So grateful was my mother to Harrington for what he had done for me that she insisted on his making his home with us.  This he decided to do, and took charge of our farm.  The next spring, this man, who had safely weathered the most perilous of journeys over the Plains, caught cold while setting out some trees and fell ill.  We brought a doctor from Lawrence, and did everything in our power to save him, but in a week he died.  The loss of a member of our own family could not have affected us more.

I was now in my fifteenth year and possessed of a growing appetite for adventure.  A very few months had so dulled the memory of my sufferings in the dugout that I had forgotten all about my resolve to forsake the frontier forever.  I looked about me for something new and still more exciting.

I was not long in finding it.  In April, 1860, the firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell organized the wonderful “Pony Express,” the most picturesque messenger-service that this country has ever seen.  The route was from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, a distance of two thousand miles, across the Plains, over a dreary stretch of sagebrush and alkali desert, and through two great mountain ranges.

The system was really a relay race against time.  Stations were built at intervals averaging fifteen miles apart.  A rider’s route covered three stations, with an exchange of horses at each, so that he was expected at the beginning to cover close to forty-five miles—­a good ride when one must average fifteen miles an hour.

The firm undertaking the enterprise had been busy for some time picking the best ponies to be had for money, and the lightest, most wiry and most experienced riders.  This was a life that appealed to me, and I struck for a job.  I was pretty young in years, but I had already earned a reputation for coming safe out of perilous adventures, and I was hired.

Naturally our equipment was the very lightest.  The messages which we carried were written on the thinnest paper to be found.  These we carried in a waterproof pouch, slung under our arms.  We wore only such clothing as was absolutely necessary.

The first trip of the Pony Express was made in ten days—­an average of two hundred miles a day.  But we soon began stretching our riders and making better time.  Soon we shortened the time to eight days.  President Buchanan’s last Presidential message in December, 1860, was carried in eight days.  President Lincoln’s inaugural, the following March, took only seven days and seventeen hours for the journey between St. Joseph and Sacramento.

We soon got used to the work.  When it became apparent to the men in charge that the boys could do better than forty-five miles a day the stretches were lengthened.  The pay of the rider was from $100 to $125 a month.  It was announced that the further a man rode the better would be his pay.  That put speed and endurance into all of us.