ever 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