Girls & Women
The driver shut the motor off and just sat there, very still. We froze in our places. He pulled off his helmet and looked around without leaving his machine. It was too dark to see his face, but he looked big. My heart was hammering like a drum. Surely he could hear it. I looked sideways at Sam and the others. Their breath was coming out in tiny streams. Nobody moved a muscle, not even Spider.
I had felt almost smug striding into town, but leaving again made me realize that the wild country ahead was probably beyond my imagining. Already the way had been difficult, but judging by stories told by some of the men who had traveled this way before, only the very strongest, the most determined, survived to see the Cariboo. Would I be one of them?
Flame quivered beneath me, ready to fly off the moment I asked.
"The mail's been stopped one minute and twenty seconds," Uncle Billy said. "That's more than long enough."
He slapped Flame on the rump and the horse leaped forward as if shot from a cannon. The sudden movement caught me off guard and for one horrible second I thought my career as a Pony Express rider was over before it started.
