From "Orphans Preferred - The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express" by Christopher Corbett:

…But some of the greatest perils facing the Pony Express were those experienced by the station keepers and stock tenders hired to maintain relay posts along the route. A young and skilled rider on a fast horse might escape danger and outrun hostile Indians or bandits, but a station tender in places like Cold Springs, Jacob's Wells, or Alkali Lake was often alone and far from assistance.

When the Paiute Indian War broke out in the late spring of 1860, temporarily shutting down the Pony Express line in much of what is today Nevada, effectively stopping service east and west, the station tenders in the remote Nevada desert were most at risk, and several died defending these lonely outposts from Indian raiders. Stations were strung out across the countryside at points favorable to the route, located for the convenience of the horses and riders racing mail cross-country. The locations depended on the terrain, and were often located in places that were undesirable, simply because there had to be a relief station at this point along the route. Depending on the terrain and the availability of materials, stations ranged from quite comfortable if modest cabins (Hollenberg Station in eastern Kansas seems rustic chic) to dugouts and adobe shelters constructed of mud bricks made at the site. Captain Sir Richard Burton found Pony Expressmen living in a hole in the ground in eastern Nevada. Lean-tos, tents, and various other temporary quarters were thrown up as needed.

On his way west to Willow Creek from Salt Lake City, crossing the vast deserts of Utah and Nevada, Burton made these observations on the stations: "On this line there are two kinds of stations, the mail stations, where there is an agent in charge of five or six 'boys,' and the express station--every second-where there is only a master and an express rider. . . It is a hard life, setting aside the chance of death-no less than three murders have been committed by the Indians during this year-the work is severe; the diet is sometimes reduced to wolf-mutton, or a little boiled wheat and rye, and the drink to brackish water; a pound of tea comes occasionally, but the droughty souls are always 'out' of whiskey and tobacco."

The section of the Pony Express line upon which Burton was traveling between Salt Lake City and California was, in addition to the inhospitality of the terrain and extreme dangers, impossible to supply. Water often had to be hauled great distances. There was no wood, either. That, too, had to be cut elsewhere and hauled overland.

No crops could be grown here; the land was arid and barren with little annual rainfall. So virtually everything needed to operate these far-flung outposts along the line of the Pony Express from an ax to a sack of flour had to be hauled great distances at considerable expense. Russell, Majors & Waddell was spending yet more money on this fabulous gamble.