The sabre and carbine which had been taken from him had been carelessly thrown into the wagon, though they were within reach of the men. Deck was a young man of too much enterprise to be mentally inactive in the midst of his present misfortune, and the wagon had hardly started before he began to consider his chances of escaping from the custody of the four men. At the first glance he could see that the chances were all against him. If it came to a fight, there was no chance at all for him; and his inborn prudence did not permit him to think of such a thing as a physical contest with a threefold odds against him. But he was not discouraged at the mountain of difficulty in front of him, but proceeded to study the situation very carefully. It will be remembered that his captors had neglected to take from him the revolver he carried in one of his pockets; for, doubtless, it did not occur to Kipps that he was supplied with such a weapon. Deck set a very high value on the pistol in his present emergency. The trousers with which he had been supplied by the government were not made with hip pockets, a very serviceable improvement to the garment, not unknown even at the beginning of the war. This kind of pocket was very useful to those who were in the habit of carrying revolvers; but Deck's ingenuity had enabled him to provide for the deficiency. He had arranged a sort of hook under one of the back suspender buttons, about where the pocket would have been if the garment had been supplied with one, so that he could readily produce the weapon on occasion. He had a box of cartridges in his pocket, and the revolver was fully loaded for instant service. His carbine and sabre lay on the merchandise behind the men, all of whom were seated on a front seat under the projecting cover, and the wagon was wide enough to provide close quarters for all of them. The canvas could be drawn down so as to protect the contents of the body from the weather; but now it was fastened up, so that the vehicle was open in front. Deck thought he might work his way forward far enough to enable him to reach his regular weapons; and at first he thought he would take this step. If he succeeded in obtaining them, all the advantage he expected to gain was in preventing his custodians from using them on an emergency; for the revolver in his pocket was a more effective weapon in the wagon. He looked over the miscellaneous loading of the vehicle, and tried to find a place for each of his feet in his advance to the forward part of the wagon.