had to surmount these obstacles and cover his trip at
an average of fifteen miles an hour.

Cody entered the Pony Express service just after the line had been
organized. At Julesburg he met George Chrisman, an old friend who was
head wagon-master for Russell, Majors, and Waddell's freighting
department. Chrisman was at the time acting as an agent for the express
line, and, out of deference to the youth, he hired him temporarily to
ride the division then held by a pony man named Trotter. It was a short
route, one of the shortest on the system, aggregating only forty-five
miles, and with three relays of horses each way. Cody, who had been
accustomed to the saddle all his young life, had no trouble in following
the schedule, but after keeping the run several weeks, the lad was
relieved by the regular incumbent, and then went east, to Leavenworth,
where he fell in with another old friend, Lewis Simpson, then acting as
wagon boss and fitting up at Atchison a wagon train of supplies for the
old stage line at Fort Laramie and points beyond. Acting through
Simpson, Cody obtained a letter of recommendation from Mr. Russell, the
head of the firm, addressed to Jack Slade, Superintendent of the
division between Julesburg and Rocky Ridge, with headquarters at
Horseshoe Station, thirty-six miles west of Fort Laramie, in what is now
Wyoming. Armed with this letter, young Cody accompanied Simpson's
wagon-train to Laramie, and soon found Superintendent Slade. The
superintendent, observing the lad's tender years and frail stature, was
skeptical of his ability to serve as a pony rider; but on learning that
Cody was the boy who had already given satisfactory service as a
substitute some months before, at once engaged him and assigned him to
the perilous run of seventy-six miles between Red Buttes and Three
Crossings. For some weeks all went well. Then, one day when he reached
his terminal at Three Crossings, Cody found that his successor who was
to have taken the mail out, had been killed the night before. As there
was no extra rider available, it fell to young Cody to fill the dead
courier's place until a successor could be procured. The lad was
undaunted and anxious for the added responsibility. Within a moment he
was off on a fresh horse for Rocky Ridge, eighty-five miles away.
Notwithstanding the dangers and great fatigue of the trip, Cody rode
safely from Three Crossings to his terminal and returned with the
eastbound mail, going back