Rising with the sun, and snatching a hasty breakfast, he was early at work.  A fever seemed to be growing in him, nor did the increasing richness of the test-pans allay this fever.  There was a flush in his cheek other than that made by the heat of the sun, and he was oblivious to fatigue and the passage of time.  When he filled a pan with dirt, he ran down the hill to wash it; nor could he forbear running up the hill again, panting and stumbling profanely, to refill the pan.

He was now a hundred yards from the water, and the inverted “V” was assuming definite proportions.  The width of the pay-dirt steadily decreased, and the man extended in his mind’s eye the sides of the “V” to their meeting place far up the hill.  This was his goal, the apex of the “V,” and he panned many times to locate it.

“Just about two yards above that manzanita bush an’ a yard to the right,” he finally concluded.

Then the temptation seized him.  “As plain as the nose on your face,” he said, as he abandoned his laborious cross-cutting and climbed to the indicated apex.  He filled a pan and carried it down the hill to wash.  It contained no trace of gold.  He dug deep, and he dug shallow, filling and washing a dozen pans, and was unrewarded even by the tiniest golden speck.  He was enraged at having yielded to the temptation, and berated himself blasphemously and pridelessly.  Then he went down the hill and took up the cross-cutting.

“Slow an’ certain, Bill; slow an’ certain,” he crooned.  “Short-cuts to fortune ain’t in your line, an’ it’s about time you know it.  Get wise, Bill; get wise.  Slow an’ certain’s the only hand you can play; so go to it, an’ keep to it, too.”

As the cross-cuts decreased, showing that the sides of the “V” were converging, the depth of the “V” increased.  The gold-trace was dipping into the hill.  It was only at thirty inches beneath the surface that he could get colors in his pan.  The dirt he found at twenty-five inches from the surface, and at thirty-five inches yielded barren pans.  At the base of the “V,” by the water’s edge, he had found the gold colors at the grass roots.  The higher he went up the hill, the deeper the gold dipped.  To dig a hole three feet deep in order to get one test-pan was a task of no mean magnitude; while between the man and the apex intervened an untold number of such holes to be dug.  “An’ there’s no tellin’ how much deeper it’ll pitch,” he sighed, in a moment’s pause, while his fingers soothed his aching back.

Feverish with desire, with aching back and stiffening muscles, with pick and shovel gouging and mauling the soft brown earth, the man toiled up the hill.  Before him was the smooth slope, spangled with flowers and made sweet with their breath.  Behind him was devastation.  It looked like some terrible eruption breaking out on the smooth skin of the hill.  His slow progress was like that of a slug, befouling beauty with a monstrous trail.