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The Gray Dawn

by Stewart Edward White · English · Gutenberg #9149 · 705,643 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Gray Dawn

Author: Stewart Edward White


        
Release date: October 1, 2005 [eBook #9149]
                Most recently updated: August 10, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9149

Credits: Produced by C. Aldarondo, T. Vergon, J. Fairbanks and Online Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GRAY DAWN ***




Produced by C. Aldarondo, T. Vergon, J. Fairbanks and
Online Distributed Proofreaders









THE GREY DAWN

BY

STEWART EDWARD WHITE


Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty

ILLUSTRATIONS

They moved away, leaving Mrs. Morrell alone, biting her lips and
planning revenges

King listened to him in silence

"Look here, don't try to come that rot. I said, get out--and I mean it!"

"Call all you please," he sneered. "Nobody's going to pay any attention
to your calls at Jake's Place!"

OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR


THE CLAIM JUMPERS THE WESTERNERS THE BLAZED TRAIL ARIZONA NIGHTS BLAZED
TRAIL STORIES THE CABIN CAMP AND TRAIL CONJUROR'S HOUSE THE FOREST THE
SIGN AT SIX THE RULES OF THE GAME

THE RIVERMAN THE SILENT PLACES THE ADVENTURES OF BOBBY ORDE THE
MOUNTAINS THE PASS THE MAGIC FOREST THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS AFRICAN CAMP
FIRES THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY GOLD THE MYSTERY
  (With Samuel Hopkins Adams)


THE GRAY DAWN


PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN TALE

MILTON KEITH: a young lawyer from Baltimore. NAN KEITH: his wife. JOHN
SHERWOOD: a gambler. PATSY SHERWOOD: his wife. ARTHUR MORRELL: an
English adventurer. MIMI MORRELL: his wife or mistress. BEN SANSOME: a
lady-killer, destined to become an "old beau." W. T. COLEMAN, or "old
Vigilante," a leader. DAVID TERRY: a leader on the other side. JAMES
KING OF WILLIAM: a modern Crusader. THE SPIRIT OF SAN FRANCISCO
    AND OTHERS




I


On the veranda of the Bella Union Hotel, San Francisco, a man sat
enjoying his morning pipe. The Bella Union overlooked the Plaza of that
day, a dusty, unkempt, open space, later to be swept and graded and
dignified into Portsmouth Square. The man was at the younger fringe of
middle life. He was dressed neatly and carefully in the fashionable
costume of the time, which was the year of grace 1852. As to
countenance, he was square and solid; as to physique, he was the same;
as to expression, he inclined toward the quietly humorous; in general
he would strike the observer as deliberately, philosophically
competent. A large pair of steelbound spectacles sat halfway down his
nose. Sometimes he read his paper through their lenses; and sometimes,
forgetting, he read over the tops of their bows. The newspaper he held
was an extraordinary document. It consisted of four large pages. The
outside page was filled solidly with short eight or ten line
advertisements; the second page grudgingly vouchsafed a single column
of news items; the third page warmed to a column of editorial and
another of news; all the rest of the space on these and the entire
fourth page was again crowded close with the short advertisements. They
told of the arrival of ships, the consignment of goods, the movements
of real estate, the sales of stock, but mainly of auctions. The man
paid little attention to the scanty news, and none at all to the
editorials. His name was John Sherwood, and he was a powerful and
respected public gambler.

The approach across the Plaza of a group of men caused him to lay aside
his paper, and with it his spectacles. The doffing of the latter
strangely changed his whole expression. The philosophical middle-aged
quietude fell from him. He became younger, keener, more alert. It was
as though he had removed a disguise.

The group approaching were all young men, and all dressed in the height
of fashion. At that rather picturesque time this implied the
flat-brimmed beaver hat; the long swallowtail, or skirted coat; the
tight "pantaloons"; varicoloured, splendid, low-cut waistcoats of
satin, of velvet, or of brocade; high wing collars; varnished boots;
many sparkling, studs and cravat pins; rather longish hair; and
whiskers cut close to the cheek or curling luxuriantly under the chin.
They were prosperous, well-fed, arrogant-looking youths, carrying their
crests high, the light of questing recklessness in their eyes, ready to
laugh, drink, or fight with anybody. At sight of Sherwood they waved
friendly hands, and canes, and veered in his direction.

"Yo're just the man we are looking for!" cried a tall, dark, graceful
young fellow, "We are all 'specially needful of wisdom. The drinks are
on some one, and we cain't decide who."

John Sherwood, his keen eyes twinkling, set his chair down on four legs.

"State your case, Cal," he said.

Cal waved a graceful hand at a stout, burly, red-faced man whose thick
blunt fingers, square blue jowl, and tilted cigar gave the flavour of
the professional politician. "John Webb, here-excuse _me_, Sheriff John
Webb-presumin' on the fact that he has been to the mines, and that he
came here in '49, arrogates to himself the exclusive lyin' privileges,
of this assemblage."

"Pretty large order," commented Sherwood.

"_Pre_cisely," agreed Cal, "and that's why the drinks are on him!"

But Sheriff Webb, who had been chuckling cavernously inside his bulky
frame, spoke up in a harsh and husky voice: "I told them an innocent
experience of mine, and they try to hold me up for drinks. I don't
object to giving them a reasonable amount of drinks--what _I_ call
reasonable," he added hastily, "but I object to being held up."

"He says he used to cook," put in a small, alert, nervous, rather
flashily dressed individual named Rowlee, editor of the _Bugle_.

"I did!" stoutly asseverated Webb.

"And that he baked a loaf of bread so hard nobody could eat it."

"Sounds perfectly reasonable," said Sherwood.

"And that nobody could _break_ it," Rowlee went on.

"I have no difficulty in believing that," said Sherwood judicially.
"Your case is mighty weak yet, Cal."

"But he claims it was so hard that they used it for a grindstone."

"I did not!" disclaimed Webb indignantly.

An accusing groan met this statement.

"I tell you I didn't say anything of the kind," roared Webb, his bull
voice overtopping them all.

"Well, what did you say, then?" challenged Calhoun Bennett.

"I said we tried to use her as a grindstone," said Webb, "but it didn't
work."

"Weak case, boys; weak case," said Sherwood.

The little group, their eyes wide, their nostrils distended, waited
accusingly for Webb to proceed. After an interval, the sheriff, staring
critically at the lighted end of his cigar, went on in a drawling voice:

"Yes, we, couldn't get a hole through her to hang her axle on. We
blunted all our drills. Every Sunday we'd try a new scheme. Finally we
laid her flat under a tree and rigged a lightnin' rod down to the
centre of her. No use. She tore that lightning all to pieces."

He looked up at them with a limpid, innocent eye, to catch John
Sherwood gazing at him accusingly.

"John Webb," said he "you forget that I came out here in, '48. On your
honour, do you expect _me_ to believe that yarn?"

"Well," said Webb, gazing again at his cigar end, "no--really I don't.
The fact is," he went on with a perfectly solemn air of confidence,
"the fact is, I've lived out here so long and told so many damn lies
that now without some help I don't know when to believe myself."

"Do we get that drink?" insisted Calhoun Bennett.

"Oh, Lord, yes, you always get a drink."

"Well, come on and _get_ it then--you, too, of course, Mr. Sherwood."

The gambler arose, and began leisurely to fold his paper and to put
away his spectacles.

"I see you got Mex Ryan off, Cal," he observed. "You either had
extraordinary luck, or you're a mighty fine lawyer. Looked like a clear
case to me. He just naturally went in and beat Rucker half to death in
his own store. How did you do it?"

"I assure yo' it was no sinecure," laughed the tall, dark youth. "I
earned my fee."

"Yes," grumbled Webb, "but he got six months--and I got to take care of
him. Cluttering up my jail with dirty beasts like Mex Ryan! Could just
as easy have turned him loose!"

"That would have been a little too much!" smiled Bennett. "It was
takin' some risk to let him off as easy as we did. It isn't so long
since the Vigilantes."

"Oh, hell, we can handle that sort of trash now," snorted Webb.

"Who was backing Mex, anyway?" asked Rowlee curiously.

"Better ask who had it in for Rucker," suggested the fourth member of
the group, a man who had not heretofore spoken. This was Dick
Blatchford, a round-faced, rather corpulent, rather silent though
jovial-looking individual, with a calculating and humorous eye. He was
magnificently apparelled, but rather untidy.

"Well, I do ask it," said Rowlee.

But to this he got no response.

"Come on, ain't you got that valuable paper folded up yet?" rumbled
Webb to Sherwood.

They all turned down the high-pillared veranda, toward the bar, talking
idly and facetiously of last night's wine and this morning's head. A
door opened at their very elbow, and in it a woman appeared.




II


She was a slender woman, of medium height, with a small, well-poised
head, on which the hair lay smooth and glossy. Her age was somewhere
between thirty and thirty-five years. A stranger would have been first
of all impressed by the imperious carriage of her head and shoulders,
the repose of her attitude. Become a friend or a longer acquaintance,
he would have noticed more particularly her wide low brow, her steady
gray eyes and her grave but humorous lips. But inevitably he would have
gone back at last to her more general impression. Ben Sansome, the only
man in town who did nothing, made society and dress a profession and
the judgment of women a religion, had long since summed her up: "She
carries her head charmingly."

This poised, wise serenity of carriage was well set off by the costume
of the early fifties--a low collar, above which her neck rose like a
flower stem; flowing sleeves; full skirts with many silken petticoats
that whispered and rustled; low sandalled shoes, their ties crossed and
recrossed around white slender ankles. A cameo locket, hung on a heavy
gold chain, rose and fell with her breast; a cameo brooch pinned
together the folds of her bodice; massive and wide bracelets of gold
clasped her wrists and vastly set off her rounded, slender forearms.

She stood quite motionless in the doorway, nodding with a little smile
in response to the men's sweeping salutes.

"You will excuse me gentlemen, I am sure," said Sherwood formally, and
instantly turned aside.

The woman in the doorway thereupon preceded him down a narrow, bare,
unlighted hallway, opened another door, and entered a room. Sherwood
followed, closing the door after him.

"Want something, Patsy?" he inquired.

