Again came that funny expression he kept looking at me with. “Your folks know you’re here?”
“More or less,” I said.
He hesitated a minute, then wrote something down, but even upside down I couldn’t tell what it was.
He shoved the paper toward me. “Sign here, kid.”
I did.
“Well, I reckon you’re an Express rider now.”
“What do I do now?” I asked.
“I reckon you ought to get yourself out to Jackson at Flat Bluff. He’ll take care of you the rest of the way.”
“Thanks, Mister,” I said.
“Don’t mention it, boy . . . good luck.”
And that was that. Within an hour I was riding out of Sacramento on my way to the Nevada border.
Chapter 6
To Flat Bluff
It took me five days of moderate riding to get to Flat Bluff. I stopped at all the other stations along the way, even met Warren Upson and several riders I’d heard about from the newspapers or from other folks. I heard plenty of stories about those I didn’t meet, especially Pony Bob Haslam.
I rode up through the Sierras to the Sportsman’s Hall station and then on to Friday’s Station. It was pretty cold getting over the Sierras, with lots of snow everyplace. I was kinda surprised, it being as far into the summer as it was.
At Friday’s Station, the stationman was gone and the only person around was a Mexican boy. I was anxious to get to the job, so I just got me something quick to eat and kept right on going, heading down into Nevada near Carson City and then cutting out across the high desert flatlands of what they called the Nevada part of the Utah territory toward Fort Churchill.
I didn’t see a soul. There weren’t no towns, no settlements, no farms, no ranches, no fences, no cows, no horses. There weren’t nothing! Nothing but rocks, sand, scrubby plants, hills, lizards, and snakes . . . and the sun, which was cool and distant at first but then started to warm up the further east I went.
Across the high desert I rode, along long flat stretches that went on for likely ten or twenty miles, then up over a hill or small mountain, down the other side, and then out across the flat desert again. The ground was so flat between ridges that you didn’t need a trail to ride on, you just needed it to keep track of your direction. Over and over and over it went, just like that.
The only sign of life I saw was the Express riders I passed, and they weren’t that many ’cause each stretch of the line was only run twice a week. But then everyone rode both directions out from his home station, and since I was going slower than the mail, I saw several of the riders twice.
As a rule, they didn’t stop to do much talking, but once or twice they did. One fellow just whistled when I told him where I was bound and said I’d earn my pay for sure. I didn’t like the sound of that, but didn’t want to ask what he meant, either.
The only Indians I saw were from a distance, and I didn’t know then how lucky I was! Later I found out that during that whole month of June, the Paiutes had been stirring up so much trouble it was a wonder the Express kept going at all. That’s why they was looking for boys for the Nevada runs—all the regulars had quit! But I didn’t know that, and I was riding right into the middle of it!
Only a few weeks before I’d come through, in fact, there’d been a big uprising near Carson City. The cavalry’d ridden out to stop it, but the Indians put up such a fight the cavalry’d had to retreat all the way back to the city. The Express was forced to shut down for three weeks. It’d only been operating again for about a week and a half when I come through.
I still saw patches of snow when I would ride up into one of the ridges, and I wondered at that. But at one of the stations they told me it was a snowstorm that finally helped the army under Major Ormsby force the Paiutes back up in the mountains so the line could be opened again. That was something—a snowstorm in the middle of June! Must’ve been the same one that put all that snow in the Sierras.
After the snowstorm, the Paiutes kept raiding further and further east, staying in the mountains. Some of the stories I heard were enough to make my hair stand on end. Nick Wilson at the Spring Valley relay station got a stone arrow-tip halfway into his skull. They got him to the Ruby Valley station, where a doctor tended him as best he could, but when I came through he was still in bed looking pretty bad. He’d been awake for about a week by then, and the only advice he had to give me was, “If you’re heading east, Hollister, keep both your eyes open and a gun handy. That’s just the direction the redskins are moving.”
