Opposite Chiricahua, where the road forked, Link Stevens headed the car straight south and gradually increased speed.  Madeline faced another endless gray incline.  It was the San Bernardino Valley.  The singing of the car, the stinging of the wind warned her to draw the hood securely down over her face again, and then it was as if she was riding at night.  The car lurched ahead, settled into that driving speed which wedged Madeline back as in a vise.  Again the moments went by fleet as the miles.  Seemingly, there was an acceleration of the car till it reached a certain swiftness—­a period of time in which it held that pace, and then a diminishing of all motion and sound which contributed to Madeline’s acute sensation.  Uncovering her face, she saw Link was passing another village.  Could it be Bernardino?  She asked Link—­repeated the question.

“Sure,” he replied.  “Eighty miles.”

Link did not this time apologize for the work of his machine.  Madeline marked the omission with her first thrill of the ride.  Leaning over, she glanced at Link’s watch, which he had fastened upon the wheel in front of his eyes.  A quarter to ten!  Link had indeed made short work of the valley miles.

Beyond Bernardino Link sheered off the road and put the car to a long, low-rising slope.  Here the valley appeared to run south under the dark brows of the Guadalupes.  Link was heading southwest.  Madeline observed that the grass began to fail as they climbed the ridge; bare, white, dusty spots appeared; there were patches of mesquite and cactus and scattering areas of broken rock.

She might have been prepared for what she saw from the ridge-top.  Beneath them the desert blazed.  Seen from afar, it was striking enough, but riding down into its red jaws gave Madeline the first affront to her imperious confidence.  All about her ranch had been desert, the valleys were desert; but this was different.  Here began the red desert, extending far into Mexico, far across Arizona and California to the Pacific.  She saw a bare, hummocky ridge, down which the car was gliding, bounding, swinging, and this long slant seemed to merge into a corrugated world of rock and sand, patched by flats and basins, streaked with canyons and ranges of ragged, saw-toothed stone.  The distant Sierra Madres were clearer, bluer, less smoky and suggestive of mirage than she had ever seen them.  Madeline’s sustaining faith upheld her in the face of this appalling obstacle.  Then the desert that had rolled its immensity beneath her gradually began to rise, to lose its distant margins, to condense its varying lights and shades, at last to hide its yawning depths and looming heights behind red ridges, which were only little steps, little outposts, little landmarks at its gates.