Si Klegg, Book 4
Page 18
CHAPTER XVIII. A DISTURBING MESSAGE
THE DEACON HURRIEDLY LEAVES FOR CHATTANOOGA.
THAT evening Lieut. Bowersox sent a telegram to Deacon Klegg. It had tobe strictly limited to 10 words, and read:
JOSIAH KLEGG, ESQ.,
Somepunkins Station, Ind.:
Josiah not killed. Hospital at Chattanooga. Badly wounded. E. C. BOWERSOX.
It did not arrive at Sumpunkins Station, three miles from the Deacon'shome, until the next forenoon. The youth who discharged themultifarious duties of Postmaster, passenger, freight and express-agent,baggage-master, and telegraph operator at Sumpunkins Station laboriouslyspelled out the dots and dashes on the paper strip in the instrument.He had barely enough mastery of the Morse alphabet to communicatethe routine messages relating to the railroad's business aided by theintelligence of the conductors and engineers as to what was expected ofthem. This was the first outside message that he had ever received,and for a while it threatened to be too much for him, especially as theabsence of punctuation made it still more enigmatical. He faithfullytranscribed each letter as he made it out and then the agglomerationread:
"Josiamn otkildho spitalat chatano ogabadl ywounded ecbower sox."
"Confound them smart operators at Louisville and Jefferson ville," hegrumbled, scanning the scrawl. "They never make letters plain, and don'tput in half of 'em, just to worrit country operators. I'd like to takea club to 'em. There's no sort o' sense in sich sending. A Philadelphialawyer couldn't make nothing out of it. But I've got to or get acussing, and mebbe the bounce. I'll try it over again, and see if I canseparate it into words. Why in thunder can't they learn to put a spacebe tween the words, and not jumble the letters all to gether in thatfool fashion?"
The next time he wrote it out:
"J. O. S. I am not kild Hospital at Chattanooga badly wounded E. C.Bower sox."
"That begins to look like something," said he, wiping the sweat from hisforehead. "But who is J. O. S.? Nobody o' them initials in this neighborhood. Nor E. C. Bower. Deacon Klegg can't know any of 'em. Then, how'sthe hospital badly wounded Bower? What's that about his socks? I'll haveto try it over again as soon as No. 7, freight, gets by."
After No. 7 had gotten away, he tackled the message again:
"No, that sixth letter's not an m, but an h. H is four dots, and m istwo dashes. It's specks in the paper that makes it look like an h. I'llput in some letters where they're needed. Now let's see how it'll read:"