Even the coming of an autumn dusk could not subdue the color of this land. Shadows here were not gray or black; they were violet and purple. The crumbling adobe walls were laced by strings of crimson peppers, vivid in the torch and lantern light. It had been this way for days, red and yellow, violet-colors he had hardly been aware existed back in the cool green, silver, gray-brown of Kentucky. So this was Tubacca! The rider shifted his weight in the saddle and gazed about him with watchful interest. Back in '59 this had been a flourishing town, well on its way to prominence in the Southwest. The mines in the hills behind producing wealth, the fact that it was a watering place on two cross-country routes-the one from Tucson down into Sonora of Old Mexico, the other into California-had all fed its growth. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.