McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

“Sure, sure,” said the dentist.

The two sat up late that night in a corner of the barroom discussing the probability of finding gold in the Panamint hills. It soon became evident that they held differing theories. McTeague clung to the old prospector’s idea that there was no way of telling where gold was until you actually saw it. Cribbens had evidently read a good many books upon the subject, and had already prospected in something of a scientific manner.

“Shucks!” he exclaimed. “Gi’ me a long distinct contact between sedimentary and igneous rocks, an’ I’ll sink a shaft without ever SEEING ‘color.’”

The dentist put his huge chin in the air. “Gold is where you find it,” he returned, doggedly.

“Well, it’s my idea as how pardners ought to work along different lines,” said Cribbens. He tucked the corners of his mustache into his mouth and sucked the tobacco juice from them. For a moment he was thoughtful, then he blew out his mustache abruptly, and exclaimed:

“Say, Carter, le’s make a go of this. You got a little cash I suppose—fifty dollars or so?”

“Huh? Yes—I—I—”

“Well, I got about fifty. We’ll go pardners on the proposition, an’ we’ll dally ‘round the range yonder an’ see what we can see. What do you say?”

“Sure, sure,” answered the dentist.

“Well, it’s a go then, hey?”

“That’s the word.”

“Well, le’s have a drink on it.”

They drank with profound gravity.

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 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 cañóns 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 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 cañón 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 cañón 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 cañóns 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.

“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,” assented 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 hell 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,” assented 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. GOD! if we could only find the quartz between the two now.”

“Well, there it is,” exclaimed McTeague. “Look on ahead there; ain’t that quartz?”

“You’re shouting right out loud,” vociferated Cribbens, looking where McTeague was pointing. His face went suddenly pale. He turned to the dentist, his eyes wide.

“By God, pardner,” he exclaimed, breathlessly. “By God—” he broke off abruptly.

“That’s what you been looking for, ain’t it?” asked the dentist.

“LOOKING for! LOOKING for!” Cribbens checked himself. “That’s SLATE all right, and that’s granodiorite, I know”—he bent down and examined the rock—“and here’s the quartz between ‘em; there can’t be no mistake about that. Gi’ me that hammer,” he cried, excitedly. “Come on, git to work. Jab into the quartz with your pick; git out some chunks of it.” Cribbens went down on his hands and knees, attacking the quartz vein furiously. The dentist followed his example, swinging his pick with enormous force, splintering the rocks at every stroke. Cribbens was talking to himself in his excitement.

“Got you THIS time, you son of a gun! By God! I guess we got you THIS time, at last. Looks like it, anyhow. GET a move on, pardner. There ain’t anybody ‘round, is there? Hey?” Without looking, he drew his revolver and threw it to the dentist. “Take the gun an’ look around, pardner. If you see any son of a gun ANYWHERE, PLUG him. This yere’s OUR claim. I guess we got it THIS tide, pardner. Come on.” He gathered up the chunks of quartz he had broken out, and put them in his hat and started towards their camp. The two went along with great strides, hurrying as fast as they could over the uneven ground.

“I don’ know,” exclaimed Cribbens, breathlessly, “I don’ want to say too much. Maybe we’re fooled. Lord, that damn camp’s a long ways off. Oh, I ain’t goin’ to fool along this way. Come on, pardner.” He broke into a run. McTeague followed at a lumbering gallop. Over the scorched, parched ground, stumbling and tripping over sage-brush and sharp-pointed rocks, under the palpitating heat of the desert sun, they ran and scrambled, carrying the quartz lumps in their hats.

“See any ‘COLOR’ in it, pardner?” gasped Cribbens. “I can’t, can you? ‘Twouldn’t be visible nohow, I guess. Hurry up. Lord, we ain’t ever going to get to that camp.”

Finally they arrived. Cribbens dumped the quartz fragments into a pan.

“You pestle her, pardner, an’ I’ll fix the scales.” McTeague ground the lumps to fine dust in the iron mortar while Cribbens set up the tiny scales and got out the “spoons” from their outfit.

“That’s fine enough,” Cribbens exclaimed, impatiently. “Now we’ll spoon her. Gi’ me the water.”

Cribbens scooped up a spoonful of the fine white powder and began to spoon it carefully. The two were on their hands and knees upon the ground, their heads close together, still panting with excitement and the exertion of their run.

“Can’t do it,” exclaimed Cribbens, sitting back on his heels, “hand shakes so. YOU take it, pardner. Careful, now.”

McTeague took the horn spoon and began rocking it gently in his huge fingers, sluicing the water over the edge a little at a time, each movement washing away a little more of the powdered quartz. The two watched it with the intensest eagerness.

