THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 209 



eye. The car hums steadily into their ranks and 

 one and all take to their heels. 



"Yes, you'd better beat it!" 



Now where are we? The cattle have tramped 

 the trail into nothingness. 



"Watch me!" says my chauffeur. 



I watch him. He describes a wide circle with the 

 car, then darts like a swallow into a trail at first in- 

 visible to me but soon developing into a grand nat- 

 ural road, down which we fly at some forty miles 

 an hour. 



"Isn't this fine !" he cries. It is very fine, its sole 

 drawback being that it runs away from the moun- 

 tain instead of passing around it. But I sit back 

 and take the goods the gods provide. 



Presently I note symptoms indicating that R. is 

 none too sure of the route, and he begins to discuss 

 possibilities — that we may, for instance, find it de- 

 sirable to take in the Elephant Butte Dam, or even 

 run on to Albuquerque, an afternoon drive of per- 

 haps two hundred miles. But the fun of the game 

 possesses us both, and we don't seem to care much. 



Far ahead another home ranch and a new range 

 loom up and a distant line of telephone poles, and 

 then of a sudden a Borderland Route post leaps up 

 alongside. "Whoa!" is the word, down goes the 

 brake and we reverse to read the lettering on the 

 white post. The backward finger points south and 

 reads, "Las Cruces — El Paso." The one pointing 

 north concerns us no wit, for it suggests the end 

 of the earth. 



"I was told we'd have to go north for several 



