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."

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. 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.

"An' me asking you if you had fifty dollars!" he exclaimed. "You carry your mine right around with you, don't you?"

"Huh, I guess so," muttered the dentist. "I--I just sold a claim I had up in El Dorado County," he added.

At five o'clock on a magnificent May morning the "pardners" jogged out of Keeler, driving the burro before them. 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."

"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.

"That's a smart looking valley," observed the dentist.

"NOW you're talking straight talk," returned Cribbens, sucking his mustache. The valley was beautiful, wide, level, and very green.

Everywhere were herds of cattle, scarcely less wild than deer. Once or twice cowboys pa.s.sed them on the road, big-boned fellows, picturesque in their broad hats, hairy trousers, jingling spurs, and revolver belts, surprisingly like the pictures McTeague remembered to have seen.

Everyone of them knew Cribbens, and almost invariably joshed him on his venture.

"Say, Crib, ye'd best take a wagon train with ye to bring your dust back."

Cribbens resented their humor, and after they had pa.s.sed, chewed fiercely on his mustache.

"I'd like to make a strike, b'G.o.d! if it was only to get the laugh on them joshers."

By noon they were climbing the eastern slope of the Panamint Range. Long since they had abandoned the road; vegetation ceased; not a tree was in sight. 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.

"Huh!" snorted the other more grimly than ever. The motionless air was like the mouth of a furnace. Cribbens's pony lathered and panted.

McTeague's mule began to droop his long ears. Only the little burro plodded resolutely on, picking the trail where McTeague could see but trackless sand and stunted sage. Towards evening Cribbens, who was in the lead, drew rein on the summit of the hills.

Behind them was the beautiful green Panamint Valley, but before and below them for miles and miles, as far as the eye could reach, a flat, white desert, empty even of sage-brush, unrolled toward the horizon. In the immediate foreground a broken system of arroyos, and little canons tumbled down to meet it. To the north faint blue hills shouldered themselves above the horizon.

"Well," observed Cribbens, "we're on the top of the Panamint Range now.

It's along this eastern slope, right below us here, that we're going to prospect. Gold Gulch"--he pointed with the b.u.t.t of his quirt--"is about eighteen or nineteen miles along here to the north of us. Those hills way over yonder to the northeast are the Telescope hills."

"What do you call the desert out yonder?" 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. Cribbens and the dentist sat motionless in their saddles, looking out over that abominable desolation, silent, troubled.

"G.o.d!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Cribbens at length, under his breath, with a shake of his head. Then he seemed to rouse himself. "Well," he remarked, "first thing we got to do now is to find water."

This was a long and difficult task. They descended into one little canon 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. The dentist let the animal have his head, and in a few minutes he had brought them to the bed of a tiny canon 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. The burro won't eat it, but I wouldn't trust the others."

A new life began for McTeague. After breakfast the "pardners" separated, going in opposite directions along the slope of the range, examining rocks, picking and chipping at ledges and bowlders, looking for signs, prospecting. McTeague went up into the little canons 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.

One day, after a week of prospecting, they met unexpectedly on the slope of an arroyo. It was late in the afternoon. "h.e.l.lo, 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." 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. "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. "To think of us mushheads going over ground that's been covered already! Say, pardner, we'll dig out of here to-morrow.

I've been thinking, anyhow, we'd better move to the south; that water of ours is pretty low."

"Yes, yes, I guess so," a.s.sented the dentist. "There ain't any gold here."

"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. It's called Gold Mountain, an' there's only one mine been located there, an' it's paying like a nitrate bed. There ain't many people in that country, because it's all h.e.l.l to get into.

First place, you got to cross Death Valley and strike the Armagosa Range fur off to the south. Well, no one ain't stuck on crossing the Valley, not if they can help it. But we could work down the Panamint some hundred or so miles, maybe two hundred, an' fetch around by the Armagosa River, way to the south'erd. We could prospect on the way. But I guess the Armagosa'd be dried up at this season. Anyhow," he concluded, "we'll move camp to the south to-morrow. We got to get new feed an' water for the horses. 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. I--"

"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 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," a.s.sented Cribbens. "Hi!" he shouted suddenly, "HERE'S A 'CONTACT,' and here it is again, and there, and yonder. Oh, look at it, will you? That's granodiorite on slate. Couldn't want it any more distinct than that. G.o.d! if we could only find the quartz between the two now."