“Yeah, it’s a wonder they keep any riders between Carson and Salt Lake,” the man was saying. “Most of the originals have quit or been wounded or injured by this time anyway. But they keep on finding adventure-crazy young fools who’ll hire on—meaning no offense to your son, Mister—but it takes a special breed of young rapscallion to put up with the dangers those boys face every day and every night out alone on the trail.”
“Zack’s a good rider,” said Pa. “Maybe that’ll keep him outta the way of—”
“They’re all good riders, Mister!” interrupted the man. “Them that ain’t—why, they’d be dead inside o’ two or three days. They don’t ride for the Express unless they’re the best riders this side of the Ohio valley. It ain’t good riding that keeps ’em alive in this foolhardy business.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s pluck, little lady. It’s determination, it’s courage, it’s guts, it’s bravado. It’s being able to look death in the face and not blink. You ever heard of Nick Wilson?” he asked, looking back toward Pa.
Pa shook his head.
“The blamed fool had a will to live beyond what any mortal oughta have to have. They left him for dead a couple of times, but he lived to tell what happened. Takes a lot of that too—a will to live.”
He looked at us, almost as if baiting us to ask what happened before he would continue.
“We’re listening,” said Pa finally, taking another sip of the horrid coffee.
“Young Nick got to the relay station at Spring Valley, but there weren’t nobody there. No sign of the keeper. Everything looked in order. No sign of attack. The relay horses were grazing near the cabins. So Nick, he didn’t waste no time asking questions—he just jumped off his mount and started to saddle himself up a new horse.
“All of a sudden if he didn’t hear a dreadful screaming whooping war cry that’s the fear of every Express rider. He pulled out his Colt and started firing at the Indians that was heading toward the corral to steal the rest of the horses. The blamed fool took off chasing them to try to scare them away! But just then, from behind a tree close by, another redskin drew aim at Nick and sent a stone-tipped arrow right at him. Nick never saw him till it was too late. The arrow hit him above his left eye, and the arrowhead went right into his skull, halfway into his head. And there Nick fell and lay, right there among the trees.
“The Indians made off with all the horses, and figured they’d killed the young kid. But two men happened along a few hours later, found him, and saw that he was still alive. They tried to get the arrow out, but couldn’t. All they managed to do was loosen the shaft from the stone tip, but there the arrowhead stuck, tight as ever. Weren’t nothing much they could do, so they dragged him into the shade, then rode off to the next relay station to tell somebody they had a dead rider and an untended station.
“The next morning, two men came back from the station, figuring to bury the dead rider they’d been told about. Blamed if they didn’t find Nick lying there, still breathing faintly! They didn’t figure he’d survive the trip, but they hoisted him up across a saddle and carried him back with them to the Ruby Valley station.
“But that kid had no hankering to die just yet. He stayed alive long enough for them to get a doctor to him. He cut out the arrowhead and bandaged up the gashing wound as best he could. He hadn’t woke up since the arrow slammed into his head, and no one could figure why he kept breathing! But he did, and after a few more days he woke up and looked around and asked what all the fuss was about. I ain’t lying to you, Mister, when I tell you that Nick was up and riding his stretch o’ the Express line in less than two months!”
“What about his wound?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Yeah, well, it weren’t none too pretty, and that’s a fact. Ol’ Nick, he don’t see too good outta that eye, and he still keeps a patch over it to hide the ugly hole. But blamed if he can’t still ride with the best of ’em!”
Pa took in a deep breath, no doubt thinking of Zack. But the man hardly gave us a chance to get our wits back together before he was off again.
“Pony Bob, though,” he said. “He’s my favorite o’ the riders. Why, that young fool, he don’t know the meaning of the word fear. And he don’t know the meaning of tired, neither! He’s saved more lives than his own, and ridden more than his share of dangerous miles. You recollect what I was telling you about pluck, little lady?” he asked, looking at me.
I nodded.