After talking with Nick, I found myself glancing around a lot more as I rode—and I made sure I got to a station every night. I wasn’t about to bed down out in the middle of the desert after hearing all those stories about the Paiutes, especially when I heard about all that Pony Bob Haslam had been through at every station between Reese River and Dry Creek. As far as I could tell, he was just about the most famous rider of all.
I didn’t ride too hard, though, because I didn’t want to wear out my horse. I wasn’t changing mounts every ten miles, like I would when I started carrying the mail, so I didn’t want to gallop him too much. I reckon I could have used some of the Express ponies since I was an official rider.
I hoped I could keep Gray Thunder with me once I got on the job. Little Wolf and I’d found him two years before up in the Sierras. I’d broken him and trained him myself, and he was the best horse I’d ever had. I figured he’d be about as much of a friend as I’d have out here. I wouldn’t ride him on the job, but I figured us two’d go scouting around the countryside when I was between rides.
The further east I rode, like I said, the warmer it got, until halfway across the flatlands it was downright hot. The weather sure could change in a hurry in this country! There wasn’t no snow now, that was for sure!
And that was some desolate country, I can tell you—especially in the month of June! It was so dry that if you didn’t have water with you, you’d die for sure trying to cross it.
I had a map the man at the Sacramento office had given me. It showed the Express trail and all the relay stations and home stations and the places where there was supposed to be water. But by the time I was halfway across Nevada, most of the rivers and creek beds were all dried up. I reckoned they’d have water in them during the winter, but you’d never know it now.
The ground itself was just rocks and sand, and the only plants was dried-up desert grasses and shrubs, looking like they wanted to be green but couldn’t keep from being mostly gray and brown. There weren’t no dirt to speak of, and it’s a mystery to me how even those wiry, prickly things could grow at all.
I didn’t see how much of anything could survive out there, but I would later learn about all the hundreds of kinds of critters that made the desert their home—not all of them too friendly neither, like snakes and scorpions. It was the driest, hottest, unfriendliest patch of country I’d ever laid eyes on!
Actually, I reckon I had laid eyes on it before, when we was coming across the other way in the wagon train on the way to California with Ma. But I reckon things look a mite different through twenty-one-year-old eyes than they do through thirteen-year-old eyes.
Now that I was riding it alone, it wasn’t that hard to understand why this land had taken Ma’s life. If a body was to take to ailing out here, why the sun could just drain the life right outta you—it was that hot!
I finally arrived at Flat Bluff on June 29. I rode up, tied up Gray Thunder, and went inside.
One look at the stationman, and I knew why they called him Hammerhead.
Chapter 7
Hammerhead Jackson
I never did learn Hammerhead Jackson’s real first name. But after one look at him, there just didn’t seem much else to call him.
He was a short, squatty man, easily five inches shorter than me, and built stocky and muscular, with big wide shoulders and legs that looked like tree trunks. I could have outrun him, but he sure wasn’t the kind of fellow I’d
want to tangle with! One look and you’d figure him for an ornery cuss. And listening to his gruff talk only made it worse. If he’d been hired to be hard on the Pony Express riders and toughen them up, they sure got the perfect man for the job!
Worst of all was the big scar—several inches wide—along the side of his head, running from one eyebrow back to his ear and then about halfway up toward the top of his head. It was such a grotesque deformity I could hardly take my eyes off it. On the one side his hair grew normally and was thick and black. But then on the other side, where his head was all dented in, it was mostly bald, with just a few scraggly hairs trying to grow, and the skin itself was ragged and scarred. It almost did look like somebody’d taken a hammer to the side of his head.
If it hadn’t been for that, the rest of his face would have been pretty fearsome to meet up with, too, especially if he had his usual scowl on it. There was a scar over the eyebrow opposite the dented-in side, and his nose was bent just a little bit off to one direction. There were a few smaller scars and pockmarks on his face and cheeks, too, though the stubble of a beard covered most of them. His jaw was square, settling down on a short, thick neck.
