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The mouse bared its tiny teeth and sprang. Eakins knocked it aside.

“Now get the hell out of here,” he said. He was beginning to wonder if the rodent was crazy. Did it have rabies, perhaps?

The mouse gathered itself for another charge. Eakins lifted the spade off his shoulders and waited. When the mouse sprang, he met it with a carefully timed blow. Then carefully, regretfully, he battered it to death.

“Can’t have rabid mice running around,” he said.

But the mouse hadn’t seemed rabid; it had just seemed very determined.

Eakins scratched his head. Now what, he wondered, had gotten into that little mouse?

In the camp that evening, Eakins’ story was greeted with hoots of laughter. It was just like Eakins to be attacked by a mouse. Several men suggested that he go armed in case the mouse’s family wanted revenge. Eakins just smiled sheepishly.

Two days later, Sorensen and Al Cable were finishing up a morning’s hard work at Site 4, two miles from the camp. The metals detector had shown marked activity at this spot. They were seven feet down and nothing had been produced yet except a high mound of yellow-brown earth.