ove the car. Madeline expected to hear it crash down
into the canyon, but presently she saw Link waiting to take them aboard
again. Then came steeper parts of the road, places that Link could run
down if he had space below to control the car, and on the other hand
places where the little inclines ended in abrupt ledges upon one side
or a declivity upon the other. Here the cowboy, with ropes on the wheels
and half-hitches upon the spurs of rock, let the car slide down.

Once at a particularly bad spot Madeline exclaimed involuntarily,
"Oh, time is flying!" Link Stevens looked up at her as if he had been
reproved for his care. His eyes shone like the glint of steel on
ice. Perhaps that utterance of Madeline's was needed to liberate his
recklessness to its utmost. Certainly he put the car to seemingly
impossible feats. He rimmed gullies, he hurdled rising ground, he leaped
little breaks in the even road. He made his machine cling like a goat
to steep inclines; he rounded corners with the inside wheels higher
than the outside; he passed over banks of soft earth that caved in the
instant he crossed weak places. He kept on and on, threading tortuous
passages through rock-strewn patches, keeping to the old road where it
was clear, abandoning it for open spaces, and always going down.

At length a mile of clean, brown slope, ridged and grooved like a
washboard, led gently down to meet the floor of the valley, where the
scant grama-grass struggled to give a tinge of gray. The road appeared
to become more clearly defined, and could be seen striking straight
across the valley.

To Madeline's dismay, that road led down to a deep, narrow wash. It
plunged on one side, ascended on the other at a still steeper angle. The
crossing would have been laborsome for a horse; for an automobile it was
unpassable. Link turned the car to the right along the rim and drove as
far along the wash as the ground permitted. The gully widened, deepened
all the way. Then he took the other direction. When he made this turn
Madeline observed that the sun had perceptibly begun its slant westward.
It shone in her face, glaring and wrathful. Link drove back to the road,
crossed it, and kept on down the line of the wash. It was a deep cut in
red earth, worn straight down by swift water in the rainy seasons. It
narrowed. In some places it was only five feet wide. Link studied these
points and looked up the slope, and seemed to be making deductions. The
valley