What next happened was wild and incoherent in all subsequent reports. Shea cared absolutely nothing for results, so long as he got through. When he found his path barred by mounted men, he opened up the throttle wide, shut his eyes, and gripped hard to the wheel. General opinion was that the first bullet had killed him and that the car was running wild; for blood was trickling over his face from his slashed brow, and he was a fearsome sight.
The dust-white flivver smashed head-on into the mass of men and horses. It paused as though for breath, then went ahead. The radiator was boiling over; and when that red-hot projectile began to bore its way, things happened. The steam seared into a big mule, and the mule instantly began to plunge and kick. Two horses went down and the flivver climbed over them and their riders. A vaquero was pitched across the hood and with screams of anguish managed to leap away to earth. A horse sat on the right-hand fender and toppled over upon his rider as the car went ahead.
After a moment Thady Shea opened his eyes and looked back upon a scene of wonderful confusion. Men and horses strewed the ground or were plunging in all directions. With a sigh of relief Thady Shea found that he was still going forward; so, in order to avoid the bullets that came swarming and buzzing after him, he aimed for the nearest cañon, which was not his proper road at all, and followed the trail blindly.
An hour later this trail petered out at an abandoned mine in the bad lands. With a vague general idea of his directions, Shea went plunging off through the sand, winding his way past huge, eroded masses and amid weird pinnacles of wind-blown rock. Somewhere past noon he was in the lava beds, and was apprised of the fact by his tires blowing out one by one.
Lack of pneumatic cushions did not trouble Shea in the least. He punished the poor flivver unmercifully, and by the eternal miracle of flivvers the car kept going. Shea climbed rocky masses, shoved through sand, rolled over jutty fields of volcanic rock, and when the afternoon was half gone, came upon automobile tracks. He had found his road at last. From the tracks, he could tell that the sheriff’s automobile had lately gone that way—but in the direction of Silver City.