It was better stuff than you're going to see in 90 percent of college-town secondhand stores, but Brit was hardly impressed; in fact, he was growing increasingly annoyed over our inability to make a major score. He likes to describe his occupation as equal parts Antiques Roadshow and The Crocodile Hunter, but I was beginning to see traces of the Tasmanian Devil creeping into the mix. I'd been marking my notebook every time we went into a building (I registered more than 40 marks the first day), but now Brit was flying through structures with such rapidity that I hardly had time to pull it out. Rather than walking around the perimeter of a 30-foot-deep chasm in the center of an abandoned mill, Brit went over it by trotting along a partially rotten six-inch beam, his arms flailing out to his sides for balance. Several times I watched him pull himself up through holes in rotten ceilings only to bust through in a shower of pigeon shit and dust. One time, blasting down a dirt road, I looked at his truck's speedometer and saw he was driving three times the posted speed limit while packing his mouth with carrots and bread washed down with a Starbucks Frappuccino.

The numbing speed of our travel was punctuated by a few short moments of crystalline excitement. On our last full day in the field, we ran into a farm kid and his pack of hunting dogs in a wide irrigated valley bordered by rugged, chalk-white mountains. He said it'd be OK to poke around for old clothes in a chain of abandoned farm buildings scattered along the river to the north. Brit pored over most of the buildings, leaving his truck running outside and wielding his flashlight in a way that reminded me of an FBI agent conducting a drug raid. Instead of yelling "Police!" he constantly shouted "Snakes!" in an effort to scare off rattlers. But there was one old house where Brit slowed his pace and came to a complete stop. When I stepped inside the kitchen door, I could see why. It seemed as though someone had wandered off decades ago, leaving behind evidence of a very simple life. Mice-gnawed food crates were scattered about. A cupboard contained the sopping-wet pages of a novel published in 1918. A woodstove and chimney stood against the wall. In a corner by the door was an old pile of clothing that had rotted into a dirt-like mound. I walked into the main room and was startled when a large raptor dropped down from a rafter and, with a pump of its wings, pushed itself out a window.

"Take a look in that second chimney," Brit said. I noticed a single section of stovepipe poking through the living-room ceiling and attached to nothing but air. I peered upward into the pipe and was surprised I couldn't see sunlight. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I let out a whoop. What I was seeing was unmistakable: Some bygone resident had grown weary of the cold drafts from the chimney and had plugged it with fabric. I climbed up to fetch it, but the roof was so decrepit that the chimney rolled off and landed outside in the tumbleweed. I raced outside and removed from the pipe a cylindrical wad of denim. The top of the ball was bleached white from the daily doses of sun that managed to peek inside. The underside was still blue, like the color on the knees of a pair of 501's when they're finally ready to give out. The denim crackled as it unfurled, and the bleached spot spread in a tie-dye pattern. I checked the label: J.C. PENNEY.

Brit said the pants might be from the 1940s or even earlier, a great find if it weren't for the size. I held them up to my waist, and the hems barely came down to my knees. They were made for a little boy. I was still holding the jeans as we walked back toward the truck, and I couldn't help but wonder about the slow line of circumstances that might have played out inside that house. A couple of times I looked over my shoulder, irrationally expecting to see some poor little kid off in the sagebrush wearing nothing but his underwear. I found myself thinking that this family might've liked that their old clothes were actually worth something in this day and age. I recalled something from just a few days before, when Brit was negotiating with a rancher's wife over a cowboy hat that Brit had found in a tenantless house on her property. He made an offer for the hat, and after accepting the price, the rancher's wife noted that it had belonged to her husband's dead father.

"I shouldn't take the hat then," Brit said. "He might be upset."

The woman silently compared the price of her husband's anger with the price of the hat. Apparently, the hat was worth more.

"Don't worry," she said. "You'll be long gone by the time he gets home."