If Ned Chadmund had been a half dozen years older, he would have recoiled at the prospect before him; but he was so young and full of animal spirits that he did not really comprehend the difficulty and danger. He had traveled very little more than half the distance between Santa Fe and Fort Havens, and his purpose was to press ahead until the latter was reached. To do this, it was necessary that he should make his way through the mountains in which he now found himself, and then to journey a couple of hundred miles through or over prairie, and across streams, before he could reach the frontier post, where his father was so anxiously awaiting his coming. The project seemed nothing short of madness; but its justification lay in the fact that the wanderer had the choice of attempting that or lying down and dying where he was. He could do nothing but choose the former. Ned climbed up to an elevated position and took an observation--his purpose, after learning whether any present danger threatened, being to learn the direction it was necessary to follow in order to reach Fort Havens. "Corporal Hugg told me that after we reached Devil's Pass, it was in a straight line West. The trail winds in and out, as it has to do, but all one had to do was to dig ahead, and he would be sure to come out right in the end--that is, if the Indians and wild animals would only let him. Well, right yonder rose the sun," he continued, very carefully continuing his observation. "That must be the east, and all I have to do is to keep that at my back until it gets over my head and wears round to the front. So off we go." There was one favorable accompaniment of this first thoughtful effort to reach home. The valley-like depression that had caught his eye upon rising ran precisely in the direction to be desired--due east and west--so that he had the best facility in the world for getting through the mountains. Still another favorable augury was that the general direction pursued by the Apaches was the same, and the fact was, there was very little still intervening between him and the open prairie beyond. Should his progress remain uninterrupted through the day, by nightfall he would be close to the prairie, which stretched away so many miles in the direction of the frontier post. "I don't think it's as much as two hundred miles," he said, as he started off at a rapid walk. "I can make thirty miles a day, so that I will be there at the end of a week, if nothing unexpected gets in the way. Won't father be surprised when he sees me walk up, and won't I be surprised if I manage to do it, also!" CHAPTER XVII. A MYSTERIOUS CAMP FIRE.