The bouncing of the huge car, throwing Madeline up, directed her attention and fastened it upon the way Link Stevens was driving and upon the immediate foreground.  Then she discovered that he was following an old wagon-road.  At the foot of that long slope they struck into rougher ground, and here Link took to a cautious zigzag course.  The wagon-road disappeared and then presently reappeared.  But Link did not always hold to it.  He made cuts, detours, crosses, and all the time seemed to be getting deeper into a maze of low, red dunes, of flat canyon-beds lined by banks of gravel, of ridges mounting higher.  Yet Link Stevens kept on and never turned back.  He never headed into a place that he could not pass.  Up to this point of travel he had not been compelled to back the car, and Madeline began to realize that it was the cowboy’s wonderful judgment of ground that made advance possible.  He knew the country; he was never at a loss; after making a choice of direction, he never hesitated.

Then at the bottom of a wide canyon he entered a wash where the wheels just barely turned in dragging sand.  The sun beat down white-hot, the dust arose, there was not a breath of wind; and no sound save the slide of a rock now and then down the weathered slopes and the labored chugging of the machine.  The snail pace, like the sand at the wheels, began to drag at Madeline’s faith.  Link gave over the wheel to Madeline, and, leaping out, he called Nels.  When they untied the long planks and laid them straight in front for the wheels to pass over Madeline saw how wise had been Link’s forethought.  With the aid of those planks they worked the car through sand and gravel otherwise impossible to pass.

This canyon widened and opened into space affording an unobstructed view for miles.  The desert sloped up in steps, and in the morning light, with the sun bright on the mesas and escarpments, it was gray, drab, stone, slate, yellow, pink, and, dominating all, a dull rust-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.