Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/226

 to a close, but Alden ought to reach the station well before sunset. As he figured it he would change horses there, cover another run of about a dozen miles, change again and complete his task at a point something over thirty miles from where Dick Lightfoot had begun it.

This was on the supposition that the men connected with the service would permit the youth to finish the task he had voluntarily taken upon himself. It would seem that they would forbid the innovation, when all the circumstances are remembered, but that remained to be seen. Sufficient unto the hour was the work before him.

With the slackening of pace, Alden scanned the ground in front. The course did not lead between cliffs and high precipices, as was the case where he began his journey, but it was as if the same plateau had taken an upward slope and gained many more boulders and masses of rock in doing so. A horse might keep straight on or swerve to the right or left. There seemed to be any number of routes.

For the first time the youth interfered with the pace of his animal. Certain that he would exhaust himself by running up the slope,