Madeline's last clear sensation upon the ride. Blinded, dazed,
she succumbed to the demands upon her strength. She reeled, fell back,
only vaguely aware of a helping hand. Confusion seized her senses.
All about her was a dark chaos through which she was rushing, rushing,
rushing under the wrathful red eye of a setting sun. Then, as there was
no more sound or sight for her, she felt there was no color. But the
rush never slackened--a rush through opaque, limitless space.
For moments, hours, ages she was propelled with the velocity of a
shooting-star. The earth seemed a huge automobile. And it sped with
her down an endless white track through the universe. Looming, ghostly,
ghastly, spectral forms of cacti plants, large as pine-trees, stabbed
her with giant spikes. She became an unstable being in a shapeless,
colorless, soundless cosmos of unrelated things, but always rushing,
even to meet the darkness that haunted her and never reached her.

But at an end of infinite time that rush ceased. Madeline lost the queer
feeling of being disembodied by a frightfully swift careening through
boundless distance. She distinguished voices, low at first, apparently
far away. Then she opened her eyes to blurred but conscious sight.

The car had come to a stop. Link was lying face down over the wheel.
Nels was rubbing her hands, calling to her. She saw a house with clean
whitewashed wall and brown-tiled roof. Beyond, over a dark mountain
range, peeped the last red curve, the last beautiful ray of the setting
sun.

XXV. At the End of the Road

Madeline saw that the car was surrounded by armed Mexicans. They
presented a contrast to the others she had seen that day; she wondered a
little at their silence, at their respectful front.

Suddenly a sharp spoken order opened up the ranks next to the house.
Senor Montes appeared in the break, coming swiftly. His dark face wore a
smile; his manner was courteous, important, authoritative.

"Senora, it is not too late!"

He spoke her language with an accent strange to her, so that it seemed
to hinder understanding.

"Senora, you got here in time," he went on. "El Capitan Stewart will be
free."

"Free!" she whispered.

She rose, reeling.

"Come," replied Montes, taking her arm. "Perdoneme, Senora."

Without his assistance she would have fallen wholly upon Nels, who
supported her on the other side. They helped her alight from the car.
For a moment the white walls, the hazy red sk