As he spoke he stretched out on the flat bottom of the ambulance, allowing his head to be elevated just enough to permit him to peer over the foreboard and guide the horse, which was now forced into a furious gallop. Earnest in his desire to obey, Ned Chadmund did the same, awaiting the result of this desperate attempt to escape from a most perilous position. The bottom of the pass was quite level and hard, but the ambulance bounded and leaped from side to side in a way that threatened to overturn it, and made anything like connected conversation impossible. The speed of the party was about the same, the horsemen retaining their position a short distance in advance of the vehicle and all nerved to the fiery charge they believed to be inevitable. The lad, still lying flat on his face in the bottom of the ambulance, raised his head just enough to peer over the shoulder of the corporal at the galloping horse and the figures of the cavalry beyond. Suddenly the reports of a score of rifles sounded in the pass, and the horrified lad saw fully one half of the soldiers topple out of their saddles, riddled by the balls that had been fired from a skillfully arranged ambush. At the same time several horses reared, plunged and fell, fatally wounded by others of the missiles. "Down!" shouted the corporal to Ned, who, in the excitement of the moment, had placed his hands upon the shoulders of his friend and risen to his knees. "Down, I say! Don't you see that they are firing at us?" The rattling sound of the returning fire of the cavalry was heard, each man being armed with a rifle, and the corporal rose to his knees and lashed the galloping horse to a still greater speed. Instead of a dozen Apaches, fully a hundred came swarming toward the little band of soldiers, the painted warriors seeming to spring, like the dragon's teeth of old, from the very ground. Hemmed in on every hand, the cavalry, throwing away their rifles, which were useless in such an emergency, and drawing their revolvers, charged straight through the yelling horde closing in around them. Fascinated by the terrible scene and scarcely conscious of what he was doing, Ned crawled forward again and stared out from the front of the ambulance, while the corporal added his voice to the terrible din by shouting to his horse, which was plunging forward at a rate that threatened to overturn completely the bounding vehicle. The horsemen that were left were comparatively few and they fought like Spartans; but Ned saw them drop one by one from their animals, until there was only the lieutenant left, and he, poor fellow, was lying upon his steed, both badly wounded, as they strove with the madness of desperation to escape. But it was useless. The Apaches were all around them, pouring in their shots with such precision that a moment later the dying horse sank heavily to the ground and the wretches that dashed forward to slay his rider found that he was already dead.