Summary

The first chapter of Part I: Cutting the Drag is titles “The Rules of the Game.” Five men stumble out of a mountain pass, looking for water. They have been surviving on mangled prickly pears, and the cactus spines have cut their mouths. There is no shade in sight.

The men are in a place called, “The Devil’s Highway.” The author gives a legendary description of the “Devil’s Highway,” and notes that the first white man reportedly died there in 1541. The plants in this particular strip of desert are spiked, and the Indians who live there tell stories of ghosts. The author describes the history of the region, including the European efforts to conquer North America: “Immigration, the drive northward, is a white phenomenon” (8). Eventually, this patter shifted, and European-descended Americans began to fear an incursion of immigrants from the south...