“What time is it?” he panted.
“You arrived at five ten.”
“Is that so? Then I made the last twenty miles in sixty-two minutes.”
The horse looked like it. It staggered, weak-kneed, as the hostler carefully led it to the stable. Charley also slightly staggered from stiffness as he walked away with the agent through a lane of admirers, for breakfast and sleep.
Before the east-bound mail arrived on its swift journey from California to the Missouri River, Davy and everybody else at Laramie knew just how the system was being worked. Charley had been well questioned.
Only the best horses were used—horses that could beat Indian horses or anything else on the road. The Pony Express riders were supposed not to fight but to run away. Their Spencer carbine and two revolvers and knife were carried for use only in case that they couldn’t run away. They all had to sign the regular Russell, Majors & Waddell pledge, and each one was given a calf-bound Bible, just as with the bull trains. Small horses were preferred, and a very light skeleton saddle was used. A set of saddle-bags called a mochila (mo-cheela) was hung across the saddle; each corner was a pocket for the mail. The pocket flaps were locked by little brass keys, and could be unlocked only by the station agents. The mochila was passed from rider to rider, and the mail was taken out or put in along the route. Of course, the most of the mail was through mail, from the East to the Coast, and from the Coast to the East. The rate was five dollars a half ounce, and most of the letters were written on tissue paper; the New York and St. Louis papers also were to be printed on tissue paper for mailing by the Pony Express. The limit was twenty pounds. Charley thought that he had brought about three pounds. The letters were wrapped in oiled silk, so that they would not soak with water, and were in Government Pony Express envelopes, which cost ten cents apiece. Later Dave saw some of these letters, directed to Laramie. Several addressed to the post sutler, for instance, from merchant houses, had as much as twenty dollars in postage stamps and Pony Express stamps on the envelopes!
Gradually the names of the Pony Express riders passed back and forth along the line. There were eighty of the riders, forty carrying the news in one direction, forty carrying it in the other. Out on the west end—the Pacific Division—were riding Harry Roff and “Boston,” and Sam Hamilton (through thirty feet of snow on the Sierra Nevada mountain range!) and Bob Haslam, and Jay Kelley, Josh Perkins, Major Egan. In and out of Laramie rode Irish Tom, and Charley Cliff, who was only seventeen years old. In and out of Julesburg rode Bill Hogan, and “Little Yank,” who weighed a hundred pounds and rode 100 miles without a rest. Further east, down the Platte, were Theo Rand and “Doc” Brink, and Jim Beatley, and handsome Jim Moore, and little Johnny Frye—who took the first trip out of St. Joe.
Their names and the names of other riders travelled from mouth to mouth—and soon tales were being told of storms and Indians and outlaws and accidents that tried to stop the express but couldn’t. No matter what conspired to stop him, the Pony Express rider always got through. The first relays had carried the mail from the Missouri River to Sacramento, California, 1966 miles, in nine days and twenty-three hours—one hour under schedule! And after that the mail went through, both ways, on schedule time or less.
So, regularly as clockwork, into Laramie galloped the rider from Mud Springs, with the west-bound mail, and the rider from Red Buttes with the east-bound mail; in fifteen seconds the saddle bags were changed from horse to horse and out galloped the fresh riders. Davy burned to vault aboard the saddle, like Irish Tom or Charley, and scurry away, on business bent, to carry the precious saddle bags to the next rider.
But meanwhile, where was Billy Cody?