A good rest, and the knowledge that nothing really serious had happened, did much to restore Jack, and on the second day following his experience he was back in the saddle again. His cuts had been well bandaged, so he could use his hands. He was not actually required to ride the express route, but he would not let any one else do it.
"Maybe I'll get a chance to trace those robbers," he said. "I feel sure I would know at least one of them again—the man who sat on his horse all the while. I'm going to be on the watch for him."
The excitement caused by the hold-up of the pony express soon died away. In western communities there is so much going on that interest is soon shifted to newer events.
The posse that went out to seek the robbers had no luck in finding them. All traces seemed to disappear after the bags were found in the old mine-hole. A man was kept in hiding at that place for nearly a week, ready to give the alarm if the hold-up men returned to get the pouches which they had hidden. But they did not come back.
Meanwhile Jack soon became himself again. His father, too, improved slowly, though he was far from well, and would not be able to ride the trail again for a long time.
Of course, Jennie had to hear the whole story of the hold-up from Jack himself, and she sympathized deeply with him.
"Oh, it was just terrible!" she exclaimed, in her impulsive, but sweet and girlish fashion. "I just can't bear to think of your lying out there all alone, in the dark, and tied up with ropes!"
"Well, it wasn't exactly a picnic," Jack admitted.
"And to think of your cutting yourself on the glass!" she went on, as she looked at his hands, one of which she held gently.
"Oh, it might have been worse. If it hadn't been for the glass I might have lain there a while longer, and in that case I probably would not have found the stolen mail bags, for if I had waited there until the rescuers came I'd never have walked down the trail."