“Well, Pony Bob’s made of the stuff, I can tell ya that! Why, one time he was riding along lickety-split, and rounding a bend suddenly found himself squared off face-to-face with a war party of thirty mean, blood-thirsty Paiutes! He reined in his pony, sat there a minute, this one young kid staring back at an ambush from one of the most savage tribes west of the Sioux. I tell ya, them Paiutes has killed and massacred and burned to death more settlers and workers for the Express than all the other tribes put together!
“After sitting there a spell, that young rascal just drew out his revolver, and then just ever so slowly urged his pony on. He just stared straight back into their faces, walked right up to ’em, gun held out just beside him. And without a word being said, them Indians watched him ride right through their midst and just keep going.
“Now that’s guts!” he said, laughing and showing what teeth he had left. “Them redskins was probably so surprised that he’d challenge them right to their faces like that, they couldn’t help admiring him!”
The station tender himself was almost as good a subject for an article as anything he was telling us. His name was Claude Tavish, which he only told us after Pa asked him. He had broad shoulders and big, muscular arms, which was probably a good thing for all the work he had to do around the place—building and repairing things, blacksmithing, fixing meals for the riders, and tending their horses and getting them saddled and ready. He said he had a helper who came out the four days a week when the riders came through in both directions.
Mr. Tavish had probably been a blacksmith before, and that’s how he got so strong. But now he was starting to get a little fat. His hair was getting thin, too, and gray around the edges. He didn’t look as if he worried too much about what he looked like. His face had four or five days’ worth of beard stubble on it, and the graying whiskers stood out on the brown face. He had a pleasant enough expression, and a nice smile except for the two or three missing teeth. But he seemed tired, from more than just the work—almost as if life itself was exhausting him.
If we could have gotten him to stop talking so much about all the Express riders he knew, I would have liked to ask him about his own life. I had the feeling that behind all the tales he was telling us was probably a sad story of his own—maybe a family dead, or left behind. I couldn’t help but wonder why he was out here like this, all by himself in a dangerous job, at his age. It was plain he liked people by the way he wanted to visit with us. But here he was miles from anybody. He reminded me a little of how Alkali Jones might have been at fifty, but without the same gleam in his eye. His eyes did sparkle some when he was talking, but behind the sparkle was a look that made me suspect there was pain somewhere back in his past.
All the time I’d been observing him, he had been talking about Bob Haslam. “Fortitude, that’s what he’s got—enough for a dozen riders! Why, during the Paiute War, he started off his ride one day with a seventy-five-mile stretch to the Reese River Station. That’s all a rider’s suppose to have to do in a day, but on account of the Indian trouble, there weren’t nobody to hand the mail off to, and all the horses had been requisitioned by the army to fight back the Indians. So Pony Bob, he just kept on riding, hoping for better luck fifteen miles away at Buckland’s. But there his replacement refused to ride from fear of all the war parties out on the loose.
“Pony Bob had already been riding some nine or ten hours, but there wasn’t no one else to carry the mail. So with a fresh horse, he took off again, an’ had to pass through three more stations without
finding another rider to replace him. He’d ridden 190 miles almost continuously!
“An’ what should be the news awaiting him? Only that the rider from the other direction had been badly hurt in a fall. Pony Bob got himself an hour and a half of sleep before they woke him up to make the return trip. Off he rode again, only to get to the first station that he had left several hours before to find all five of the crew murdered by Indians and all the horses stolen. He kept right on, all the way to Buckland’s, where he slept nine hours, waiting for nightfall when there would be less danger from Indians. Then he continued on through the night, outrunning a party of Paiutes who spotted him once, and finally arriving back here after 380 miles!
“I tell ya, I was glad to see the lad! I made him the finest meal I knew how to make, and put him to bed and told him to sleep for a week! He’d only lost four hours from the scheduled time after riding practically four days on ten hours sleep! Quite a kid! The company gave him a special hundred-dollar prize after that.”
“Sounds like he’s a fellow you oughta talk to and write an article about, Corrie!” said Pa.
“You’ll meet him in the morning!” said Mr. Tavish. “He’s due in sometime afore noon.”
