Now Alden Payne would not have had a tithe of the sense with which we have credited him all along, if he had forgotten for one moment the peril which he faced from the moment he came up with the inanimate form of Dick Lightfoot. The turning back of Jethro Alix, and the shift from one saddle to the other
Indians, made the speediest 190 miles on record, and for six months covered daily the run between Reno, Nevada, and Virginia City, a distance of twenty-three miles, well within an hour. He used fifteen horses on each run. How those old timers could ride and if necessary fight! I add the following extract from an interesting letter received by me from Mr. Haslam;
“Very few of the old Pony Express Riders ever carried a rifle of any description from start to finish. I once purchased a Spencer from a deserter from Fort Bridger, paying him $20. This was in 1861. The weapon was a breech-loader with seven shots. I always carried a Colt’s revolver with two cylinders, and often had to use both of them. I made sure that the pistol was fully loaded when I started. Caps were employed, and the revolver was loaded by means of a ramrod attached to it. After the Spencer came the Sharp, seven-shooter, repeating breech-loader with cartridges. My Spencer weighed about seven and a half pounds, but I never used it on the Express. When I was messenger from Salt Lake to Denver in the service of Wells Fargo & Co. I carried a short double-barreled shotgun with buckshot and later a Winchester 16-shooter. When in the government service in Porto Rico and the Philippines, all the weapon I carried was a Colt’s improved double action revolver.”
