Then we went on
to the ranch where Harrington had obtained his cattle and paid for the
yoke with twenty-five beaver skins, the equivalent of a hundred dollars
in money.
At the end of twenty days' travel we reached Salt Creek Valley, where I
was welcomed by my mother and sisters as one returned from the dead.
So grateful was my mother to Harrington for what he had done for me
that she insisted on his making his home with us. This he decided to
do, and took charge of our farm. The next spring, this man, who had
safely weathered the most perilous of journeys over the Plains, caught
cold while setting out some trees and fell ill. We brought a doctor
from Lawrence, and did everything in our power to save him, but in a
week he died. The loss of a member of our own family could not have
affected us more.
I was now in my fifteenth year and possessed of a growing appetite for
adventure. A very few months had so dulled the memory of my sufferings
in the dugout that I had forgotten all about my resolve to forsake the
frontier forever. I looked about me for something new and still more
exciting.
I was not long in finding it. In April, 1860, the firm of Russell,
Majors & Waddell organized the wonderful "Pony Express," the most
picturesque messenger-service that this country has ever seen. The
route was from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, a
distance of two thousand miles, across the Plains, over a dreary
stretch of sagebrush and alkali desert, and through two great mountain
ranges.
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