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Updated: June 3, 2025
They followed faint cattle trails that led from one water hole to another. By degrees these water holes grew dryer and dryer, and at three o'clock Cribbens halted and filled their canteens. "There ain't any TOO much water on the other side," he observed grimly. "It's pretty hot," muttered the dentist, wiping his streaming forehead with the back of his hand.
McTeague was frying strips of bacon over the coals, and Cribbens was still chattering and exclaiming over their great strike. All at once McTeague put down the frying-pan. "What's that?" he growled. "Hey? What's what?" exclaimed Cribbens, getting up. "Didn't you notice something?" "Where?" "Off there." The dentist made a vague gesture toward the eastern horizon.
McTeague went up into the little cañóns where the streams had cut through the bed rock, searching for veins of quartz, breaking out this quartz when he had found it, pulverizing and panning it. Cribbens hunted for "contacts," closely examining country rocks and out-crops, continually on the lookout for spots where sedimentary and igneous rock came together.
"That's gold, all right," muttered McTeague, studying the contents of the spoon. "You bet your great-grandma's Cochin-China Chessy cat it's gold," shouted Cribbens. "Here, now, we got a lot to do. We got to stake her out an' put up the location notice. We'll take our full acreage, you bet. You we haven't weighed this yet. Where's the scales?" He weighed the pinch of gold with shaking hands.
Say, what'll we call her?" "I don' know, I don' know." "We might call her the 'Last Chance. 'Twas our last chance, wasn't it? We'd 'a' gone antelope shooting tomorrow, and the next day we'd 'a' say, what you stopping for?" he added, interrupting himself. "What's up?" The dentist had paused abruptly on the crest of a cañón. Cribbens, looking back, saw him standing motionless in his tracks.
They fitted out the next day at the general merchandise store of Keeler picks, shovels, prospectors' hammers, a couple of cradles, pans, bacon, flour, coffee, and the like, and they bought a burro on which to pack their kit. "Say, by jingo, you ain't got a horse," suddenly exclaimed Cribbens as they came out of the store. "You can't get around this country without a pony of some kind."
The dentist let the animal have his head, and in a few minutes he had brought them to the bed of a tiny cañón where a thin stream of brackish water filtered over a ledge of rocks. "We'll camp here," observed Cribbens, "but we can't turn the horses loose. We'll have to picket 'em with the lariats. I saw some loco-weed back here a piece, and if they get to eating that, they'll sure go plum crazy.
It turned out to be a good bargain, however, for the mule was a good traveller and seemed actually to fatten on sage-brush and potato parings. When the actual transaction took place, McTeague had been obliged to get the money to pay for the mule out of the canvas sack. Cribbens was with him at the time, and as the dentist unrolled his blankets and disclosed the sack, whistled in amazement.
The keeper of the general merchandise store, from whom Marcus had borrowed a second pony, had informed them that Cribbens and his partner, whose description tallied exactly with that given in the notice of reward, had outfitted at his place with a view to prospecting in the Panamint hills. The posse trailed them at once to their first camp at the head of the valley. It was an easy matter.
McTeague's eyes wandered over the illimitable stretch of alkali that stretched out forever and forever to the east, to the north, and to the south. "That," said Cribbens, "that's Death Valley." There was a long pause. The horses panted irregularly, the sweat dripping from their heaving bellies.
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