The old prospector wiped his ragged sleeve across his gray and dripping brow. Instead of staunching the flow of sweat, the motion just added a layer of dust that mingled with the salty perspiration and created a tiny rivulet of mud that ran from his leathery wrinkles, around his eyes, along his crooked nose, through his unkempt beard and dribbled over his parched lips into his gasping mouth. Gagging, he spit out the gritty slurry as well as a string of curses. Realizing he was wasting his breath, he stopped mid curse, and sunk to his knees. The temperature in the underground pocket was definitely rising and the air becoming fouler from his frantic, and futile, efforts at digging. He could sense his oxygen deprived mind starting to wander. His breathing became less regular and shallower as his thoughts drifted back over the events of the past few weeks.

He had staked a small, unregistered claim where a clear, ice cold stream had deposited small bits of gold in a sand and gravel shoal before plunging, in a furious white cascade, down into the foothills of the Dragonback mountains. He had pitched camp in the dense and fragrant pine forest at the base of the great falls. He had been very careful about not leaving any trace of his presence that could be seen by competing prospectors or the watchful eyes of the orc tribes that prowled the mountain passes. Each night, he hid the crude branch and vine ladder he used to climb to his claim under a small ledge that the stream had cut into the rock face eons ago. He hadn't even made fires to cook the meager supply of fish he was able to catch in the deep pool just downstream from the falls. He supplemented his diet of raw fish with the colorful, but bitter, wild mushrooms that grew between the gnarled roots of the towering pines. His only visitor, and an unwelcome one at that, had been a gaunt gray wolf that he had surprised when it was digging up his discarded fish bones late one night. He had thrown a stick at the wolf and hit it squarely on the snout. The wolf had glared at him, growled menacingly, and loped off into the velvety darkness.

Over the course of several days, the prospector had panned out several nuggets of gold and stowed them in a leather drawstring pouch, which he carefully secreted in a hollow log near his camp. The stash of gold would have been enough for him to purchase a small cottage and live out his days in comfort. The near starvation diet had dulled the prospector's senses and the hallucinogenic mushrooms he had ingested fueled his greed, making him careless. Believing the shoal contained large deposits of gold ore, the prospector had taken his rude wooden shovel and begun digging. The little flakes of gold that turned up in every shovelful of sand and gravel lured him ever deeper into the ground. As he dug deeper, evening set in and the rough tunnel became darker. He hastily assembled a torch using a green branch he snapped from a nearby pine, a scrap of fabric torn from his sleeve, and some pine pitch. When lit, the torch burned poorly and emitted a cloud of sooty black smoke. Its feeble glow allowed him to inspect his "mine". He noticed that little bits of loose sand and gravel would crumble from the soft walls and settle to the floor. Ruefully, he realized he should stop digging for the night and shore up the walls in the morning. As he was turning around and preparing to leave, a soft yellow gleam on the back wall caught his eye. "Eureka!" he said to himself as he stuck his shovel into the gravel. When the shovel struck the wall it splintered into several pieces. At the same time, it dislodged a chunk of gold the size of the prospector's fist. The prospector bent over to pick up his prize when the sand and gravel walls gave way with a roar and a rush. The cave-in entombed the chunk of gold but spared the prospector and his torch. Disoriented and scared, the prospector began clawing at the walls with nothing but his bare hands and fierce determination. His fingers became raw and bloody from his efforts. The warm, tangy smell of his own blood panicked him and made him redouble his attack on the earth. Nearly exhausted, his eyes stinging with sweat, he paused to wipe his brow and to collect a lungful of air. His thoughts drifted and eventually faded completely.

As if in sympathy, the torch guttered and faded with the prospector. Outside, it was a cold and clear night. A gaunt gray wolf sniffed blood in the air and began sniffing the ground. It lifted its head and let out a haunting howl. It seemed to grin as it started digging into a depression in the soft sand to lay claim to its prize.