“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 butt 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.

“God!” ejaculated 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 canyon 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 canyon 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 canyons 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.  “Hello, 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.