e river--and it runs so
seldom to the ton that no Injun would ever get it. So, thinks I, why
not look in at Apache Canyon? It's the plumb lonesomest place I know,
and I don't believe anybody ever had the heart to prospect it good. So
I went up to Worden's and worked up from the lower end.

"That was last year, and I have been prognosticatin' round, off and
on, ever since, whenever I could get away from my farmin'. I found a
trace, mostly. You can always get a color round here, and no one place
better than another. But when the rains begun this year, so I could
find water to pan with, I tried it again, higher up. And in a little
flat side draw, leadin' from between two miserable little snubby hills
off all alone, too low to send much flood water down--there I begun to
find float, plumb promisin'. I started to follow it up. You know
how--pan to right and left till the stuff fails to show, mark the edge
of the pay dirt, go on up the hill and do the like again. If the gold
you're followin' has been carried down by water the streak gets
narrower as you go up a hillside, and pay dirt gets richer as it gets
narrower. If the hill has been tossed about by the hell fires down
below, all bets is off and no rule works, not even the exceptions.
That's why they say gold is where you find it. But any time you find a
fan-shaped strip of color on a hill that looks like it might have
stayed put, or nearly so, it's worth while to follow it up. If you
find the apex of that triangle you're apt to strike a pocket that will
land you right side up with the great and good. Sometimes the apex has
done been washed away; these water courses have run quite elsewhere
other times. Oh, quite! But there's always a chance. Follow up a
narrowing color and quit one that squanders round casual. Them's the
rules.

"Well, sir, my pay dirt took to the side of that least hill, and she
was shaping right smart like a triangle. Then my water give out. I was
usin' a little tank in the rocks--no other without packing from
MacCleod's Tank, five mile. And I had to get in my last cuttin' of
alfalfa--pesky stuff! I cached my outfit and came on home.

"So there you are. It's been rainin' again; and I'm goin' out and try
another whirl to-morrow, hit or miss. Go snooks with you if you're a
mind to side me. What say?"

"Why, Big Chump, you're not such a bad old hoss thief, are you? Well,
I thank you just as much, and I sure hope you'll make a ten-strike and
everything