CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE PONY EXPRESS
About the time I had decided to go back to my Indian friends, word came that the Pony Express was to be started, and Mr. Faust induced me to stay and be one of the pony riders. I sold my roan pony to a sergeant in Camp Floyd for seventy-five dollars and my little black mare for a hundred dollars. Part of this money I gave to mother, and the rest I used to buy some clothes.
A great “powwow” was going on about the Pony Express coming through the country. The company had begun to build its roads and stations. These stations were about ten miles apart. They were placed as near to a spring, or other watering place, as possible. There were two kinds of them, the “home station” and the “way station.” At the way stations, the riders changed horses; at the home stations, which were about fifty miles from each other, the riders were changed; and there they ate their meals and slept.
Finally the time came for the express horses to be distributed along the line, and the station keepers and riders were sent to the various stations. Mr. Faust and Major Howard Egan went on my bond, and I was sent out west into Nevada to a station called Ruby Valley. This was a “home station.” It was kept by William Smith. Samuel Lee was his hostler.
When we were hired to ride the express, we had to go before a justice of the peace and swear we would be at our post at all times, and not go farther than one hundred yards from the station except when carrying the mail. When we started out we were not to turn back, no matter what happened, until we had delivered the mail at the next station. We must be ready to start back at a half minute’s notice, day or night, rain or shine, Indians or no Indians.
Our saddles, which were all provided by the company, had nothing to them but the bare tree, stirrups, and cinch. Two large pieces of leather about sixteen inches wide by twenty-four long were laced together with a strong leather string thrown over the saddle. Fastened to these were four pockets, two in front and two behind; these hung on each side of the saddle. The two hind ones were the largest. The one in front on the left side was called the “way pocket.” All of these pockets were locked with small padlocks and each home station keeper had a key to the “way pocket.” When the express arrived at the home station, the keeper would unlock the “way pocket” and if there were any letters for the boys between the home stations, the rider would distribute them as he went along. There was also a card in the way pocket that the station keeper would take out and write on it the time the express arrived and left his station. If the express was behind time, he would tell the rider how much time he had to make up.
Well, the time came that we had to start. On the afternoon of April 3, 1860, at a signal cannon shot, a pony rider left St. Joseph, Missouri; and the same moment another left Sacramento, California—one speeding west, the other east over plains and mountains and desert. Night and day the race was kept up by the different riders and their swift horses until the mail was carried through. Then they turned and dashed back over the same trail again. Each man would make about fifty miles a day, changing horses four or five times to do it.
Not many riders could stand the long, fast riding at first, but after about two weeks they would get hardened to it.
At first the rider would be charged up with the saddle he was riding, and his first wages were kept back for it. If he had no revolver, and had to get one from the company, that would add another heavy expense to be deducted from his wages. Some of the boys were killed by the Indians before they had paid for these things. Our pay was too small for the hard work and the dangers we went through.
Everything went along first rate for a while, but after about six or eight months of that work, the big, fine horses began to play out, and then the company bought up a lot of wild horses from California, strung them along the road and put the best riders to breaking them.
Peter Neece, our home station keeper, was a big, strong man, and a good rider. He was put to breaking some of these mustangs for the boys on his beat. After he had ridden one of them a time or two, he would turn the half-broken, wild things over to the express boys to ride. Generally, when a hostler could lead them into and out of the stable without getting his head kicked off, the bronchos were considered broken. Very likely they had been handled just enough to make them mean. I found it to be so with most of the horses they gave me to ride.
I was not a bit afraid of the Indians at first; but when the boys began to get shot at and killed by the skulking savages, I might not have been afraid, but I was pretty badly scared just the same.
At one time my home station was at Shell Creek. I rode from there to Deep Creek. One day the Indians killed a rider out on the desert, and when I was to meet him at Deep Creek, he was not there. I had to keep right on until I met him. It was not until I reached the next station, Willow Creek, that I found out he had been killed. My horse was about jaded by this time, so I had to stay there and let him rest. I should have had to start back that night if the Indians had not come upon us.
About four o’clock that afternoon, seven Indians rode up to the station and asked for something to eat. Neece, the station keeper, picked up a sack holding about twenty pounds of flour and offered it to them. They demanded a sack of flour apiece. He threw it back into the house and told them to clear out, that he would not give them anything.
This made them angry, and as they passed a shed about five rods from the house they each shot an arrow into a poor old lame cow, that happened to be standing under a shed. When Neece saw that, he jerked out his pistol and commenced shooting at them. He killed two of the Indians and the rest ran.