The room was obviously one of the best of the Bella Union. That is to
say, it was fairly large, the morning sun streamed in through its two
windows, and it contained a small iron stove. In all other respects it
differed quite from any other hotel room in the San Francisco of that
time. A heavy carpet covered the floor, the upholstery was of leather
or tapestry, wall paper adorned the walls, a large table supported a
bronze lamp and numerous books and papers, a canary, in a brass cage,
hung in the sunshine of one of the windows, flitted from perch to
perch, occasionally uttering a few liquid notes under its breath.

"Just a little change, Jack, if you have some with you," said the
woman. Her speaking voice was rich and low.

Sherwood thrust a forefinger into his waistcoat pocket, and produced
one of the hexagonal slugs of gold current at that time.

"Oh, not so much!" she protested.

"All I've got. What are you up to to-day, Patsy?"

"I thought of going down to Yet Lee's--unless there is something better
to do."

"Doesn't sound inspiring. Did you go to that fair or bazaar thing
yesterday?"

She smiled with her lips, but her eyes darkened.

"Yes, I went. It was not altogether enjoyable. I doubt if I'll try that
sort of thing again."

Sherwood's eye suddenly became cold and dangerous.

"If they didn't treat you right--"

She smiled, genuinely this time, at his sudden truculence.

"They didn't mob me," she rejoined equably, "and, anyway, I suppose it
is to be expected."

"It's that cat of Morrell's," he surmised.

"Oh, she--and others. I ought not to have spoken of it, Jack. It's
really beneath the contempt of sensible people."

"I'll get after Morrell, if he doesn't make that woman behave," said
Sherwood, without attention to her last speech.

She smiled at him again, entirely calm and reasonable.

"And what good would it do to get after Morrell?" she asked. "Mrs.
Morrell only stands for what most of them feel. I don't care, anyway. I
get along splendidly without them." She sauntered over to the window,
where she began idly to poke one finger at the canary.

"For the life of me, Patsy," confessed Sherwood, "I can't see that
they're an inspiring lot, anyway. From what little I've seen of them,
they haven't more than an idea apiece. They'd bore me to death in a
week."

"I know that. They'd bore me, too. Don't talk about them. When do they
expect the _Panama_--do you know?"

But with masculine persistence he refused to abandon the topic.

"I must confess I don't see the point," he insisted. "You've got more
brains than the whole lot of them together, you've got more sense,
you're a lot better looking"--he surveyed her, standing in the full
light by the canary's cage, her little glossy head thrown back, her
pink lips pouted teasingly at the charmed and agitated bird, her fine
clear features profiled in the gold of the sunshine--"and you're a
thoroughbred, egad, which most of them are not."

"Oh, thank you, kind sir." She threw him a humourous glance. "But of
course that is not the point."

"Oh, isn't it? Well, perhaps you'll tell me the point."

She left the canary and came to face him.

"I'm not respectable," she said.

At the word he exploded.

"Respectable? What are you talking about? You talk as though--as though
we weren't married, egad!"

"Well, Jack," she replied, a faint mocking smile curving the corners of
her mouth, "when it comes to that, we _did_ elope, you'll have to
acknowledge. And we weren't married for quite a long time afterward."

"We got married as soon as we could, didn't we?" he cried indignantly.
"Was it our fault that we didn't get married sooner? And what
difference did it make, anyway?"

"Now don't get all worked up," she chided. "I'm just telling you why,
in the eyes of some of these people, I'm not 'respectable.' You asked
me, you know."

"Go on," he conceded to this last.

"Well, we ran away and weren't married. That's item one. Then perhaps
you've forgotten that I sat on lookout for some of your games in the
early days in the mining camps?"

"Forgotten?" said Sherwood, the light of reminiscence springing to his
eyes.

The same light had come into hers.

"Will you _ever_ forget," she murmured, "the camps by the summer
streams, the log towns, the lights, the smoke, the freedom--the
comradeship--"

"Homesick for the old rough days?" he teased.

"Kind of," she confessed. "But it wasn't 'respectable'--a--well, a
_fairly_ good-looking woman in a miner's saloon."

He flared again.

"Do you mean to tell me they dare say--"

"They dare say anything--behind our backs," she said, with cool
contempt. "It's all drivelling nonsense. I care nothing about it. But
you asked me. Don't bother your head about it. Have you anything to
suggest doing this morning, instead of Yet Lee's?" She turned away from
him toward the door leading into another room. "I'll get my hat," she
said over her shoulder.

"Look here, Patsy," said Sherwood, rather grimly, "if you want to get
in with that lot, you shall."

She stopped at this, and turned square around.

"If I do--when I do--I will," she replied. "But, John Sherwood, you
mustn't interfere--never in the world! Promise!" She stood there,
almost menacing in her insistence, evidently resolved to nip this
particularly masculine resolution in the bud.

"Egad, Patsy," cried Sherwood, "you are certainly a raving beauty!"

He covered the ground between them in two strides, and crushed her in
his arms. She threw her head back for his kiss.

A knock sounded, and almost immediately a very black, very
bullet-headed young negro thrust his head in at the door.

"Sam," said Sherwood deliberately, "some day I'm going to kill you!"

"Yes, sah! yes, sah!" agreed Sam heartily.

"Well, what the devil do you want?"

"Th' _Panama_ done been, signalled; yes, sah!" said the negro, but
without following his head through the door.

"Well, what the devil do you suppose I care, you black limb?" roared
Sherwood, "and what do you mean coming in here before you're told?"

"Yes, sah! yes, sah, dat's right," ducked Sam, "Shell I awdah the team,
sah?"

"I suppose we might as well go see her docked. Would you like it?" he
asked his wife.

"I'd love it."

"Then get the team. And some day I'm going to kill you."




III


Mrs. Sherwood prepared herself first of all by powdering her nose. This
simple operation, could it have been seen by the "respectable" members
of the community, would in itself have branded her as "fast," In those
days cosmetics of any sort were by most considered inventions of the
devil. It took extraordinary firmness of character even to protect
one's self against sunburn by anything more artificial than the shadow
of a hat or a parasol. Then she assumed a fascinating little round hat
that fitted well down over her small head. This, innocent of pins, was
held on by an elastic at the back. A ribbon, hanging down directly in
front, could be utilized to steady it in a breeze.

"All ready," she announced, picking up a tiny parasol, about big enough
for a modern doll. "You may carry my mantle."

Near the foot of the veranda steps waited Sam at the heads of a pair of
beautiful, slim, satiny horses. Their bay coats had been groomed until
they rippled and sparkled with every movement of the muscles beneath.
Wide red-lined nostrils softly expanded and contracted with a
restrained eagerness; and soft eyes rolled in the direction of the
Sherwoods--keen, lithe, nervous, high-strung creatures, gently stamping
little hoofs, impatiently tossing dainty heads, but nevertheless making
no movement that would stir the vehicle that stood "cramped" at the
steps. Their harness carried no blinders; their tails, undocked, swept
the ground; but their heads were pulled into the air by the old stupid
overhead check reins until their noses pointed almost straight ahead.
It gave them rather a haughty air.

Sherwood stepped in first, took the reins in one hand, and offered his
other hand to his wife. Sam instantly left the horses' heads to hold a
wicker contrivance against the arc of the wheels. This was to protect
skirts from dusty tires. Mrs. Sherwood settled as gracefully to her
place as a butterfly on its flower. Sam snatched away the wicker
guards. Sherwood spoke to the horses. With a purring little snort they
moved smoothly away. The gossamerlike wheels threw the light from their
swift spokes. Sam, half choked by the swirl of dust, gazed after them.
Sherwood, leaning slightly forward against the first eagerness of the
animals, showed a strong, competent, arresting figure, with his beaver
hat, his keen grim face, his snow-white linen, and the blue of his
brass-buttoned-coat. The beautiful horses were stepping as one, a
delight to the eye, making nothing whatever of the frail vehicle at
their heels. But Sam's eye lingered longest on the small stately figure
of his mistress. She sat very straight, her head high, the little
parasol poised against the sun, the other hand clasping the hat ribbon.

"Dem's quality foh sure!" said Sam with conviction.

Sherwood drove rapidly around the edge of the Plaza and, so into
Kearney Street. From here to the water front were by now many fireproof
brick and stone structures, with double doors and iron shatters, like
fortresses. So much had San Francisco learned from her five disastrous
fires. The stone had come from China, the brick also from overseas.
Down side streets one caught glimpses of huge warehouses--already in
this year of 1852 men talked of the open-air auctions of three years
before as of something in history inconceivably remote. The streets,
where formerly mule teams had literally been drowned in mud, now were
covered with planking. This made a fine resounding pavement. Horses'
hoofs went merrily _klop, klop, klop_, and the wheels rumbled a dull
undertone. San Francisco had been very proud of this pavement when it
was new. She was very grateful for it even now, for in the upper part
of town the mud and dust were still something awful. Unfortunately the
planks were beginning to wear out in places; and a city government,
trying to give the least possible for its taxes, had made no repairs.

There were many holes, large or small: jagged, splintered, ugly holes
going down to indeterminate blackness either of depth or mud. Private
philanthropists had fenced or covered these. Private facetiousness had
labelled most of them with signboards. These were rough pictures of
disaster painted from the marking pot, and various screeds--"Head of
Navigation," "No Bottom," "Horse and Dray Lost Here," "Take Soundings,"
"Storage, Inquire Below," "Good Fishing for Teal," and the like.

Among these obstructions Sherwood guided his team skilfully, dodging
not only them, but other vehicles darting or crawling in the same
direction. There were no rules of the road. Omnibuses careered along,
every window rattling loudly; drays creaked and strained, their horses'
hoofs slipping against wet planks; horsemen threaded their way;
nondescript delivery wagons tried to outrattle the omnibuses. The din
was something extraordinary--hoofs drumming, wheels rumbling, oaths and
shouts, and from the sidewalks the blare and bray of brass bands in
front of the various auction shops. Newsboys and bootblacks darted in
all directions, shouting raucously as they do to-day. Cigar boys, an
institution of the time, added to the hubbub. Everybody was going in
the same direction, some sauntering with an air of leisure, some
hurrying as though their fortunes were at stake.

