8. CHAPTER VIII.
IN a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our
necks and watching for the "pony-rider"—the fleet messenger who
sped across the continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying
letters nineteen hundred miles in eight days! Think of that for
perishable horse and human flesh and blood to do! The pony-rider
was usually a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit and endurance.
No matter what time of the day or night his watch came on, and no
matter whether it was winter or summer, raining, snowing, hailing,
or sleeting, or whether his "beat" was a level straight road or a
crazy trail over mountain crags and precipices, or whether it led
through peaceful regions or regions that swarmed with hostile
Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the saddle and be off
like the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty.
He rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight,
starlight, or through the blackness of darkness—just as it happened.
He rode a splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and
lodged like a gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten
miles, and then, as he came crashing up to the station where stood
two men holding fast a fresh, impatient steed, the transfer of rider
and mail-bag was made in the twinkling of an eye, and away flew
the eager pair and were out of sight before the spectator could get
hardly the ghost of a look. Both rider and horse went "flying
light." The rider's dress was thin, and fitted close; he wore a
"round-about," and a skull-cap, and tucked his pantaloons into his
boot-tops like a race-rider. He carried no arms—he carried nothing
that was not absolutely necessary, for even the postage on his
literary freight was worth
five dollars a letter.
He got but little frivolous correspondence to carry—his bag had
business letters in it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all
unnecessary weight, too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle,
and no visible blanket. He wore light shoes, or none at all. The
little flat mail-pockets strapped under the rider's thighs would each
hold about the bulk of a child's primer. They held many and many
an important business chapter and newspaper letter, but these were
written on paper as airy and thin as gold-leaf, nearly, and thus bulk
and weight were economized. The stage-coach traveled about a
hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles a day (twenty-four
hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty. There were
about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night and day,
stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to
California, forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and
among them making four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring
livelihood and see a deal of scenery every single day in the
year.
We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a
pony-rider, but somehow or other all that passed us and all that
met us managed to streak by in the night, and so we heard only a
whiz and a hail, and the swift phantom of the desert was gone
before we could get our heads out of the windows. But now we
were expecting one along every moment, and would see him in
broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:
"HERE HE COMES!"
Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained
wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black
speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I
should think so!
In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling,
rising and falling—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing
more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer
and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the
ear—another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a
wave of the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst
past our excited faces, and go winging away like a belated
fragment of a storm!
So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but
for the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a
mail-sack after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we
might have doubted whether we had seen any actual horse and
man at all, maybe.
We rattled through Scott's Bluffs Pass, by and by. It was along
here somewhere that we first came across genuine and
unmistakable alkali water in the road, and we cordially hailed it as
a first-class curiosity, and a thing to be mentioned with eclat in
letters to the ignorant at home. This water gave the road a soapy
appearance, and in many places the ground looked as if it had been
whitewashed. I think the strange alkali water excited us as much
as any wonder we had come upon yet, and I know we felt very
complacent and conceited, and better satisfied with life after we
had added it to our list of things which
we had seen
and some other people had not. In a small way we were
the same sort of simpletons as those who climb unnecessarily the
perilous peaks of Mont Blanc and
the Matterhorn, and derive no pleasure from it except the
reflection that it isn't a common experience. But once in a while
one of those parties trips and comes darting down the long
mountain-crags in a sitting posture, making the crusted snow
smoke behind him, flitting from bench to bench, and from terrace
to terrace, jarring the earth where he strikes, and still glancing and
flitting on again, sticking an iceberg into himself every now and
then, and tearing his clothes, snatching at things to save himself,
taking hold of trees and fetching them along with him, roots and
all, starting little rocks now and then, then big boulders, then acres
of ice and snow and patches of forest, gathering and still gathering
as he goes, adding and still adding to his massed and sweeping
grandeur as he nears a three thousand-foot precipice, till at last he
waves his hat magnificently and rides into eternity on the back of a
raging and tossing avalanche!
This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away by
excitement, but ask calmly, how does this person feel about it in his
cooler moments next day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow
and stuff on top of him?
We crossed the sand hills near the scene of the Indian mail
robbery and massacre of 1856, wherein the driver and conductor
perished, and also all the passengers but one, it was supposed; but
this must have been a mistake, for at different times afterward on
the Pacific coast I was personally acquainted with a hundred and
thirty-three or four people who were wounded during that
massacre, and barely escaped with
their lives. There was no doubt of the truth of it—I had it from
their own lips. One of these parties told me that he kept coming
across arrow-heads in his system for nearly seven years after the
massacre; and another of them told me that he was struck so
literally full of arrows that after the Indians were gone and he
could raise up and examine himself, he could not restrain his tears,
for his clothes were completely ruined.
The most trustworthy tradition avers, however, that only one
man, a person named Babbitt, survived the massacre, and he was
desperately wounded. He dragged himself on his hands and knee
(for one leg was broken) to a station several miles away. He did it
during portions of two nights, lying concealed one day and part of
another, and for more than forty hours suffering unimaginable
anguish from hunger, thirst and bodily pain. The Indians robbed
the coach of everything it contained, including quite an amount of
treasure.