“Don’t see it yet; don’t see it yet,” whispered Cribbens, chewing his mustache. “LEETLE faster, pardner. That’s the ticket. Careful, steady, now; leetle more, leetle more. Don’t see color yet, do you?”

The quartz sediment dwindled by degrees as McTeague spooned it steadily. Then at last a thin streak of a foreign substance began to show just along the edge. It was yellow.

Neither spoke. Cribbens dug his nails into the sand, and ground his mustache between his teeth. The yellow streak broadened as the quartz sediment washed away. Cribbens whispered:

“We got it, pardner. That’s gold.”

McTeague washed the last of the white quartz dust away, and let the water trickle after it. A pinch of gold, fine as flour, was left in the bottom of the spoon.

“There you are,” he said. The two looked at each other. Then Cribbens rose into the air with a great leap and a yell that could have been heard for half a mile.

“Yee-e-ow! We GOT it, we struck it. Pardner, we got it. Out of sight. We’re millionaires.” He snatched up his revolver and fired it with inconceivable rapidity. “PUT it there, old man,” he shouted, gripping McTeague’s palm.

“That’s gold, all right,” muttered McTeague, studying the contents of the spoon.

“You bet your great-grandma’s Cochin-China Chessy cat it’s gold,” shouted Cribbens. “Here, now, we got a lot to do. We got to stake her out an’ put up the location notice. We’ll take our full acreage, you bet. You—we haven’t weighed this yet. Where’s the scales?” He weighed the pinch of gold with shaking hands. “Two grains,” he cried. “That’ll run five dollars to the ton. Rich, it’s rich; it’s the richest kind of pay, pardner. We’re millionaires. Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you get excited? Why don’t you run around an’ do something?”

“Huh!” said McTeague, rolling his eyes. “Huh! I know, I know, we’ve struck it pretty rich.”

“Come on,” exclaimed Cribbens, jumping up again. “We’ll stake her out an’ put up the location notice. Lord, suppose anyone should have come on her while we’ve been away.” He reloaded his revolver deliberately. “We’ll drop HIM all right, if there’s anyone fooling round there; I’ll tell you those right now. Bring the rifle, pardner, an’ if you see anyone, PLUG him, an’ ask him what he wants afterward.”

They hurried back to where they had made their discovery.

“To think,” exclaimed Cribbens, as he drove the first stake, “to think those other mushheads had their camp within gunshot of her and never located her. Guess they didn’t know the meaning of a ‘contact.’ Oh, I knew I was solid on ‘contacts.’”

They staked out their claim, and Cribbens put up the notice of location. It was dark before they were through. Cribbens broke off some more chunks of quarts in the vein.

“I’ll spoon this too, just for the fun of it, when I get home,” he explained, as they tramped back to the camp.

“Well,” said the dentist, “we got the laugh on those cowboys.”

“Have we?” shouted Cribbens. “HAVE we? Just wait and see the rush for this place when we tell ‘em about it down in Keeler. Say, what’ll we call her?”

“I don’ know, I don’ know.”

“We might call her the ‘Last Chance.’ ‘Twas our last chance, wasn’t it? We’d ‘a’ gone antelope shooting tomorrow, and the next day we’d ‘a’—say, what you stopping for?” he added, interrupting himself. “What’s up?”

The dentist had paused abruptly on the crest of a cañón. Cribbens, looking back, saw him standing motionless in his tracks.

“What’s up?” asked Cribbens a second time.

McTeague slowly turned his head and looked over one shoulder, then over the other. Suddenly he wheeled sharply about, cocking the Winchester and tossing it to his shoulder. Cribbens ran back to his side, whipping out his revolver.

“What is it?” he cried. “See anybody?” He peered on ahead through the gathering twilight.

“No, no.”

“Hear anything?”

“No, didn’t hear anything.”

“What is it then? What’s up?”

“I don’ know, I don’ know,” muttered the dentist, lowering the rifle. “There was something.”

“What?”

“Something—didn’t you notice?”

“Notice what?”

“I don’ know. Something—something or other.”

“Who? What? Notice what? What did you see?”

The dentist let down the hammer of the rifle.

“I guess it wasn’t anything,” he said rather foolishly.

“What d’you think you saw—anybody on the claim?”

“I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything either. I had an idea, that’s all; came all of a sudden, like that. Something, I don’ know what.”

“I guess you just imagined something. There ain’t anybody within twenty miles of us, I guess.”

“Yes, I guess so, just imagined it, that’s the word.”

