But there was no haste now.

Sam Bass, his corn-fed sorrel, was hardly less sleek and sturdy than at the start, though a third of the way was behind him.

Pringle rode by easy stages, and where he found himself pleased, there he tarried for a space.
With another friendly nod to the northward hills that marked a day of his past, Pringle turned his eyes to the westlands, outspread and vast before him.

To his right the desert stretched away, a mighty plain dotted with low hills, rimmed with a curving, jagged range.

Beyond that range was a nothingness, a hiatus that marked the sunken valley of the Rio Grande; beyond that, a headlong infinity of unknown ranges, tier on tier, yellow or brown or blue; broken, tumbled, huddled, scattered, with gulfs between to tell of unseen plains and hidden happy valleys--altogether giving an impression of rushing toward him, resistless, like the waves of a stormy sea.
At his feet the plain broke away sharply, in a series of steplike sandy benches, to where the Rio Grande bore quartering across the desert, turning to the Mexican sea; the Mesilla Valley here, a slender ribbon of mossy green, broidered with loops of flashing river--a ribbon six miles by forty, orchard, woodland, and green field, greener for the desolate gray desert beyond and the yellow hills of sand edging the valley floor.