noon
He had learned that the nearest mining camp was five miles away , and its direction was indicated by a long wooden `` flume , '' or water-way , that alternately appeared and disappeared on the flank of the mountain opposite . The cooler and drier air , the grateful shadow of pine and bay , and the spicy balsamic odors that everywhere greeted him , thrilled and exhilarated him . The trail plunging sometimes into an undisturbed forest , he started the birds before him like a flight of arrows through its dim recesses ; at times he hung breathlessly over the blue depths of canyons where the same forests were repeated a thousand feet below . Towards noon he struck into a rude road -- evidently the thoroughfare of the locality -- and was surprised to find that it , as well as the adjacent soil wherever disturbed , was a deep Indian red . Everywhere , along its sides , powdering the banks and boles of trees with its ruddy stain , in mounds and hillocks of piled dirt on the road , or in liquid paint-like pools , when a trickling stream had formed a gutter across it , there was always the same deep sanguinary color . Once or twice it became more vivid in contrast with the white teeth of quartz that peeped through it from the hillside or crossed the road in crumbled strata . One of those pieces Clarence picked up with a quickening pulse .