Bolivar measured his words, then shot them out with staccato emphasis. “Senator Gwin of California says that is not fast enough. A shorter route from St. Joe, Missouri, along the Platte River, then west across the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Sacramento would save a hundred miles.”
“A hunnert miles over what?” the trapper asked.
“Over the Butterfield route—across the Arkansas River, through El Paso, along the Gila River, and over the sandy deserts of the Southwest.”
A chorus of “Hmm’s” and “Oh’s.”
“Y’see, the senator wants our company to organize this shorter, quicker service to bridge the gap between Washington and California. Especially now.”
“Why now?”
“With the cotton states wanting to secede, and urging California to join them, there’s liable to be war if communications can’t get through.”
A pompous man, using his paunch for an armrest, said with conviction: “I tell ye, young feller, there’ll be war anyway.”
“Then all the more reason for the Pony Express.”
Peter forced himself to listen. He had to remember all the reasons, to convince his mother how much he was wanted and needed.
Bolivar was patience itself, explaining: “There’s deep concern in Washington that California might go independent from both the South and the North; and President Buchanan will want to send dispatches flying across country to halt any such notions.”
“Him?” The pompous objector scoffed. “Not him! That old bachelor settin’ in the White House is a hand-wringer when there’s trouble.”
“Hey, Superintendent!” A man with a cranelike neck leaned over the group, studying the handbill. “What’s a message going to cost?”
“Five dollars a half ounce, written on tissue-thin paper.”
“Five dollars! Why, that’s outrageous! I can think o’ far better uses for that paper.”
Snickering grew into guffaws. Gibes came fast.
“Hurrumph! I’d send a duplicate letter by stage.”
“Name me what kind of news is important enough to spend five dollars fer?”
“How ’bout: ‘Dear Ma, I’m fine. How’re you?’ ”
The room broke into a boom of laughter. Even so, Peter sensed an undercurrent of concern, as if the Union could be torn apart.
“What kind of time do you expect to make from St. Joe to Sacramento?” a quiet man on the fringe of the group asked.
“We’re promising ten days.”
“In-cred-i-beel!” a French Canadian exploded. “In-cred-i-beel!”
“But is it worth the risk of life and limb to the young riders?” the quiet man continued.
“Or the money risk?” the pompous man added. “Only thing I got to say, Bolivar, your company’ll go broke without government help. Someone’s got to pay the fiddler.”
“Be that as it may, I’m to engage eighty pony boys at once.” He pulled out his bull’s-eye watch. “Oh, Gemini!” he exclaimed. “I’m due in Fort Laramie by nightfall.” Gathering up the rest of his handbills he strode toward the door, Peter and Dice at his heels.
“Bol! Bolivar! Mr. Bolivar! Wait! I want to sign up. I’m coming with you!”
In one leap Adam was spinning Peter around. “Gawblimy, Little Brother!” he cried. “You can’t leave Adam for good!”
“Please,” Peter implored. “Please, Adam. Mind shop for me. And I’ll write you often.”
“Cheer up, fellow,” Mr. Bolivar said to Adam, “the Express won’t be running for a few weeks.” He turned to Peter. “I hoped you’d want to join,” he said. “But it isn’t all that simple. I’ll need the full consent of one of your parents. Come, let’s see if you can get it.”
Orphans Preferred
MOMENTS LATER, when Peter threw open the soddy door, everything was silent as midnight. Aileen and Grandma had rocked each other to sleep, arm in arm. His mother was sitting cross-legged on the floor, hand-drying her hair by the fire. She looked, Peter thought, like the Lorelei in his McGuffey’s Second Reader.
She was too stunned at seeing the businesslike stranger and Peter’s eyes big with excitement to do anything but remain frozen where she was.
“Ma!” Peter whispered, tiptoeing around the sleeping figures and crouching down beside her. “Read this!” He tried to hold the paper at the right distance. “I aim to join, Ma!”
Bolivar, standing awkwardly by the open door, cleared his throat.