A wild shriek arose, and everybody made room for the steam sand shovel
on its way to dump the sand hills into the bay. It was called the
"steam paddy" to distinguish it from the "hand paddy"--out of Cork or
Dublin. It rumbled by on its track, very much like juggernaut in its
calm indifference as to how many it ran over. Sherwood's horses looked
at it nervously askance; but he spoke to them, and though they trembled
they stood.

Now they debouched on the Central Wharf, and the sound of the hoofs and
the wheels changed its tone. Central Wharf extended a full mile into
the bay. It was lined on either side its narrow roadway by small
shacks, in which were offered fowls, fish, vegetables, candy,
refreshments. Some of them were tiny saloons or gambling houses. But by
far the majority were the cubicles where the Jewish slop sellers
displayed their wares. Men returning from the mines here landed, and
here replenished their wardrobes. Everything was exposed to view
outside, like clothes hung out after a rain.

The narrow way between this long row of shops was crowded almost
dangerously. Magnificent dray horses, with long hair on the fetlocks
above their big heavy hoofs, bridling in conscious pride of
silver-mounted harness and curled or braided manes, rose above the ruck
as their ancestors, the warhorses, must have risen in medieval battle.
The crowd parted before them and closed in behind them. Here and there,
too, a horseman could be seen--with a little cleared space at his
heels. Or a private calash picking its way circumspectly.

From her point of vantage on the elevated seat Mrs. Sherwood could see
over the heads of people. She sat very quietly, her body upright, but
in the poised repose characteristic of her. Many admiring glances were
directed at her. She seemed to be unconscious of them. Nevertheless,
nothing escaped her. She saw, and appreciated and enjoyed, every phase
of that heterogeneous crowd--miners in their exaggeratedly rough
clothes, brocaded or cotton clad Chinese, gorgeous Spaniards or
Chileños, drunken men, sober men, excited men, empty cans or cases
kicking around underfoot, frantic runners for hotels or steamboats
trying to push their way by, newsboys and cigar boys darting about and
miraculously worming their way through impenetrable places. Atop a
portable pair of steps a pale, well-dressed young man was playing
thimble-rig on his knees with a gilt pea. From an upturned keg a
preacher was exhorting. And occasionally, through gaps between the
shacks, she caught glimpses of blue water; or of ships at anchor; or,
more often, of the tall pile drivers whose hammers went steadily up and
down.

Sherwood guided his glossy team and light spidery vehicle with the
greatest delicacy and skill. He was wholly absorbed in his task.
Suddenly up ahead a wild turmoil broke out. People crowded to right and
left, clambering, shouting, screaming. A runaway horse hitched to a
light buggy came careering down the way.

A collision seemed inevitable. Sherwood turned his horses' heads
directly at an open shop front. They hesitated, their small pointed
ears working nervously. Sherwood spoke to them. They moved forward,
quivering, picking their way daintily. Sherwood spoke again. They
stopped. The runaway hurtled by, missing the tail of the buggy by two
feet. A moment later a grand crash marked the end of its career farther
down the line. Again Sherwood spoke to his horses, and exerted the
slightest pressure on the reins. Daintily, slowly, their ears twitching
back and forth, their fine eyes rolling, they backed out of the opening.

Throughout all this exciting little incident the woman had not altered
her pose nor the expression of her face. Her head high, her eye
ruminative, she had looked on it all as one quite detached from
possible consequences. The little parasol did not change its angle.
Only, quite deliberately, she had relinquished the ribbon by which she
held on her hat, and had placed her slender hand steadyingly on the
side of the vehicle.

The bystanders, already leaping down from their places of refuge and
again crowding the narrow way, directed admiring eyes toward the
beautiful, nervous, docile horses, the calm and dominating man, and the
poised, dainty creature at his side. One drunken individual cheered her
personally. At this a faint shell pink appeared in her cheeks, though
she gave no other sign that she had heard. Sherwood glanced down at
her, amused.

But now emerged the Jew slop seller, very voluble. He had darted like a
rat to some mysterious inner recess of his burrow; but now he was out
again filling the air with lamentations, claims, appeals for justice.
Sherwood did not even glance toward him; but in the very act of tooling
his horses into the roadway tossed the man some silver. Immediately,
with shouts and cheers and laughter, the hoodlums nearby began a
scramble.

The end of the long wharf widened to a great square, free of all
buildings but a sort of warehouse near one end. Here a rope divided off
a landing space. Close to the rope the multitude crowded, ready for its
entertainment. Here also stood in stately grandeur the three livery
hacks of which San Francisco boasted. They were magnificent affairs,
the like of which has never elsewhere been seen plying for public hire,
brightly painted, highly varnished, lined with silks, trimmed with
solid silver. The harnesses were heavily mounted with the same metal.
On their boxes sat fashionable creatures, dressed, not in livery, but
throughout in the very latest of the late styles, shod with varnished
leather, gloved with softest kid. Sherwood drove skilfully to the very
edge of the roped space, pushing aside the crowd on foot. They growled
at him savagely. He paid no attention to them, and they gave way. The
buggy came to a stop. The horses, tossing their heads, rolling their
eyes, stamping their little hoofs, nevertheless stood without need of
further attention.

Now the brass bands blared with a sudden overwhelming blast of sound,
the crowd cheered noisily; the runners for the hotels began to bark
like a pack of dogs. With a vast turmoil of paddle wheels, swirling of
white and green waters, bellowing of speaking trumpets, throwing of
handlines and scurrying of deck hands and dock hands, the _Panama_ came
to rest. After considerable delay the gangplank was placed. The
passengers began to disembark, facing the din much as they would have
faced the buffeting of a strong wind. This was the cream of the
entertainment for which the crowd had gathered; for which, indeed, the
Sherwoods had made their excursion. Each individual received his meed
of comment, sometimes audible and by no means always flattering.
Certainly in variety both of character and of circumstance they offered
plenty of material. From wild, half-civilized denizens of Louisiana's
canebrakes, clinging closely to their little bundles and their long
rifles, to the most polished exquisites of fashion they offered all
grades and intermediates. Some of them looked rather bewildered. Some
seemed to know just what to do and where to go. Most dove into the
crowd with the apparent idea of losing their identity as soon as
possible. The three magnificent hacks were filled, and managed, with
much plunging and excitement, to plow a way through the crowd and so
depart. Amusing things happened to which the Sherwoods called each
other's attention. Thus a man, burdened with a single valise, ducked
under the ropes near them. A paper boy happened to be standing near.
The passenger offered the boy a fifty-cent piece.

"Here, boy," said he, "just carry this valise for me."

The paper boy gravely contemplated the fifty cents, dove into his
pocket, and produced another.

"Here, man," said he, handing them both to the traveller, "take this
and carry it yourself."

One by one the omnibuses filled and departed. The stream of passengers
down the gangplank had ceased. The crowd began to thin. Sherwood
gathered his reins to go. Mrs. Sherwood suddenly laid her hand on his
forearm.

"Oh, the poor thing!" she cried, her voice thrilling with compassion.

A young man and a steward were supporting a girl down the gangplank.
Evidently she was very weak and ill. Her face was chalky white, with
dark rings under the eyes, her lips were pale, and she leaned heavily
on the men. Although she could not have heard Mrs. Sherwood's
exclamation of pity, she happened to look up at that instant, revealing
a pair of large, dark, and appealing eyes. Her figure, too, dressed in
a plain travelling dress, strikingly simple but bearing the
unmistakable mark of distinction, was appealing; as were her exquisite,
smooth baby skin and the downward drooping, almost childlike, curves of
her lips. The inequalities of the ribbed gangplank were sufficient to
cause her to stumble.

"She is very weak," commented Mrs. Sherwood.

"She is--or would be--remarkably pretty," added Sherwood. "I wonder
what ails her."

Arrived at the foot of the gangplank the young man removed his hat with
an air of perplexity, and looked about him. He was of the rather
florid, always boyish type; and the removal of his hat had revealed a
mat of close-curling brown hair, like a cap over his well-shaped head.
The normal expression of his face was probably quizzically humorous,
for already the little lines of habitual half laughter were sketched
about his eyes.

"A plunger," said John Sherwood to himself, out of his knowledge of
men; then as the young man glanced directly toward him, disclosing the
colour and expression of his eyes, "a plunger in something," he
amended, revising his first impression.

But now the humorous element was quite in abeyance, and a faint dismay
had taken its place. One arm supporting the drooping girl, he was
looking up and down the wharf. Not a vehicle remained save the heavy
drays already backing up to receive their loads of freight. The dock
hands had dropped and were coiling the line that had separated the
crowd from the landing stage.

With another exclamation the woman in the carriage rose, and before
Sherwood could make a move to assist her, had poised on the rim of the
wheel and leaped lightly to the dock. Like a thistledown she floated to
the little group at the foot of the gangplank. The steward instantly
gave way to her evident intention. She passed her arm around the girl's
waist. The three moved slowly toward the buggy, Mrs. Sherwood, her head
bent charmingly forward, murmuring compassionate, broken, little
phrases, supporting the newcomer's reviving footsteps.

Sherwood, a faint, fond amusement lurking in the depths of his eyes,
quietly cramped the wheels of the buggy.




IV


A half hour later the two men, having deposited the women safely in the
Sherwoods' rooms at the Bella Union, and having been unceremoniously
dismissed by Mrs. Sherwood, strolled together to the veranda. They had
not, until now, had a chance to exchange six words.

The newcomer, who announced himself as Milton Keith from Baltimore,
proved to have a likable and engaging personality. He was bubbling with
interest and enthusiasm; and these qualities, provided they are backed
solidly, are always prepossessing. Sherwood, quietly studying him,
concluded that such was the case. His jaw and mouth were set in firm
lines; his eye, while dancing and mischievous, had depths of capability
and reserves of forcefulness. But Sherwood was, by inclination and by
the necessities of his profession, a close observer of men. Another,
less practised, might have seen here merely an eager, rather talkative,
apparently volatile, very friendly, quite unreserved young man of
twenty-five. Any one, analytical or otherwise, could not have avoided
feeling the attractive force of the youth's personality, the friendly
quality that is nine tenths individual magnetism and one tenth the cast
of mind that initially takes for granted the other man's friendliness.

