was level now, and there were nothing but little breaks in the
rim of the wash. Link drove mile after mile, looking for a place to
cross, and there was none. Finally progress to the south was obstructed
by impassable gullies where the wash plunged into the head of a canyon.
It was necessary to back the car a distance before there was room to
turn. Madeline looked at the imperturbable driver. His face revealed no
more than the same old hard, immutable character. When he reached the
narrowest points, which had so interested him, he got out of the car and
walked from place to place. Once with a little jump he cleared the wash.
Then Madeline noted that the farther rim was somewhat lower. In a flash
she divined Link's intention. He was hunting a place to jump the car
over the crack in the ground.

Soon he found one that seemed to suit him, for he tied his red scarf
upon a greasewood-bush. Then, returning to the car, he clambered in,
and, muttering, broke his long silence: "This ain't no air-ship, but
I've outfiggered thet damn wash." He backed up the gentle slope and
halted just short of steeper ground. His red scarf waved in the wind.
Hunching low over the wheel, he started, slowly at first, then faster,
and then faster. The great car gave a spring like a huge tiger. The
impact of suddenly formed wind almost tore Madeline out of her seat. She
felt Nels's powerful hands on her shoulders. She closed her eyes. The
jolting headway of the car gave place to a gliding rush. This was broken
by a slight jar, and then above the hum and roar rose a cowboy yell.
Madeline waited with strained nerves for the expected crash. It did not
come. Opening her eyes, she saw the level valley floor without a break.
She had not even noticed the instant when the car had shot over the
wash.

A strange breathlessness attacked her, and she attributed it to the
celerity with which she was being carried along. Pulling the hood down
over her face, she sank low in the seat. The whir of the car now seemed
to be a world-filling sound. Again the feeling of excitement, the
poignancy of emotional heights, the ever-present impending sense of
catastrophe became held in abeyance to the sheer intensity of physical
sensations. There came a time when all her strength seemed to unite in
an effort to lift her breast against the terrific force of the wind--to
draw air into her flattened lungs. She became partly dazed. The darkness
before her eyes was not all occasioned