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We had several engagements with the Indians, but they were of no great importance. In the winter of 1862, I became one of the "Red Legged Scouts," a company of scouts commanded by Captain Tuff. Among its members were some of the most noted Kansas Rangers, such as Red Clark, the St. Clair brothers, Jack Harvey, an old pony express-rider named Johnny Fry, and many other well known frontiersmen.
Almost the very first person I saw after dismounting from my horse was Slade. I walked up to him and presented Mr. Russell's letter, which he hastily opened and read. With a sweeping glance of his eye he took my measure from head to foot, and then said: "My boy, you are too young for a pony express-rider. It takes men for that business."
This made a quorum, and a state convention was immediately appointed for the 20th of November. Before these proceedings were concluded, an express-rider brought the news from New York that Congress had submitted the Constitution to the judgment of the states. And now there ensued such a war of pamphlets, broadsides, caricatures, squibs, and stump-speeches, as had never yet been seen in America.
He had gained his title during the Mexican War. As an express-rider for different American generals he had dodged the reatas of guerrilla parties who were lurking by water-holes and had outjockeyed swarthy horsemen in wild races across the flaming deserts of Sonora until he had come to know the science of their fighting as well as old Padre Jurata himself.
"I have to inform you," runs the communication, "that just now the President's express-rider, Bill Phillips, has tore through this little place without stopping. He came and went in a cloud of dust, his horse's tail and his own long hair streaming alike in the wind as they flew by.
Slade, although rough at times and always a dangerous character having killed many a man was always kind to me. During the two years that I worked for him as pony express-rider and stage-driver, he never spoke an angry word to me. As I was leaving Horse Creek one day, a party of fifteen Indians "jumped me" in a sand ravine about a mile west of the station.
Russell there and asked him for employment as a pony express-rider; he gave me a letter to Mr. Slade, who was then the stage agent for the division extending from Julesburg to Rocky Ridge. Slade had his headquarters at Horseshoe Station, thirty-six miles west of Fort Laramie and I made the trip thither in company with Simpson and his train.
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