At the moment Keith was boyishly avid for the sights of the new city.
In these modern days of long journeys, a place so remote as San
Francisco, in the most commonplace of circumstances, gathers to its
reputation something of the fabulous. How much more true then of a city
built from sand dunes in four years; five times swept by fire, yet
rising again and better before its ashes were extinct; the resort of
all the picturesque, unknown races of the earth--the Chinese, the
Chileño, the Mexican, the Spanish, the Islander, the Moor, the
Turk--not to speak of ordinary foreigners from Russia, England, France,
Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the out-of-the-way corners of Europe; the
haunt of the wild and striking individuals of all these races. "Sydney
ducks" from the criminal colonies; "shoulder strikers" direct from the
tough wards of New York; long, lean, fever-haunted crackers from the
Georgia mountains or the Louisiana canebrakes; Pike County desperadoes;
long-haired men from the trapping countries; hard-fisted, sardonic
state of Maine men fresh from their rivers; and Indian fighters from
the Western Reserve; grasping, shrewd commercial Yankees; fire-eating
Southern politicians; lawyers, doctors, merchants, chiefs, and thiefs,
the well-educated and the ignorant, the high-minded and the scalawags,
all dumped down together on a sand hill to work out their destinies; a
city whose precedents, whose morals, whose laws, were made or adapted
on the spot; where might in some form or another--revolver, money,
influence--made its only right; whose history ranged in three years the
gamut of human passion, strife, and development; whose background was
the fabled El Dorado whence the gold in unending floods poured through
its sluices. To the outside world tales of these things had come. They
did not lose in the journey. The vast loom of actual occurrences rose
above the horizon like mirages. Names and events borrowed a
half-legendary quality from distances, as elsewhere from time. Keith
had heard of Coleman, of Terry, of Broderick, Brannan, Gwin, Geary, as
he had heard of the worthies of ancient history; he had visualized the
fabled splendours of San Francisco's great gambling houses, of the
excitements of her fervid, fevered life, as he might have visualized
the magnificences of pagan Rome; he had listened to tales of her street
brawls, her vast projects, the buccaneering raids of her big men, her
Vigilance Committee of the year before, as he would have listened to
the stories of one of Napoleon's veterans. Now, by the simple process
of a voyage that had seemed literally interminable but now was past, he
had landed in the very midst of fable. It was like dying, he told
Sherwood eagerly, like going irretrievably to a new planet. All his old
world now seemed as remote, as insubstantial, as phantomlike, as this
had seemed.

"Even yet I can't believe it's all so," he cried, walking excitedly
back and forth, and waving an extinct cigar. "I've got to see it, touch
it! Why, I know it all in advance. That must be where the Jenny Lind
Theatre stood--before the fire--just opposite? I thought so! And the
bay used to come up to Montgomery Street, only a block down! You see, I
know it all! And when we came in, and I saw all those idle ships lying
at anchor, just as they have lain since their crews deserted them in
'49 to go to the mines--and I know why they haven't been used since,
why they will continue to lie there at anchor until they rot or sink--"

"Do you?" said Sherwood, who was vastly amused and greatly taken by
this fresh enthusiasm.

"Yes, the clipper ships!" Keith swept on. "The first cargoes in this
new market make the money--the fastest clippers--poor old hulks--but
you brought in the argonauts!"

So he ran on, venting his impatience, so plainly divided between his
sense of duty in staying near his wife and his great desire to slip the
leash, that Sherwood smiled to himself. Once again he mentioned Coleman
and the Vigilantes of '51.

"I suppose he's around here? I may see him?"

"Oh, yes," said Sherwood, "you'll see him. But if you would accept a
bit of advice, go slow. You must remember that such a movement makes
enemies, arouses opposition. A great many excellent people--whom you
will know--are a little doubtful about all that."

Keith mentioned other names.

"I know them all. They are among the most influential members of the
bar." He glanced at a large watch. "Just at this hour we might find
them at the Monumental engine house. What do you say?"

"I should like nothing better!" cried Keith.

"Your wife's illness is not likely to require immediate attendance?"
suggested Sherwood inquiringly.

"She's only seasick--horrible voyage--she's always under the weather on
shipboard--three weeks of it from Panama--Nan's as strong as a horse,"
replied Keith, with obvious impatience.

They walked across the Plaza to the Monumental fire engine house, a
square brick structure of two stories, with wide folding doors, and a
bell cupola apart. Keith paused to admire the engine. It was of the
type usual in those days, consisting of a waterbox with inlet and
outlet connections, a pump atop, and parallel pump rails on either
side, by the hand manipulation of which the water was thrown with force
from the box. The vehicle was drawn by means of a long rope, carried on
a drum. This could be slacked off at need to accommodate as high as a
hundred men or as few as would suffice to move her. So far this engine
differed in no manner from those Keith had seen in the East. But this
machine belonged to a volunteer company, one of many and all rivals. It
was gayly coloured. On the sides of its waterbox were scenic paintings
of some little merit. The woodwork was all mahogany. Its brass
ornamentation was heavy and brought to a high state of polish. From a
light rack along its centre dangled two beautifully chased speaking
trumpets, and a row of heavy red-leather helmets. Axes nestled in
sockets. A screaming gilt eagle, with wings outspread, hovered atop.
Alongside the engine stood the hook and ladder truck and the hose cart.
These smaller and less important vehicles were painted in the same
scheme of colour, were equally glittering and polished. Keith commented
on all this admiringly.

"Yes," said Sherwood, "you see, since the big fires, it has become a
good deal a matter of pride. There are eleven volunteer companies, and
they are great rivals in everything, political and social, as well as
in the line of regular business, so to speak. Mighty efficient. You'll
have to join a company, of course; and you better look around a little
before deciding. Each represents something different--some different
element. They are really as much clubs as fire companies."

They mounted to the upper story, where Keith found himself in a long
room, comfortably fitted with chairs, tables, books, and papers. A
double door showed a billiard table in action. Sherwood indicated a
closed door across the hall.

"Card rooms," said he briefly.

The air was blue with smoke and noisy with rather vociferative
conversation and laughter. Several groups of men were gathered in
little knots. A negro in white duck moved here and there carrying a
tray.

Sherwood promptly introduced Keith to many of these men, and he was as
promptly asked to name his drink. Keith caught few of the names, but he
liked the hearty, instant cordiality. Remarking on the beauty and order
of the machines, loud cries arose for "Taylor! Bert Taylor!" After a
moment's delay a short, stocky, very red-faced man, with rather a fussy
manner, came forward.

"Mr. Keith," said a tall, dark youth, with a pronounced Southern
accent, "I want foh to make you acquainted with Mr. Tayloh. Mr. Tayloh
is at once the patron saint of the Monumentals, but to a large extent
its 'angel' as well--I hope you understand the theatrical significance
of that term, suh. He is motheh, fatheh, guardeen, and dry nurse to
every stick, stone, and brick, every piece of wood, brass, or rubbah,
every inch of hose, and every man _and_ Irishman on these premises."
Taylor had turned an embarrassed brick red. "Mr. Keith," went on the
dark youth, explanatorily, "was just sayin' that though he had
inspected carefully many fire equipments, per'fessional and amateur, he
had nevah feasted his eyes on so complete an outfit as that of our
Monumentals."

Keith had not said all this, but possibly he had meant it. The
brick-red, stocky little man was so plainly embarrassed and anxious to
depart that Keith racked his brains for something to say. All he could
remember was the manufacturer's nameplate on the machine downstairs.

"I see you have selected the Hunaman engine, sir," said he. The little
man's eye brightened.

"It may be, sir, that you favour the piano-box type--of the sort made
by Smith or Van Ness?" he inquired politely.

"It is a point on which my opinion is still-suspended," replied Keith
with great gravity.

The little man moved nearer, and his shyness fell from him.

"Oh, but really there is no choice, none whatever!" he cried. "I'm
sure, sir, I can convince you in five minutes. I assure you we have
gone into the subject thoroughly--this Hunaman cost us over five
thousand dollars; and you may be certain we went very thoroughly into
the matter before making the investment----"

He went on talking in his self-effacing, deprecatory, but very earnest
fashion. The other men in the group, Keith felt, were watching with
covert amusement. Occasionally, he thought to catch half-concealed
grins at his predicament. In less than the five minutes the claims of
the piano box were utterly demolished. Followed a dissertation on
methods of fighting fire; and then a history of the Monumental
Company--its members, its officers, and its proud record. "And our
bell--did you know that?--is the bell used by the Vigilantes--" He
broke off suddenly in confusion, his embarrassment descending on him
again. A moment later he sidled away.

"But I found him very interesting!" protested Keith, in answer to
implied apologies.

"Bert is invaluable here; but he's a lunatic on fire apparatus. We
couldn't get along without him, but it's sometimes mighty difficult to
get on _with_ him," said some one.

Keith was making a good impression without consciously trying to do so.
His high spirits of youth and enthusiasm were in his favour; and as yet
he had no interests to come into conflict with those of any one
present. More drinks were ordered and fresh cigars lighted. From
Sherwood they now learned that Keith had but just landed, and intended
to settle as a permanent resident. As one man they uprose.

"And yo' wastin' of yo' time indoors!" mourned the dark Southerner.
"And so much to see!"

Enthusiastically they surrounded him and led him forth. Only a very
old, very small, very decadent village is devoid of what is modernly
called the "booster" spirit. In those early days of slow transportation
and isolated communities, local patriotism was much stronger than it is
now. And something about the air's wine of the Pacific slope has
always, and probably will always, make of every man an earnest
proselyte for whatever patch of soil he calls home. But add to these
general considerations the indubitable facts of harbour, hill, health,
opportunity, activity, and a genuine history, if of only three years,
one can no longer marvel that every man, each in his own way, saw
visions.

