His hands trembling, he waded into cold clear water of the eddy. He dug out a shovelful of gravel and sand, water streaming from the blade, and he emptied it into his gold pan. He squatted at the stream's edge. He examined and discarded the stream pebbles in his pan. He filled the pan with water. He swirled the cloudy mix, washing loose sand and silt over the lip of the pan.

At last, he discharged everything but the residue, a small handful of mud. He fanned it across the pan's bottom, which measured about 10 inches in diameter. Nothing. He repeated the sequence. Again, nothing. He repeated it again. Still nothing. He repeated it still again. This time, in the dark smear in the bottom of his pan, he saw it: a yellow speck, not much larger than a flake of dandruff. It twinkled merrily in a ray of sunlight. He tried to not let himself get too excited - it might not be worth much - but he knew that he had found gold.

Early the following morning, he rushed into the mining camp. He filed his claim, which encompassed both the quartz outcrop and the placer, with a local merchant who also served as the district recorder. In preparing the claim, the recorder wrote down our prospector's name, the site location and the date on a piece of paper.

Our prospector, unable to write, prevailed on the recorder, as a favor, to prepare a notice, signifying exclusive legal right to the claim.

He hurried back to his site to post the notice, which seemed to ratify the promises he had made to his wife.

The Catwalk Trail, near Glenwood, winds through the narrow Whitewater Canyon, following a pipeline that once delivered water to a mill at the old gold and silver mining community of Graham during the late 1800s and early 1900s.	Catwalk Trail	(top) Ruins of a cabin in the old mining community of White Oak, NM (bottom) Remnants of a miner's cabin, near Pinos Altos, giving a suggestion of the hardship of the Argonaut's life.

The Hard Work of Mining a Claim

He fell to work at once, shoveling the placer gravel and sand into his gold pan, picking the occasional gold flecks and, rarely, a small nugget from the residue, stashing them in a small leather pouch. Within days, other prospectors appeared both upstream and downstream, filing their own claims, recalling their own dreams and promises. With the approaching winter - when rains and even traces of snow might fall, daytime temperatures would cool and nighttime temperatures could turn freezing - our prospector took time to build a small lean-to cabin with boards he had scavenged from the mining camp. Otherwise, he mined his claim compulsively, from first light to twilight, with a sense that fortune might lie at his fingertips.

He worked perhaps 40 or 50 pans full of the placer material on an average day.

At nights, he sometimes visited with fellow miners, who gathered around campfires or in the larger cabins. They smoked their pipes, played cards, drank a little whiskey. They talked about big strikes that prospectors had found in neighboring foothills. They talked about their day's finds, which seldom seemed to be worth the effort they had spent; new arrivals, who had come too late to find decent claims; a new saloon, which had good but expensive whiskey; the new girls, some of them known to veteran miners from previous camps; a new gambler, who, some said, cheated at the gaming tables; a thief, who got caught, tried and hung in a nearby camp; and the mercantile store, where the owner charged extravagant prices.

Sometimes, they remembered home - their wives, their children, their dreams - and how they hoped that they could go back, buy land, build a house and educate their children. Sometimes, too, they spoke of prospects in other lands, for instance, the Rocky Mountains, which surely must hold fortunes in gold. They even talked about mining desert arroyos, maybe in New Mexico, where gold-bearing placers must have been deposited by streams that dried up many years ago. "All you've got to do is find it," they said. Maybe the Rockies or the desert might hold the most promise for the future. Prospectors had already overrun the California mining region.

As winter gave way to spring and summer came - the season when our prospector had hoped to return home with some real money in his pocket - he had made barely enough to feed himself and his horse and burro. He had neared the bottom of his placer, however, and they said it is at the bottom where you usually find the most gold because its density caused it to filter down through the sand and gravel to the rock floor.

A prospector working near the bottom of a placer just downstream had found a nugget as big as a kernel of corn in his pan. Another, just upstream, found a sliver of gold in the bedrock in his claim. They said a man from a big mining company had come around asking about buying some claims.

They said claim jumpers now hung around, looking for unguarded or neglected sites like vultures searching for carcasses. Our prospector made sure to wear his .44 Colt Percussion Revolver, his cherished hold on security, on a regular basis. With hopes rising, he intended to protect his claim fully.

As the days wore on and he stripped the bottom of his placer, he began to find slightly more gold flecks and nuggets in his pan, just like other prospectors had said. He cached it in his leather pouch, always attached to a rawhide thong that he hung around his neck, inside his shirt.

As a second winter passed, a second spring, and a second summer, he knew that his wife, back in San Antonio with the children and her parents, worried and fretted about him. He knew that she would have told their friends that when he returned home, with some real money in his pocket, they would buy some land, build a house, educate their children. Having exhausted his placer, he turned now to the quartz outcrop, driving his pick, day after day, into the rock surface. He hammered the stone fragments into rubble, which he panned just as he did the placer gravel and sand. He teased out more flecks and small nuggets of gold, stashing them in his leather pouch.

By the beginning of fall, a full year after he had filed for his claim and more than a year after he expected to be home, he had accumulated about eight or ten ounces of gold.

He had grown weary from the brutal and relentless work. He yearned for his family and home. He knew that he could not take time to go back for a visit because he might forfeit his claim if he left it unworked for more than 10 consecutive days.

Then, one day, a man who represented a big mining company came around buying claims. The company had the capital and machinery to undertake big-scale operations. The man offered our prospector $2500 - more money than he'd ever seen in his life - for the rights to his site.

Moving On

A few nights later, our prospector went over to the saloon, with some real money in his pocket, to have a little whiskey just to celebrate. Early the next morning, he planned to start for home and his family and his dreams. He wondered whether his wife and children would recognize him with a full black beard - the trademark of the prospector.

He talked to other miners who had sold their claims to the man from the mining company, drinking a little whiskey just to celebrate. He knew that a brotherhood born of shared hardships and dreams was fading from his life. He realized that he would miss campfires and cards and yarns and local gossip. When he left the saloon, he could feel the earth swaying beneath his feet.

Our prospector woke up the next morning, lying in the dirt at the door of his lean-to cabin. He felt a pounding ache in the back of his head, as if he had been kicked by a mule. He could feel the blood crusted in his hair, his beard and his shirt collar. He felt for the money he had had in his pocket. Gone.

He reached for his treasured .44 Colt Percussion Revolver. Gone. He felt for the few ounces of gold in the leather pouch at his neck. Still there. Thank God.

Through the fog of the pain and a numbing hangover, he looked mournfully at the quartz outcrop and the stream eddy that had been his claim. Remembering his promises, he knew that he couldn't go home to his wife and children without some real money in his pocket. He wondered idly if she still prayed for him.

He took stock. He had some gold he could sell for a little money. He still had his horse and saddle and his burro. He still had his camp gear, his musket, his Bowie knife and a few clothes. He still had his shovel and pick and gold pan.

Maybe he would try the Rocky Mountains next. Maybe New Mexico's desert placers. He knew that any man willing to work hard could get rich. That's what everybody said, and he still had his dreams.

From the Author ~

In preparing this composite sketch of an Argonaut, I have drawn most heavily from The Miners (from the Time-Life series on the Old West) by Robert Wallace, Gold and Silver in the West by T. H. Watkins and Gold Rushes and Mining Camps of the Early American West by Vardis Fisher and Opal Laurel Holmes.

Those three books paint a rich story of the prospectors and miners of the Old West.

(right)A White Oak saloon, where the Argonauts would gather to have a little whiskey just to celebrate a little luck now and then.