“Pshaw, I’ll have to ride a strange horse!” Whitey said dejectedly.

“I bin thinkin’,” said Bill, “what with our bein’ kinda short on stock, just now, an’ th’ boys needin’ all their strings for th’ round-up, an’ everythin’, it might be a good scheme for you t’ go in th’ stage.  Be sort of a change for you.  You c’d ride as far as Cal Smith’s ranch, an’ he’d lend you a hoss t’ take you on t’ th’ T Up and Down.”

Again the unsuspecting Whitey was delighted, as every Western boy was, in those days, to ride on the old-fashioned but swift-moving stage-coaches that were still the main means of communication between many places in that sparsely settled country.

At six o’clock Whitey was waiting in the road, with Bill, and when the coach appeared, and was halted, was hoisted up to a seat beside the driver; a seat of honor that did not happen to be occupied that trip.  Messenger boys and telephones were unknown on the Frontier at that time.  Even the telegraph lines were limited to the course of the big railroad that pointed its nose from St. Paul to the Pacific.  So Whitey, with the important letter sewed inside his shirt, thereby became the first messenger boy known to the history of the West.

And he surely enjoyed seeing the driver wield his long whip, and capably handle the six reins that controlled the six spirited horses.  And going down grade Whitey would have to put his arm around the driver’s middle, because his legs were not quite long enough to reach the dashboard, and if the body of that old-fashioned stage-coach had hit him in the middle of the back, Whitey would have beaten the horses down the hill.

Everything went well for ninety miles, and at a certain trail the driver pulled up and said, “Well, son, here’s where you have t’ wear out your moccasins.  There’s your trail, bearing off t’ th’ right.  Follow it for twenty-five miles, an’ you’ll be where you want t’ go.”

“Twenty-five miles!” gasped Whitey.  “Do you mean to say that I have to walk twenty-five miles?”

“Sure,” said the driver.  “If you keep goin’ good an’ lively th’ rest o’ th’ day, you c’n hit th’ Zumbro before dark, an’ just one mile this side o’ th’ Zumbro is Cal Smith’s ranch.  He’ll take care o’ you overnight, an’ you c’n go t’ th’ T Up and Down in th’ mornin’.”

“B—­but I didn’t know I had to walk,” Whitey protested.

“Reck’n you do, unless you c’n ketch a jack-rabbit an’ ride him,” the driver answered.

“I thought the ranch was right on the line of the stage road,” Whitey said weakly.  “Bill Jordan didn’t say anything about walking.”

“Well, Bill’s a funny cuss, an’ mebbe he kept this for you as a sort o’ s’prise,” the driver allowed, with a grin.  “Good-bye.  Giddap!” And the coach whirled away, in a cloud of dust, leaving Whitey standing in the lonely road, looking off over the lonelier prairie.