“How long will he be here?” I asked.
“Day or two. If there ain’t no Indian trouble, he’ll ride out east again day after tomorrow evening.”
“Might there be Indian trouble . . . this close to California?” I asked, growing nervous again.
“There’s been reports of Paiutes scouting this way. But don’t you worry none about Pony Bob. He can outrun anyone. Why, there was another time when he rode into the Dry Creek Station and found the whole staff murdered. He kept going to Cold Springs, and the station was burned down and the dead body of the station keeper lying in the ashes.”
As he spoke, Mr. Tavish stopped momentarily and drew in a deep breath. “Funny how fate works, ain’t it?” he said reflectively. “When I first was hired by the Express, I worked the Cold Springs Station, but then I got transferred here. Otherwise, that woulda been me laying there with a Paiute arrow sticking out of my chest.”
He paused again. “But ol’ Bob, he kept on riding. Wasn’t nothing much else he could do, I don’t reckon. When he came to Sand Creek, he told the station tender all he’d seen and managed to get him to leave with him. That night the Sand Creek Station was burned down, too.
“Those were a bad couple of months back the early part of the summer! It’s better now, but there ain’t no one I’d rather was coming our way than Pony Bob. If there is trouble, he’ll know of it and be far enough ahead of ’em to warn us.”
He stopped again, and the station room was quiet for a minute or two. I looked around and began noticing all the stuff hanging up and sitting on shelves or in crates everywhere. The floor was dirt. Several bunks were built right into the far wall, and besides the bench Pa and I were sitting on, there wasn’t much else in the way of furniture. Just a table, one chair, and empty crates turned up on end for people to sit on. There was a big wood stove for cooking with shelves full of supplies—flour, sugar, coffee, cornmeal, hams and bacon, containers of dried fruit and meat, tea, coffee, beans. All around the rest of the room were scattered an assortment of other things they might need—tools, brooms, candles, blankets, buckets, medicines, borax, tin dishes, turpentine, castor oil, rubbing alcohol, even sewing supplies. The alcohol was only for treating wounds or injuries. No drinking of any liquor was allowed at any of the Pony Express stations. Of course, there were lots of guns and rifles and ammunition around too.
Outside there were a couple of other buildings—a blacksmithing forge, a stable and barn. They had to have everything on hand that might possibly be needed for any situation—Indian attack, lame horses, broken legs, loose shoes, wounds, injury. At most of the Nevada stations, the ground was so dry that there was no grass for animals to graze on, so they had to have a large supply of oats and other feed on hand, too.
“Where’d you say your boy was at?” Mr. Tavish asked Pa.
“Not sure. Far as we know, out toward Utah.”
Mr. Tavish gave a low whistle. “That ain’t good, Mister. He musta come in after the Indian troubles quieted down. They brought in lots of new kids in July to replace the ones that left. When’d he join up?”
“Early July. He said he’d heard there was openings out toward eastern Nevada.”
“Openings is right!” laughed Mr. Tavish. “The whole blame line from Carson to Salt Lake was open! Weren’t hardly nobody left.”
The look on Pa’s face was not a happy one. My heart sank just to hear the stationman’s words.
“Well, can’t be helped now,” he went on. “If your boy’s alive, he’s alive. If he’s dead, I’d probably have heard about it. So we’ll wait on Bob tomorrow and see if he knows anything. One thing’s for sure, Mister, you ain’t gonna take the little lady here no further east than right here. If you was fool enough to go by yourself, there wouldn’t be much I could do to stop you, though I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for your chances out there alone. But with a young lady—nope, I just wouldn’t let you go another mile past here.”
Pa and I looked at each other. I guess this is where we’d be spending the night!
“You ever heard of Billy Cody?” Mr. Tavish asked.
“Nope,” Pa answered. I nodded my head that I had.
“What’d you hear about him?” asked Mr. Tavish.
“Only that he wasn’t much older than a boy,” I said.