“Now, boys,” he said, “we are in for a hot time tonight. There’s a bunch of about thirty of the red rascals up the canyon, and they will be on us as soon as it gets dark. We’ll have to fight.”
A man by the name of Lynch was with us at the time. He had boasted a good deal about what he would do if the Indians attacked him. We thought he was a kind of desperado. I felt pretty safe until he weakened and began to cry, then I wanted all of us to get on our horses and skip for the next station; but Pete said: “No; we will load up all of our old guns and get ready for them when they come. There are only four of us; but we can stand off the whole bunch of them.”
Bur. of Am. Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution
An aged Indian of the Nevada desert, of Pony Express days, with his bow and arrows.
Just a little before dark we could see a big dust over towards the mouth of the canyon about six miles from the station. We knew they were coming. Neece thought it would be a good thing to go out from the station a hundred yards or so and surprise them as they came up. When we got there he had us lie down a little way apart.
“Now,” he said, “when you fire, jump to one side, so if they shoot at the blaze of your gun, you will not be there.”
You bet I lay close to the ground. Pretty soon we heard the thumping of their horses’ hoofs. It seemed to me there were hundreds of them. And such yells as they let out, I never heard before. They were coming straight for us, and I thought they were going to run right over us. It was sandy where we lay, with little humps here and there and scrubby greasewood growing on the humps.
When the Indians got close enough, Pete shot and jumped away to one side. I had two pistols, one in each hand, cocked and ready to pull the trigger, and was crawling on my elbows and knees. Each time he would shoot I saw him jump. Soon they were all shooting but me. I got so excited that I forgot to fire, but I kept jumping.
After I had jumped a good many times, I happened to land in a little wash, or ravine, that the water had made. My back came up nearly level with the top of the banks. Anyway I pressed myself down in it. I was badly scared. My heart was beating like a triphammer.
As I lay there, the shooting ceased. After a while I raised my head and looked off towards the desert. Those humps of sand covered with greasewood looked exactly like Indians on horses, and I could see several of them near the wash. I crouched down again and lay there a long time; it seemed hours.
Finally everything was so still I decided to go and see whether my horse was where I had staked him. If he was, I intended to jump on him and strike back for the Deep Creek station, and tell them that the boys were killed; but as I went crawling around the house on my elbows and knees with my revolvers ready to shoot, I saw a light shining through the cracks. It must be full of Indians, I thought; and I lay there quietly to watch what they were doing.
Suddenly I heard one of the men a little distance from the house say, “Did you find anything of him?”
Another answered: “No, I guess he is gone.”
I knew then it was the boys. When I heard them go into the house and shut the door, I slipped up and peeped through the cracks. The three of them were in there all right. I was almost too ashamed to go in; but I finally went around and opened the door.
“Hello!” Neece called out; “here he is! How far did you chase them, Nick? I knew you would stay with them.”
Several Indians had been killed and the rest of the bunch had run when the surprise attack was made on them. They did not bother us any more just then, but they got plenty of revenge later. The next morning I went back to Deep Creek.
Shortly after this I was making my ride through one of the canyons on the trail when suddenly four Indians jumped out of the rocks and brush into the road just ahead of me. I whirled my pony and started to run back, when I found three other Indians standing in the trail. I couldn’t climb the sides of the canyon; the devils had me trapped, and they began to close in on me with their bows and arrows ready. Only one of them had a gun.
I did not know what else to do, so I sat still on my horse. As they came up I recognized old Tabby among them. This gave me some hope. Their leader, a one-eyed, mean-looking old rascal, grabbed my horse’s rein, and ordered me to get off. I tried to get old Tabby’s eye, but he wouldn’t look my way nor speak to me. Two Indians led my horse about a hundred yards up the canyon and held it there, while the one-eyed Indian talked to me.
He said I had no right to cross their country. The land belonged to the Indians, and they were going to drive the white men out of it. He took his ramrod out of his old gun and marked a trail in the road. “We will burn the stations, here and here and here,” he went on, jabbing the rod in the dirt. “And we will kill the pony men.”
With this threat he left me standing in the road, while he, with old Tabby and the rest, walked away into the brush and began to talk. I could not hear what they were saying. I was badly scared. Then they made a fire.
“Joe Dugout’s” well on old Pony Express trail, about ten miles northeast of Camp Floyd. “Joe” kept a “way station” here for the express.
My soul! I thought. Are they going to burn me? I was just about to make a dash for the two Indians and fight for my horse; but that would have been a fool thing to do.
