The company had been on the road for nearly a week. Six of them, including the lieutenant, were riding at the head, and the remainder were in the rear of the ambulance. Corporal Hugg was holding the reins of his horse, who was stepping along with his heavy, ponderous tread, while the driver was drowsy and indolent from the long, monotonous ride in which he had been engaged for so many days, and for so many hours during this last day. It was near the middle of the afternoon, and Ned Chadmund was the only one of the company that seemed to be full of life and spirits. He had run along by the side of the vehicle, until he was pretty well jaded; he had crawled in again, and was chatting away to the corporal in a fashion that left no room for his giving way to drowsiness. The men sat like statues upon their horses, indifferent and silent, and wishing, in a general way, that the day were over and the time had come for going into camp, where they might stretch out their legs and smoke their pipes to their hearts' content. "Yes, that 'ere is the place they call Devil's Pass," said the corporal in reply to a question from the boy. "You see that it was so wide back there at the beginning that you couldn't see how wide it was, and it keeps geting narrower and narrower till it reminds me of the canyon of the upper Yellowstone." "How is that?" was the question that came when he paused to take breath. "So narrow that you could toss a ball from one side to the other, and a thousand feet from the top to bottom, clean and square, and there are some places where it is all of a half mile." "But this don't seem as narrow as that." "I don't s'pose it is; but don't you notice ahead, yonder, that it ain't more than a hundred yards broad? Well, it keeps it up for all of two miles just like that." "Why do they call it Devil's Pass, corporal?" "I suppose because, if the Old Boy wanted to gobble up a lot of folks, that is just the place. The walls on each side are straight up and down, and several hundred feet high, so that a man can't dodge to the right or left, unless he has a pair of wings to help him. The only thing he can do is to go forward and backward, and if he happens to have Injuns in front and rear, you can understand what a purty muss he would be in. That, I s'pose, is the reason why it's called the Devil's Pass." "Do you think they will attack _us_?" asked Ned, in a scared voice. "I can't say," replied the corporal, striving to banish the expression of alarm from his face. "If they've got any idea of disturbing us, just here is where they'll do it. It's the worst place on the route, and if we can get through to the other side all right, I'll feel as safe as if we was inside the stockades of your father's fort." "Have you ever been through here before?" "Yes; all of half a dozen times." "Did you ever get into trouble?"