First, there weren't any "villages" in that part of the country. The general progression was:
an encampment (tents and such, but no roads except wagon tracks)
a settlement (buildings and perhaps a main road, but no government)
a town (elected/appointed officials who ran things and more formalized streets, sidewalks and such)
a city (more layers of officials, city government beyond a town hall and cross streets with some sort of platting of the land)
In the very early days of the telegraph, it was the railroad office where someone would travel to send a telegram. The person would either write out their message and hand it to a clerk with payment, or would speak the words to the clerk and give payment. The clerk would write it out and read it back to the customer to be sure they sent it correctly. Payment was by the word, and it was expensive (for the time), which is why messages began to be shortened to what might be the equivalent of a text message today. If someone wanted to say:
Bob: I need you to send me $10 and I need to talk to you about the ranch. One of the fences is broken and I need money to repair it. I think I rounded up all the cows. Dave
That message would cost the equivalent of a week's pay (or more, depending on the railroad--no standardized pricing.) But they didn't charge for the word "stop", which was the equivalent of punctuation. A period, if you will.
So, a long message would get shortened to something like this:
Bob--stop--Send $10--stop--fence broke--stop--sending letter to explain--Dave
The telegraph operator would click out the message to the closest station and would wait for receipt. They were also responsible to notify the person if the message got a reply, and most telegraph operators had an arrangement with the local bank to pay over money when funds were wired by telegraph from a different location.
Does that help?