Gale marked the nature of this eyrie.  It was the wildest and most rugged place he had ever stepped upon.  Only a sheep could have climbed up the wall above or along the slanting shelf of lava beyond.  Below glistened a whole bank of choya, frosty in the sunlight, and it overhung an apparently bottomless abyss.

Ladd chose the smallest gun in the party and gave it to Mercedes.

“Shore it’s best to go the limit on bein’ ready,” he said, simply.  “The chances are you’ll never need it.  But if you do—­”

He left off there, and his break was significant.  Mercedes answered him with a fearless and indomitable flash of eyes.  Thorne was the only one who showed any shaken nerve.  His leave-taking of his wife was affecting and hurried.  Then he and the rangers carefully stepped in the tracks of the Yaqui.

They climbed up to the level of the rim and went along the edge.  When they reached the fissure and came upon its narrowest point, Yaqui showed in his actions that he meant to leap it.  Ladd restrained the Indian.  They then continued along the rim till they reached several bridges of lava which crossed it.  The fissures was deep in some parts, choked in others.  Evidently the crater had no direct outlet into the arroyo below.  Its bottom, however, must have been far beneath the level of the waterhole.

After the fissure was crossed the trail was soon found.  Here it ran back from the rim.  Yaqui waved his hand to the right, where along the corrugated slope of the crater there were holes and crevices and coverts for a hundred men.  Yaqui strode on up the trail toward a higher point, where presently his dark figure stood motionless against the sky.  The rangers and Thorne selected a deep depression, out of which led several ruts deep enough for cover.  According to Ladd it was as good a place as any, perhaps not so hidden as others, but freer from the dreaded choya.  Here the men laid down rifles and guns, and, removing their heavy cartridge belts, settled down to wait.

Their location was close to the rim wall and probably five hundred yards from the opposite rim, which was now seen to be considerably below them.  The glaring red cliff presented a deceitful and baffling appearance.  It had a thousand ledges and holes in its surfaces, and one moment it looked perpendicular and the next there seemed to be a long slant.  Thorne pointed out where he thought Mercedes was hidden; Ladd selected another place, and Lash still another.  Gale searched for the bank of choya he had seen under the bench where Mercedes’s retreat lay, and when he found it the others disputed his opinion.  Then Gale brought his field glass into requisition, proving that he was right.  Once located and fixed in sight, the white patch of choya, the bench, and the sheep eyrie stood out from the other features of that rugged wall.  But all the men were agreed that Yaqui had hidden Mercedes where only the eyes of a vulture could have found her.