In every direction wide stretched the lonely brown prairie-land of north central Kansas, 1866. From horizon to horizon not a house of any kind was to be seen, nor even a tree except low lines of willows and occasional cottonwoods marking the courses of streams. Late November s pale blue sky bent mildly over, the steady plains breeze rustled the dried weeds and the sun-cured carpet of buffalo-grass; and Ned Fletcher, trudging wearily, felt that he was a very small boy in a very large world.

However, he was not afraid of the largeness; and as he hastened as fast as he could, with ear alert for sunning rattlesnakes and eye upon a vast herd of buffalo grazing far to the northeast, he was rather glad of the loneliness. Moving objects, ahorse, might mean Indians, and Indians he did not want. Ah no, no, no.

Ned was bare-headed, his tow hair long and matted as if it needed cutting and combing. But who had there been, in the Indian camps, to cut or comb a white-boy prisoner s hair? He wore on his body a tattered fragment of stained blanketing, his head thrust through a slit. One foot was supplied with an old moccasin that lacked part of the sole; the other foot had nothing. As he hurriedly walked he limped.

Where he was he did not know. He was still in Kansas, he believed, although one part of this flat prairie-country looked much like another. Since his escape from the Sioux he had been trying to travel straight east; but he had sneaked down crooked stream-beds and had slept some, and now exactly where he might be or how far he might have come, he could not tell.

Somewhere on before were the settlements of the Kansas frontier, out of which was creeping westward the Kansas Pacific Railroad, bound for Denver. North was the Republican Fork emigrant trail to Denver, and south was the Smoky Hill trail. With these, and with the outlying ranches and hamlets which were liable to be encountered, it did seem to Ned that by hook or crook he would be rescued if he only kept going.

Suddenly he stopped short, with lame foot upraised,