Half an hour later they had the fire going. McTeague was frying strips of bacon over the coals, and Cribbens was still chattering and exclaiming over their great strike. All at once McTeague put down the frying-pan.

“What’s that?” he growled.

“Hey? What’s what?” exclaimed Cribbens, getting up.

“Didn’t you notice something?”

“Where?”

“Off there.” The dentist made a vague gesture toward the eastern horizon. “Didn’t you hear something—I mean see something—I mean—”

“What’s the matter with you, pardner?”

“Nothing. I guess I just imagined it.”

But it was not imagination. Until midnight the partners lay broad awake, rolled in their blankets under the open sky, talking and discussing and making plans. At last Cribbens rolled over on his side and slept. The dentist could not sleep.

What! It was warning him again, that strange sixth sense, that obscure brute instinct. It was aroused again and clamoring to be obeyed. Here, in these desolate barren hills, twenty miles from the nearest human being, it stirred and woke and rowelled him to be moving on. It had goaded him to flight from the Big Dipper mine, and he had obeyed. But now it was different; now he had suddenly become rich; he had lighted on a treasure—a treasure far more valuable than the Big Dipper mine itself. How was he to leave that? He could not move on now. He turned about in his blankets. No, he would not move on. Perhaps it was his fancy, after all. He saw nothing, heard nothing. The emptiness of primeval desolation stretched from him leagues and leagues upon either hand. The gigantic silence of the night lay close over everything, like a muffling Titanic palm. Of what was he suspicious? In that treeless waste an object could be seen at half a day’s journey distant. In that vast silence the click of a pebble was as audible as a pistol-shot. And yet there was nothing, nothing.

The dentist settled himself in his blankets and tried to sleep. In five minutes he was sitting up, staring into the blue-gray shimmer of the moonlight, straining his ears, watching and listening intently. Nothing was in sight. The browned and broken flanks of the Panamint hills lay quiet and familiar under the moon. The burro moved its head with a clinking of its bell; and McTeagues mule, dozing on three legs, changed its weight to another foot, with a long breath. Everything fell silent again.

“What is it?” muttered the dentist. “If I could only see something, hear something.”

He threw off the blankets, and, rising, climbed to the summit of the nearest hill and looked back in the direction in which he and Cribbens had travelled a fortnight before. For half an hour he waited, watching and listening in vain. But as he returned to camp, and prepared to roll his blankets about him, the strange impulse rose in him again abruptly, never so strong, never so insistent. It seemed as though he were bitted and ridden; as if some unseen hand were turning him toward the east; some unseen heel spurring him to precipitate and instant flight.

Flight from what? “No,” he muttered under his breath. “Go now and leave the claim, and leave a fortune! What a fool I’d be, when I can’t see anything or hear anything. To leave a fortune! No, I won’t. No, by God!” He drew Cribbens’s Winchester toward him and slipped a cartridge into the magazine.

“No,” he growled. “Whatever happens, I’m going to stay. If anybody comes—” He depressed the lever of the rifle, and sent the cartridge clashing into the breech.

“I ain’t going to sleep,” he muttered under his mustache. “I can’t sleep; I’ll watch.” He rose a second time, clambered to the nearest hilltop and sat down, drawing the blanket around him, and laying the Winchester across his knees. The hours passed. The dentist sat on the hilltop a motionless, crouching figure, inky black against the pale blur of the sky. By and by the edge of the eastern horizon began to grow blacker and more distinct in out-line. The dawn was coming. Once more McTeague felt the mysterious intuition of approaching danger; an unseen hand seemed reining his head eastward; a spur was in his flanks that seemed to urge him to hurry, hurry, hurry. The influence grew stronger with every moment. The dentist set his great jaws together and held his ground.

“No,” he growled between his set teeth. “No, I’ll stay.” He made a long circuit around the camp, even going as far as the first stake of the new claim, his Winchester cocked, his ears pricked, his eyes alert. There was nothing; yet as plainly as though it were shouted at the very nape of his neck he felt an enemy. It was not fear. McTeague was not afraid.

“If I could only SEE something—somebody,” he muttered, as he held the cocked rifle ready, “I—I’d show him.”

He returned to camp. Cribbens was snoring. The burro had come down to the stream for its morning drink. The mule was awake and browsing. McTeague stood irresolutely by the cold ashes of the camp-fire, looking from side to side with all the suspicion and wariness of a tracked stag. Stronger and stronger grew the strange impulse. It seemed to him that on the next instant he MUST perforce wheel sharply eastward and rush away headlong in a clumsy, lumbering gallop. He fought against it with all the ferocious obstinacy of his simple brute nature.