The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Chapter 5

Curtin and Dobbs learned soon that without Howard they would have been utterly helpless. Had they been alone, they would not have been able to follow even a trail. They had no idea how to keep the burros at the camp during the night, how to pack them the right way, or how to make them go over the rocky paths across the high mountains, where often the boys themselves could not get hold with their feet.

On this trip the boys had to do without such little conveniences as were always found even in the most primitive oilcamps. It took them almost a week to learn how to pitch camp under such difficult conditions as they found here every day. This was no boy scouts’ hike and camp-fires were not built according to instructions in printed guides for hunting parties. Here it meant work, and nothing but hard work. Often at night when they were so tired that they could sleep like blocks they had to get up and search for the burros that had gone astray. There were many other things to attend to even more disagreeable and more wearisome and annoying.

There were many days and more nights when both of them said that if they had known beforehand what it meant to go prospecting, they would have preferred to stay in town and wait for a job to turn up.

Every day their respect for old Howard grew greater and greater. That old fellow nevet complained, never whined, never felt too tired to lend here a pull and there a push. He appeared to become younger and more active with every mile that the little train made toward its goal. He climbed steep rocks like a cat and trotted for long, dreary hours across arid stretches without even mentioning a drink of water.

“Never fail to understand the reason why gold is so precious,” he said occasionally when the boys were all in. “Perhaps you know now why one ounce of gold costs more than a ton of cast iron. Everything in this world has its true price. Nothing is ever given away.”

The trip alone was of minor importance. The main thing was how to find the metal and how to get it after having found it. In this respect Dobbs and Curtin were still at a greater loss than in knowing how to drive a little bunch of donkeys to a certain place. When still in town, they had thought that prospecting for gold was just like picking up stones in a dry riverbed. Their idea was that you cannot make a mistake, that when you see something that glitters, it must be gold. To their amazement, they found almost every day patches of ground that were covered with glittering yellowish powder, and they found the same glittering sand in brooks and creeks. Whenever they saw this sort of sand, they were sure that it must be the right stuff or at least something that was heavily charged with gold. Howard did not laugh at them. He just said: “I’ll tell you when to pick up. This here stuff wouldn’t pay you a dinner for a truckload unless you can sell it in town right in front of a house under construction.”

Gold doesn’t call out loud to be picked up. You have to know how to recognize it. “You have to tickle it,” Howard would often say, “you have to tickle it so that it comes out laughing. You may walk over it twenty times a day and you won’t see it if you don’t know its call.”

Old man Howard knew gold and what it looked like in the raw. He saw it even if there were only a trace of it in the vicinity. He could tell from the landscape if there might be gold around or not. He knew whether it would pay to spend a day or two at a certain place to dig and to wash and to make tests so as to be sure that to work the ground would pay enough wages for a living. Whenever he stopped to get his frying-pan from the pack and wash a few shovelfuls of dirt in a brook, the boys would know that he had made a discovery.

Five times they found gold. But the amount which could be taken by the primitive means they could afford was not sufficient to pay them a good day’s wages. Once they came upon a site that was very promising, but the water necessary for washing the sand was six miles away. So they had to give up the find.

“Now, don’t you kids think it’s child’s play to prospect for gold,” Howard said to his partners, who were about to lose the last flicker of hope. “Gold means work, and very hard work at that. Just discard everything you have ever read in stories in the magazines. Forget it. It’s all lies. Bunk, that’s what it is. Don’t believe that millions are lying around. There are very few men in the world, or in all history, who have actually made millions by digging for gold. You can’t make it single-handed if you want to have the millions, believe me.”

One morning they found themselves entirely surrounded by wild, desolate mountainous country. It looked as though they could not go on nor go back. Panting and gasping, cursing and swearing, the two boys were trying, by cutting the thick underbrush and by climbing the rocks, which seemed inaccessible, to open a trail by which they could go on and at the same time get out of the wilderness. The difficulty became so great that they lost all hope and were ready to give up the whole outfit, leave everything behind, and return to a civilized world, where there were no jobs, but also no such hardships to endure. They were at the edge of what any sane person can bear.

The old man seemed to be in his most hilarious mood. To him, with so many experiences to draw from, such complications were the regular thing when you are after gold.

“Well, tell my old gra’mother I have burdened myself with a couple of fine lodgers, two very elegant bedfellers who kick at the first drop of rain and crawl under mother’s petticoat when thunder rumbles. My, my, what great prospectors a driller and a tool-dresser can make! Drilling a hole with half a hundred Mexican peons around to lend you hands and feet! I still can do that after a two days’ spree, you bet. Two guys and what shit! Two guys reading in the magazines about crossing a lazy river up in Alaska and now going prospecting on their own.”

“Shut your stinking trap!” Dobbs howled. He took up a rock and threatened to use it.

“Throw it, baby, throw it. Welcome. Just do it. You will never leave this wilderness without my help, if you know what is good for you. You two would die here more miserably than a sick rat.”

Curtin tried to quiet Dobbs. “Leave the old man alone. Can’t you see he’s nuts?”

“Nuts, hey? Is that what you mean?” Howard, instead of being angry, just laughed in a satanical way. “Nuts? Now, I’ll tell you somethin’, you puppies. What did I say? Yes, two fine lodgers I’ve burdened myself with. You two are so dumb, so immensely stupid and dumb, that even a secret-service flat would stand amazed at such dumbness. And that’s something.”

Dobbs and Curtin began to listen to the old man. They looked at each other and they looked again at Howard. They seemed to become convinced that the old man had really gone mad, perhaps from the hardships or from senility.

“And what I was saying,” Howard went on, “you two are so dumb that you don’t even see the millions when treading upon them with your own feet.”

The two boys opened their mouths wide. It was clear they had not understood the full sense of what Howard had said. Not yet. But after a minute they came to. Seeing Howard still grinning at them while he held, in both his hands, sand picked up from the ground, letting it run through his fingers, it dawned upon them that the old man was as sane as ever and that what he said was true.

They did not start a dance out of this joyful relief nor did they holler to clear their breasts of the anguish that had filled them during these last few days. A long breath they took and then sat down and fingered the soil, looking at it carefully.

“Don’t you expect to find nuggets of molten gold.” Howard was still standing upright. “It’s not that rich. It’s only heavy dirt. And it’s not here either. Here are only traces of the stuff. It comes from somewhere farther up there.” Howard pointed up to certain rocks which they had been about to cross. “There is where we have to go. And if I am not mistaken, it will be there that we will settle for a few months. Let’s go.”

While this stretch which they had now to cover was short, it meant harder work than any other trail they had encountered so far on the expedition. The distance was less than two miles, but it took them a whole day to reach the site indicated by Howard.

When the outfit arrived at the spot, Howard said: “We’d better not pitch camp right here where the works are. We should build the camp a mile or even a mile and a half away. Some day you may learn why this is for the best.”

It had got dark, and so for this night they camped right there. Next morning, however, Howard and Curtin went exploring for a good camp-site while Dobbs remained with the animals.

Having found a suitable place sufficiently far off the field, camp was built at the spot where it was to stay.

“Suppose somebody should accidentally come upon this camp, you two fellers understand we are just hunters, professional gamehunters for hides of commercial value. And don’t you make any mistake. It may cost you dearly.” Howard surely knew what he was talking about.