The news that shook Live-Oaks into swift activity had to do with Lee Snaith.  Just before the storm hit him the buckboard driver had met her riding toward the Mal-Pais.

Prince arrived to find the town upside down with the confusion of preparation.  Swiftly he brought order out of the turmoil.  He organized the rescue party, assigned leaders to the divisions, saw that each man was properly outfitted, and mapped off the territory to be covered by each posse.  Outwardly he was cool, efficient, full of hopeful energy.  But at his heart Billie felt an icy clutch of despair.  What chance was there for Lee, caught unsheltered in the open, when the wiry, old Indian fighter, protected by his wagon, had barely won through alive?

Every horse in Live-Oaks that could be ridden was in the group that melted into the night to find Lee Snaith.  Every living soul left in the little town was on the street to cheer the rescuers.

The sheriff divided his men.  Most of them were to spend the night, and if necessary the next day and night, in combing the sand desert east of the Mal-Pais.  Here Lee had last been seen, and here probably she had wandered round and round until the storm had beaten her down.  It took little imagination to vision the girl, flailed by the sweeping sand, bewildered by it, choked at every gasping breath, hopelessly lost in the tempest.

Yet some bell of hope rang in Billie’s breast.  She might have reached the lava.  If so, there was a chance that she might be alive.  For though the wind had sweep enough here, the fine dust-sand of the alluvial plain could not be carried so densely into this rock-sea.  Perhaps she had slipped into a fissure and found safety.

For fifty miles this great igneous bed stretches, a rough and broken sea of stone, across the thirsty desert.  Its texture is like that of slag from a furnace.  Once, in the morning of the world, it flowed from the crater along the line of least resistance, a vitreous river of fire.  In a great molten mass it swept into the valleys, crawling like a great snake here and there, pushing fiery tongues into every crevice of the hills.

The margin of its flow is a cliff or steep slope varying in height from a few feet to that of a good-sized tree.  Between the silt plain and the general level of its bed rises a terrace.  In front of it Prince stopped and distributed the men he had reserved to search the lava bed.  He gave definite, peremptory orders.

“We’ll keep about two hundred yards apart.  Every twenty minutes each of you will fire his revolver.  If any of you find Miss Snaith or any evidence of her, shoot three times in rapid succession.  Each of you pass the signal down the line by firing four shots.  Those who hear the three shots go in as fast as you can to the rescue.  The others—­those farther away, who hear the four shots only—­will turn an’ work back to the plain, continuing to fire once every twenty minutes.  Do exactly as I tell you, boys.  If you don’t, some one will be lost an’ may never get out alive.  If any one of you gets out of touch with the rest of us, stay right where you are till mornin’, then come out by the sun.”