After a while one of the Indians came up and asked me if I had any tobacco. I gave him all I had. That made things look a little better. They had a smoke and then Old Tabby came to talk with me.
The Indians, he said, wanted to kill me, but he would not agree to it. My father, he said, was his good friend. But I must turn back and never carry the mail there again; for if they caught me they would surely kill me next time.
“But this mail’s got to go through,” I said. “Let me take it this time and I will not ride here again.”
When I had made this promise, they let me go. I did not carry the mail over there any more; but I was sent further west, about three hundred miles, to ride from Carson Sink to Fort Churchill. The distance was about seventy-five miles and was a very hard ride, for the horses as well as for me, because much of the trail led through deep sand. Some things were not so bad, however; I had no mountains to cross, and the Indians were more friendly here.
East of my beat along Egan Canyon, Shell Creek, and Deep Creek, they had begun to be very ugly, threatening to burn the stations and kill the people, and the following spring they did break out in dead earnest. Some of the stations were burned and one of the riders was killed. That spring I was changed back into Major Egan’s division and rode from Shell Creek to Ruby Valley.
Things grew worse that summer. More stations were burned, some hostlers and riders were killed, and I got very badly wounded. It happened this way. I had been taking some horses to Antelope Station, and on my way back, I made a stop at Spring Valley Station. When I got there, the two boys that looked after the station were out on the wood pile playing cards. They asked me to stay and have dinner. I got my horse and started him towards the station, but instead of going into the stable he went behind it where some other horses were grazing.
Pretty soon we saw the horses going across the meadow towards the cedars with two Indians behind them. We started after them full tilt and gained on them a little. As we ran I fired three shots at them from my revolver, but they were too far off for me to hit them. They reached the cedars a little before we did.
I was ahead of the other two boys, and as I ran around a large cedar one of the Indians shot me in the head with a flint-tipped arrow. It struck me about two inches above the left eye. The two boys were on the other side of the tree. Seeing the Indians run, they came around to find me lying on the ground with the arrow sticking in my head. They tried to pull the arrow out, but the shaft came away and left the flint in my head. Thinking that I would surely die, they rolled me under a tree and started for the next station as fast as they could go. There they got a few men and came back the next morning to bury me; but when they got to me and found that I was still alive, they thought they would not bury me just then.
They carried me to a station called Cedar Wells, and sent to Ruby Valley for a doctor. When he came, he took the spike out of my head and told the boys to keep a wet rag on the wound, as that was all they could do for me.
I lay there for six days, when Major Egan happened to come along. Seeing that I was still alive, he sent for the doctor again. When the doctor came and saw I was no worse, he began to do something for me. But I knew nothing of all this. For eighteen days I lay unconscious. Then I began to get better fast, and it was not long before I was riding again.
If Mr. Egan had not happened along when he did, I think I should not be here now telling about it. But oh, I have suffered with my head at times since then!
The Indians kept getting worse. They began to attack and murder emigrants, and they did a lot of damage to the express line by burning stations, killing the riders, and running off with the horses. It became harder to get riders to carry the mail; for every one that could leave would do so, and the agents found it difficult to find others to take the dangerous job. They raised the wages from forty dollars to sixty per month, but men did not want to risk their lives for even that price.
Between Deep Creek and Shell Creek was what we called “Eight-mile station.” It was kept by an old man, and he had two young emigrant boys to help him. Their mother had died of the cholera, east of Salt Lake City, and their father had been shot by the Indians farther along the trail west. He died when they reached Deep Creek, leaving these two boys with the station keeper. Before he passed away he gave this keeper five hundred dollars, a span of big mules, and a new wagon if he would send the boys back to Missouri where the family had lived.
As it was too late for them to make the trip that fall, the boys were to pass the winter at Deep Creek. The old keeper of the “Eight-mile station” could not do the work very well, so the older of the two boys was sent there to help him. An emigrant train came along and the old man slipped away with it, leaving the boy to take care of the station alone. It was hard to get men to stay at this station when the Indians began to get mean. The boy wanted to stay with it, so they let him do it; and his brother was sent out to help him.
One day, while these two boys were in charge, I rode up there to meet the other rider. As I reached the station, I could see him coming five or six miles away. While we were watching him a band of Indians broke out of the brush and began to chase him. He made a great race for his life; but just before he reached the station, they shot and killed him. We knew the Indians would attack the station next, so we hurried to the barn and brought the three horses there to the house.
