It had struck him
a mile or two this side of the Mal-Pais, as the great lava beds in the
Tularosa Basin are commonly called. He had unhitched the horses,
overturned the buckboard, and huddled in the shelter of the bed. There he
had lain crouched for ten hours while the drifting sand, fine as powder,
blotted out the world and buried him in drifts. He was an old plainsman,
tough as leather, and he had weathered the storm safely. A full day late
he staggered into Live-Oaks a sorry sight.

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
g