"And I'll help, too!" cried the young pony express rider.

"I knew you would, Cousin Jack!" Jennie exclaimed, clapping her hands. "But
now we must talk business. Let me have your slips to sign, and here is a
registered letter that you'd better put in an inside pocket where the stage
robbers won't find it," and she laughed merrily at her joke.

There was considerable routine work attached to the post office and to the
pony express route, and for some time Jack and Jennie were busy over this.
The mail and express matter which Jack had brought in on the back of his
pony, Sunger, had already been sent off on the outgoing stage.

"Will you ride back to-night, after the other stage comes in, or will you
stay here?" asked Mrs. Blake.

"I guess I'll stay," Jack said. "But I can go back as far as Painted Post,"
naming a mountain settlement a few miles east of Golden Crossing. "I
stopped there on my way here, and Harry Ward said he was going to ride in
to Rainbow Ridge to a dance to-night. I can have him take a message for me,
saying the mail will be late. And he can also tell my father that I'll stay
over night, and be in early to-morrow morning."

"That would be a good idea," said Mrs. Blake. "We'll try and make you
comfortable, Jack."

"Oh, you won't have to try very hard," he laughed. Jennie blushed and
smiled, and Mrs. Blake looked wise.

Jack spent that afternoon helping Jennie straighten up her post office, for
she had determined on a new arrangement of tables and desks, which Mrs.