Excerpt from Pony Express Rider
The crescent moon was just rising as I saddled my horse and led him out of the stable. The cool spring air was damp, and I shivered a bit as I swung into the saddle. I gave the reins a gentle flick and my horse responded. We were off.
As we crested the hill, I wanted to turn back and catch a last glimpse of the farm that had been my home for the past three years, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If I stopped, even for a moment, my resolve would vanish, and if I looked back, there was no question what I would do.
“Well, Matty, this is it,” I said out loud. “You didn’t think I would do it, but here I am.” My thirteen-year-old sister had been unhappy when I had told her that I was thinking of leaving. She had bet me that I would lose my nerve at the last minute. I hadn’t told her when I decided to go since I knew she would cry and then she would have won the bet. There is something about her tears that just rips my heart out.
“I have to do it,” I said, repeating the speech I had given her so many times. “This drought is killing the crops, and we will lose the farm if we don’t earn some money soon. Pa can’t leave, so it has to be me. It has to be me.”
Saying those words aloud in the dark was comforting, and I tried to think not about leaving, but returning—
soon, very soon.
This fifteen-chapter serial is part one of a thirty-chapter story.
Pony Express Rider is illustrated by Lisa Goldfinger. Each chapter comes with its own drawing, and the story has its own distinctive logo.
This story comes with an additional page detailing the history of the Pony Express.
Teacher's Guide
“Wanted: Skinny, young, wiry fellows not over eighteen, must be expert riders willing to risk death daily, orphans preferred.
Wages $25 a week. Apply Central Overland Express.
Ad from San Francisco newspaper, 1860
The Central Overland Pony Express was a mail delivery service that ran from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, a distance of 1,966 miles. The company operated for 19 ½ months, opening service on April 3, 1860 and shutting down on October 24, 1861, the day that the transcontinental telegraph line was completed.
The Pony Express used a relay system designed to provide fresh horses every five to twenty miles (depending on the terrain) so that the riders could push their mounts at top speed. The express company built at least 165 stations although the exact number is unknown as there is no definitive history of the company.
The key to the relay system was the roughly 50 home stations which were located 50 to 75 miles apart with three to five remount or relay stations in between. Each station employed two men and was stocked with several horses, which made the stations easy targets for rustlers, outlaws, or Native American raids.
The trip from St. Joseph to Sacramento took ten days on average. The men rode day and night, year-round, in all kinds of weather and averaged eight to ten miles an hour. Remarkably only one mail sack was ever lost and only one rider killed.
With the completion of the telegraph to California, the company lost the mail contract and was forced to shut down, ending an important and often romanticized era in American history.
