My brother Darryl and I had not had a prospecting adventure since January and we wanted to try out our new drywasher, so we decided to go for the weekend and check out some claims near Barstow…

Sure enough, after hiking a couple miles uphill and hacking through some brush, we found the place just as he had described it.

The sound got quiet when the fuse burned down into the clay. I waited, and waited…

I have a slight mental disorder. It causes frequent lapses in common sense, good judgment and bouts of high fever—gold fever.

If you have done any hiking in rough terrain you are well aware that going down a slope is much more difficult and dangerous than climbing it.

Gold probably is one of the easiest things in the world to cheat an absentee owner out of. He would generally have no way of really knowing if a guy had found 3 nuggets or 30 nuggets on his claim.