A study of the speedometer showed Matt that he was not averaging more than twenty miles an hour. This worried him. The necessity for doing better than that was vital to the success of his mission, and yet, without great risk to his machine, he did not see how he was going to accomplish it. Hoping constantly for a better piece of road, he pushed doggedly on.
The walls of the cañon were wide apart and high. They formed themselves into pinnacles, and turrets, and parapets, and a fanciful mind could easily liken them to the walls of a castle. From these features of the cañon it had, no doubt, derived its name of "Castle Creek."
A stream flowed through the defile, but a stranger would not have discovered this from a casual survey of the cañon's bed. The stream was like most water-courses in Arizona, and flowed under the sand and next to the bed-rock. Here and there, at irregular intervals, the water appeared in pools, pushed to the surface by a lifting of the underlying rock.
Once Matt halted to snatch a drink from one of the diminutive ponds, but in less than a minute he was astride the Comet again and pushing resolutely onward.
Here and there he passed a "flat," or level stretch of earth, brought down by the waters from above and lodged in some bend of the gulch. These flats were free from stones and covered with a scant growth of cottonwoods and piñons.
Some time was gained by riding across these level, unobstructed stretches.
A little more than half an hour after leaving the notch, Matt passed a flat that lay at the foot of a gully running into the ravine. There was an adobe house on the flat, a corral, and other evidences of a rather extensive ranch. A man was standing in front of the house as Matt hurried past. He was staring at the motor-cycle like a person in a trance.
"What place is this?" called Matt, as he went by.
"Hot Springs," the rancher called back. "What sort of a contraption y'u got thar, anyways?"
Matt told him, but probably the backwoodsman was not very much enlightened.