St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1885-01-03
COvINGTON. ST TAMMANY PARISH La. JANUARY 3, 1885.

you better tie string to yourself. 1 m
losing you fellows pretty fast This
led to an explanation, and he told me
about it. 1t seems the three Were
brothers. The first one was little
| tlighty, and was continually rum
| ming off to some out-of-the-way cor
ner Of the globe. Only few months
before he appeared in Nevada he had
been in India. His brothers paid no
attention at first to his crazy tele-
gram, thinking it was only one of his
loony jokes, but when several months
had passed and they heard nothing of
him they began TO fear that he mi ght
cided that one of them should go after
him. This was the second gentleman.
and his failure to return brought out
the third under the apprehension that
the Others had been foully dealt with.
Well, he was gone about Il week. and
| began to believe that he had gone up
the spout. too, when the first one came
sneaking into my Office and said: SAY,
if anybody comes around here looking
for me just tell them you don't know
where l am Where's your brother?'
said l. He looked at me nervously and
said: He's up in the Comstock with
me- Where's your other brother?'
He's down East No he isn't | re-
piled; hes here in this town. and he's
looking for you, and going TO find You.
just then the second one came in and
said to the first: Come on. Charley,
let's be going While / was question
ing him in walked the other. and there
was great handshaking all around.
The whole three of them seemed to en-
joy the thing immensely. Well, / be-
gan to think those were about the craZi-
est cranks L ever saw, when the last one
said. kind Of pityingly, to me: Its all
right, my boy. Those messages amt
just what they seem. A little cipher.
you know. We've got silver up here
till you can't rest, and we couldn't be
telegraphing everything You see.
was young in those days, and when two
of those lunaties came in at different
times with copies of messages. inquir-
ing very particularly after the men who
sent them, what was to think? No
Philadelphian could come any such
game on me now, I'll bet you. They all
got rich, and when they came to sell ont
one of them made me present of
silver brick worth twenty-five dollars.
The last speaker was one who had
no hair on his head, but who said
in response to an inquiry that no
scalping-knife had ever taken it off.
1T was just scared off," he eN-
claimed, down toward old Jules
burg. One day L was at my desk
ms nj of
ing, ten or twelve miles away, tele-
graphed down that he was surrounded
by redskins, and that they were whet-
ting their tomahawks on the wires.
l thought that it was a pretty good
joke until he telegrapked tn.t. the
station was in flames. and that
lot of the Indians had set out for
my place. Then / began to prick
up my ears. There We're not many
of us there just then. and we were
in no condition to fight Indians any
way. We threw up breastworks. and
got everybody who had gun. pis-
tol. a club, or knife to fall in. 1t
was about sundown when we got all
ready for them. While we were wait
ing nervously for the onslaught. one of
tllt ClliZtuS, Il SdlOOfl-kceptT, came rlu-
ing up in mad haste and shouted that
there were just millions of them
coming You fellows are all as good
as massacred now,' he said. There's
only just one thing to do, and that
is to telegraph up and down the line
for help. Put it strong, now,' he said
to me. Beg, implore, exhort them.
Well, could rattle key pretty
well in those days, and 1 everlast-
ingly begged for help. / was thor
oughly scared, and l threw my whole
soul into the work. After about an
hour of agony Cheyenne broke in with:
oh. turn yourself out, You big calf.
What's the matter with you?' This
cooled me off a little, and I looked
outside and saw the people going and
coming as usual. They had put up
gorgeous joke on me just because /
was telegraphic tenderfoot. My hair
fell out soon after that. and it has never
grown since.-Sidney(Neb.J Cor. N. Y
Sun.