The Pony Express Rider of Grand Coulee

The usual crowd of loungers were at their resort, the barroom of the crude frontier hotel. The conversation turned to the non-arrival of the pony express rider from the fort ninety miles away, and whether road agents or Indians had waylaid him. The captain claimed the Indians were the cause; the gambler thought road agents were responsible. While the debate grew, a young conductor—an overgrown boy—volunteered to go to the fort to find out what happened. He was known as a good shot and rider. Mounting 'Black Prince,' a spirited Morgan horse that others feared to ride, he set off into the mist. He eventually reached the fort and delivered his dispatches, but he became suspicious of the local agency Indians. After disguising himself with paint and a feathered headdress, he mingled with them at the agency, where he overheard their plot: they were planning to waylay and murder the express riders at a ravine. The conductor fled back toward the fort, pursued by a band of warriors. He was trapped in a coulee where he made a gruesome discovery: the bodies of the missing express riders and their horses. In a desperate final stand, he fought his way through the warriors, shot the chief, and escaped back to the settlement. He handed the chief's medal to the captain and told them, 'The good Indian that wore it lies beside his victims in the Grand Coulee.'