The sun dessicates their nut-brown skin. It is too hot to work the fields. But they must. Scorpions poise beneath overturned rocks. Snakes grow angry in mesquite shadows.
Vultures flap by on slow patient wings.
Even the plants attack. Jumping cholla punctures unwary flesh. Worse than all these hardships is the Apache. He is a relentless foe. Time after time bands of Indians raid the almost defenseless colony.