The last Jack saw of it the creature plunged over the brink of the precipice up which the Border Boy had so laboriously toiled. As he heard the body go rolling and bumping down toward the valley, Jack shuddered. Had things turned out differently he might have been in its place, for the boy well knew that if once the maddened animal had fastened its claws in him he would not have stood a chance without a weapon. Jack sat down to rest once more, this time keeping a cautious lookout for any other wild creatures; but none appeared, and it was evident that his theory that the animal had accidentally dropped from above was a correct one. “Well,” said Jack to himself, after an interval, “if I’m to get to the top of that cliff I’ve got to start in right now. Ugh! It doesn’t look as if I could possibly make it; but then it’s equally certain that I can’t climb down again. The thought makes me sick; so I’ve _got_ to tackle it. There’s no other way out of it.” Fortifying himself by a cooling drink, to which he added another wash, the boy prepared to take up his task again. Above the dry watercourse the cliff shot up more precipitously than the part he had already traversed below it; but Jack steeled himself to the thought of the dizzy climb. Knife in hand he worked his way up, clinging to the face of the cliff desperately at times, and again resting where some vagrant bush offered him a hand or foothold. In the meantime, below in the valley, Alvarez, returning from a hunt for more food, began to worry about the boy. Not a bad man at heart, Alvarez was a true son of the Mexican revolution. He decided that all Americans, or Gringoes, as he contemptuously called them, were the born foes of the Mexicans. It had been with this conviction that he and his companions had set out to spy on the Rangers who, they thought, menaced them, instead of merely patrolling the Border to prevent lawless acts on American soil. Since his brief acquaintance with Jack, however, Alvarez had found cause to revise his opinion. Himself a courageous man, he admired courage and grit in others, and of these qualities we know Jack possessed full and abundant measure. Returning, then, from his hunt with some quail and rabbits, Alvarez began to be seriously alarmed about Jack. Not for one moment did the Mexican deem it possible that the lad could have actually found a way to scale those awful cliffs. He had confidently expected that on his return to camp he would find Jack awaiting him. When, therefore, he could see no trace of the boy his alarm was genuine and deep. He carefully deposited his game out of harm’s way in the trees, and then set out to see if he could find any trace of the boy to whom he had become attached in their short acquaintance.