The first stage reached Denver on May 17, 1859. It was accounted a remarkable achievement, and the line was pronounced a great success. In one way it was; but the expense of equipping it had been enormous, and the new line could not meet its obligations. To save the credit of their senior partner, Russell, Majors & Waddell were obliged to come to the rescue. They bought up all the outstanding obligations, and also the rival stage line between St. Joseph and Salt Lake City. They consolidated the two, and thereby hoped to put the Overland stage route on a paying basis. St. Joseph now became the starting-point of the united lines. From there the road went to Fort Kearny, and followed the old Salt Lake trail, already described in these pages. After leaving Salt Lake it passed through Camp Floyd, Ruby Valley, Carson City, Placerville, and Folsom, and ended in Sacramento. The distance from St. Joseph to Sacramento by this old stage route was nearly nineteen hundred miles. The time required by mail contracts and the government schedule was nineteen days. The trip was frequently made in fifteen, but there were so many causes for detention that the limit was more often reached. Each two hundred and fifty miles of road was designated a "division," and was in charge of an agent, who hadgreat authority in his own jurisdiction. He was commonly a man of more than ordinary intelligence, and all matters pertaining to his division were entirely under his control. He hired and discharged employee, purchased horses, mules, harness, and food, and attended to their distribution at the different stations. He superintended the erection of all buildings, had charge of the water supply, and he was the paymaster. There was also a man known as the conductor, whose route was almost coincident with that of the agent. He sat with the driver, and often rode the whole two hundred and fifty miles of his division without any rest or sleep, except what he could catch sitting on the top of the flying coach. The coach itself was a roomy, swaying vehicle, swung on thorough-braces instead of springs. It always had a six-horse or six-mule team to draw it, and the speed was nerve-breaking. Passengers were allowed twenty-five pounds of baggage, and that, with the mail, express, and the passengers themselves, was in charge of the conductor. The Overland stagecoaches were operated at a loss until 1862. In March of that year Russell, Majors & Waddell transferred the whole outfit to Ben Holliday. Here was a typical frontiersman, of great individuality and character. At the time he took charge of the route the United States mail was given to it. This put the line on a sound financial basis, as the government spent $800,000 yearly in transporting the mail to San Francisco. Will reported for duty the morning after his talk with Trotter, and when he mounted the stage-box and gathered the reins over the six spirited horses, the passengers were assured of an expert driver. His run was from Fort Kearny to Plum Creek. The country was sharply familiar. It was the scene of his first encounter with Indians. A long and lonely ride it was, and a dismal one when the weather turned cold; but it meant a hundred and fifty dollars a month; and each pay day brought him nearer to St. Louis.

Indian signs there had been right along, but they were only signs until one bleak day in November. He pulled out of Plum Creek with a sharp warning ringing in his ears. Indians were on the war-path, and trouble was more likely than not ahead. Lieutenant Flowers, assistant division agent, was on the box with him, and within the coach were six well-armed passengers.

Half the run had been covered, when Will's experienced eye detected the promised red men. Before him lay a stream which must be forded. The creek was densely fringed with underbrush, and along this the Indians were skulking, expecting to cut the stage off at the only possible crossing.

Perhaps this is a good place to say a word concerning the seemingly extraordinary fortune that has stood by Will in his adventures. Not only have his own many escapes been of the hairbreadth sort, but he has arrived on the scene of danger at just the right moment to rescue others from extinction. Of course, an element of luck has entered into these affairs, but for the most part they simply proved the old saying that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Will had studied the plains as an astronomer studies the heavens. The slightest disarrangement of the natural order of things caught his eye. With the astronomer, it is a comet or an asteroid appearing upon a field whose every object has long since been placed and studied; with Will, it was a feathered headdress where there should have been but tree, or rock, or grass; a moving figure where nature should have been inanimate.

When seen, those things were calculated as the astronomer calculates the motion of the objects that he studies. A planet will arrive at a given place at a certain time; an Indian will reach a ford in a stream in about so many minutes. If there be time to cross before him, it is a matter of hard driving; if the odds are with the Indian, that is another matter.

A less experienced observer than Will would not have seen the skulking redskins; a less skilled frontiersman would not have apprehended their design; a less expert driver would not have taken the running chance for life; a less accurate marksman would not have picked off an Indian with a rifle while shooting from the top of a swinging, jerking stagecoach.

Will did not hesitate. A warning shout to the passengers, and the whip was laid on, and off went the horses full speed. Seeing that they had been discovered, the Indians came out into the open, and ran their ponies for the ford, but the stage was there full five hundred yards before them. It was characteristic of their driver that the horses were suffered to pause at the creek long enough to get a swallow of water; then, refreshed, they were off at full speed again.

The coach, creaking in every joint, rocked like a captive balloon, the unhappy passengers were hurled from one side of the vehicle to the other, flung into one another's laps, and occasionally, when some uncommon obstacle sought to check the flying coach, their heads collided with its roof. The Indians menaced them without, cracked skulls seemed their fate within.