McTeague, “following a blind and unreasoned instinct” (385), finds his way back to the Big Dipper Mine he worked in before becoming a dentist. He is quickly given a job. He is “pleased beyond words” (387) to return to mining life, which he resumes “exactly where he had left it the day when his mother had sent him away with the travelling dentist” (385). The “enormous power” of the mountain seems to reflect “his own nature, huge, strong, brutal in its simplicity” (387).

One night McTeague awakens, startled by something he cannot define. He searches but finds nothing. He is wary from that point forward, always expecting danger. Finally, a “strange sixth sense” and “animal cunning” (390) inspire him to collect his bag and his canary and leave. Two days later the police arrive from San Francisco to arrest him for Trina’s murder.

McTeague walks over the mountains and arrives in Reno, Nevada, with plans to go to Mexico. He boards a freight train and follows it down through the “desolate” landscape of Western Nevada back into California. He ends up in the one-road town of Keeler, California.

McTeague meets a man named Cribbens who invites him to travel through the Panamint Valley toward Gold Gulch, where he intends to prospect for gold.