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Updated: June 3, 2025
"Well, that's the craziest idea I ever heard of," remarked Cribbens, "to take a canary along prospecting. Why not kid gloves, and be done with it?" They travelled leisurely to the southeast during the day, following a well-beaten cattle road, and that evening camped on a spur of some hills at the head of the Panamint Valley where there was a spring. The next day they crossed the Panamint itself.
Then Cribbens rose into the air with a great leap and a yell that could have been heard for half a mile. "Yee-e-ow! We GOT it, we struck it. Pardner, we got it. Out of sight. We're millionaires." He snatched up his revolver and fired it with inconceivable rapidity. "PUT it there, old man," he shouted, gripping McTeague's palm.
"Yes, there is," protested Cribbens doggedly; "there's gold all through these hills, if we could only strike it. I tell you what, pardner, I got a place in mind where I'll bet no one ain't prospected least not very many. There don't very many care to try an' get to it. It's over on the other side of Death Valley.
"If I could only SEE something somebody," he muttered, as he held the cocked rifle ready, "I I'd show him." He returned to camp. Cribbens was snoring. The burro had come down to the stream for its morning drink. The mule was awake and browsing. McTeague stood irresolutely by the cold ashes of the camp-fire, looking from side to side with all the suspicion and wariness of a tracked stag.
Cribbens scooped up a spoonful of the fine white powder and began to spoon it carefully. The two were on their hands and knees upon the ground, their heads close together, still panting with excitement and the exertion of their run. "Can't do it," exclaimed Cribbens, sitting back on his heels, "hand shakes so. YOU take it, pardner. Careful, now."
It was all hell to get into that country, Cribbens had said, and not many men went there, because of the terrible valley of alkali that barred the way, a horrible vast sink of white sand and salt below even the sea level, the dry bed, no doubt, of some prehistoric lake. But McTeague resolved to make a circuit of the valley, keeping to the south, until he should strike the Armagosa River.
Over the scorched, parched ground, stumbling and tripping over sage-brush and sharp-pointed rocks, under the palpitating heat of the desert sun, they ran and scrambled, carrying the quartz lumps in their hats. "See any 'COLOR' in it, pardner?" gasped Cribbens. "I can't, can you? 'Twouldn't be visible nohow, I guess. Hurry up. Lord, we ain't ever going to get to that camp." Finally they arrived.
McTeague clung to the old prospector's idea that there was no way of telling where gold was until you actually saw it. Cribbens had evidently read a good many books upon the subject, and had already prospected in something of a scientific manner. "Shucks!" he exclaimed. "Gi' me a long distinct contact between sedimentary and igneous rocks, an' I'll sink a shaft without ever SEEING 'color."
It was dark before they were through. Cribbens broke off some more chunks of quarts in the vein. "I'll spoon this too, just for the fun of it, when I get home," he explained, as they tramped back to the camp. "Well," said the dentist, "we got the laugh on those cowboys." "Have we?" shouted Cribbens. "HAVE we? Just wait and see the rush for this place when we tell 'em about it down in Keeler.
Cribbens dumped the quartz fragments into a pan. "You pestle her, pardner, an' I'll fix the scales." McTeague ground the lumps to fine dust in the iron mortar while Cribbens set up the tiny scales and got out the "spoons" from their outfit. "That's fine enough," Cribbens exclaimed, impatiently. "Now we'll spoon her. Gi' me the water."
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