Midnight Run at Friday's Station
A Pony Express Adventure

About this book:

Fourteen-year-old Toby Miller has never ridden the Pony Express—but tonight, the mountains may force him to. At Friday's Station on the shores of Lake Bigler, the westbound rider is hours overdue, a blizzard is swallowing the Sierra summit, and the new telegraph wires humming through the pines carry a threat deadlier than any storm: the end of the Pony itself. With the mail frozen on the wrong side of the divide and the station keeper's rheumatic knees locking up, Toby faces a choice that will test everything he knows about horses, honor, and the weight of a mochila stuffed with a nation's urgent secrets.

From the icygrade of Daggett Pass to the wolf-haunted ridges above Carson Sink, *Midnight Run at Friday's Station* plunges you into the brutal, breathtaking world of the Central Overland California & Pikes Peak Express Company in its final, desperate months. Author [Author Name] renders every detail with the authority of a horseman and the heart of a storyteller—the sting of graupel on frozen cheeks, the scream of a timber wolf on the ridge, the maddening *thrum* of copper wire singing the death knell of a way of life. Toby's journey from stable boy to something harder and rarer unfolds across twenty-six chapters of white-knuckle riding, impossible choices, and the quiet courage that held a fracturing country together, one relay at a time.

When the wire falls silent and the snow buries the trail, the mail still has to move. Saddle up.