In the course of the next few hours Keith got confused and mixed
impressions of many things. The fortresslike warehouses; the plank
roads; the new Jenny Lind Theatre; the steam paddies eating steadily
into the sand hills at the edge of town; the Dramatic Museum; houses
perched on the crumbling edges of hills; houses sunk far below the
level of new streets, with tin cans and ducks floating around them; new
office buildings; places where new office buildings were going to be or
merely ought to be; land that in five years was going to be worth
fabulous sums; unlikely looking spots where historic things had stood
or had happened--all these were pointed out to him. He was called upon
to exercise the eye of faith; to reconstruct; to eliminate the
unfinished, the mean, the sordid; to overlook the inadequate; to build
the city as it was sure to be; and to concern himself with that and
that only. He admired Mount Tamalpais over the way. He was taken up a
high hill--a laborious journey--to gaze on the spot where he would have
been able to see Mount Diabolo, if only Mount Diabolo had been visible.
And every few blocks he was halted and made to shake hands with some
one who was always immediately characterized to him impressively, under
the breath--"Colonel Baker, sir, one of the most divinely endowed men
with the gift of eloquence, sir"; "Mr. Rowlee, sir, editor of one of
our leading journals"; "Judge Caldwell, sir at present one of the
ornaments of our bench"; "Mr. Ben Sansome, sir, a leadin' young man in
our young but vigorous social life"; and so on.

These introductions safely and ceremoniously accomplished, each
newcomer insisted on leading the way to the nearest bar.

"I insist, sir. It is just the hour for my afternoon toddy."

After some murmuring of expostulation, the invitation was invariably
accepted.

There was always a barroom immediately adjacent. Keith was struck by
the number and splendour of these places. Although San Francisco was
only three years removed from the tent stage, and although the
freightage from the centres of civilization was appalling, there was no
lack of luxury. Mahogany bars with brass rails, huge mirrors with gilt
frames, pyramids of delicate crystal, rich hangings, oil paintings of
doubtful merit but indisputable interest, heavy chandeliers of prism
glasses, most elaborate free lunches, and white-clad barkeepers--such
matters were common to all. In addition, certain of the more
pretentious boasted special attractions. Thus, one place supported its
ceiling on crystal pillars; another--and this was crowded--had dashing
young women to serve the drinks, though the mixing was done by men; a
third offered one of the new large musical boxes capable of playing
several very noisy tunes; a fourth had imported a marvellous piece of
mechanism: a piece of machinery run by clockwork, exhibiting the sea in
motion, a ship tossing on its bosom; on shore, a water mill in action,
a train of cars passing over a bridge, a deer chase with hounds,
huntsmen, and game, all in pursuit or flight, and the like. The
barkeepers were marvels of dexterity and of especial knowledge. At
command they would deftly and skilfully mix a great variety of
drinks--cocktails, sangarees, juleps, bounces, swizzles, and many
others. In mixing these drinks it was their especial pride to pass them
at arm's length from one tall glass to another, the fluid describing a
long curve through the air, but spilling never a drop.

In these places Keith pledged in turn each of his new acquaintances,
and was pledged by them. Never, he thought, had he met so jolly, so
interesting, so experienced a lot of men. They had not only lived
history, they had made it. They were so full of high spirits and the
spirit of play. His heart warmed to them mightily; and over and over he
told himself that he had made no mistake in his long voyage to new
fields of endeavour. On the other hand, he, too, made a good
impression. Naturally the numerous drinks had something to do with this
mutual esteem; but also it was a fact that his boyish, laughing,
half-reckless spirit had much in common with the spirit of the times.
Quite accidentally he discovered that the tall, dark Southern youth was
Calhoun Bennett. This then seemed to him a remarkable coincidence.

"Why, I have a letter of introduction to you!" he said.

Again and again he recurred to this point, insisting on telling
everybody how extraordinary the situation was.

"Here I've been talking to him for three hours," he exclaimed, "and
never knew who he was, and all the time I had a letter of introduction
to him!"

This and a warm irresponsible glow of comradeship were the sole
indications of the drinks he had had. Keith possessed a strong head.
Some of the others were not so fortunate. Little Rowlee was frankly
verging on drunkenness.

The afternoon wind was beginning to die, and the wisps of high fog that
had, since two o'clock, been flying before it, now paused and
forgathered to veil the sky. Dusk was falling.

"Look here," suggested Rowlee suddenly; "let's go to Allen's Branch and
have a good dinner, and then drift around to Belle's place and see if
there's any excitement to be had thereabouts."

"Belle--our local Aspasia, sah," breathed a very elaborate, pompous,
elderly Southerner, who had been introduced as Major Marmaduke Miles.

But this suggestion brought to Keith a sudden realization of the
lateness of the hour, the duration of his absence, and the fact that,
not only had he not yet settled his wife in rooms of her own, but had
left her on the hands of strangers. For the first time he noticed that
Sherwood was not of the party.

"When did Sherwood leave?" he cried.

"Oh, a right sma't time ago," said Bennett.

Keith started to his feet.

"I should like to join you," said he, "but it is impossible now."

A chorus of expostulation went up at this.

"But I haven't settled down yet!" persisted Keith. "I don't know even
whether my baggage is at the hotel."

They waived aside his objections; but finding him obdurate, perhaps a
little panicky over the situation, they gave over urging the point.

"But you must join us later in the evening," said they.

The idea grew.

"I tell you what," said Rowlee, with half-drunken gravity; "he's got to
come back. We can't afford to lose him this early. And he can't afford
to lose us. The best life of this glorious commonwealth is as yet a
sealed book to him. It is our sacred duty, gentlemen, to break those
seals. What does he know of our temples of Terpsichore? Our altars to
the gods of chance? Our bowers of the Cyprians?"

He would have gone on at length, but Keith, laughingly protesting,
trying to disengage himself from the detaining hands, broke in with a
promise to return. But little Rowlee was not satisfied.

"I think we should take no chances," he stated. "How would it be to
appoint a committee to 'company him and see that he gets back?"

Keith's head was clear enough to realize with dismay that this
brilliant idea was about to take. But Ben Sansome, seizing the
situation, locked his arm firmly in Keith's.

"I'll see personally that he gets back," said he.




V


"That was mighty good of you; you saved my life!" said Keith to him,
gratefully, as they walked up the street.

"You couldn't have that tribe of wild Indians descending on your wife,"
said Sansome. He had kept pace with, the others, but showed it not at
all. Sansome was a slender, languid, bored, quiet sort of person,
exceedingly well dressed in the height of fashion, speaking with a
slight, well-bred drawl, given to looking rather superciliously from
beneath his fine eyelashes, almost too good looking. He liked, or
pretended he liked, to view life from the discriminating spectator's
standpoint; and remained unstirred by stirring events. He prided
himself on the delicacy of his social tact. In the natural course of
evolution he would probably never marry, and would become in time an
"old beau," haunting ballrooms with reminiscences of old-time belles.

Keith, meeting the open air, began to feel his exhilaration.

"What I need is my head under a pump for about ten seconds," he told
Sansome frankly. "Lord! It was just about time I got away."

Arrived at the hotel, Sansome said good-bye, but Keith would have none
of it.

"No, no!" he cried. "You must come in, now you've come so far! I want
you to meet my wife; she'll be delighted!"

And Sansome, whose celebrated social tact had been slightly obscured by
his potations, finally consented. Truth to tell, it would have been a
little difficult for him to have got away. Poising his light stick and
gloves in his left hand, giving his drooping moustache a last twirl,
and settling his heavy cravat in place, he followed Keith down the
little hall to the Sherwoods' apartments.

At the knock Keith was at once invited to enter. The men threw open the
door. Sansome stared with all his might.

Nan Keith had made the usual miraculous recovery from seasickness once
she felt the solid ground beneath, her. The beautiful baby-textured
skin had come alive with soft colour, her dark, wide, liquid eyes had
brightened. She had assumed a soft, silken, wrapperlike garment with, a
wide sash, borrowed from Mrs. Sherwood; and at the moment was seated in
an enveloping armchair beneath a wide-shaded lamp. The firm, soft lines
of her figure, uncorseted in this negligée, were suggested beneath the
silk. Sansome stopped short, staring, his eyes kindling with, interest.
Here was something not only new but different--a distinct addition.
Sansome, like most dilettantes, was something of a phrase maker, and
prided himself on the apt word. He found it here, to his own
satisfaction, at least.

"Her beauty is positively creamy!" he murmured to himself.

At sight of her Keith crossed directly to her, full of a sudden,
engaging, tender solicitude.

"How are you feeling now, honey?" he inquired. "Quite recovered? All
right now?"

But Nan was inclined to be a little vexed and reproachful. She had been
left alone, with strangers, altogether too long. Keith excused himself
volubly and convincingly--she had been asleep--she was much better off
not being disturbed--that this was true was proven by results--she was
blooming, positively blooming--as fresh as a rose leaf--of course it
was rather an imposition on the Sherwoods, but the baggage hadn't come
up yet, and they were kind people, our sort, the sort for whom the word
obligation did not exist--he, personally, had not intended being gone
so long, but by the rarest of chances he had run across some of the men
to whom, he had introductions, and they had been most kind in making
him acquainted--nothing was more important to a young lawyer than to
"establish connections"--it did not do to overlook a chance.

He urged all this, and more, with all his usual, vital, enthusiastic
force. In spite of herself, she was overborne to a reproachful
forgiveness.

In the meantime Mrs. Sherwood had gone over to where Ben Sansome was
still standing by the door. Sansome did not like Mrs. Sherwood. He
considered that she had no social tact at all. This was mainly--though
he did not analyze it--because she was quite apt to speak the direct
and literal truth to him; because she had a disquieting self-confidence
and competence in place of appropriate, graceful, feminine dependence;
but especially because she had never and would never play up to his
game.

"Are you making a formal afternoon call, Ben?" she asked in her cool,
mocking voice. "Aren't you really a little _de trop?_"

"I did not come of my own volition at this time, I assure you," he
replied a trifle stiffly. The thought that he was suspected of a
blunder in social custom stung him; as, in a rather lazily amused way,
she knew it would.

At this reply she glanced keenly toward Keith, then nodded; slowly.

"I see," she conceded.

Sansome moved to go. But at this Keith's attention was attracted. He
sprang forward, seized Sansome's arm, insisted on introducing him to
Nan, was over-effusive, over-cordial, buoyant. Both Sansome and Mrs.
Sherwood were experienced enough to yield entirely to his mood. They
understood perfectly that at the least opposition Keith was in just the
condition to reveal himself, perhaps, to break over the frail barrier
that separates exhilaration from loss of self-control. They saw also
that Nan had no suspicion of the state of affairs. Indeed, following
the reaction from her long voyage and her illness, she responded and
played up to Keith's high spirits. Neither wanted her to grasp the
situation if it could be avoided: Mrs. Sherwood from genuine good
feeling, Sansome because of the social awkwardness and bad taste.
Besides, he felt that his presence at such a scene would be a very bad
beginning for himself.

