The ascent was all but impossible.  The few jutting ledges were so narrow that foothold was precarious, so far apart that only the slight backward slant of the wall made it possible for them to flatten their bodies against the crumbling brown rock and thus keep from falling.  They toiled desperately, silently.  After an hour of utmost effort, they reached the top, and with an exclamation of exultation started in the direction of the fissure.  But their exultation was short-lived.  The great split that stopped fifty feet from the desert floor cut them off from the main mesa.  They ran hastily along its edge but at no point was it to be crossed.  Shortly DeWitt left Jack to follow it back and he hastened to the mesa front where he made a perilous descent and returned with the horses to Porter.

That gentleman forced John to eat some breakfast while Carlos rode hastily to scour the mesa front to the west.  Porter and the Mexican had captured two of the horses and the burro that the Indians had left.  The other horses had run out into the desert back to the last spring they had camped at, Porter said.  To DeWitt’s great disappointment, the horses carried only blankets, and the burro was loaded with bacon and flour.  There were none of Rhoda’s personal belongings.  The animals were in good condition, however, and the men annexed them to their outfit gladly.

John was torn betwixt hope and bitter disappointment.

“Do you think they could climb out of the fissure?” he asked half a dozen times, then without waiting for an answer, “Did you see her face, Billy?  I had just a glimpse!  Didn’t she look well!  Just that one glance has put new life in me!  I know we will get her!  Even this cursed desert isn’t wide enough to keep me from her!  God help that Indian when I get him!”

Porter kept his eyes on Alchise’s rifle which had never wavered in the past three hours.

“I’ve a notion to shoot the barrel off that thing just for luck!” he growled.  “John, sit down!  You will need all the strength you’ve got and then some before you catch that Injun!”

“What are you going to do?” asked John, seating himself in the sand some few feet from the fissure.

“The big probability is,” said Billy, “that they are in the crack.  It would be just about impossible for a girl to climb out of one of ’em.  If they have got out, though, it’s just a matter of finding their trail again.  We’ll have ’em!  It’s just this chance crack that saved ’em.  If you’re rested, ride along the west wall and try for the top again.”

For the next five hours, Porter guarded the mesa front alone.  It was nearing six o’clock when Jack returned, exhausted and disappointed.  He had followed the great split back until the mesa top became so cut and striated with mighty fissures that progress was impossible.

“Isn’t it the devil’s own luck,” he growled to Porter as he ate, “that we should have let him get into that one crack!  What next!  Unless they are still in there, we’ve lost them and are just losing time squatting here.”