To begin with, he felt the necessity of getting out of the circumscribing
valley and of taking his bearings. He wished to learn where the opening
through which he had fallen was situated. It was no difficult matter to
work his way upward until he found himself up on a level with the main
plateau. There, his view, although broken and interrupted in many
directions, was quite extended in others, and his eye roamed over a large
extent of that broken section of the country. He was utterly unable to
recognize anything he saw, but he was confident that he was no great
distance from the spot for which he was searching. It was only through the
entrance that he could hold communication with Mickey, whenever the way
should be left clear for him to do so. But he was fully mindful of the
necessity for caution in every movement.

It was not to be supposed that the Apaches, having struck what might be
called a gold-mine, intended to abandon it at the very time the richest of
results were promised. And so, after long deliberation, the boy decided
upon the direction in which the opening lay, and he made toward a small
peak from which, in case his calculations were correct, he knew he would
see it. Strange to say, his reckoning was correct in this instance; and
when he stealthily made his way to the elevation and looked down over the
slope, he saw the clump of bushes covering the "skylight," not more than a
hundred yards distant.

He saw something else, which was not quite so pleasant. Six Apache
warriors were guarding the same entrance.

"I wonder if they think Mickey expects to make a jump up through there!"
was the thought which came to Fred, as he peered down upon the savages,
and counted them over several times. "I don't see what they are to gain by
waiting there, unless they mean to go down pretty soon."