The darkness was Stygian. He struck another match.

From the gloom beyond the s.p.a.ce lit by the small flame came the rustle of something stirring. The match burned out. He lit another and groped forward. His foot struck an impediment.

He looked down into the startled eyes and white face of Lee Snaith.

Chapter XXVI

A Dust-Storm

It had been a beautiful day of sunshine when Lee left Live-Oaks to ride to the Ninety-Four Ranch. Not a breath of wind stirred. The desert slept in a warm, golden bath. It was peaceful as old age.

But as the sun slipped past the meridian, gusts swept across the sands and whipped into the air inverted cones that whirled like vast tops in a wild race to nowhere. The air waves became more frequent and more furious. When Lee pa.s.sed the buckboard driver, the whole desert seemed alive with stinging sand.

He called something to her that was lost in the wind. The girl waved at him a gauntleted hand. She had been out in dust-storms before and was not in the least alarmed. Across the lower part of her face she had tied a silk handkerchief to protect her mouth and nostrils from the sand.

The mail carrier had scarcely disappeared before the fury of the wind increased. It lashed the ground with heavy whips, raging and screaming in shrill, whistling frenzy, until the desert rose in terror and began to shift.

Lee bent her head to escape the sand that filled her eyes and nostrils and beat upon her cheeks so unmercifully. She thought perhaps the tempest would abate soon and she slipped from the saddle to crouch close to the body of the horse for protection. Instead of decreasing, the gale rose to a hurricane. It was as if the whole sand plain was in continuous, whirling motion.

The horse grew frightened and restless. It was a young three-year-old Jim Clanton had broken for her. Somehow--Lee did not know quite the way it happened--the bridle rein slipped from her fingers and the colt was gone.

She ran after the pony--called to it frantically--fought in pursuit against the shrieking blasts. The animal disappeared, swallowed in the whirl-wind that encompa.s.sed her and it. Lee sank down, sheltering her face with her arms against the pelting sand sleet.

But years in the outdoor West had given Lee the primal virtue, courage.

She scorned a quitter, one who lay down or cried out under punishment.

Now she got to her feet and faced the storm. The closeness of her horizon--her outstretched arms could almost touch the limit of it--confused the mind of the girl. She no longer knew east from west, north from south. With a sudden sinking of the heart she realized that she was lost in this gray desert blizzard.

Blindly she chose a direction and plunged forward. At times the wind hit her like a moving wall and flung her to the ground. She would lie there panting for a few moments, struggle to her knees, and creep on till in a lull she could again find her feet.

How much of this buffeting, she wondered, could one endure and live? The air was so filled with dust that it was almost impossible to get a breath. Her muscles ached with the flogging they were receiving. She was so exhausted, her forces so spent, that the hinges of her knees buckled under her.

One of her feet struck against a rise in the ground and she stumbled. She lay there motionless for what seemed a long time before it penetrated her consciousness that one of her palms pained from a jagged cut the fall had caused. Her body lay on sharp-pointed rocks. As far as they could reach, the groping fingers of the girl found nothing but hard, rough stone.

Then, in a flash, the truth came to her. She had reached the Mal-Pais.

She crept across the lava in an effort to escape the strangling wind. Its rage followed her, drove the girl deeper into the bad lands. A renewal of hope urged her on. In its rough terrain she might find shelter from the tornado. In short stages, with rests between, she pushed into the vitreous lake, dragged herself up from the terrace, fought forward doggedly for what seemed to her an age.

A crevice barred the way. The fissure was too wide to step across and was perhaps ten feet deep. Lee slid into it, slipped, and fell the last step or two of the descent. She lay where she had fallen, too worn out to move.

It must have been almost at once that she fell asleep.

The stars were out when she awakened, her muscles stiff and aching from the pressure of her weight upon the rock. The girl lay for a minute wondering where she was. Above was a narrow bar of starlit sky. The walls of her pit of refuge were within touch of her finger tips. Then memory of the storm and her escape from it flashed back to her.

