"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 canyons
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.
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