Van might perhaps have shot and killed the escaping man who held the wheel, but he wanted Searle alive.

A roar from the crowd replied to the car.  A score of men ran madly in pursuit.  None of them knew the details of the case, but they knew that Bostwick was wanted.

They drifted rearward from the hurtling car like fragments of paper in its wake.  The few down street who danced for a moment before the modern juggernaut, to stop it in its course, sprang nimbly away as it rocketed past—­and Searle was headed for the desert.

One wild, sweeping glance Van cast about, for a horse or something to ride.  Suvy was stabled, unsaddled, up the street.  Bostwick and his cloud of dust were dropping away in a swiftly narrowing perspective.  And there stood a powerful, dusty-red car—­empty—­its motor in motion!

There was no time to search for its owner.  There were half a dozen different cars with which Van Buren was familiar.  He ran to it, glanced at its levers, wheel, and clutch, recognized the one type he had coveted, and hurled himself into the seat.

“Here!  You!” yelled the owner, fighting through the crowd, but three big miners fell upon him and bore him to the earth.  They hoped to see a race.

They saw it begin with a promptness incredible.

One—­two changes of the snarling gears they heard before the deafening cut-out belched its explosions.  Then down the street, in pursuit of the first, the second machine was fired.

The buildings, to Van, were blended in grayish streaks, on either side, as his gaze was fastened on the vanishing car ahead.  He shoved up his spark, gave her all the gas, froze to the wheel like a man of steel—­and swooped like a ground-skimming comet out upon the world.

The road for a distance of fully five miles was comparatively level.  It was rutted by the wheels of heavy traffic, but with tires in the dusty ruts a car ran unimpeded.

Both, for a time were in the road, flaying up a cloud of smoke like a cyclone ripping out its path.

Searle had not only gained a half-mile lead, but his car was apparently swifter.  He knew its every trick and ounce of power.  He drove superbly.  He was reckless now, for he had not missed the knowledge that behind him was a meteor burning up his trail.

Like a leaping beast—­a road-devouring minotaur—­the car with Van shot roaringly through space.  He could not tell that Searle, ahead, was slipping yet further in the lead.  He only knew that, come what might, till the mechanism burst, or the earth should split, he would chase his man across the desert.  The dust in the air from Bostwick’s car drove blindingly upon him.  Far, far away, a mere speck on the road, he beheld a freight-team approaching—­a team of twenty animals at least, that he and Bostwick must encounter.

A sudden memory of road conditions decided him to move.  The ruts where he was were bad enough—­they were worse where the team must be passed.