as 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.

A sickening apprehension assailed him, however, within the minute. One
of his cylinders was missing. His trained ear caught at the change of
the "tune," and he felt his speed decreasing. He glanced back briefly,
where the dusty lump of steel, like a red-hot projectile, thundered in
his wake.

He beheld a sudden fan-like flare of dust in the cloud Van was making.
He even faintly heard the far report, and a grim joy sprang in his
being.

Van had blown out a tire. Striking the high places, crowding on the
speed, holding to a straight-away course like a merciless fate, the
horseman heard an air cushion go, fel