Though the dipping gold-trace increased the man’s work, he found consolation in the increasing richness of the pans.  Twenty cents, thirty cents, fifty cents, sixty cents, were the values of the gold found in the pans, and at nightfall he washed his banner pan, which gave him a dollar’s worth of gold-dust from a shovelful of dirt.

“I’ll just bet it’s my luck to have some inquisitive one come buttin’ in here on my pasture,” he mumbled sleepily that night as he pulled the blankets up to his chin.

Suddenly he sat upright.  “Bill!” he called sharply.  “Now, listen to me, Bill; d’ye hear!  It’s up to you, to-morrow mornin’, to mosey round an’ see what you can see.  Understand?  To-morrow morning, an’ don’t you forget it!”

He yawned and glanced across at his side-hill.  “Good night, Mr. Pocket,” he called.

In the morning he stole a march on the sun, for he had finished breakfast when its first rays caught him, and he was climbing the wall of the canyon where it crumbled away and gave footing.  From the outlook at the top he found himself in the midst of loneliness.  As far as he could see, chain after chain of mountains heaved themselves into his vision.  To the east his eyes, leaping the miles between range and range and between many ranges, brought up at last against the white-peaked Sierras—­the main crest, where the backbone of the Western world reared itself against the sky.  To the north and south he could see more distinctly the cross-systems that broke through the main trend of the sea of mountains.  To the west the ranges fell away, one behind the other, diminishing and fading into the gentle foothills that, in turn, descended into the great valley which he could not see.

And in all that mighty sweep of earth he saw no sign of man nor of the handiwork of man—­save only the torn bosom of the hillside at his feet.  The man looked long and carefully.  Once, far down his own canyon, he thought he saw in the air a faint hint of smoke.  He looked again and decided that it was the purple haze of the hills made dark by a convolution of the canyon wall at its back.

“Hey, you, Mr. Pocket!” he called down into the canyon.  “Stand out from under!  I’m a-comin’, Mr. Pocket!  I’m a-comin’!”

The heavy brogans on the man’s feet made him appear clumsy-footed, but he swung down from the giddy height as lightly and airily as a mountain goat.  A rock, turning under his foot on the edge of the precipice, did not disconcert him.  He seemed to know the precise time required for the turn to culminate in disaster, and in the meantime he utilized the false footing itself for the momentary earth-contact necessary to carry him on into safety.  Where the earth sloped so steeply that it was impossible to stand for a second upright, the man did not hesitate.  His foot pressed the impossible surface for but a fraction of the fatal second and gave him the bound that carried him onward.  Again, where even the fraction of a second’s footing was out of the question, he would swing his body past by a moment’s hand-grip on a jutting knob of rock, a crevice, or a precariously rooted shrub.  At last, with a wild leap and yell, he exchanged the face of the wall for an earth-slide and finished the descent in the midst of several tons of sliding earth and gravel.