Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/20

12 He peered grimly ahead, as if his life depended upon his reaching the ferry without a second’s loss of time.

As the pony shot like a cannon ball out of the doors of the stable and sped with arrowy swiftness down the street, the two men with whom he had been in consultation within the structure stepped forward and watched him. They smiled, though there was a serious expression on each face, for both felt they were looking upon an epoch-making event. And it was Alexander Carlyle, the superb horseman, who was making it.

Neither of the couple took their eyes from him as long as he was within sight. One was Ben Fickland, superintendent of the stage line to Denver, known as “Pike’s Peak Express,” the uncle of the horseman. The other was Mr. Russell of the firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell, who had been running for years a daily coach from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City. The two were thrilled not so much by what they saw as by their knowledge of what it meant.

On the afternoon that I have named, the first “” left St. Joseph, Missouri, on the long westward trip to San Francisco. The