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Cover Story
The sun’s golden rays fight to
break through slate-gray clouds on an early Febru
ary morning in a desolate area of northern Ari-
zona's vista-ridden Mogollon Plateau. Suddenly,
spectacularly, Robert Perry and his 19-year-old
Arabian horse burst over the crest of a hill a half
mile away at a full gallop. As they near a highway
mile marker, another rider on horseback prepares
to take off. With the smoothness of a handshake.
Perry extends a canvas and leather bag to the
departing rider as plumes of dust kick high in the
air behind the horses.
The U.S. Mail is en route from Holbrook to
Scottsdale, Ariz., via a most unlikely modern-day
letter carrier—the Pony Express.
As a member of the Hashknife Pony Express,
Perry, 31, is part of the nation’s oldest continu
ous Pony Express affiliated with the U.S. Postal
Service. In a few weeks (Jan. 31-Feb. 2, 2007), he
and his fellow riders, most of them mem
bers of the Navajo County Sheriff s Posse
Search and Rescue Unit, will set out
again on the annual mail run —their
49th straight. During this three-day
journey covering 230 miles, 20,000
special hand-stamped letters from
around the world will be hauled '
by some 33 riders, all of whom are RKJ
sworn in as official mail carriers by
the U.S. Post Office in Holbrook
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Nathan Perkins grabs a mailbag from his uncle Gayle Perkins during the annual Hashknife Pony Express.
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Mark Reynolds departs the Holbrook (Ariz.) Post Office.
The letters are placed into nearly 24 different mailbags,
each weighing from 10 to 25 pounds, and are passed from
rider to rider along the route. Horsemen relay at every
mile marker along the route that winds through
the scenic Mogollon Rim country, through little
towas and hamlets such as Heber, Christopher
W” Creek and Payson, before ending with a ride
en masse to the Scottsdale Post Office, where
the mail re-enters the conventional postal
ffreTtfafc delivery system. In all, each rider will take
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their next assigned mile marker.
The riding is the easy part,”
acknowledges Hashknife Pony Express
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captain Mark Reynolds, 50, a deputy commander
of the Navajo County Sheriffs Office, which orga
nizes the annual event. "This ride costs around
$30,000 to $35,000 to put on,” says Reynolds,
noting that money is raised through fund-raisers
and business sponsorships. “It's paying for all the
motel rooms, all the food, all the dinners. It's quite
an expense. The pilot cars, the riders—each rider
is different, each horse is different, each hand-off is
different; different towns, different city councils.
Some people have fast horses, some people have
slower horses. It just builds the history of this
thing: Everybody’s got a story.”
Route remembrances
Tales along the trail abound from the youngest
riders to some of the oldest. Kelland Webb, 51,
an actual U.S. Postal Service mail carrier on the
Scottsdale-Kachina rural route, has ridden with
the Hashknife Pony Express gang for 24 years.
He remembers a pristine picture-postcard setting
accompanying one of his rides.
“It was right along this stretch of road, with snow
about a foot deep,” recounts Webb, standing next to
his trailer parked along State Route 377. "Twenty
wild horses covered in snow are running right along
side me! I look up to my left and there’s 20 of 'em
chasing me on that side of the fence. Wow!”
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