Still clutching the handbill, Peter jumped up. “Oh, ’scuse me, sir.” Then turning to his mother: “Mrs. Lundy,” he said, as if the sound of anything but “Ma” were new to him, “please to make the acquaintance of Mr. Bolivar. He’s superintendent for the Pony Express. He’ll take me!” In the same breath he added, “Remember, Ma, there’s a time for great things . . .”
“And a time for closing doors, and a bit of hospitality,” Mrs. Lundy said with a quick smile. She flipped her hair behind her ears and leaped to her feet, her face gone pink with embarrassment. “Let me put the kettle on, Mr. Bolivar,” she said. “Tea and a sweet biscuit will take only a moment.”
“Thank you, ma’am, but I have miles to go before dark.”
“Then at least sit by the table in comfort until I find out whatever has put meteors into Peter’s eyes.” She took the handbill and swept the room into stillness as she stood reading the few lines over and over again, as if a second and a third reading might tell her more. The only sounds were the purring whispers of Grandma and Aileen and the precise ticking of the clock.
When it struck the hour, Mr. Bolivar could wait no longer. “Your son, here, is so certain you’ll approve his being a pony rider that all I need is your word.” He smiled, showing his big white teeth.
“My company believes,” he went on quickly, “that if the government could get important dispatches to and from California faster, it might be the means of keeping the nation together. As it is, California feels like an outsider, is even thinking of setting up a separate Pacific country.”
“Yes, Ma. We could keep the United States from getting un-united.”
“And that, Mrs. Lundy, will take fearless riders,” Bolivar added.
Peter’s and his mother’s eyes met, and held. When her answer finally came, it burst like a light in the drab little soddy. “Jethro Lundy,” she said in a hushed voice, “will be very proud of his son.”
“And you, Mamma?”
Her lips trembled in a little smile before she could speak. “I’ll be so happy for you that I shall sing all the long days from one of your letters to the next.”
Bolivar rose at once. His voice was strangely husky as he told Peter to report at Fort Laramie two weeks hence to sign the pledge of allegiance to the United States. “He’s just the kind of recruit we want,” he said to Mrs. Lundy. “As the handbill says, we prefer orphans, but without a mother like you, Peter Lundy would not be the boy he is.”
A little silence came in before he added: “But in all fairness, I must tell you both that in our final selection, orphaned boys will, of course, be chosen first.”
• • •
Into late night Peter and his mother talked across the dark, across the partition of flour sacking. Words seemed to stick up in the air, like clothespins on a line.
“You awake, Peter?”
“Yes, Ma. Sharp awake, but dreaming.”
“I can’t sleep, either. So I’m knitting by the fire, trying to remember . . .”
“Remember what, Ma?”
“Just how did that handbill read?”
Peter’s skin ran prickly up the back of his neck. It took all his willpower not to shout at the top of his voice: “The first line said WANTED.”
“Yes, yes, of course, I remember that; the letters fairly screamed. But the second line?”
“Young, Skinny . . .”
There was laughter in her voice. “You certainly fit that description, though Heaven knows I’ve tried to stuff you with puddings and porridges. What comes next?”
&n
bsp; “Wiry Fellows Not Over 18.”
“That, too, fits Peter Lundy to a T. And then?”
Peter went on, repeating word by word: “Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily.”
“Oh, Peter! Willing to risk death—that’s the part where I need more faith.”
“But, Ma, think about the next line: WAGES $25.00 Per Week. Per week, Ma. Not per month. And every week I’ll be sending off mail orders to the United States. I’ll buy jewelry for you and a hobbyhorse for Aileen.”
The laughter sounded close to tears as she said, “Write to me instead, little one, by Pony Express!”
Little one! Peter bit his lip at sound of the pet name, yet it warmed him all the same. He crackled the handbill under his pillow to make sure it was still there. Aloud he said, “Only one thing doesn’t fit me, and that’s Orphans preferred.”
No answer came over the flour sacking. The knitting needles stopped clicking. The prolonged wail of a coyote jolted the quiet. “But it does fit,” his mother said at last.
