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Updated: May 27, 2025
"I don't know," returned the marshal. "He wouldn't stay there, but he might go through that way." It did not take long to organize two posses, and Jack went with the one led by the marshal. The young express rider bestrode a borrowed steed, and though it was good enough, as horses go, it was not at all like his beloved Sunger.
"But I've got to do something! I've got to do something!" He repeated the words over and over again, until they rang in his numbed brain like the refrain of some song. Sunger did not know what to make of it all. He could tell something was wrong, and whinnied once or twice. But Jack was too ill to answer him, or pat him caressingly as he always did. "Sunger, we've got to do something!
"But Sundodger is too much of a mouthful when one's in a hurry," and Jack laughed at his idea, "so," he went on, "I shortened it to Sunger, which does just as well." "Yes, as long as he knows it," agreed Mrs. Watson. "But I guess, Jack, I had better be going, I did think I'd wait until your father came, and put the supper on for you both, but he's so late now " "Yes, Mrs.
The stage, as the messenger had said, had broken down half way between Bosford and Tuckerton. These were two small settlements, the last one being about three miles from Golden Crossing. As Jack was passing through the eastern outskirts of Tuckerton he noticed that Sunger was limping slightly. "Hello! What's this? Got a stone under your shoe?" he exclaimed, as he got off.
Another rider was coming. Who it might be Sunger, of course, did not know. But the little pony had been trained never to let another horse pass him from behind on the mail route. It was not so much a matter of necessity as it was of pride, and Jack's pony now increased his pace.
There was a fresh breeze blowing from the west, cold and refreshing from the distant mountains, and the air cleared away from Jack's head the last lingering feeling caused by the drug. "Well, Sunger, old boy, they didn't get us that time, did they?" he asked as he went into the stall and petted his faithful animal. "They didn't get us though they tried mighty hard.
And then, at a level place on the trail, and one that was straight, where a good view could be had ahead, there swung into view behind Sunger a horse, carrying a man who was urging his mount on with whip, spur and voice. "So that's why I didn't find him as I expected to!" exclaimed Ryan, for he it was who was galloping behind the unconscious form of Jack Bailey.
"I don't want to loosen your shoe too much, or it will come off, and then I'd be in a worse pickle than ever," he continued, talking aloud, as he frequently did when on the trail. "And yet if I don't, I can't see how I'm going to get at that stone. Well, we'll have another try in a minute." Sunger did not seem to mind the rest.
Sunger sprang forward, and only just in time, for in another second he would have stepped through a hole in the bridge where a plank had fallen off into the stream below. And had the pony fallen Jack would probably have been thrown over the bridge railing into the water. "Whoa! Steady old boy! Easy now!"
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.
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