She climbed easily the rough side of the cavern and looked around. The wind had died so that not even a murmur of it remained. As far as the eye could see the lava flow extended without a break. But she knew the cavern in which she had slept lay at a right angle to the line of her advance.

All site had to do was to face forward and keep going till she reached the plain. The reasoning was sound, but it was based on a wrong premise.

Lee had clambered out of the fissure on the opposite side from that by which she had entered. Every step she took now carried her farther into the bad lands.

Morning broke to find her completely at sea. Even the boasted weather of the Southwest played false. A drizzle of rain was in the air. Not until late in the afternoon did the sun show at all and by that time the wanderer was so deep in the Mal-Pais that when night closed down again she was still its prisoner.

She was hungry and f.a.gged. The soles of her boots were worn out and her feet were badly blistered. Again she took refuge in a deep crevice for the night.

The loneliness appalled her. No living creature was to be seen. In all this awful desolation she was alone. Her friends at Live-Oaks would think she was at the Ninety-Four Ranch. Even if they searched for her she would never be found. After horrible suffering she would die of hunger and thirst. She broke down at last and wept herself to sleep.

Chapter XXVII

"A Lucky Guy"

Lee had the affrighted look of one roused suddenly from troubled dreams.

The whimper that had drawn the attention of Prince must have come from her restless, tortured sleep. Not till his second match flared had she been really awake.

"Thank G.o.d!" he cried brokenly, all the pent emotion of the long night vibrant in his tremulous voice.

She began to sob, softly, pitifully.

The match went out, but even in the blackness of the pit he could not escape the look of suffering he had seen on her face. Her habit was to do all things with high spirit. He could guess how much she had endured to bring those hollow shadows under her dusky eyes. The woe of the girl touched his heart sharply, as if with the point of a rapier.

He stooped, lifted her gently, and gathered her like a hurt child into his arms. "You poor lost lamb," he murmured. And again he cried, "Thank G.o.d, I came in time."

Her arms crept round his neck. She clung to him for safety, fearfully, lest even now he might vanish from her sight. Long, ragged sobs shook the body resting in his arms. He whispered words of comfort, stroked gently the dark head of blue-black hair, held her firmly so that she might know she had found a sure refuge from the fate that had so nearly devoured her.

The spasmodic quivering of the body died away. She dabbed at her eyes with a rag of a handkerchief and withdrew herself from his arms.

"I'm a nice baby," she explained with a touch of self-contempt. "But it's been rather awful, Billie. I ... I didn't know whether ..."

"It's been the worst night of my life," he agreed. "I've been in h.e.l.l for hours, dear. If--if anything had happened to you--"

The heart of the girl beat fast. She told herself he did not mean--could not mean what, with a sudden warmth of joy, her soul hunger had read into his words.

Prince uncorked his canteen and she drank. He gave her sandwiches and she devoured them. After he had helped her from the fissure he fired three shots. Faintly from the left came the answering bark of a revolver. What might almost have been an echo of it drifted from the right.

Lee Snaith was the most competent young woman the sheriff had ever met.

He knew her self-reliant and had always guessed her sufficient to herself. Toward him especially he had sensed a suggestion of cool hostility. They had been friends, but with a distinct note of reservation on her part.

To-night the mask was off. She had come too close to raw reality to think of her pride. The morning light was sifting into the sky now. Billie could see the girl more clearly as she sat on a slab of rock waiting for the other searchers to join them. Was it his imagination that found in her an unwonted shyness of the dark eyes, a gentle timidity of manner when she looked at him?

His emotion still raced at high tide. What an incomparable mate she would be for any man! The rich contralto of her voice, the slow, graceful turn of the exquisite head, the vividness she brought to all her activities!

How easy it was to light in her fine eyes laughter, indignation, the rare smile of understanding! Life with her would be an adventure into the hill-tops. With all his heart he yearned to take it beside her.

There were strange flashes in his eyes to-night that signaled to her a message she had despaired of ever receiving. The long lashes of the girl fell to the hot cheeks. A pulse of excitement beat in her blood. A few minutes before she had clung to him despairingly. Now she wanted to run away and hide.

He stepped close to her and let his hand fall lightly on her arm.