"There's gold in them there hills," said the boy, in all seriousness. I looked to where he was pointing, at some scrubby sagebrush and limestone and dirt. A tiny waterfall shot muddy water toward us and I guessed that he intended to pan for gold in the stream underneath.

The stream looked like something out of an old Hollywood movie. All it needed to complete the look was a few crusty fourty-niners hunched over it with pans in hand. I scrubbed at my sweat-slicked hair and squinted against the bright noonday sun. "Yeah, sure there is kid."

We found some old pans in the sand and began skimming from the bottom of the stream. What did I expect? Some fool's gold might've been exciting but after a few hours of nothing, we gave up. He said, "The gold is buried. I heard of a map."

"You mean this one?" I said, pulling a creased tourist map from my back pocket. "That's what they give everyone who comes out here." The boy seemed defeated for a moment before sticking his chin out. "No. The other map. The one Dad talked about, in grandpa's attic."

Gold fever began to hit me. Was it the panning, or the assured look on the boy's face? I wanted to see the map. Sure, it was probably a game to him-- messing with the head of a tourist. But I felt high at the prospect of finding gold.

Determination took hold of me. Whatever gold existed in this landscape would be mine. "Where's this map?" The boy made no reply, only concentrated his face and walked west from the stream. Had he ever seen the map? Was it even real? I followed him into the afternoon sun.

We walked for while over sandy ridges until we came across a cluster of dilapidated buildings dropped into the middle of nowhere. I held my breath. An honest-to-God ghost town. No touristy set with made-up actors, but the actual skeleton of long-dead boom town. But why?

"No ghosts?" I asked, kidding him. "Everybody moved out of town when they closed the microchip factory," said the boy. "My grandpa's house is right over there and I hid the map up in the rafters one summer." Sure enough, a vintage treasure map was soon in our grasp.

The map seemed too real to be real. Its yellowed pages, faded inks, and bloodstains—oh is that what it is? The creases, wrinkles, bullet holes seemed contrived. I turned it in my fingers, felt its crackle. Hollywood did this kind of thing on a daily basis, didn't they?