The horses were left in charge of a Mexican boy.  The surface of the deposit is so broken that even a man on foot has difficulty in traversing it.  Prince crawled forward from the terrace up the rough slope of the cliff which at this point bounded it.  At the top of the rim he rose and came face to face with another man.

“A good deal like frozen hell, Billie,” the other said casually.

“Where did you come from?” demanded the sheriff, amazed.

Jim Clanton laughed grimly.  “I’ve been with yore party half an hour.  Why shouldn’t I be here when Lee Snaith is lost?”

“You were hiding in Live-Oaks?”

“Mebbeso.  Anyway, I’m here.  I’ll take the right flank, Billie.”

“Do you think there’s a chance, Jim?” The voice of Prince shook with emotion.  It was the first sign of distress he had given.

Clanton reflected just a moment before he answered.  “I think there’s just a chance.  She saved our lives once, Billie.  If she’s alive we’ll find her, you an’ me.”

“By God, yes.”  Prince turned away.  He could not talk about it without breaking down.

In the stress of a great shock Billie had made a vital discovery.  The most important thing that would ever come to him in life was to find Lee Snaith alive.  How blind he had been!  He could see her now in imagination, as in reality he had seen her a hundred times, moving in the sun-pour with elastic tread, full-throated and deep-chested, athrob with life in every generous vein.  How passionately she had loved things brave and true!  How anger had flamed up in her like fire among tow at meanness and hypocrisy.  Surely all the beauty of her person, the fineness of her character, could not be blotted out so wantonly.  If there was any economy in his world God would never permit waste like that.

He wanted her.  His soul cried out for her. and stormily he prayed that he might find her alive and well, that the chance might still be given him to tell her how much he loved her.

Sometimes he covered small distances where the flow structure was comparatively smooth, broken only by minor irregularities.  Again he came to abrupt pits, deep caverns, tumbled heaps of broken slabs, or jagged chunks of lava twisted into strange shapes.  No doubt the volcanic flow had hardened to a crust on top, cracked, and sunk into the furnace below.  This process must have gone on indefinitely.

He crept from slab to slab, pulled himself across chasms, worked slowly forward in the darkness.  At intervals he fired and listened for an answer.  Occasionally there drifted to him the sound of a shot from one of the other searchers.  As the hours passed and brought to him no signal that the girl had been found, his hopes ebbed.  It was very unlikely that she could have wandered so far into the bad lands as this.

He shuddered to think of her alone in this vast tomb of death.  Suppose she were here and they never found her.  Suppose she were asleep when he passed, worn out by terror and exhaustion.  His voice grew hoarse from shouting.  Sometimes, when the thought of her fate would become an agony to him, he could hardly keep his shout from rising to a scream.