A thrilling and truthful history of the pony express; or, Blazing the westward way, and other sketches and incidents of those stirring times . dway after having ridden 280miles in twenty-two hours from thetime he had left there. Ben Holladaygave him a gold watch and a certifi-cate of this remarkable of the old frontiersmen nowliving knew Moore, knew of his 280- 40 BLAZING THE WESTWARD WAY mile ride in twenty-two hours, andhave seen the watch and certificate. J. G. Kelley, one of the veteranriders, now hving in Denver, tells hisstory of those eventful days, when herode over the
A thrilling and truthful history of the pony express; or, Blazing the westward way, and other sketches and incidents of those stirring times . dway after having ridden 280miles in twenty-two hours from thetime he had left there. Ben Holladaygave him a gold watch and a certifi-cate of this remarkable of the old frontiersmen nowliving knew Moore, knew of his 280- 40 BLAZING THE WESTWARD WAY mile ride in twenty-two hours, andhave seen the watch and certificate. J. G. Kelley, one of the veteranriders, now hving in Denver, tells hisstory of those eventful days, when herode over the lonely trail carryingdespatches for Russell, Majors andWaddell. Yes, he said, I was a PonyExpress rider in i860, and went outwith Boli\ar Roberts, and I tell you to protect us from the Indians. Asthere were no rocks or logs in thatvicinity, it was built of adobes, madefrom the mud on the shores of thelake. To mix this and get it to theproper consistency to mould intoadobes, we tramped all day in ourbare feet. This we did for a week ormore, and the mud being stronglyimpregnated with alkali carbonate ofsoda, you can imagine the condition. The Last Station it was no picnic. No amount ofmoney could tempt me to repeat myexperience of those days. To beginwith, we had to build willow roads,corduroy fashion, across many placesalong the Carson River, carryingbundles of willows two and threehundred yards in our arms, whilethe mosquitoes were so thick that itwas difficult to tell whether the manwas white or black, so thickly werethey piled on his neck, face, and at the Sink of the CarsonRiver, we began the erection of a fort of our feet. They were much swollenand resembled hams. We next builta fort at Sand Springs, twenty milesfrom Carson Lake, and another atCold Springs, thirty-seven miles eastof Sand Springs. At the latter sta-tion I was assigned to duty as assis-tant station-keeper, under Jim Mc-Naughton. The war against the Pi-Utc Indi-ans was then at its height, and as
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectfrontierandpioneerli
