Shefford drew her back from the rim.

“Fay, we are here,” he said.  “I recognize the valley.  I miss only one thing—­the arch of stone.”

His words seemed to recall her to reality.

“The arch?  That fell when the wall slipped, in the great avalanche.  See!  There is the place.  We can get down there.  Oh, let us hurry!”

The Indian reached the rim and his falcon gaze swept the valley.  “Ugh!” he exclaimed.  He, too, recognized the valley that he had vainly sought for half a year.

“Bring the lassos,” said Shefford.

With Fay leading, they followed the rim toward the head of the valley.  Here the wall had caved in, and there was a slope of jumbled rock a thousand feet wide and more than that in depth.  It was easy to descend because there were so many rocks waist-high that afforded a handhold.  Shefford marked, however, that Fay never took advantage of these.  More than once he paused to watch her.  Swiftly she went down; she stepped from rock to rock; lightly she crossed cracks and pits; she ran along the sharp and broken edge of a long ledge; she poised on a pointed stone and, sure-footed as a mountain-sheep, she sprang to another that had scarce surface for a foothold; her moccasins flashed, seemed to hold wondrously on any angle; and when a rock tipped or slipped with her she leaped to a surer stand.  Shefford watched her performance, so swift, agile, so perfectly balanced, showing such wonderful accord between eye and foot; and then when he swept his gaze down upon that wild valley where she had roamed alone for twelve years he marveled no more.

The farther down he got the greater became the size of rocks, until he found himself amid huge pieces of cliff as large as houses.  He lost sight of Fay entirely, and he anxiously threaded a narrow, winding, descending way between the broken masses.  Finally he came out upon flat rock again.  Fay stood on another rim, looking down.  He saw that the slide had moved far out into the valley, and the lower part of it consisted of great sections of wall.  In fact, the base of the great wall had just moved out with the avalanche, and this much of it held its vertical position.  Looking upward, Shefford was astounded and thrilled to see how far he had descended, how the walls leaned like a great, wide, curving, continuous rim of mountain.

“Here!  Here!” called Fay.  “Here’s where they got down—­where they brought me up.  Here are the sticks they used.  They stuck them in this crack, down to that ledge.”

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.