"No, you're not going," Keith was insisting; "you don't realize what a
celebration this is! Here we've pulled up all our roots, haven't we,
Nan? and come thousands of miles to a new country, a wonderful country;
and the very first day of our landing you want us to act as though
nothing had happened!"

Nan nodded a vigorous assent to his implied reference to her.

"And what we're going to do is to celebrate," insisted Keith. "You're
all going to dine with us. No, I insist! You're the only friends we
have out here, and you aren't going to desert us the very first day we
need you."

"I wish you would!" cried Nan, sitting forward eagerly.

They tried to expostulate, to get out of it, but without avail. It
seemed easier to promise. Keith rushed out to look for his baggage, to
arrange for rooms, leaving the three together to await his return.




VI


Both Mrs. Sherwood and Sansome applied themselves to relieving whatever
embarrassment Nan might feel over this unusual situation. Sansome was
possessed of great charm and social experience. He could play the game
of light conversation to perfection. By way of bridging the pause in
events, he set himself to describing the society in which the Keiths
would shortly find themselves launched. His remarks were practically a
monologue, interspersed by irrepressible gurgles of laughter from Nan.
Mrs. Sherwood sat quietly by. She did not laugh, but it was evident she
was amused. In this congenial atmosphere Sansome outdid himself.

"They are all afraid of each other," he told her, "because they don't
know anything about each other. Each ex-washerwoman thinks the other
ex-washerwoman must have been at least a duchess at home. It's terribly
funny. If they can get hold of six porcelain statuettes, a half-dozen
antimacassars, some gilt chairs, and a glass bell of wax flowers, they
imagine they're elegantly furnished. And their functions! I give you my
word, I'd as soon attend a reasonably pleasant funeral! Some of them
try to entertain by playing intellectual games--you know, rhyming or
spelling games--seriously!" He went on to describe some of the women,
mentioning no names, however. "You'll recognize them when you meet
them," he assured her. "There's one we'll call the Social Agitator--she
isn't happy unless she is running things. I believe she spent two weeks
once in London--or else she buys her boots there--anyway, when
discussions get lively she squelches them by saying, 'Of course, my
dear, that may be absolutely _au fait_ in New York--but in London--' It
corks them up every time. And 'pon honour, three quarters of the time
she's quite wrong! Then there's the Lady Thug, Square jaw, square
shoulder, sort of bulging out at the top--you know--in décolleté one
cannot help thinking 'one more struggle and she'll be free!'"

"Oh, fie, Mr. Sansome," laughed Nan, half shocked.

Sansome rattled on. The ultimate effect was to convey an impression of
San Francisco society--such as existed at all--as stodgy, stupid,
pretentious, unattractive. Nan was immensely amused, but inclined to
take it all with a grain of salt.

"Mrs. Sherwood doesn't bear you out," she told him, "and she's the only
one I've seen yet. I think we're going to have a pretty good time."

But at this point Keith returned. He was quite sobered from his
temporary exhilaration, but still most cordial and enthusiastic over
his little party, Sansome noted with quiet amusement that his light
curly hair was damp. Evidently he had taken his own prescription as to
the pump.

"Well," he announced, "I have a room--such as it is. Can't say much for
it. The baggage is all here; nothing missing for a wonder. I've spoken
to the manager about dinner for five." He turned to Nan with
brightening interest. "Guess what I saw on the bill of fare! Grizzly
bear steak! Think of that! I ordered some."

Sansome groaned comically.

"What's the matter?" inquired Keith.

"Did you ever try it before? Tough, stringy, unfit for human
consumption."

But Keith was fascinated by the name of the thing.

"There's plenty else," he urged defensively, "and I always try
everything once."

It was agreed that they should all meet again after an hour. Sansome
renewed his promises to be on hand.

The room Keith had engaged was on the second story, and quite a
different sort of affair from that of the Sherwoods'. Indeed it was
little more than a pine box, containing only the bare necessities. One
window looked out on an unkempt backyard, now mercifully hidden by
darkness.

"This is pretty tough," said Keith, "but it is the very best I could
do. And the price is horrible. We'll have to hunt up a living place
about the first thing we do."

"Oh, it's all right," said Nan indifferently. The lassitude of
seasickness had left her, and the excitement of new surroundings was
beginning. She felt gently stirred by the give and take of the light
conversation in the Sherwoods' room; and, although she did not quite
realize it, she was responding to the stimulation of having made a good
impression. Her subconscious self was perfectly aware that in the
silken negligée, under the pink-shaded lamp, her clear soft skin, the
pure lines of her radiant childlike beauty, the shadows of her tumbled
hair, had been very appealing and effective. She moved about a trifle
restlessly, looking at things without seeing them. "I'm glad to see the
brown trunk. Open it, will you, dear? Heavens, what a mirror!" She
surveyed herself in the flawed glass, moving from side to side,
fascinated at the strange distortions.

"I call it positive extortion, charging what they do for a room like
this," grumbled Keith, busy at the trunk. "The Sherwoods must pay a
mint of money for theirs. I wonder what he does!"

Her attention attracted by this subject, she arrested her posing before
the mirror.

"They certainly are quick to take the stranger in," she commented
lightly.

Something in her tone arrested Keith's attention, and he stopped
fussing at his keys. Nan had meant little by the remark. It had
expressed the vague instinctive recoil of the woman brought up in
rather conventional circumstances and in a conservative community from
too sudden intimacy, nothing more. She did not herself understand this.

"Don't you like the Sherwoods?" he instantly demanded, with the
masculine insistence on dissecting every butterfly.

"Why, she's charming!" said Nan, opening her eyes in surprise. "Of
course, I like her immensely!"

"I should think so," grumbled Keith. "They certainly have been mighty
good to us."

But Nan had dropped her negligée about her feet, and was convulsed at
the figure made of her slim young body by the distorted mirror.

"Come here, Milt," she gasped.

She clung to him, gurgling with laughter, pointing one shaking finger
at the monstrosity in the glass.

"Look--look what you married!"

They dressed gayly. His optimism and enthusiasm boiled over again. It
was a shame, his leaving her all that afternoon, he reiterated; but she
had no idea what giant strides he had made. He told her of the city,
and he enumerated some of the acquaintances he had made--Calhoun
Bennett, Bert Taylor, Major Marmaduke Miles, Michael Rowlee, Judge
Caldwell, and others. They had been most cordial to him, most kind;
they had taken him in without delay.

"It's the spirit of the West, Nan," he cried, "hospitable,
unsuspicious, free, eager to welcome! Oh, this is going to be the place
for me; opportunity waits at every corner. They are not tied down by
conventions, by the way somebody else has done things--"

He went on rapidly to detail to her some of the things he had been
told--the contemplated public improvements, the levelling of the sand
hills, the building of a city out of nothing.

"Why, Nan, do you realize that only four years ago this very Plaza had
only six small buildings around it, that there were only three
two-story structures in town, that the population was only about five
hundred--there are thirty-five thousand now, that--" he rattled on,
detailing his recently acquired statistics. Oh, potent influence of the
Western spirit--already, eight hours after his landing on California's
shores, Milton Keith was a "booster."

With an expansion of relief that only a woman could fully appreciate,
Nan unpacked and put on a frock that had nothing whatever to do with
the sea voyage, and which she had not for some time seen. In ordinary
accustomed circumstances she would never have thought of donning so
elaborate a toilette for a hotel dining-room, but she was yielding to
reaction. In her way she was "celebrating," just as was Keith. Her hair
she did low after the fashion of the time, and bound it to her brow by
a bandeau of pearls. The gown itself was pale green and filmy. It lent
her a flowerlike semblance that was very fresh and lovely.

"By Jove, Nan, you certainly have recovered from the sea!" cried Keith,
and insisted on kissing her.

"Look how you've mussed me all up!" chided Nan, but without irritation.

They found the other three waiting for them, and without delay entered
the dining-room. This, as indeed all the lower story, was in marked
contrast of luxury with the bare pine bedrooms upstairs. Long red
velvet curtains, held back by tasselled silken cords, draped the long
windows; fluted columns at regular intervals upheld the ceiling; the
floor was polished and slippery; the tables shone with white and
silver. An obese and tremendous darkey in swallowtail waved a
white-gloved hand at them, turned ponderously, and preceded them down
the aisle with the pomp of a drum major. His dignity was colossal, awe
inspiring, remote. Their progress became a procession, a triumphal
procession, such as few of Caesar's generals had ever known. Arrived at
the predestined table, he stood one side while menials drew out the
chairs. Then he marched tremendously back to the main door, his chin
high, his expression haughty, his backbone rigid. This head waiter was
the feature of the Bella Union Hotel, just as the glass columns were
the feature of the Empire, or the clockwork mechanism of the El Dorado.

The dinner itself went well. Everybody seemed to be friendly and at
ease, but by one of those strange and sudden social transitions it was
rather subdued. This was for various reasons. Nan Keith, after her
brief reaction, found herself again suffering from the lassitude and
fatigue of a long voyage; she needed a night's rest and knew it. Keith
himself was a trifle sleepy as an after affect to the earlier drinking.
Sherwood was naturally reserved and coolly observing; Mrs. Sherwood was
apparently somehow on guard; and Sansome, as always, took his tone from
those about him. The wild spirits of the hour before had taken their
flight. It was, however, a pleasant dinner--without constraint, as
among old friends. After the meal they went to the public parlour, a
splendid but rather dismal place. Sherwood almost immediately excused
himself. After a short and somewhat awkward interval, Nan decided she
would go to bed for her needed rest.

"You won't think me rude, I know." said she.

Keith, whose buoyant temper had been sadly divided between a genuine
wish to do the proper and dutiful thing by his wife and a great desire
to see more of this fascinating city, rose with so evident an alacrity
under restraint that Mrs. Sherwood scarcely, concealed a smile. She
said her adieux at the same time, and left the room, troubling herself
only to the extent of that ancient platitude about "letters to write."




