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Updated: June 3, 2025
We'll see if we can knock over a couple of antelope to-morrow, and then we'll scoot." "I ain't got a gun," said the dentist; "not even a revolver. "Wait a second," said Cribbens, pausing in his scramble down the side of one of the smaller gulches. "Here's some slate here; I ain't seen no slate around here yet. Let's see where it goes to." McTeague followed him along the side of the gulch.
Cribbens rode his cayuse, McTeague following in his rear on the mule. "Say," remarked Cribbens, "why in thunder don't you leave that fool canary behind at the hotel? It's going to be in your way all the time, an' it will sure die. Better break its neck an' chuck it." "No, no," insisted the dentist. "I've had it too long. I'll take it with me."
They returned together, Cribbens telling the dentist of a group of antelope he had seen. "We might lay off to-morrow, an' see if we can plug a couple of them fellers. Antelope steak would go pretty well after beans an' bacon an' coffee week in an' week out." McTeague was answering, when Cribbens interrupted him with an exclamation of profound disgust.
They descended into one little cañón after another, followed the course of numberless arroyos, and even dug where there seemed indications of moisture, all to no purpose. But at length McTeague's mule put his nose in the air and blew once or twice through his nostrils. "Smells it, the son of a gun!" exclaimed Cribbens.
Cribbens already owned and rode a buckskin cayuse that had to be knocked in the head and stunned before it could be saddled. "I got an extry saddle an' a headstall at the hotel that you can use," he said, "but you'll have to get a horse." In the end the dentist bought a mule at the livery stable for forty dollars.
Cribbens went on ahead, muttering to himself from time to time: "Runs right along here, even enough, and here's water too. Didn't know this stream was here; pretty near dry, though. Here's the slate again. See where it runs, pardner?" "Look at it up there ahead," said McTeague. "It runs right up over the back of this hill." "That's right," assented Cribbens.
McTeague took the horn spoon and began rocking it gently in his huge fingers, sluicing the water over the edge a little at a time, each movement washing away a little more of the powdered quartz. The two watched it with the intensest eagerness. "Don't see it yet; don't see it yet," whispered Cribbens, chewing his mustache. "LEETLE faster, pardner. That's the ticket.
One day, after a week of prospecting, they met unexpectedly on the slope of an arroyo. It was late in the afternoon. "Hello, pardner," exclaimed Cribbens as he came down to where McTeague was bending over his pan. "What luck?" The dentist emptied his pan and straightened up. "Nothing, nothing. You struck anything?" "Not a trace. Guess we might as well be moving towards camp."
Careful, steady, now; leetle more, leetle more. Don't see color yet, do you?" The quartz sediment dwindled by degrees as McTeague spooned it steadily. Then at last a thin streak of a foreign substance began to show just along the edge. It was yellow. Neither spoke. Cribbens dug his nails into the sand, and ground his mustache between his teeth.
"I thought we were the first to prospect along in here, an' now look at that. Don't it make you sick?" He pointed out evidences of an abandoned prospector's camp just before them charred ashes, empty tin cans, one or two gold-miner's pans, and a broken pick. "Don't that make you sick?" muttered Cribbens, sucking his mustache furiously.
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