Peter sat bolt upright. Even in his linsey-woolsey undersuit he trembled violently. “Pa ain’t my Pa?” he asked, trying to keep his relief from showing.
“Yes, Peter. He is. But I am not your mother.”
“Ma!” came torn from his mouth. He prayed for some miracle that would take back her words. Instead, her whispering seemed unbearably loud, driven by an intensity that nothing could stop.
“Your own mother,” she said numbly, “and my mother and father all died of cholera on the same day, in the same wagon train bound for Oregon.” The story came in a rush now, as if long rehearsed. “You were just a baby, mostly eyes, and a hungry mouth like a bird’s; and you had a topknot of yellow fluff. And your name was Peter, like my brother who had stayed back east in Syracuse to be a concert singer.”
Uncle Peter! That letter in the chest was for an uncle who wasn’t his uncle.
“And I felt alone in the world, and frightened. Until one day your father asked me to hold you in my arms while the wagon train forded a swollen stream.” Her voice was no longer impassive. It grew warm and full of memory. “Holding you,” she said, “I suddenly felt strong. From that moment you became all the love I had lost. Don’t you see, Peter, I needed you more than you needed me? And that’s the way it has been ever since.”
Peter felt his whole world turn over. His heart made a slow, heavy thump, then beat so fast it hurt him. After a while he heard himself ask, “Did you marry Pa just because of me?”
“No,” the Mrs. Lundy who was not his mother said very gently. “Your cradle was another reason. It was hooded against drafts, and the cutout sides were in the shape of birds and flowers, and the wood had all been rubbed and rubbed until it shone. When I found out your father had made the cradle, carving and all, I felt a great tenderness for him, too.”
Peter got up out of bed, thudding across the dirt floor to the warmth of the fire where his mother sat, her knitting fallen from her lap. He kneeled down, putting his arms around her, clinging to her for long moments. Then gingerly he kissed her cheek. “Good night, my mother,” he whispered.
He went back to his bed, grown older.
The Long Good-bye
TWO WEEKS later, Peter rode out on Bald Galloway for the new Pony Express Overland Mail Office at Fort Laramie. The moon was still shining brightly.
Last night he had told everyone good-bye, very finally, in case he should be killed and never come back. Everyone, that is, except Dice, who was nowhere to be found.
“Him off sulking somewheres,” Adam had explained through his own tears, “ ’cause he ain’t invited along.”
Peter hunched his shoulders into the warmth of his jacket. He missed Dice already. A cottontail rabbit twisted and turned on the road ahead of him. Dice would have gone bursting after her, making turnings and doublings as quick as any rabbit-hound.
The morning tried its best to be friendly. A lone star danced in the east and the Platte River played its same tune over and over. Galloway’s new shoes struck the hard-packed earth like hammer strokes. Suddenly the horse’s ears pricked. He snorted, shying wildly as if a rattlesnake coiled near. Peter reached for his pistol just as the grasses parted and Dice leaped up, his tail waving in a great arc of happiness. Pacing himself to Galloway’s gait, he fell into stride, traveling alongside as if now at last he were in his rightful place.
“Dice!” Peter’s voice cracked high, then went deep and serious. “You can’t go.”
The dog ran around in front of Galloway and sat down abruptly in the horse’s path. Peter pulled up short.
Dice continued to sit. His eyes locked now on the boy’s face.
“Don’t do it, Dice! Don’t hypnotize me! Can’t you see I’m hurting, too?”
The dog held his gaze steady. “Don’t you want me along?” he asked plainer than words.
“ ’Course I want you, Dice. But there’s sure to be a rule against dogs. You’d be stirrin’ up trouble, not meaning to. Like just now. With a nervous horse like Galloway, he could’ve broke a leg.”
Peter dismounted and went over to Dice. For a long moment he put his arms around the dog. Then he stood up and mustered all the sternness he could.
“You go home now. Adam needs you. I got to go on alone, account of this is the time for big things.”
Slowly Dice turned tail, looking back often to see if the boy had changed his mind.
