Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1907-05-09
SAVED BY
SHORTY

have been massacred If Shorty hadn't
blown into T on the through
freight that day." said Col. b,
growing reminiscent, but it's rabbits
to coyotes that some of us would have
lost our pretty curls.
The redskins had been restless for
some time. 1t was before the days
that the government made college
football players out of them, and they
still resented white men intruding Oh
their game preserves and desecratine
their happy hunting grounds.
Il was United States marshal theE
! had handful Of deputies, as gam
crowd as ever pulled A or cvz..
a Winchester, but they wo'ldL hav,
equator il those peslky devils had
started on the warpath.
THE Indian agent was plainly wor
ried, and l was not sleeping good my.
self. A fellow never does rest well
with his rife under his neck. The
cavalry should have been sent over as
fntimidators q week before, but those
fellows at Washington always die
think that they knew more than the
men on the firing line.
tue, we had an operator at T.
one of those combination kind, who
punches tickets, handles trunks and
potatoes and receives train orders fc
the extra engine which used to double
head Winding Stage mountains.
He was good enough for the isolatef
station in ordinary times, but he weni
to pieces whenever the Indian agent
would throw those long-winded cipher
messages for the interior department
at him, the gist of which was prayer
that the secretary of the interio;
would ask the attorney general t.
plead with the secretary of war, witt
the presidents permission, to permi
the bugler at the post, 200 miles ava:
to sound boots and saddles.
I'VE sent man up the railroad ;
the chief dispatcher of the division
asking him to send us an operator
who could send dots and dashes in
lunches without hurting his finger
nails. We were politely but firmly in.
formed that the railroad needed all the
men 1t had in that forsaken country,
and that we would have to do the bes.
we could with the amateur at T.
"I'll telegraph down the line and
see If l can get you man, but ]
amt making any promises was the
best consolation we could get from thu
main wiretapper.
Things were desperate, l say, whe.
Shorty came. He wasn't pleasant t:
look upon at first meeting. / have
seen some cleaner tramps, but h,
didn't object to water, and he scrape
off his hirsute appendages of tw
weeks standing when we loaned hi,
a razor. After he had filled his ach
ing voids with goodly supply of ra
tons and given him new blue fan
mel shirt, he didn't look half bad.
Il hear you gazabos are in grave
danger of being separated from scalps
If a gentleman of intimate acquaint.
ance with Miss Morse didn't come to
your rescue" was his salutatory, when
he swung clear of the caboose, on
which he had been deadhead pas
senger.
81 used to hold down the A. z.
leased wire at Chi, he said, and j
guess l can shoot all the lightnin' you
fellows can send We didn't know
whether A. P. stood for apple pie or
ask papa, and we didn't care when
we saw that DO caress the telegraph
key affectionately.
HE could have had the only billed
shirt in camp IL he'd been so impo
lite as to ask for 1t, so much attached
did the boys become to him. He kept
the wires to Washington so hot that
within As hours special arrived with
the troops and the Indians promised
to be good.
1--WE tried to keep Shorty with u.s.
but when the government sent him
$40 per day for the two weeks he
spent at T, he climbed onto the
first passenger train going north. He
didn't object to the company, he said,
but wanted to get back to the white
lights of Broadway. l hope he got
there, because he certainly saved our
bacon"