The letter mail will be delivered in San Francisco in ten days from the departure of the Express. The Express passes through Forts Kearney, Laramie, Bridger, Great Salt Lake City, Camp Floyd, Carson City, The Washoe Silver Mines, Placerville, and Sacramento. * * * * * W. H. RUSSELL, President. LEAVENWORTH CITY, KANSAS, March, 1860. There was more than this to the advertisement, but these were the paragraphs that appealed to Davy. “Pretty slick they’ve all been about it, too,” resumed Bob, tucking the paper away again. “You’re right,” spoke the express messenger――who was Captain Cricket, again on his way through to Salt Lake. “They’ve bought the ponies and hired the riders, sixty of them. The route’s being divided into runs of seventy-five or a hundred miles, and stocked with horses, every ten or fifteen miles, for change of mounts.” “Do you think it’ll pay?” asked Gentleman Bob. “Pay? No! It can’t pay. But it’ll be a big advertisement for this company. They count on showing the Government that the Salt Lake Trail can be travelled quicker and easier than the old Butterfield overland trail through Texas, and on taking the mail and express business away from it.” “I’d like to ride one of those runs,” asserted Dave, boldly. Gentleman Bob laughed and cracked his silk lashed whip, of which he was very proud. “I expect you would, Red,” he agreed. “But this riding a hundred miles or more at a gallop without rest is no kid’s job, you’d find.” “Billy Cody’ll ride, though, I bet a dollar,” returned Davy. Gentleman Bob scratched his cheek with his whip stock, and deliberated. “Well,” he said, “I shouldn’t wonder if he would.” Events moved rapidly now after the Pony Express had been announced. Three new horses were stabled at the stage station; two were wiry ponies, the other was a mettlesome horse of such extra good points that Gentleman Bob pronounced him a Kentucky thoroughbred. The station force of men were increased by Pony Express employees, and a rider himself arrived who had been engaged to take the run from Laramie west to the next “home” station, Red Buttes, ninety-eight miles. His name was “Irish Tom,” and he did not weigh more than one hundred pounds; but every pound of him seemed to be good hard muscle. Irish Tom had come in from the west. He said that he had been one of sixty riders hired at Carson City, Nevada, by Bolivar Roberts, who was the superintendent of the Western Division of the Pony Express. According to Irish Tom every man had to prove up that he was experienced on the plains and in the mountains, and could ride. Altogether, there were eighty riders waiting, stationed all the way across the continent from St. Joseph on the Missouri to Sacramento in California; there were over 400 picked horses, which would gallop at top speed up hill and down, through sand and mud, snow and water and sun, for at least ten miles at a stretch.