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Updated: June 12, 2025
They were the last words the brave soldier uttered. Ned Chadmund, who had again crouched back in the swaying vehicle, was horrified to see his friend pitch forward upon the foreboard, and then, as the carriage gave one unusually violent plunge, he went out head foremost, and vanished from sight. He had been pierced by a dozen balls, and was dead before he reached the ground.
But while he was alternating between hope and despair, the figure of a man appeared around the corner of the rock, and then the form of a little boy was discerned, as he came running across the prairie with out-stretched arms. "Oh, father! father!" Colonel Chadmund leaped from the back of his horse and ran to meet him. "My darling boy! God be thanked!"
"None of them suspect that I've got such a thing about me, and that gives me the better chance," was his very sensible conclusion, as he endeavored to put on an expression of blissful serenity. When the sun was fairly up, the fifty Apache warriors were galloping in a direct line toward the south, Lone Wolf at their head, and Ned Chadmund riding at his side.
"He is gone," he muttered, when he had made certain that no object was to be seen. "I might have knowed that before I looked, 'cause the hoss knows how to travel, and Tom's made him do his purtiest." "Hello! what's the news?" The query came from Ned Chadmund, who had aroused himself from slumber, and was standing at his side. "Where is Tom?"
Curiously enough, he carried no gun with him, and, as the boy still retained possession of Lone Wolf's, it seemed to young Chadmund that he could want no better opportunity of wiping out one of those pestilent redskins.
The conclusion to which both came was that the Apaches were incited to this attack more by the desire to get possession of the lad than by anything else, in view of the intense hatred with which Colonel Chadmund was viewed by the hostile Indians of the Southwest.
In this comfortable state of mind, he soon closed his eyes, and relapsed into a deep, refreshing sleep, which lasted an hour or more, when it ended in a peculiar manner. Very few boys are apt to lie quiet in their beds, and Ned Chadmund, in turning over upon his side, turned completely out of bed, and dropped through the branches to the ground.
As they progressed toward Arizona, the country gradually grew wilder and more rugged, but the trail was followed without trouble, and when they encamped the second night, they had the satisfaction of reflecting that they had progressed much further than they had counted upon at first. Those were days of delight and happiness to young Ned Chadmund.
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.
It was this deliberation which gave Ned his only chance. The rein was unfastened at last, and, with a desperate effort he mounted the mustang, which came very near bounding from beneath him while in the act of springing upward, and, turning his head toward the southwest, the very direction he wished to follow, Chadmund struck his sides with his heels, gave a regular Indian shout and was off.
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