“He’ll shift his saddle and mail bags to a pony that is waiting, and then gallop at the same headlong speed for ten or twelve miles more, and change again unless that is the end of his run. This isn’t the first time, Jeth, we have seen those men riding like mad, and we are likely to see many more before we get sight of the Pacific.”
“I didn’t obsarve dat he carried a rifle.”
“He had none, but a few of the riders carry them; this one doesn’t think he is likely to need any, and so he lightens the load of his horse that much. Shagbark managed to say a few words to me last night, and one thing he told me was that the Pony Express riders sometimes miss it in not taking a rifle with them. They are so anxious to make schedule time that they run into danger. It often happens that when they most need a gun they haven’t it. I hope that fellow won’t be caught in such a fix.”
“Gorrynation! don’t he trabbel? Why can’t we do de same ting, Al?”
“If we could change horses every ten or twelve miles, we might keep it up for a day at a time, but we should have to have two or three hundred horses waiting for us at the different stations,” observed Alden, thinking to close the argument.
“How would it do fur us to ride ahead and fix it dat way? Den we could come back and skim ober de kentry like a couple ob muskeeters.”
“After we had placed our ponies at the last station this side of Sacramento, what should we gain by coming here and going over the ground a second time?”
Jethro lifted his well worn hat and scratched his head.
“Dat’s so; I didn’t tink ob dat; blamed queer how it slipped my mind—what’s de matter wid Shagbark?”