hours.  This engagement continued for more than a year; but as the Union Pacific Railway gradually extended its line and operations, the Pony Express business as gradually diminished.  Finally the track was completed to Reno, Nevada, twenty-three miles from Virginia City, and over this route Pony Bob rode for more than six months, making the run every day, with fifteen horses, inside of one hour.  When the telegraph line was completed, the Pony Express over this route was withdrawn, and Pony Bob was sent to Idaho, to ride the company’s express route of one hundred miles, with one horse, from Queen’s River to the Owyhee River.  He was at the former station when Major McDermott was killed at the breaking out of the Modoc War.

On one of his rides he passed the remains of ninety Chinamen who had been killed by the Indians, only one escaping to tell the tale.  Their bodies lay bleaching in the sun for a distance of more than ten miles from the mouth of Ives Canyon to Crooked Creek.  This was Pony Bob’s last experience as Pony Express rider.  His successor, Macaulas, was killed by the Indians on his first trip.

A few daredevil fellows generally did double duty and rode eighty or eighty-five miles.  One of them was Charles Cliff, now living in Missouri, who rode from St. Joseph to Seneca and back on alternate days.  He was attacked by Indians at Scott’s Bluff, receiving three balls in his body and twenty-seven in his clothes.  He made Seneca and back in eight hours each way.

James Moore, the first post-trader at Sidney, Nebraska, made a ride which may well lay claim to be one of the most remarkable on record.  He was at Midway Station, in Western Nebraska, on June 8, 1860, when a very important government despatch for the Pacific coast arrived.  Mounting his pony, he sped on to Julesburg, one hundred and forty miles away, and he got every inch of speed out of his mounts.  At Julesburg he met another important government despatch for Washington.  The rider who should have carried the despatch east had been killed the day before.  After a rest of only seven minutes and without eating a meal, Moore started for Midway, and he made the round trip, two hundred and eighty miles, in fourteen hours and forty-six minutes.  The west-bound despatch reached Sacramento from St. Joseph in eight days, nine hours, and forty minutes.

The authors of this book may be pardoned for the inevitable introduction here of the part taken by one of them in this service.  Their old friend Colonel Majors, a well-known figure for many years in frontier life, when speaking of “Billy” Cody, as he was called in those days, says that while engaged in the express service, his route lay between Red Buttes and Three Crossings,[28] a distance of one hundred and sixteen miles.  It was a most dangerous, long, and lonely trail, including the perilous crossing of the North Platte River, which at that place was half a mile wide and, though generally shallow, in some places reached a depth of twelve feet, a stream often much swollen and very turbulent.  An average of fifteen miles an hour had to be made, including change of horses, detours for safety, and time for meals.