Indian country furnished, Cody's trail ran through a region that was
often frequented by desperadoes. Furthermore, he had to ford the North
Platte at a point where the stream was half a mile in width and in
places twelve feet deep. Though the current was at times slow, dangers
from quicksand were always to be feared on these prairie rivers. Cody,
then but a youth, had to surmount these obstacles and cover his trip at
an average of fifteen miles an hour.

Cody entered the Pony Express service just after the line had been
organized. At Julesburg he met George Chrisman, an old friend who was
head wagon-master for Russell, Majors, and Waddell's freighting
department. Chrisman was at the time acting as an agent for the express
line, and, out of deference to the youth, he hired him temporarily to
ride the division then held by a pony man named Trotter. It was a short
route, one of the shortest on the system, aggregating only forty-five
miles, and with three relays of horses each way. Cody, who had been
accustomed to the saddle all his young life, had no trouble in following
the schedule, but after keeping the run several weeks, the lad was
relieved by the regular incumbent, and then went east, to Leavenworth,
where he fell in with another old friend, Lewis Simpson, then acting as
wagon boss and fitting up at Atchison a wagon train of supplies for the
old stage line at Fort Laramie and points beyond. Acting through
Simpson, Cody obtained a letter of recommendation from Mr. Russell, the
head of the firm, addressed to Jack Slade, Superintendent of the
division between Julesburg and Rocky Ridge, with headquarters at
Horseshoe Station, thirty-six miles west of Fort Laramie, in what is now
Wyoming. Armed with this letter, young Cody accompanied Simpson's
wagon-train to Laramie, and soon found Superintendent Slade. The
superintendent, observing the lad's tender years and frail stature, was
skeptical of his ability to serve as a pony rider; but on learning that