VII


"I think we'll find most of the proper crowd down at the Empire,"
observed Sansome as the two picked their way across the Plaza. "That is
one of the few old-fashioned, respectable gambling places left to us.
The town is not what it used to be in a sporting way. It was certainly
wide open in the good old days!"

The streets at night were ill lighted, except where a blaze of
illumination poured from the bigger saloons. The interims were dark,
and the side streets and alleys stygian. "None too safe, either,"
Sansome understated the case. Many people were abroad, but Keith
noticed that there seemed to be no idlers; every one appeared to be
going somewhere in particular. After a short stroll they entered the
Empire, which, Sansome explained, was the most stylish and frequented
gambling place in town, a sort of evening club for the well-to-do and
powerful. Keith looked over a very large room or hall, at the lower end
of which an alcove made a sort of raised stage with footlights. Here
sat a dozen "nigger minstrels" with banjos strumming, and bawling away
at top pressure. An elaborate rosewood bar ran down the whole length at
one side--an impressive polished bar, perhaps sixty feet long, with a
white-clad, immaculate barkeeper for every ten feet of it. Big mirrors
of French plate reflected the whole room, and on the shelf in front of
them glittered crystal glasses of all shapes and sizes, arranged in
pyramids and cubes. The whole of the main floor was carpeted heavily.
Down the centre were stationed two rows of gambling tables, where
various games could be played--faro, keeno, roulette, stud poker, dice.
Beyond these gambling tables, on the other side of the room from the
bar, were small tables, easy chairs of ample proportions, lounges, and
a fireplace. Everything was most ornate. The ceilings and walls were
ivory white and much gilt. Heavy chandeliers, with the usual glass
prisms and globes, revolved slowly or swayed from side to side. Huge
oil paintings with shaded top and foot-lights occupied all vacant
spaces in the walls. They were "valued" at from ten to thirty thousand
dollars apiece, and that fact was advertised. "Leda and the Swan," "The
Birth of Venus," "The Rape of the Sabines," "Cupid and Psyche" were
some of the classic themes treated as having taken place in a warm
climate. "Susannah and the Elders" and "Salome Dancing" gave the
Biblical flavour. The "Bath of the Harem" finished the collection. No
canvas was of less size than seven by ten feet.

The floor was filled with people. A haze of blue smoke hung in the air.
There was no loud noise except from the minstrel stage at the end. A
low hum of talk, occasionally accented, buzzed continuously. Many of
the people wandering about, leaning against the bar, or integers of the
compact groups around the gambling tables, were dressed in the height
of fashion; but, on the other hand, certainly half were in the roughest
sort of clothes--floppy old slouch hats, worn flannel shirts, top boots
to which dried mud was clinging. These men were as well treated as the
others.

Fascinated, Keith would, have liked to linger, but Sansome threaded his
way toward the farther corner. As Keith passed near one of the close
groups around a gambling table, it parted momentarily, and he looked
into the eyes of the man in charge, cold, passionless, aloof, eyes
neither friendly nor unfriendly. And he saw the pale skin; the weary,
bored, immobile features; the meticulous neat dress; the long, deft
fingers; and caught the withdrawn, deadly, exotic personality of the
professional gambler on duty.

The whole place was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Whether it
was primarily a bar, a gambling resort, or a sort of a public club with
trimmings, he could not have determined. Many of those present, perhaps
a majority, were neither gambling, nor drinking; they seemed not to be
adding to the profits of the place in any way, but either wandered
about or sat in the easy chairs, smoking, reading papers, or attending
to the occasional outbreaks of the minstrels. It was most interesting.

They joined a group in the far corner. A white-clad negro instantly
brought them chairs, and hovered discreetly near. Among those sitting
about Keith recognized several he had met in the afternoon; and to
several more he was introduced. Of these the one who most instantly
impressed him was called Morrell. This was evidently a young
Englishman, a being of a type raised quite abundantly in England, but
more rarely seen in native Americans--the lean-faced, rather
flat-cheeked, high-cheek-boned, aquiline-nosed, florid-complexioned,
silent, clean-built sort that would seem to represent the high-bred,
finely drawn product of a long social evolution. These traits when seen
in the person of a native-born American generally do represent this
fineness; but the English, having been longer at the production of
their race, can often produce the outward semblance without necessarily
the inner reality. Many of us even now do not quite realize that fact;
certainly in 1852 most of us did not. Morrell was dressed in riding
breeches, carried a short bamboo crop, smiled engagingly to exhibit
even, strong, white teeth, and had little to say.

"A beverage seems called for," remarked Judge Caldwell, a gross,
explosive, tobacco-chewing man, with a merry, reckless eye. The order
given, the conversation swung back to the topic that had occupied it
before Keith and Sansome had arrived.

It seemed that an individual there present, Markle by name--a tall,
histrionic, dark man with a tossing mane--conceived himself to have
been insulted by some one whose name Keith did not catch, and had that
very afternoon issued warning that he would "shoot on sight." Some of
the older men were advising him to go slow.

"But, gentlemen," cried Markle heatedly, "none of you would stand such
conduct from anybody! What are we coming to? I'll get that----as sure
as God made little apples."

"That's all right; I don't blame yo'," argued Calhoun. Bennett. "Do not
misunderstand me, suh. I agree with yo', lock, stock, an' barrel. My
point is that yo' must be circumspect. Challenge him, that's the way."

"He isn't worth my challenge, sir, nor the challenge of any decent man.
You know that, sir."

"Well, street shootings have got to be a little, a little----"

He fell silent, and Keith, looked up in surprise to see why. A man was
slowly passing the table. He was a thick, tall, strong man, moving with
a freedom that bespoke smoothly working muscles. His complexion was
florid; and this, in conjunction with a sweeping blue-black moustache,
gave him exactly the appearance of a gambler or bartender. Only as he
passed the table and responded gravely to the formal salutes, Keith
caught a flash of his eye. It was gray, hard as steel, forceful, but so
far from being cold it seemed to glow and change with an inner fire,
The bartender impression was swept into limbo forever.

"That's one good reason why," said Calhoun Bennett, when this man had
gone on.

But Markle overflowed with a torrent of vituperative profanity. His
face was congested and purple with the violence of his emotions. Keith
stared in astonishment at the depth of hatred stirred. He turned for
explanation to the man next him, Judge Girvin, a gentleman of the old
school, weighty, authoritative, a little pompous.

"That is Coleman," Judge Girvin told him. "W.T. Coleman, the leader of
the vigilance movement of last year."

"That's why," repeated Calhoun Bennett, with quiet vindictiveness,
"lawlessness, disrespect foh law and order, mob rule. Since this
strangler business, no man can predict what the lawless element may do!"

This speech was the signal for an outburst against the Vigilance
Committee, so unanimous and hearty that Keith was rather taken aback.
He voiced his bewilderment.

"Why, gentlemen, I am, of course, only in the most distant touch with
these events; but the impression East is certainly very general that
the Vigilantes did rather a good piece of work in clearing the city of
crime."

They turned on him with a savagery that took his breath. Keith,
laughing, held up both hands.

"Don't shoot, don't shoot! I'll come down!" he cried. "I told you I
didn't know anything about it!"

They checked themselves, suddenly ashamed of their heat. Calhoun
Bennett voiced their feeling of apology.

"Yo' must accept our excuses, Mr. Keith, but this is a mattah on which
we feel strongly. Our indignation was naturally not directed against
yo', suh."

But Judge Girvin, ponderous, formal, dignified, was making a
pronouncement.

"Undoubtedly, young sir," he rolled forth at Keith, "undoubtedly a
great many scoundrels were cleared from the city at that time. That no
one would have the temerity to deny. But you, sir, as a lawyer, realize
with us that even pure and equitable justice without due process of law
is against the interests of society as a coherent whole. Infringement
of law, even for a good purpose, invariably brings about ultimate
contempt, for all law. In the absence of regularly constituted
tribunals, as in a primitive society--such as that prior to the
Constitutional Convention of September, 1849--it may become necessary
that informal plebiscites be countenanced. But in the presence of
regularly constituted and appointed tribunals, extra-legal functions
are not to be undertaken by the chance comer. If defects occur in the
administration of the law, the remedy is in the hand of the public. The
voter----" he went on at length, elaborating the legal view. Everybody
listened with respect and approval until he had finished. But then up
spoke Judge Caldwell, the round, shining, perspiring, untidy, jovial,
Silenus-like jurist with the blunt fingers.

"We all agree with you theoretically, Judge," said he. "What these
other fellows object to, I imagine, is that the law has such a hell of
a hang fire to it."

Judge Girvin's eyes flashed, and he tossed back his white mane. "The
due forms of the law are our heritage from the ages!" he thundered
back. "The so-called delays and technicalities are the checks devised
by human experience against the rash judgments and rasher actions by
the volatile element of society! They are the safeguards, the bulwarks
of society! It is better that a hundred guilty men escape than that one
innocent man should suffer!"

The old judge was magnificent, his eyes alight, his nostrils expanded,
his head reared back defiantly, all the great power of his magnetism
and his authority brought to bear. Keith was thrilled. He considered
that the discussion had been lifted to a high moral plane.

By rights Judge Caldwell should have been crushed, but he seemed
undisturbed.

"Well," he remarked comfortably, "on that low average we must have
quite a few innocent men among us after all."

"What do you mean, sir?" demanded Judge Girvin, halted in mid career
and not catching the allusion.

"Surely, Judge, you don't mean to imply that you endorse Coleman and
his gang?" put in Calhoun Bennett courteously but incredulously.

"Endorse them? Certainly not!" disclaimed Caldwell. "I need my job," he
added with a chuckle.

Bennett tossed back his hair, and a faint disgust appeared in his dark
eyes, but he said nothing more. Caldwell lit a cigar with pudgy fingers.

"My advice to you," he said to Markle, "is that if you think you're
going to have to kill this man in self-defence"--he rolled an unabashed
and comical eye at the company--"you be sure to see our old friend,
Sheriff Webb, gets you to jail promptly." He heaved to his feet, "Might
even send him advance word," he suggested, and waddled away toward the
bar.

A dead silence succeeded his departure. None of the younger men
ventured a word. Finally Judge Girvin, with a belated idea of upholding
the honour of the bench, turned to Keith.

