“Yes,” Jack answered. “Anything
you want carried?”
“No,” was the surly answer. “An’
if I had I wouldn’t trust a kid like you with
it! It’s a man’s job to ride pony
express, an’ I’m surprised that they let
you have the place.”
“Oh, if that’s the way you feel about
it, I don’t want to take any of your stuff,”
snapped Jack, filled with indignation. “But
I’ve made good so far, and I expect to keep
on.”
“Huh! Maybe you will, an’ maybe you
won’t!” was the snarling retort.
It was quite dark when Jack finally started with the
mail. He also had several express packages, one
of which was securely sealed, indicating that it contained
valuables.
“Guess I’ll stow that away in an inside
pocket,” Jack said to himself, and he suited
the action to the words.
The first part of the trail leading out from Golden
Crossing was not especially bad, and Jack ambled along
it slowly enough. About two miles out from the
settlement he had to cross, on a rather frail wooden
bridge, a rushing mountain stream.
As Jack neared the middle of the bridge he felt a
plank suddenly give way with the pony. In an
instant he clapped his heels to the side of the horse,
and slapped him sharply on the flank.
Sunger sprang forward, and only just in time, for
in another second he would have stepped through a
hole in the bridge where a plank had fallen off into
the stream below. And had the pony fallen Jack
would probably have been thrown over the bridge railing
into the water.
IMPORTANT LETTERS
“Whoa! Steady old boy! Easy now!”
Thus Jack exclaimed, as he leaped from the Saddle
and held the reins lightly to restrain Sunger.
The pony snorted, whinnied, and, after prancing about
a few moments, stood still.
“That’s better!” commented Jack.
“Now let’s see what happened.”
There was, as Jack said, “half a moon,”
and by the light of this he was able to see, as he
glanced over the part of the bridge he had traversed,
a place where a plank had fallen out. A gap was
left—a gap wide enough to have allowed
a horse’s leg to slip through, with disastrous
results to animal and rider.
“Well, Sunger, old boy,” went on Jack,
“did we do that; did it just happen of itself;
or was it done on purpose?”
For, in a second’s flash, there had come to
him his father’s warning.
“Well, if it’s some one after my job,
it’s a mean trick they have played in trying
to get it,” mused Jack, aloud. “I
wouldn’t so much mind for myself, for I guess
I could have swum out all right. But I guess you’d
have been pretty well banged up, old boy,” and
he patted his pony, which now had gotten over his
first fright.
Jack, whose wildly-beating heart had now somewhat
calmed itself, stood beside his faithful pony and
considered what his next move had best be. Among
other thoughts was the one that he must, in some way,
repair the bridge so that any one coming after him
would not slip through the holes left where the misplaced
planks had fallen into the stream.
