Scenario - A young man rides for the Pony Express in the year 1860.
Many a young man has a dream! Mine was to be on horseback, riding in the Wild West. While growing up, I had heard so much about pioneers headed west on the Oregon Trail, and I admired their courage. In school, I had also read and heard about the Forty-Niners that left home and family, and risked everything for a chance to strike it rich in the gold fields of California. I thought about how dangerous it would be to head west like the famous Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, and John C. Fremont.
But I didn't think I could ever get the courage to leave my home and family. At the time, the nation was in turmoil over states' rights and slavery, and I was forced to make a decision - a decision no young man should ever have to face.
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I was only 18 and I was raised on a farm just outside of Charlestown, Virginia, near the Shenandoah River Valley. My parents named me Sidney, after a mountain in the area. My immediate family felt that a war between the states would erupt if Lincoln were to be elected president. Families in the valley would have to decide if they would support and fight for the Union, or support the slave state of Virginia. There was talk of some southern states breaking away from the United States and forming a southern confederacy of states.
My family did not have any slaves and we were abolitionists. I had read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and I believed slavery was wrong. But I had two uncles, an aunt, and eleven cousins that lived near Snicker's Gap, on the southeastern side of the Shenandoah River, and they all were loyal to the state of Virginia and owned household slaves and a few field workers on their farms.
I knew I could never go to war against my own family - people I had known and loved all my life. I prayed to God Almighty to help me not to have to make that decision!
Then, I read an advertisement in the local newspaper, that a new company called the Pony Express was starting up soon, and they were hiring experienced riders to carry the mail by way of more than a hundred and fifty stations between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California. The company was paying riders $100 per month; that was over three times more than a common laborer was paid! But a person could not weigh more than 125 pounds and the riders rode from 10-12 hours per day. I was of small stature and felt my prayer had been answered.
I decided it was time to try to fulfill my dream. I would venture out on my own, and avoid making a decision that could never have any good results. I talked with my mother and father, my younger brother and older sister about my decision. They were all sad, but understood why I felt I had to leave.
My father objected at first, feeling that I was being a coward and did not want to have to fight in a war. But then he realized I was showing a great deal of courage by heading west - facing many dangers, especially being on my own most of the time and in some unsettled territory with hostile Indians. We had heard about many conflicts with the plains tribes like the Sioux, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Crow, Shoshone and Blackfeet.
