Overland found his slow way back to the hidden cañon. He felt a little lonely as he thought of Collie. He gave the burro some scraps of camp bread, knowing that the little animal would not stray so long as he was fed, even a little, each day.
It was while he was scouring the fry-pan that he noticed the black sand across the stream. Leisurely he rose and scooped a panful of the sand and gravel and began washing it, more as a pastime than with an idea of finding gold. Slowly he oscillated the whispering sand, slopping the water out until he had panned the lot. He spread his bandanna on a smooth rock and gently emptied the residue of the washing on it. "Color—but thin," he said. "Let's try her again."
He moved farther upstream—this time with one of his regular pans. He became absorbed in his experiment. He washed panful after panful, slowly, carefully, collectedly. Suddenly he stood up, swore softly, and flung the half-washed dirt of the last pan on the rocks. "I'm a nut!" he exclaimed. "This livin' in civilization has been puttin' my intellec' to the bad. Too much Eastern sassiety." And with this inexplicable self-arraignment he stooped at the tent-door, buckled on his gun, and started upstream. He glanced from side to side of the steep and narrowing walls as he advanced slowly. He passed places where the stream disappeared in the sand to find some subterranean channel and reappear below again. Rounding an angle of the cliff, he dropped to his knees and examined some tiny parallel scratches on a rounded rock—the marks made by a boot-heel that had slipped. For an hour he toiled over the rocks on up the diminishing stream. "Gettin' thin," he muttered, gazing at the silver thread of water rippling over the pebbles. A few feet ahead the cliffs met at the bottom in a sharp-edged "V," not over a foot apart in the stream-bed, but widening above. Overland scrambled through. On the other side of the opening he straightened up, breathing hard. His hand crept to his hip. On a sandy level a few yards ahead of him stood a ragged and faded canvas tent, its flap wavering idly in a breath of wind. In front of the tent was the rain-washed charcoal of an old fire. A rusted pan, a pick, and the worn stub of a shovel lay near the stream. A box marked "Dynamite" was half-filled with odds and ends of empty tins, cooking-utensils, and among the things was a glass fruit-jar half filled with matches.
Slowly Overland's hand dropped to his side. He stepped forward, stooped, and peered into the tent. "Thought so," he said laughing queerly. Save for a pair of old quilts and an old corduroy coat, the place was empty.
"Fool's luck," muttered Overland. "Wonder the Gophertown outfit didn't find him and fix him. But come to think of it, they ain't so anxious to cross over to this side of the range and get too clost to a real town, and get run in or shot up. Fool's luck," he reiterated, coolly rolling a cigarette and gazing about with a critical eye. "They's another trail into this cañon that the prospector knowed. I got to find it. Billy'll be some interested."