The station was a stone building about twelve by twenty feet in size, with a shed roof covered with dirt, so that no timbers were sticking out for the Indians to set on fire. There were portholes in each end of the building, and one on each side of the door in front.
We succeeded in getting our horses into this house by the time the Indians surrounded the station. They kept shooting at the back of the house; for they soon learned not to come up in front of these portholes. One or two of them that were foolish enough to do it got killed. I know that one made a mistake by darkening my porthole. When I saw the shadow, I pulled the trigger. Three days afterwards, when I went out, I found an Indian lying there. He must have got in the way of my bullet.
They kept us there for three days. It was lucky for us that the station was built on low ground. The water had risen in the cellar under the house. We had only one pan that the boys had used for mixing dough to make their bread. This we had to use to water and feed the horses in and for mixing bread also. The water in the cellar was not good, but it kept us from choking to death those three days that we were held prisoners.
The younger boy was not more than eleven years old, and the other one was about fourteen. I was only a few years older. We put the little boy to tending the horses and looking after things while we guarded the house. Sometimes the little fellow would get to crying, and talking about his mother dying and his father getting killed by the Indians. The older boy was full of grit. He would try to comfort his little brother.
The first night none of us slept at all, but the next day and the following night I let them sleep a little by having one of them watch while the other slept. The third night I went to sleep and left the boys on guard.
Along towards morning, just as it was getting daylight, they came and woke me up. There was a lot of shooting going on outside, and they wanted to know what it meant. I listened, and the first thing I heard was somebody saying, “Go to the house and see if the boy is all right.” I looked through the hole and saw a lot of soldiers. Some of Johnston’s army had been sent out to clear the trail of the murdering Indians.
Another exciting experience happened to me when Mr. Kennedy, a horse trader, was bringing a large band of mustangs along the trail from California to Salt Lake to sell. He got belated out on the desert and found it necessary to stop at Deep Creek, where he could winter his horses out instead of feeding them. The Indians were so bad that we had to send out guards with the horses in the daytime, and at night corral them, and place a strong guard around them.
Our corral was made by digging a trench and setting in large cedar posts on end. There was a straw stack in the middle of the corral where the boys tried to sleep; but the Indians got so mean that they would shoot arrows in the bed. This made it too dangerous to sleep there. Sometimes we would spread our blankets on the straw as if we were in bed, and in the morning find several arrows sticking through them.
A favorite way of guarding the corral was to take up a big picket, or post on either side of the bars, and have a man stand in its place.
The Indians’ scheme was to get the bars down in some way, then stampede the horses, and run them off. One night Peter Neece and I were standing guard in this way. He was on one side of the bars and I was on the other. We knew that there were Indians around by the way the horses in the corral acted. I was standing on the south side of the bars looking off into the sagebrush, for I believed the Indians would be coming from that direction, because the horses were looking that way.
But one Indian, instead of coming straight up from the front, got close up to the fence at the back and came creeping around close to the corral to get to the bars. It happened that he was coming on my side, but I did not see him. Neece did, but he could not warn me without giving himself away.
He watched him crawling towards the bars, and just as he got about to his feet, Neece fired. The Indian gave one unearthly yell that could have been heard for miles, sprang in the air and settled down where I had been standing, but I wasn’t there. When that yell was being let out, I turned a back somersault and landed a rod or more inside of the corral.
Sometimes at night when the horses were brought in, we would saddle one for each of us and keep him saddled ready for use all night. In the morning we would put the saddle on fresh horses to be prepared at any minute to strike out after the Indians if it was necessary.
In the spring, when Mr. Kennedy was about to start with his horses for Salt Lake, the herder was fired on one morning as he was driving the band out to grass. The Indians then closed in behind the horses and headed them towards the hills. Seven of us immediately started after them. I was on a lazy, old blue horse, and could not keep up with the other boys, but Mr. Kennedy rode a very good horse. He was way ahead of the rest of us and was crowding the Indians pretty close. He would have overtaken them in a few minutes more. Just before he caught up with them, however, one Indian’s horse fell, carrying his rider down with him. As Kennedy charged on the Indian to run over him, he received an arrow in the arm; but the Indian got a bullet through the head in return. Kennedy had to wait until we came up to pull the arrow out of his arm.
By that time the Indians had the horses in a box canyon. A few of the thieves hid among the rocks and held us back while the rest of the band rushed the horses up the canyon. The canyon led south a few hundred yards, then turned sharply around a large, steep mountain and ran almost directly north. A short distance further the canyon turned again and opened into a large meadow about a mile long.
