The most widely known of all the pony riders is William F. Cody — usually called “Bill,” who in early life resided in Kansas and was raised amid the exciting scenes of frontier life.  Cody had an unusually dangerous route between Red Buttes and Three Crossings.  The latter place was on the Sweetwater River, and derived its name from the fact that the stream which followed the bed of a rocky cañon, had to be crossed three times within a space of sixty yards.  The water coming down from the mountains, was always icy cold and the current swift, deep, and treacherous.  The whole bottom of the cañon was often submerged, and in attempting to follow its course along the channel of the stream, both horse and rider were liable to plunge at any time into some abysmal whirlpool.  Besides the excitement which the Three Crossings and an Indian country furnished, Cody’s trail ran through a region that was often frequented by desperadoes.  Furthermore, he had to ford the North Platte at a point where the stream was half a mile in width and in places twelve feet deep.  Though the current was at times slow, dangers from quicksand were always to be feared on these prairie rivers.  Cody, then but a youth, had to surmount these obstacles and cover his trip at an average of fifteen miles an hour.

Cody entered the Pony Express service just after the line had been organized.  At Julesburg he met George Chrisman, an old friend who was head wagon-master for Russell, Majors, and Waddell’s freighting department.  Chrisman was at the time acting as an agent for the express line, and, out of deference to the youth, he hired him temporarily to ride the division then held by a pony man named Trotter.  It was a short route, one of the shortest on the system, aggregating only forty-five miles, and with three relays of horses each way.  Cody, who had been accustomed to the saddle all his young life, had no trouble in following the schedule, but after keeping the run several weeks, the lad was relieved by the regular incumbent, and then went east, to Leavenworth, where he fell in with another old friend, Lewis Simpson, then acting as wagon boss and fitting up at Atchison a wagon train of supplies for the old stage line at Fort Laramie and points beyond.  Acting through Simpson, Cody obtained a letter of recommendation from Mr. Russell, the head of the firm, addressed to Jack Slade, Superintendent of the division between Julesburg and Rocky Ridge, with headquarters at Horseshoe Station, thirty-six miles west of Fort Laramie, in what is now Wyoming.  Armed with this letter, young Cody accompanied Simpson’s wagon-train to Laramie, and soon found Superintendent Slade.  The superintendent, observing the lad’s tender years and frail stature, was skeptical of his ability to serve as a pony rider; but on learning that Cody was the boy who had already given satisfactory service as a substitute some months before, at once engaged him and assigned him to the perilous run of seventy-six miles between Red Buttes