The Prospector

Barney Dittman ate the last of his eggs, and savored the last of the hot coffee. It promised to be a long, hot day, but the desert was still cold. The grease was soon cleaned from the old fry pan with a handful of sand. He rolled his blankets up and put them in the open trunk of the old Ford, and took out his pack. Dittman expected to return to what passed as a road before dark, so he left behind his jacket. The exercise would soon warm him, and by ten the jacket would just be an encumbrance.

Dittman shrugged the pack onto his old shoulders, and heaved the heavy water bag onto his back. A worn rock hammer hung from a loop in his worn coveralls, and his pockets bulged with a compass, his glass, pocketknife and chewing tobacco. Today, he intended to checkout the possibilities of a mesa about eight miles from his camp. It would be a long and rugged walk, so he began walking down the hill. After a hundred yards the campsite and Ford were invisible, but the mesa loomed before him. At the base of the hill, Dittman stopped to chip and examine a flake from a promising boulder along the wash. Nothing. He dropped the rock, and continued along a dim path worn by small animals. Dittman began to whistle soundlessly between his broken yellow teeth.

Walking alone in the wilderness gives a man time to think. Dittman's feet knew where to find footing without his conscious thought. Eyes, long practiced to recognize promising rock, worked with almost as little care. From time to time Dittman would stop to rest from his exertions. Mostly he reflected back over his life, and fantasized his Big Strike. He had mostly failed. Two wives, six kids and forty jobs lay behind him. Perhaps he should have stayed with Ray selling cars, perhaps. Deep in his heart, Dittman always knew that someday he would make the Big Strike. Everyone knew these mountains, these hills and wide deserts held immense mineral wealth. You just had to be patient, and keep looking. He had looked, and even taken a college course in geology. Molly sure was something, and little Ray named for his uncle was a sweet kid. Once he thought he had made the Big Strike, but the claim didn't fulfill its promise and he sold it for only $5000. Oh well, a dollar here and a dollar there. Time for a chew. A rattler slithered away from the approaching man.

By noon the sun was high overhead and sweat was running freely down Dittman's face. He was near his objective, so he took his lunch break. Dittman found a shady spot near the bottom of an arroyo cut by the waters rushing off of the mesa cliffs. He dropped his pack and water bag, and lay back on the cool sand beside a line of squirrel tracks. From his pack he took a tin of sardines and had a nice little meal washed down with water warm from the bag. Dittman checked his pocket watch and decided that he'd take a nap since he was so close to his objective. He slept and dreamed of big houses and shiny new cars. When Dittman awoke, he rolled over and found right before his eyes the most promising rock that he had seen all morning.

He took out his glass and examined the quartz carefully. By God! This looked like it could really hold a seam of gold. Where did it come from? Dittman's experienced eyes traced the arroyo back and upward to the cliffs that loomed above. He would have to get up there and look more closely.

The hillside was difficult going, and Dittman's old legs began to tire. The pack and water bag seemed to become heavier and heavier. Dittman's breath became shorter from the exertion and anticipation. This could really be it. He found a deer path and worked it upward toward the cliff face. It took two hours to climb up to the base of the cliffs, and then Dittman had to rest a long time to recover from the effort. Oh happy day. Dittman found it hard to contain his optimism, but this wasn't the first time that he was sure that finally his fortune was made. The view from the base of the cliffs extended for a hundred miles, empty of man but beautiful. Far off on the horizon a dark cloud hovered over a distant peak, but Dittman didn't see any of it. His attention was closer; the rocks, the rocks, the rocks. Where were the veins, what were the processes that resulted in this formation, and that one? Dittman's eyes took it all in, and his mind considered all the evidence with every bit of experience, knowledge and skill that fifty years had given him.

He finally found what he was looking for. There wasn't much, just a small outcropping that disappeared back into the cliff. The exposed rock was just as promising as the first sample he had seen down in the arroyo, almost a mile away. He had to know more, but that would mean excavating, getting back into the rock to see how large and promising the vein might be. Dittman set his pack aside and began to gouge out a hole in the wall of rock. Once he was sure that he had picked just the right spot, he took a steel drill from his pack and began to drill in earnest. He took off his sweat-stained shirt and stuffed it into his pack. A light breeze came up and cooled his fevered skin as he pounded the drill over and over again into the rock. Pound, twist the drill ninety degrees, pound, twist, and pound. Over and over Dittman worked the drill to prepare the hole for blasting.

Finally it was done. Dittman rested, and wiped his brow. He took his last two sticks of dynamite from his pack and laid them on a flat rock. Next, he very carefully removed his cap box. The cap box was really just an old tobacco tin stuffed with cotton around two shinny caps. This job would only require one. Dittman found a large boulder behind which he would be safe from the dynamite blast. It was a little further than Dittman would have liked, but it's always better to be safe and the dynamite might move more rock than expected. Dittman measured out a good length of slow fuse, and cut it with his pocketknife. He pushed the fuse end gently into the base of the cap, and crimped it with his teeth. He sharpened the edge of his blade against his stone workbench, and cut a narrow slit in the brown paper dynamite wrapper. The cap fit snuggly into the slit, and the two sticks of dynamite slid easily into the blast hole. Dittman carefully packed the hole with small pebbles, and then mixed a bit of mud from the dust to seal the hole. He tucked his pack under a loose outcropping near the boulder where he would wait for the blast. Dittman climbed back up to the fuse.

Dittman sat on his rock chewing tobacco. A part of him retained the wild optimism that he had started with fifty years ago, but fifty years of disappointment weighed just as heavily. Dittman thought that if this didn't pan out he would have to get a job somewhere, probably as a janitor or watchman, until he could build up enough stake to try again. He was beginning to feel old. Seventy was old, but he was still in better physical shape that those who gave up their dreams to work in a smelly factory. Finally, he got up and walked over to the fuse. He struck a wooden kitchen match against the rock, and started the fuse. Dittman hurried away toward the protective boulder he had selected.

In his hurry, Dittman made a bad mistake. He set his foot onto a loose rock, and his weight caused the rock to shift. Dittman's ankle twisted, and he fell heavily onto the rocks. Dittman could feel and hear a bone in his hip snap. He slid down ten feet down the hill in excruciating pain. He looked up and could see the fuse was already getting near the blast hole. He eyed the distance and knew it wasn't far enough. Which was closer, the fuse or some place that might shield him from the blast? He hesitated, and the fuse got shorter. He would have to try for concealment, so Dittman began crawling. He was still fifteen feet away from safety when the dynamite exploded.

The sound of the blast echoed off the hard sides of the mesa and the nearby mountainsides, but went unheard by human ears. Expanding gases forced the cliff face apart along thousands of small faults. With a great tearing, the cliff face sheared off and fell, setting off a landslide. Large boulders and small pebbles were sent flying and sliding down over Dittman's tangled body. A large plume of dust and blast debris rose above the mesa, and began to settle back to earth.

Far above, riding a thermal, a raven saw the event and was curious. The raven adjusted a feather and began to spiral down toward the Cliffside. There was something pretty there, something that sparkled. The raven landed and picked up the pretty gold nugget, no larger than a bone in Dittman's little finger. It would make a fine adornment for the raven's penthouse nest five miles away. As the raven sprang back into the air, a lizard scurried from beneath a bush to safety under a rock that still trembled from the blast.