I saw a big brown hind end of what at first I thought was an elk, about 75 yards away. I was standing behind a large tree and stopped and peeked around the tree to see what it was.

All of this made me have to conclude that those dummies just didn’t know what they were doing. It was a couple of years later before the solution for this puzzle became clear to me.

It all occurred when Gus and I returned to a remote placer gold area where we had previously found really good gold. The problem was that it would take about an hour to walk through the desert to get to it.

He got out his new salt gun and began searching for the source of the intruder. He soon isolated the sound to a point in the rafters above the stove.

I noticed an area which I could crawl through to keep going in a straight line. I got about three feet into the pile and Bob yelled for me to stop…

Because waiting for spring seemed to be taking forever, my 15-year-old granddaughter Grace and I decided to pan for gold sooner. The thought was…even if we did not find any gold, we would set a new record for absurdity—gold panning in the coldest weather!

Saturday came and it looked to have the makings of a dreary, misty day. Undaunted, I loaded my truck with my sluice, buckets and gear, and headed for the claim.