Finley and Bohlman
A coyote, an animal often seen on the desert, along the Pony Express trail. See Mark Twain’s description of the coyote, in Roughing It.
When we saw that we could not pass the Indians that were ambushing us at the rocky entrance of the canyon, Kennedy thought it would be best to go back two or three miles and cross a low divide to get into it at the head of the meadow. There the canyon narrowed again. We might head off the Indians if we got there first. We turned and went back about two and a half miles to go over this divide. When we neared the top of the divide there was a cliff too steep to take our horses over, so we tied them to a clump of mountain mahogany, and went afoot. We could not go very fast down the other side, for the white maple brush was very thick.
Just before we got down to the head of the meadows, we stopped on the side of the mountain near a very large flat-topped rock. Kennedy sat there watching for the Indians to come out on to the meadows from the canyon. The rest of us went down just below the rock and began to fill our pockets with “yarb,” or Indian tobacco. While picking this “yarb,” Frank Mathis laid his old muzzle-loading Springfield rifle down in the bushes where he could easily reach it if necessary.
We had been there about half an hour when all at once Kennedy jumped down among us and cried, “Boys, we’re surrounded!” In his excitement Mathis grabbed his gun by the muzzle and gave it a jerk. The hammer caught on a bush and the gun was discharged, shooting his left arm off between the shoulder and elbow. That rattled us a good deal so we hardly knew what to do next.
Kennedy thought it best for us to fight our way back to where our horses were tied. He started Mathis up the hill ahead of the rest of us. We were to keep the Indians back if we could. We knew they were around us on every side for we could hear the brush cracking and see it shaking every once in a while. When near the top, we came to a bare stretch of ground about two rods across.
We stopped at the edge of the brush, for we knew that the Indians could shoot us as soon as we got into the open. Kennedy thought we had better make a break for it and scatter out as we ran so that they could not hit us so easily. I had the shortest legs of all the men; but, just the same, I wasn’t the last one over. When we were about half way across, the Indians opened fire with their bows and guns. One bullet struck a rock right under my feet. It helped me over the hill just that much quicker.
By the time we reached the horses, Mathis was bleeding badly. He was faint and begging for water. We had to lead our horses down to the bottom of the mountain on account of the rocks. Kennedy sent Robert Orr and me down to the creek to get water in our hats for Mathis. When we got back with it, Kennedy sent me on to the station so I could be there when the express came and be ready to take it on. That was the last I ever saw of Frank Mathis. He was sent on to Salt Lake, where he was cared for and got well, but he got into trouble later and was killed.
About the time the Indians were at their worst a small train of emigrants came through on their way to California. They were warned by all of the station agents that it was not safe for so few people to travel through the country at that time, and were advised to stop until more trains came up. They replied that they were well armed and could stand off the Indians all right.
At that time I was riding from Shell Creek through Egan Canyon to Ruby Valley. We who knew the Gosiute Indians could tell that they were going to make a raid. They were making signals in the mountains with smokes by day and fires by night to gather their band. We knew by their signs that the emigrants would be attacked as they were going through some of the bad canyons on the route. Egan Canyon was about the worst of these; it was a narrow canyon nearly six miles long, with cliffs on each side from three hundred to one thousand feet high, so that one could not turn to the right or the left after entering it. This canyon was the dread of all that had to go through it.
The train of emigrants had entered this canyon just ahead of me. I rode very fast to catch up with them before they got to the worst part of it, but just before I reached them, I heard the shooting and I knew the Indians had made an attack. As I stopped to listen two men came running for dear life. They were bare-headed.
“Go back!” they shouted as they came near, “The whole company has been killed but us.” They passed me and ran on.
After a little while I could hear no more shooting, so I went on cautiously, looking ahead and around at every turn of the road. Soon I came in sight of the wagons. I made sure the Indians had gone before I went up to them.
Such a terrible sight I never saw before. Every man, woman, and child except the two that escaped had been cruelly murdered. Only one woman had any life left when I got there and she died a moment later. I looked around carefully to see whether any others were alive, but finding none I rode on. I could not stand to look long on the dreadful scene. The Indians had cut the tugs of the harnesses and taken every horse and mule in the train. When I got out of the canyon, and saw where the murderous band had turned off the road, I did not spare my horse until I reached the next station. The keeper there immediately sent a messenger to Ruby Valley where the soldiers were and they came and buried the unfortunate emigrants.
“I told Johnson to have his shooting-irons ready.”