logical thing is to set out looking for another
one. My friend the Pocket Hunter had been looking twenty years. His
working outfit was a shovel, a pick, a gold pan which he kept cleaner
than his plate, and a pocket magnifier. When he came to a watercourse he
would pan out the gravel of its bed for "colors," and under the glass
determine if they had come from far or near, and so spying he would work
up the stream until he found where the drift of the gold-bearing outcrop
fanned out into the creek; then up the side of the canon till he came to
the proper vein. I think he said the best indication of small pockets
was an iron stain, but I could never get the run of miner's talk enough
to feel instructed for pocket hunting. He had another method in the
waterless hills, where he would work in and out of blind gullies and all
windings of the manifold strata that appeared not to have cooled since
they had been heaved up. His itinerary began with the east slope of the
Sierras of the Snows, where that range swings across to meet the coast
hills, and all up that slope to the Truckee River country, where the
long cold forbade his progress north. Then he worked back down one or
another of the nearly parallel ranges that lie out desertward, and so
down to the sink of the Mojave River, burrowing to oblivion in the
sand,--a big mysterious land, a lonely, inhospitable land, beautiful,
terrible. But he came to no harm in it; the land tolerated him as it
might a gopher or a badger. Of all its inhabitants it has the least
concern for man.

There are many strange sorts of humans bred in a mining country, each
sort despising the queernesses of the other, but of them all I found the
Pocket Hunter most acceptable for his clean, companionable talk.

There was more color to his reminiscences than the faded sandy old
miners "kyote-ing," that is, tunneling like a coyote (kyote in the
vernacular) in the core of a lonesome hill. Such a one has found,
perhaps, a body of tolerable ore in a poor lead,--remember that I can
never be depended on to get the terms right,--and followed it into the
heart of country rock to no profit, hoping, burrowing, and hoping. These
men go harmlessly mad in time, believing themselves just behind the wall
of fortune--most likable and simple men, for whom it is well to do any
kindly thing that occurs to you except lend them money. I have known
"grub stakers" too, those persuasive sinners to whom you make allowances
of flou