And as far as I could tell, Hammerhead Jackson was one of those kind of men who does everything to try to rile you. He always seemed intent on picking a fight, even though I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to tangle with him! Everything about his voice and his looks and his manner immediately told you this was a gruff old bull of a man who wouldn’t take nothing from nobody.
“You don’t look tough enough to ride out in this country, boy!” were his first words to me as he stood there in the doorway and scanned me up and down with his eyes.
“’Sides that, you’re too blamed old!” His voice sounded like gravel slushing through Pa’s sluice box.
“I can take care of myself,” I shot back.
I don’t reckon I was too convincing. He just let out with a big laugh, still looking me over. It wasn’t a cheerful laugh, either, like Alkali Jones’s.
“That’s what all you young runts think!” he barked. “But toughness is in the eyes, and I can tell if it’s there or not. And you ain’t got it, boy!”
“Well, I can ride as well as anybody!” I was getting a little riled by now. “And whether you figure I can or not, I been taking care of myself longer than maybe some of your young riders. So you just give me a chance, and then you can get rid of me if you don’t figure I’m tough enough for it!”
He didn’t actually smile, but some of the gruffness seemed to relax out of his face.
“Well, maybe I was wrong about you, boy,” I said. “You got grit, and you ain’t gonna let an old coot like me bully you none. That’s good . . . you might do after all. But I won’t have to discharge you if you ain’t up to the job—them Paiutes will take care of that. Come on in . . . what’s your name?”
“Hollister,” I said. “Zack Hollister.”
“Well, Hollister,” Hammerhead went on as he showed me where to put my stuff and where I’d bunk down, “I may have been testing you some, but I was speaking the truth when I said you gotta be tough to ride in this country. You musta heard about the Indian trouble?”
I nodded.
“Blamed Paiutes is the savagest brutes this side of the Comanches and Apaches. The run between Salt Lake and Carson’s been on and off for months. If it ain’t one of their kind, they’ll kill it as soon as shoot a rattler. We ain’t lost no boys yet, but we come close more times’n I like. And several stations been looted and burned—there’s been some station people killed.”
“Yeah, I heard,” I said.
“You still wanted to come?”
“It’s a job.”
“Twenty-five a week . . . yeah, I know, it’s good money. You figure it’s worth getting shot at for, Hollister?”
“If I ride fast enough, maybe I won’t have to worry about it.”
“Paiutes has got fast ponies too. Half of ’em they stole from us! Takes more’n a fast horse. Takes guts and wits . . . and like I said before, you gotta be a tough son of a gun. You think you can do it, Hollister?”
“I aim to try,” I said. “That’s what I came for.”
“Then I’ll give you a chance to prove yourself. I gotta make sure what kinda stuff my riders is made of. That’s my job, Hollister. I get paid to be tougher on you young bucks than the trail ever could. That’s what the Express hired me for—to make men outta you! So you do what I say, you pay attention to what I teach you, or I’ll box your ears. For your own good. Now, set yourself down. Rest of ’em will be in for grub in ’bout half an hour.”
“Rest of who?” I asked, not exactly liking the sound of what might be in store for me.
“Smith, he’s my station assistant, and the Barnes kid. They’re both out at the stables tending the horses. Billy’s been riding double stints. He’s a tough little son of a gun, though I had to beat some sense into that lame skull of his when he first came. He’s gonna be glad to see you! We been shorthanded out here ever since the Paiutes started causing all the trouble.”
“When do I start?” I asked.
“Billy’ll take you out tomorrow, show you the trail, take you partway, up over the ridge—that’s the only tricky part. After that you got a clear ride all the way into the Stephens’ Canyon station. It’s ’bout an eighteen-mile run east. You’ll make your first ride day after that. Well, I gotta fix up this grub. Why don’t you get your horse unsaddled and settled—they’ll show you where out back.”
