Shefford ran to her side and looked down. There was a narrow split in
this section of wall and it was perhaps sixty feet in depth. The floor
of rock below led out in a ledge, with a sheer drop to the valley level.

As Shefford gazed, pondering on a way to descend lower, the Indian
reached his side. He had no sooner looked than he proceeded to act.
Selecting one of the sticks, which were strong pieces of cedar, well
hewn and trimmed, he jammed it between the walls of the crack till it
stuck fast. Then sitting astride this one he jammed in another some
three feet below. When he got down upon that one it was necessary for
Shefford to drop him a third stick. In a comparatively short time the
Indian reached the ledge below. Then he called for the lassos. Shefford
threw them down. His next move was an attempt to assist Fay, but she
slipped out of his grasp and descended the ladder with a swiftness
that made him hold his breath. Still, when his turn came, her spirit
so governed him that he went down as swiftly, and even leaped sheer the
last ten feet.

Nas Ta Bega and Fay were leaning over the ledge.

"Here's the place," she said, excitedly. "Let me down on the rope."

It took two thirty-foot lassos tied together to reach the floor of the
valley. Shefford folded his vest, put it round Fay, and slipped a loop
of the lasso under her arms. Then he and Nas Ta Bega lowered her to
the grass below. Fay, throwing off the loop, bounded away like a wild
creature, uttering the strangest cries he had ever heard, and she
disappeared along the wall.

"I'll go down," said Shefford to the Indian. "You stay here to help pull
us up."

Hand over hand Shefford descended, and when his feet touched the grass
he experienced a shock of the most singular exultation.

"In Surprise Valley!" he breathed, softly. The dream that had come to
him with his friend's story, the years of waiting, wondering, and then
the long, fruitless, hopeless search in the desert uplands--these were
in his mind as he turned along the wall where Fay had disappeared. He
faced a wide terrace, green with grass and moss and starry with strange
white flowers, and dark-foliaged, spear-pointed spruce-trees. Below the
terrace sloped a bench covered with thick copse, and this merged into
a forest of dwarf oaks, and beyond that was a beautiful strip of white
aspens, their leaves quivering in the stillness. The air was close,
sweet, warm, fragrant, and remarkably dry. It reminded