The Road to Laramie by Brett Halliday

Author:Brett Halliday
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504024952
Publisher: Open Road Media

10.

Sam Sloan spent the next two days in the saddle looking for horses good enough to buy for the Express route. It was a disheartening business. There were plenty of fine cow-horses on the ranches throughout Colorado, but few of them met the company’s exacting specifications. Because a cow-horse is essentially a work-horse, and thoroughbred stock is generally too high-spirited to do the day by day routine required of a horse on a cattle ranch.

Speed isn’t essential in a cow-horse. It doesn’t take thoroughbred blood to outrace a lumbering bull or heifer; and stamina and surefootedness are much more important.

For the Pony Express route, speed was all important. The riders were limited to a maximum weight of one hundred and thirty-five pounds, and their saddles were stripped of all unnecessary gear, with the two mail pouches limited to ten pounds each to get the maximum speed from each horse. Covering only one ten-mile leg of the route each day, the horses were carefully selected for those particular requirements, and the run-of-the-mill range horses simply didn’t fill the bill.

At the end of two days, Sam had located only twenty head of horses that he thought would do, and he was dead-tired and thoroughly disgusted with city commission men who couldn’t be trusted to carry out their end of a bargain. He was completing a wide swing that had taken him to all the biggest ranches around that section, and as dusk of the second day came on he found himself nearing the Hughes ranch.

He hadn’t planned it that way consciously, but his heart beat a little faster with anticipation as he neared the ranch. According to his best calculations, it was just possible that Kitty might have arrived from Denver that day.

He had sent the letter down to her at the Lazy Mare ranch by Pony Express, and if she’d caught the train at Hopewell Junction the next day and come right up to Denver, she could have reached the city the preceding night.

It sure was funny how much he missed Kitty and the little one. He’d always thought it was silly the way some married men were always wanting to get back to their wives, but now he realized it wasn’t funny at all. He just felt like sort of half a man without Kitty around, and he worried a lot about his young son, too. Suppose Sammy was to forget his dad after being away from him so long? Suppose he was to get to like Ezra best? Because he knew Ezra would be spending every minute making up to him. And kids did like big good-natured Ezra. He had a way with them. It was because he was sort of simple-minded like a child himself, Sam thought, but he didn’t like the idea of Ezra horning in on little Sammy’s affections. He had good reason to spur his tired horse up and peer anxiously ahead through the dusk as he approached the Hughes ranch.

His heart got tight in

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