st-red. There was
level ground ahead, a wind-swept floor as hard as rock. Link rushed the
car over this free distance. Madeline's ears filled with a droning hum
like the sound of a monstrous, hungry bee and with a strange, incessant
crinkle which she at length guessed to be the spreading of sheets of
gravel from under the wheels. The giant car attained such a speed that
Madeline could only distinguish the colored landmarks to the fore, and
these faded as the wind stung her eyes.

Then Link began the ascent of the first step, a long, sweeping, barren
waste with dunes of wonderful violet and heliotrope hues. Here were
well-defined marks of an old wagon-road lately traversed by cattle. The
car climbed steadily, surmounted the height, faced another long bench
that had been cleaned smooth by desert winds. The sky was an intense,
light, steely blue, hard on the eyes. Madeline veiled her face, and did
not uncover it until Link had reduced the racing speed. From the summit
of the next ridge she saw more red ruin of desert.

A deep wash crossing the road caused Link Stevens to turn due south.
There was a narrow space along the wash just wide enough for the
car. Link seemed oblivious to the fact that the outside wheels were
perilously close to the edge. Madeline heard the rattle of loosened
gravel and earth sliding into the gully. The wash widened and opened out
into a sandy flat. Link crossed this and turned up on the opposite side.
Rocks impeded the progress of the car, and these had to be rolled out
of the way. The shelves of silt, apparently ready to slide with the
slightest weight, the little tributary washes, the boulder-strewn
stretches of slope, the narrow spaces allowing no more than a foot for
the outside wheels, the spear-pointed cactus that had to be avoided--all
these obstacles were as nothing to the cowboy driver. He kept on, and
when he came to the road again he made up for the lost time by speed.

Another height was reached, and here Madeline fancied that Link had
driven the car to the summit of a high pass between two mountain ranges.
The western slope of that pass appeared to be exceedingly rough and
broken. Below it spread out another gray valley, at the extreme end of
which glistened a white spot that Link grimly called Douglas. Part
of that white spot was Agua Prieta, the sister town across the line.
Madeline looked with eyes that would fain have pierced the intervening
distance.

The descent of the pass