The Shasta Courier

SHASTA COURIER.

THE OLD-TIME PONY EXPRESS OF
THE GREAT PLAINS.

From Mark Twain's Forthcoming Book,

However, 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 brim full of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of 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 forty 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 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 spectators 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 "roundabout" 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 his postage on his literary freight was worth two dollars an ounce. 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 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 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 one hundred gallant horses earning a stirring livelihood, and seeing 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 us 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 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--sweeping toward us nearer and nearer--growing more and more sharply defined--nearer and 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 has disappeared, we might have doubted whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, may be.