I did like he said, but didn’t see a trace of the other two men. There were plenty of empty stalls, so I picked one, threw two or three handfuls of grain into the feeding trough, and took care of my horse. He needed a good rubbing after all the heat and sweat and dust.
When I came back in a few minutes later, Hammerhead was busy in the kitchen area at the other end of the long rectangular room. I sat down against the far wall and watched him. He didn’t look much like a cook, but then, Almeda probably wouldn’t have called it a kitchen either! He seemed to be making biscuits, and I could smell beans bubbling slowly in a big pot on the stove. As far away as we were from anything resembling a town, I didn’t figure there was much to be particular about. So I just sat there and looked at Hammerhead Jackson and wondered about what I’d got myself into.
It wasn’t till some time later that I found out how the stationman had got so scarred up. Mason Walker, the rider who come in from the west two days later, told me about it once when we were alone. Hammerhead had been living further east, in Apache territory. A raiding war party had set fire to his house and massacred his wife and daughter. He took an arrow straight through the ribs on his right side and fell down unconscious, his pistol still in his hand.
Most of the Indians rode off, but one stayed behind, pulled out his knife, stooped down, and started to cut right into Hammerhead’s head to scalp him. The unbelievable pain somehow brought him back into consciousness just long enough to tilt the pistol up and squeeze the trigger. The Indian died instantly, and Hammerhead blacked out again.
Any ordinary man would have been dead. But when a neighbor found him several hours later he was still breathing. How he survived, half scalped and with an arrow sticking into him, Mason couldn’t say, except to add, “They don’t make ’em tougher’n Hammerhead Jackson, and that’s a fact, Hollister. Don’t cross him, or he’ll put you out on the floor.”
However it happened, he did survive, ’cause there he was in charge of the Flat Bluff Station.
The story was so gruesome it made me sick just to think of it. But if tough was what the Express wanted, I reckon they got it when they hired Hammerhead Jackson! I could tell that even before I knew what had happened to him.
“What are you running from, Hollister?” the gravelly voice said in the middle of my thoughts as I watched the stationman across the room.
“I don’t know—don’t figure I’m running from nothing.”
“Everybody’s running from something, Hollis
ter. That’s why they’re out here, trying to prove they’re men. What you got to prove, Hollister? You’re older’n most of ’em. Why you trying to prove you’re a man?”
“What makes you think I am?” I said. I didn’t like his tone. I didn’t know what business it was of his why I was here!
“Every boy’s trying to prove he’s a man. That’s why you all do fool things like joining the Pony Express. Trying to prove they’re as tough and as grown up as the next feller.”
“I thought you wanted ’em tough.”
“I do. But I like to know what demons is haunting ’em, too, so one of ’em doesn’t pull a gun on me if I beat ’em around for turning sissy on me. Most of the time it’s a feller’s pa. What’s your pa like, Hollister?”
I didn’t answer. Hammerhead glanced over at me.
“That’s it, ain’t it? Yep, I figured as much. Always is.”
“What makes you think you know so dang much about what I’m thinking?” I said angrily.
“Watch yourself, Hollister, or I’ll tell Billy to give you a thrashing—or do it myself, for that matter!”
“Whoever this Billy is, I’d like to see him try!” I retorted.
For the first time since I’d got there I saw a slight grin break over the stationman’s lips.
“You just might get your chance, Hollister,” he said, “if you keep running your fool tongue off like that!”
I didn’t say anything else.
“But to answer your question,” Hammerhead went on, “I had a pa too. Every boy does, and that’s why he’s gotta prove he’s a man—to get his own pa off his back. I hated my own pa’s guts. But then I reckon hate made a man of me and saved my life a time or two.
“Hate’s a good thing, Hollister, if it makes you tough. But just take one piece of advice—watch what you say around Billy. You step outta line, and he’s like to pull a gun and shoot you dead. His pa ain’t on his back no more. He’s made a man of himself, and he’s proved it more’n once.”
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