Excitement was plentiful during my two years' service as a Pony Express rider.

After crossing the Smoky Hill River, I felt comparatively safe as this was the last stream I had to cross.

We got more provisions for our whiskey than the same money, which we paid for the liquor, would have bought; so after all it proved a very profitable investment.

With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound.

But the West of the old times, with its strong characters, its stern battles and its tremendous stretches of loneliness, can never be blotted from my mind.

My first plan of escape having failed, I now determined upon another.

The cholera had broken out at the post, and five or six men were dying daily.