“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 passed 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 passed, chewed fiercely on his mustache.

“I’d like to make a strike, b’God! 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 canyons tumbled down to meet it.  To the north faint blue hills shouldered themselves above the horizon.