Chapter 27
The Pony Express

The idea for the Pony Express came from a businessman by the name of William Russell, who hoped that the government would pay his company—Russell, Majors, and Waddell—to have mail delivered speedily coast to coast. He proposed that they be paid one thousand dollars a week for two trips in both directions. The government never did pay for the service, and the costs involved turned out to be as high as ten to fifteen thousand dollars a week instead.

Before the Pony Express began in April of 1860, mail took twenty-five days to go from the East Coast to California—if the stagecoach didn’t break a wheel, run into snow, or get attacked by Indians! Compared with how isolated California had been from the rest of the country in the early 1800s, even that was mighty fast. But when the organizers of the Pony Express said they would take mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento in ten days or less, everyone was amazed and wondered if such speed was possible.

Naturally, with Zack’s fondness for horses, we had been curious and had followed the development of the idea with interest. Like all the papers, the Alta carried detailed stories about the first few mail crossings. Even in the midst of all the political news of 1860, some of the Pony Express riders became nationally known heroes. I read all the news articles that had been written for over a year now about it. Zack had sent off for some pamphlets too, and I had saved all the articles I’d read from different papers. So now with Pa and me planning to go find him, I pulled out everything I’d accumulated and read through it again.

Actually, the idea wasn’t really Russell’s at all, because there had been something like the Pony Express during the Roman Empire. And in the 1200s, Kublai Khan, the emperor of China, had a huge system of communication with stations stretching all the way from China to Europe, and with as many as four hundred fresh horses at every station, and thousands and thousands of messengers.

But for the United States the idea was new. And with mountains and deserts and Indians and bandits and no roads and no station houses, it was all a pretty big undertaking for Mr. Russell’s company to get started. We had been reading about it in the papers for months before the horses actually began carrying mail.

There were to be eighty expert light riders riding between eighty relay stations, and making use of four to five hundred fast and hardy top-quality Indian horses. Forty of the riders would be stretched out in a line going east, the other forty in a line going west—all of them going back and forth both ways from their home base. It turned out later that there were two hundred riders in all—eighty in the saddle at all times, and the others resting between rides and replacements.

The mail would be carried by a leather cover that fit right over the saddle, called a mochila. There were four pouches on all four corners of the mochila, each of which had a lock on it. The keys were kept only in St. Joseph and Sacramento—the two end points of the Express—and at Salt Lake City in the middle.

From California, the route of the Express went to Placerville, up over the Sierra Nevadas and down into Carson City, Nevada. From there it went straight across the high desert of the Great Basin and over the awful salt flats to Salt Lake. That was the only real city along the way, and was about a third of the whole distance. From Salt Lake the riders went gradually north up into the Rockies, past Fort Bridger, through South Pass, and to Casper, Wyoming. Then they started south, to Fort Laramie, and down onto the plains of Nebraska, following the same routes as the Mormon Trail and the Oregon Trail, down to Fort Kearny, into northeastern Kansas and to St. Joseph. The whole distance from Sacramento was 1,966 miles.

So many eager young boys wanted to join the Pony Express right at first that they could have probably been hired cheaply. But Russell, Majors, and Waddell decided to pay them over a hundred dollars a month—high pay for anybody! As time went on, though, even that much money wasn’t enough to keep some of them riding for the Express!

I don’t know how God-fearing the owners of the company were, but they must have had some religious beliefs, because every rider that signed on, besides being given a lightweight rifle and a Colt revolver, was also given a Bible to carry with him. Riders also received the clothes that became the “uniform” of the Pony Express—a bright red shirt and blue dungarees. I never did understand, given as much trouble as they had with the Indians, why they made the riders dress so brightly!

Before he was hired, every rider had to sign a pledge that read:

I do hereby swear, before the Great and Living God, that during my engagement, and while I am an employee of Russell, Majors, & Waddell, I will, under no circumstances, use profane language; that I will drink no intoxicating liquors; that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employee of the firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence of my employers. So help me God.

At least if Zack had to leave home, I was glad it was to work for a company with high standards of morality like that. I just hoped all those who signed that pledge kept to their word and lived by it!