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. He did not reduce his speed to take to the brush. The car beneath him flung clean off the ground as he swung to climb out of the grooves. It landed with all four wheels a-spin, but only struck on two. A sudden swerve, far out of the course, and the monster righted abruptly. Another sharp turn, and away it went again, crushing the brush and flinging up the sand in a track of its own that paralleled the road, but rougher though free from the ruts. The brush was small, six inches high, but the wheels bounced over it madly. The whole car hurtled and bounded in a riot of motion. It dived, it plunged nose upward, it roared like a fiend--but it shot with cannon-ball velocity across the desert's floor. Five minutes later Bostwick's car was almost fronting the team in the road, with its score of dusty mules. He dared not take the ruts at speed, and groaned as he slowed to climb the bank. He lost but little time, however, since once on the side he was going ahead again like mad; nevertheless, he cast a glance behind and saw that his gap had narrowed. Moreover, he would not attempt to return to the ruts as before, as a second of the teams was coming a mile or so away. Like two pitching porpoises, discharging fiery wrath and skimming the gray of the desert sea, the two devices raced upon the brush. And nerve began to tell. Van was absolutely reckless; Searle was not. The former would have crowded on another notch of speed, but Bostwick feared, and shut off a trifle of his power. Even then he was rocking, quivering, careening onward like a star escaped from its course; and the gains Van made were slow. The man on the second team paused to see them pass. In smoke and dust and with war's own din they cleaved the startled air. And the man who saw the look that had set on Van's hard-chiseled face was aware that unless his car should fail there was nothing on earth he could not catch. Bostwick had begun to weaken. The pace over sage-brush, rocks, and basins of sand was racking both the car and the nerves that held the wheel. How long such a flight could be continued he dared not guess. Even steel has limitations. To what he was fleeing he could scarcely have told, since the telegraph would send its word throughout the desert-land, and overhaul him finally.