Express Rider

Much has been written about the dramatic story of the Pony Express riders and most of us identify with their role in the saga of the American West, but very little has been written or dramatized about the "express riders" -- men who secretly carried gold from the remote mining camps of the West to the banking centers in the big cities. These "express riders" risked their lives every time they hauled the precious metal from the gold fields of Montana, Idhao, Nevada or elsewhere to such places as Sacramento or San Francisco in Califoria. They often had to outwit, out-ride or out-shoot organized thieves -- men who would bushwhack them for the gold they carried, men who, because of the lawlessness of the western territories, moved as afreely and openly in the mining camps as did the express riders and the lawmen who worked with them. As a result, many express riders fell victim to these outlaws. Author Rod Johnson has a direct tie to one of the express riders who worked across the gold diggings of the American West -- one of his great-grandfathers, Bruce Jones, who beame an "Express Rider" in the gold fields of California. Jones ultimately worked in the gold camps of Idaho and Montana where he spent several years coping with a protagonist by the name of Henry Plummer, right up to the final days of Plummer's life when he and several of his cohorts were strung up by Monana Vigilantes. This book is based on Bruce Jones' adventures as an express rider. Bruce Jones subsequently quit the dangerous job of express riding, settled near the small town of Stevensville in Monana's Bitterroot Valley, and took up cattle ranching in partnership with another pioneer of the Montan gold fields, James B. Stuart, who also was one of the author's great-grandfathers and whose own dramatic story was told in Johnson's first book, "Another Man's Gold."