Now prospecting means hunting gold,except to such spirits as the boy Lin.To these it means finding gold.So Lin McLean listened to the talk of his friend Honey Wiggin as the caboose trundled through the night.He saw himself in a vision of the near future enter a bank and thump down a bag of gold-dust.Then he saw the new,clean money the man would hand him in exchange,bills with round zeroes half covered by being folded over,and heavy,satisfactory gold pieces.And then he saw the blue water that twinkles beneath Boston.His fingers came again on his trunk check.He had his ticket,too.And as dawn now revealed the gray country to him,his eye fell casually upon a mile-post:"Omaha,876."He began to watch for them:--877,878.But the trunk would really get to Omaha.
"What are yu'laughin'about?"asked Honey.
"Oh,the wheels."
"Wheels?"
"Don't yu'hear 'em?"said Lin."'Variety,'they keep a-sayin'.'Variety,variety.'""Huh!"said Honey,with scorn."'Ker-chunka-chunk''s all I make it.""You're no poet,"observed Mr.McLean.
As the train moved into Evanston in the sunlight,a gleam of dismay shot over Lin's face,and he ducked his head out of sight of the window,but immediately raised it again.Then he leaned out,waving his arm with a certain defiant vigor.But the bishop on the platform failed to notice this performance,though it was done for his sole benefit,nor would Lin explain to the inquisitive Wiggin what the matter was.Therefore,very naturally,Honey drew a conclusion for himself,looked quickly out of the window,and,being disappointed in what he expected to see remarked,sulkily,"Do yu'figure I care what sort of a lookin'girl is stuck on yu'in Evanston?"And upon this young Lin laughed so loudly that his friend told him he had never seen a man get so foolish in three years.
By-and-by they were in Utah,and,in the company of Ogden friends,forgot prospecting.Later they resumed freight trains and journeyed north In Idaho they said good-bye to the train hands in the caboose,and came to Little Camas,and so among the mountains near Feather Creek.Here the berries were of several sorts,and growing riper each day,and the bears in the timber above knew this,and came down punctually with the season,making variety in the otherwise even life of the prospectors.It was now August,and Lin sat on a wet hill making mud-pies for sixty days.But the philosopher's stone was not in the wash at that placer,nor did Lin gather gold-dust sufficient to cover the nail of his thumb.Then they heard of an excitement at Obo,Nevada,and,hurrying to Obo,they made some more mud-pies.
Now and then,eating their fat bacon at noon,Honey would say,"Lin,wher're yu'goin'?"And Lin always replied,"East."This became a signal for drinks.
For beauty and promise,Nevada is a name among names.Nevada!Pronounce the word aloud.Does it not evoke mountains and clear air,heights of untrodden snow and valleys aromatic with the pine and musical with falling waters?Nevada!But the name is all.Abomination of desolation presides over nine-tenths of the place.The sun beats down as on a roof of zinc,fierce and dull.Not a drop of water to a mile of sand.The mean ash-dump landscape stretches on from nowhere to nowhere,a spot of mange.
No portion of the earth is more lacquered with paltry,unimportant ugliness.
There is gold in Nevada,but Lin and Honey did not find it.Prospecting of the sort they did,besides proving unfruitful,is not comfortable.Now and again,losing patience,Lin would leave his work and stalk about and gaze down at the scattered men who stooped or knelt in the water.Passing each busy prospector,Lin would read on every broad,upturned pair of overalls the same label,"Levi Strauss,No.2,"with a picture of two lusty horses hitched to one of these garments and vainly struggling to split them asunder.Lin remembered he was wearing a label just like that too,and when he considered all things he laughed to himself.Then,having stretched the ache out of his long legs,he would return to his ditch.As autumn wore on,his feet grew cold in the mushy gravel they were sunk in.He beat off the sand that had stiffened on his boots,and hated Obo,Nevada.But he held himself ready to say "East"whenever he saw Honey coming along with the bottle.The cold weather put an end to this adventure.The ditches froze and filled with snow,through which the sordid gravel heaps showed in a dreary fashion;so the two friends drifted southward.
Near the small new town of Mesa,Arizona,they sat down again in the dirt.It was milder here,and,when the sun shone,never quite froze.But this part of Arizona is scarcely more grateful to the eye than Nevada.
Moreover,Lin and Honey found no gold at all.Some men near them found a little.Then in January,even though the sun shone,it quite froze one day.
"We're seein'the country,anyway,"said Honey.
"Seein'hell,"said Lin,"and there's more of it above ground than I thought."
"What'll we do?"Honey inquired.
"Have to walk for a job--a good-payin'job,"responded the hopeful cow-puncher.And he and Honey went to town.
