Tombstone by Walter Noble Burns — Read

Bisbee is a city, you might say, of only one dimension -- length. It lies like a piece of string along the bottom of a narrow canyon in the Mule Mountains. Its main street in the bed of the winding slit is miles long with handsome business blocks near the middle of the thread and good-looking residences out at the ends. Of course, if one wishes to be precise, there is a little width and a little height to the town, and the height up the canyon walls is about as great as the width across the canyon. The residences hang on the steeps as if glued there. A business man going home to lunch journeys straight up by a series of ladderlike steps that bear street names. If you enjoy mountain climbing, Bisbee will appeal to you as an ideal place of residence. If you happen to be fat, you will fall into a panic at mere sight of the town.

Under the main street is a giant subway to drain off the water when it rains. After a storm, the water roars through the subterranean sluice like an express train and flows out in a spreading flood on the plains at the south end of the canyon. It is surprising what a seething torrent the tiny drops of a light rain will form when they trickle down the mountainsides and merge at the bottom of the canyon. If it were not for this subway, a light shower might wash the town away.