Vouldn'd dat yar you?"
Williams rose up to his full height of six-feet-two, and flung his
hands upward in a gesture that was more expressive than many oaths.
"_Collars-and-Cuffs, by God!_" he said.
II
THE RED DESERT
In the beginning the Red Desert, figuring unpronounceably under its
Navajo name of Tse-nastci--Circle-of-Red-Stones--was shunned alike by
man and beast, and the bravest of the gold-hunters, seeking to penetrate
to the placer ground in the hill gulches between the twin Timanyoni
ranges, made a hundred-mile detour to avoid it.
Later, the discoveries of rich "pocket" deposits in the Red Butte
district lifted the intermontane hill country temporarily to the high
plane of a bonanza field. In the rush that followed, a few prudent ones
chose the longer detour; others, hardier and more temerarious, outfitted
at Copah, and assaulting the hill barrier of the Little Pinons at
Crosswater Gap, faced the jornada through the Land of Thirst.
Of these earliest of the desert caravans, the railroad builders,
following the same trail and pointing toward the same destination in the
gold gulches, found dismal reminders.
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