“Cody’s just like Pony Bob! Guts of a man inside the body of a kid. I hope your brother’s like that . . . for his sake. Otherwise, even if he is still alive, he ain’t likely to stay that way for long. But let me tell you about Cody,” he went on.
“They gave him an extra bit of mail one time, a box of money that had to get through. Now the Indians, they’ll attack anybody or anything just to be ornery. But the bandits and thieves with white skin, they’re more particular. They’re after loot. Well, I tell you what happened—there’d been reports of a couple outlaws in the region where Cody was riding. And with him having to carry cash money, it was a dangerous situation. So Cody, he hid his mochila and mail cases under an extra leather blanket. Then he filled a couple of extra pouches with paper so that if he was held up, the robbers would think they had the real thing.
“Well, sure enough, blamed if Cody didn’t get stopped as he was riding through a narrow ravine. The two bandits had guns on him and told him to get off his horse and put his hands in the air. He obeyed. One of the men rode closer, put away his gun, and reached out to grab the fake mail pouches from Cody’s horse. But instead of waiting for them to take it and hope they’d leave without discovering them to be worthless, Billy suddenly flung the whole blanket up in the man’s face, drawing his gun at the same instant, and shot the thief. The other man fled. Billy jumped on his horse and took off after him.”
Mr. Tavish stopped in his story long enough to give a great laugh.
“That’s the kind of kids out riding this part of the Express territory,” he said. “Kids that can send grown men to flight! Yes sir, I hope the young fella you’re looking for can take care of himself like that!”
I shuddered. Just the thought of Zack having to shoot at or possibly even kill someone was enough to turn my stomach. I could hardly stand the thought that he was mixed up in such a violent thing as the Pony Express seemed to be.
I knew Pa was thinking the same thing. He and Uncle Nick had run with a much rougher crowd, and had fought in the Mexican War. But I suppose it seemed different to Pa, thinking about his own son. Things he went through himself, he didn’t want his kids to have to face. And however young Bill Cody and Pony Bob and all the rest of them were, to me and Pa, Zack still seemed too young to be part of all this.
Chapter 30
The Fright of My Life!
The rest of that night we listened to more of Claude Tavish’s stories, although by the time supper was over, Pa’d managed to get him
talking about something besides the Pony Express. It turned out Mr. Tavish had fought in the Mexican War too, and that kept him and Pa busy till late talking about their recollections. At least it took our minds off worrying about Zack.
I mixed up some biscuits to go with beans and a ham hock Mr. Tavish had boiling on top of the stove. He raved and raved about those biscuits, even though there wasn’t anything to them that he couldn’t have done himself. He didn’t have any baking powder to mix in, so they were flat and hard. But he kept saying he hadn’t eaten anything so good in years. “Anything tastes better if a woman’s hand’s gone into the making of it,” he said. “A man and woman can put all the same ingredients in a bowl, and mix it up, and cook it just the same, and feed whatever it is to a passel of hungry miners or cowboys or anybody else. They’ll all cuss and complain at the man for his lousy grub, but they’ll rave and carry on at how wonderful the lady’s food tastes. I always figured they weren’t treating me none too fairly, but after tasting them biscuits of your’s, little lady, I reckon I know what they been getting at all these years. There just ain’t no denying that a woman’s hand’s got something special in it.”
“They taste about the same as always to me,” I said. “But thank you all the same, Mr. Tavish.”
I listened with interest to the two men talk, because now every story that came out gave me new glimpses into Pa’s past during those years before we were together again.
“Where was you at?” Pa had asked Mr. Tavish.
“Buena Vista, where else!” answered the stationman.
“You were at the center of it all,” said Pa. “Me and Nick never got that close to Santa Anna.”
“Lucky for you! He was a mean cuss—came at us with 15,000 men. But he hadn’t counted on Zachary Taylor! No sir. Us with our 5,000 just waited in the mountains for them to attack. Dreadful night, I can tell you—wind, rain, hardly no sleep. But it must have been worse for them Mexicans, because the next day we sent ’em running!”
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