Alden the Pony Express rider

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

All know how hard it is to keep one’s bearings in groping through an unknown country. It is tenfold harder to do so at night, when there is no aid whatever, and nothing to prevent yielding to that curious tendency we all show to travel in a circle.

In the case of Alden Payne, however, a kind Providence took him in hand. Without being aware of it, he gradually shifted his course until he struck exactly the right one, and really advanced toward his destination. Several times he stopped with the intention of nestling down beside some rock, and sleeping if it should prove possible, but the anxiety to get as far as he could from that carcass kept him going.

There is no saying how long he would have continued had he not been suddenly checked by coming to the edge of another stream which crossed his course. He had heard no warning rippling or murmur, and almost stepped into the water before he saw what was in front of him.

“This is the second one which, as Jenkins told me, I shall have to cross, but plague take it! I don’t like the prospect at all.”

The stream was not more than half the width of the other, but it might be ten times as deep and dangerous. He found it was flowing rapidly, and it was natural that he should shrink from venturing into its treacherous icy depth.

The fact that it was an obstacle to his progress made Alden the more anxious to cross. Instead of waiting till the morrow, he felt he must do so at once.

Then he asked himself whether he could not construct a raft to bear him. He even searched up and down the bank but a few minutes showed him the impossibility of his plan. About the only wood he found were willows and a species of elder, none of which was thicker than his wrist. The squat pines scattered here and there required an axe to cut them down, and he had only his hunting knife. Perforce he abandoned the scheme.

It was at this moment that he fancied he dimly detected tracks in the mud on the edge of the stream. He had come so far from the carcass of the pony that he felt little fear of the Indians. He struck another of his matches and scrutinized the ground.

To his astonishment, he saw the prints of broad tired wagons, and the tracks of oxen and horses. They extended as far up and down stream as he could see. The inference was plain: in wandering from the course of Bucephalus, he had found his way to a portion of the main path followed by the emigrants going westward. This as was the rule was spread over a space of a mile or more in width, and still greater in other places.