Peter felt like turning back with him. He was overwhelmed with misgivings. Would Aileen ever play ball with Dice, and stop poking at his eyes and pulling his tail? His mind slipped back to last night. He thought about his mother’s forced gaiety, and his father’s silence. Was there a flicker of pride in the deep-set eyes, or had an ember in the fire suddenly burned more brightly?
He thought of the scarf Grandma had made for him, all riddled with dropped stitches, and how he had bragged on her knitting as if it were a perfect thing. He was wearing the scarf now. But as soon as he reached the fort, he’d whip it off and stuff it in his saddlebag, loving Grandma no less. She was proud of him, even if Pa wasn’t.
He wished the sun would come up and help him forget Dice and home, a little. But all during the winding miles along the Platte, the sun either hid behind Rattlesnake Ridge or was lost in cloud cover.
Not until he stood hesitant within the fort before the door marked “Arsenal” did a great shaft of light shine up the letters into brassy gold. No one answered his knock. Peter looked back at the officer who had directed him. The man nodded. “Knock again,” he said. “Alexander Majors concentrates, shuts out interference like a horse wearing blinkers.”
Peter knocked again, louder, wondering at his boldness.
“Enter!” a voice from within rolled out strong.
Peter opened the door and stepped into a room lined to the rafters with books and boxes of ammunition. A high-up window framed Laramie Peak with snow patches in its seams. Alexander Majors sat in the full light of the window, working at a makeshift table with sawhorses for legs. His chair was a powder keg.
Peter blinked. Any other man would have seemed run-of-the-mill ordinary in this storage place of a room. But Alexander Majors put Peter in mind of the power and dignity of the buffalo bull. He was bearded brown, like a buffalo, and broad of shoulder. And the planks of the floor trembled as he strode over to a row of kegs, rolled one alongside his desk, and motioned Peter to sit. Then he went back to his table, heaped with papers and a stack of calf-bound Bibles.
“You are . . .?” His eyes measured Peter, head to foot, braids to boots and back again. His question hung in midair, waiting.
In his new, deep voice Peter answered, “I am Peter Lundy.”
Strong, quick hands riffled through a file of letters on the table. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Bolivar told me to expect you, and yesterday’s stage brought a letter here from Mrs. Lundy.” He found the letter, scanned it swiftly and put it back without changing expression.
“Now,” he said, making his tone hearty,
“a few questions and then we both can be about our business. First off, your weight. Are you always this light, or have you been starving yourself to fit the qualifications on our handbill?”
Peter laughed without meaning to. “Me starve, sir? You don’t know my mother—my stepmother, that is.”
The boom of the man’s laughter reached every corner of the room. “I had a mother like that!” he said. “But the results were vastly different in my case, as you can see. The reason we want slim, wiry fellows,” he explained, “is that riders must maintain an average speed of fifteen miles an hour, which includes time for change of horses, detours when necessary, and meals. So some parts of each route have to be traveled at, say, twenty miles an hour. A horse can break at this pace if his rider is overweight, or jounces in the saddle.”
“I’m used to a fast pace, sir. At least I was . . . when I had . . .”
A sharp knock at the door and a messenger poked his head inside. “Begging your pardon, sir, but the stage heading east is leaving for St. Joe. Any mail to go?”
Mr. Majors indicated a sheaf of envelopes at the far end of the table. Before the door closed, the messenger said over his shoulder, “Bol just rode in with ten pony boys in tow.”
Mr. Majors nodded, making no comment.
Peter sat up straighter, trying to look Wanted.
“As I was about to say, Peter, we have bought up five hundred hardy horses and are now in the process of selecting eighty experienced riders. Can you honestly rate yourself an experienced rider?”
“Yes, sir!” Peter answered in a burst of enthusiasm. “My whole life I’ve spent with horses. And some mules and oxen,” he added to be truthful. “Yes, sir! I’m experienced in riding, and doctoring, too.”
“All to the good, Peter. But remember, one never becomes a finished horseman. He is, rather, constantly in the process of becoming a horseman. Trouble can be the best trainer.”
“What kind of trouble, sir?”