"Judge Caldwell's humour is a little trying at times, but he is
essentially sound."

The young Englishman, Morrell, uttered a high cackle.

"Quite right," he observed; "he'll fix it all right for you, Markle."

At the bad taste of what they thought an example of English stupidity
every one sat aghast. Keith managed to cover the situation by ordering
another round of drinks. Morrell seemed quite pleased with himself.

"Got a rise out of the old Johnny, what?" he remarked to Keith aside.

Judge Caldwell returned. The conversation became general. Vast projects
were discussed with the light touch--public works, the purchase of a
theatre for the town hall, the sale by auction of city or state lands,
the extension of wharves, the granting of franchises, and many other
affairs, involving, apparently, millions of money. All these things
were spoken of as from the inside. Keith, sipping his drinks quietly,
sat apart and listened. He felt himself in the current of big affairs.
Occasionally, men sauntered by, paused a moment. Keith noticed that
they greeted his companions with respect and deference. He experienced
a feeling of being at the centre of things. The evening drifted by
pleasantly.

Along toward midnight, John Sherwood, without a hat, stopped long
enough to exchange a few joking remarks, then sauntered on.

"I know him," Keith told Calhoun Bennett. "That's John Sherwood. He's
at our hotel. What does _he_ do?"

"Oh, don't you know who he is?" replied Bennett. "He's the owner of
this place."

"A gambler?" cried Keith, a trifle dashed.

"Biggest in town. But square."

Keith for a moment was a little nonplussed. The sudden intimacy rose up
to confront him. They were kind people, and Mrs. Sherwood was
apparently everything she should be--but a public gambler! Of course he
had no prejudices--but Nan--




VIII


Keith returned to the hotel very late, and somewhat exalted. He was
bubbling over with good stories, interesting information, and ideas; so
he awakened Nan, and sat on the edge of the bed, and proceeded
enthusiastically to tell her all about it. She was very sleepy. Also an
exasperated inhabitant of the next room pounded on the thin partition.
Reluctantly Keith desisted. It took him some time to get to sleep, as
the excitement was seething in his veins.

He came to consciousness after a restless night. The sun was streaming
in at the window. He felt dull and heavy, with a slight headache and a
weariness in all his muscles. Worst of all, Nan, in a ravishing pink
fluffy affair, was bending over him, her eyes dancing with amusement
and mischief.

"And how is my little madcap this morning?" she inquired with mock
solicitude. This stung Keith to some show of energy, and he got up.

The sun was really very bright. A dash of cold water made him feel
better. Enthusiasm began to flow back like a tide. The importance of
the evening before reasserted its claims on his imagination. As he
dressed he told Nan all about it. In the midst of a glowing eulogy of
their prospects, he checked himself with a chuckle.

"Guess what the Sherwoods are," said he.

Nan, who had been half listening up to this time, gave him her whole
attention.

"A gambler! A common gambler!" she repeated after him, a little
dismayed.

"I felt the same way for a minute or so," he answered her tone
cheerfully. "But after all I remembered--you must remember--that
society here is very mixed. And anyway, Sherwood is no 'common
gambler'; I should say he was a most _un_common gambler!" He chuckled
at his little joke. "All sorts of people are received here. We've got
to get used to that. And certainly no one could hope anywhere to find
nicer--more presentable--people."

She nodded, but with a reservation.

"Surely nowhere would you find kinder people," went on Keith. "See how
they took us in!"

"Look out they don't take you in, Milton," she interjected suddenly.

Keith, brought up short, sobered at this.

"That is unjust, Nan," he said gravely.

She said nothing, but showed no signs of having been convinced. After
her first need had passed, Nan Keith's natural reserve had asserted
itself. This was the result of heredity and training, as part of
herself, something she could not help. Its tendency was always to draw
back from too great or too sudden intimacies. There was nothing
snobbish in this; it was a sort of instinct, a natural reaction. She
liked Mrs. Sherwood, admired her slow, complete poise, approved her air
of breeding and the things by which she had surrounded herself. The
older woman's kindness had struck in her a deep chord of appreciation.
But somehow circumstances had hurried her too much. Her defensive
antagonism, not to Mrs. Sherwood as a person, but to sudden intimacy as
such, had been aroused. It had had, in her own mind, no excuse. She
knew she ought to be grateful and cordial; she felt that she was not
quite ready. The fact that the Sherwoods had proved to be "common
gamblers" gave just the little excuse her conscience needed to draw
back a trifle. This, it should be added, was also quite instinctive,
not at all a formulated thought.

She said nothing for some time; then remarked mysteriously:

"Perhaps that's why they go to meet boats."

Keith, who was miles beyond the Sherwoods by now, looked bewildered.

Keith had letters of business introduction to Palmer, Cook & Co., a
banking firm powerful and respected at the time, but destined to become
involved in scandal. The most pressing need, both he and Nan had
determined, was a house of their own; the hotel was at once
uncomfortable and expensive. Accordingly a callow, chipper,
self-confident, blond little clerk was assigned to show them about. He
had arrived from the East only six months ago; but this was six months
earlier than the Keiths, so he put on all the airs of an old-timer. In
a two-seated calash, furnished by the bankers, they drove to the
westerly part of the town. The plank streets soon ran out into sand or
rutty earth roads. These bored their way relentlessly between sand
hills in the process of removal. Steam paddies coughed and clanked in
all directions. Many houses had, by these operations, been left perched
high and dry far above the grade of the new streets. Often the sand was
crumbling away from beneath their outer corners. All sorts of
nondescript ramshackle and temporary stairs had been improvised to get
their inhabitants in or out. The latter seemed to be clinging to their
tenements as long as possible.

"They often cave in," explained the clerk, "and the whole kit and
kaboodle comes sailing down into the street. Sometimes it happens at
night," he added darkly.

"But isn't anybody hurt?" cried Nan.

"Lots of 'em," replied the clerk cheerfully "Git dap!"

They now executed a flank attack on the "fashionable" quarter of the
town.

"They're grading the street down below," the clerk justified his
roundabout course.

Here were a number of isolated, scattered wooden houses, of some size
and of much scroll and jigsaw work. Some of them had little ornamental
iron fencelets running along their ridgepoles, or lightning rods on the
chimneys or at the corners, although thunderstorms were practically
unknown. The clerk at once began to talk of these as "mansions." He
drew up before one of them, hitched the horse, and invited his clients
to descend. Nan looked at the exterior a trifle doubtfully. It was a
high-peaked, slender house, drawn together as though it felt cold; with
carved wooden panels over each window, miniature balconies with
elaborate spindly columns beneath, and a haughty, high, narrow porch
partially clothing a varnished front door flanked with narrow strips of
coloured glass.

The clerk produced a key. The interior also was high and narrow. Much
glistening varnish characterized the front hall. They inspected one
after another the various rooms. The house was partly furnished. In the
showrooms hung heavy red curtains held back by cords with gilt tassels.
Each fireplace was framed by a mantel of white marble. But the glory
was the drawing-room. This had been frescoed in pale blue, and all
about the wall and even across part of the ceiling had been draped
festoon after festoon of fishnet. Only this was not real fishnet, as a
closer inspection showed. It had been cunningly painted! In the dim
light, and to a person with an optimistic imagination, the illusion was
almost perfect. Nan choked suddenly at the sight of this; then her eyes
widened to a baby stare, and she become preternaturally solemn.

They looked it all over from top to bottom; the clerk fairly tiptoeing
about with the bent-backed air of one who handles a precious jade vase.
From the front windows he showed them a really magnificent view, with
the blue waters of the bay shining, and the Contra Costa shore
shimmering in the haze.

"In the residence next door to the west dwell most desirable
neighbours," he urged, "the Morrells. They are English, or at least he
is."

"I met him last night," said Keith to Nan; "he looked like a good sort."

"Who is in the big house over there?" asked Nan, indicating a very
elaborate structure diagonally opposite.

"That--oh, that--well, that is in rather a state of transition, as it
were," stammered the little clerk, and at once rattled on about
something else. This magnificent mansion, he explained, was the only
one Palmer, Cook & Co. had on their lists for the moment.

Therefore he drove them back to the Bella Union. Keith departed with
him to look up a suitable office downtown.

Nan bowed solemnly to his solemn salutation in farewell, and turned as
quickly as she could to the interior of the hotel. Sherwood sat in his
accustomed place, his big steel spectacles on his nose, his paper
spread out before him. He arose and bowed. She nodded, but did not
pause. Once inside the hall, she picked up her skirts and fairly flew
up the stairs to her room. Slamming the door shut, she locked it, then
sank on the edge of the bed and laughed--laughed until she wiped the
tears from her cheeks, rocking back and forth and hugging herself in an
ecstasy. Every few moments she would pull up; then some unconsidered
enormity would strike her afresh and she would go off into another
paroxysm. After a while, much relieved, she wiped her eyes and arose.

"This place will be the death of me yet," she told her distorted image
in the mirror.

She rummaged in one of her trunks, produced writing materials, and
started a letter to an Eastern friend. This occupied her fully for two
hours. At that period it was customary to "indite epistles" with a
"literary flavour," a practice that immensely tickled those who did the
inditing. Nan became wholly interested and quite pleased with herself.
Her first impressions, she found when she came to write them down, were
stimulating and interesting. She was full of enthusiasm; but had she
been capable of a real analysis she would have found it quite different
from Keith's enthusiasm. She looked on this strange, uncouth, vital
city from the outside, from the superior standpoint. She appreciated it
as she would have appreciated the "quaintness" of the villagers in some
foreign town.

About noon Keith returned.

"I've looked into every possibility," he told her. "Honest, Nan, I
don't see exactly what we are to do unless we build for ourselves. That
Boyle house is the only house in town for rent--that is of any size and
in a respectable quarter. You see they are too new out here to have
built houses for rent yet; and if you find any vacant at all, it is
sheer good fortune. Of course to stay in this little box is impossible,
and--"

She had been contemplating him, her eyes dancing with amusement.

"You've taken it!" she accused him.

"Well--I--yes," he admitted, a little red.

She laughed.

"I knew it," she said. "When can we move in? I want to get started."




IX


Keith's first plunge into the teeming life of the place had to suffice
him for all the rest of that week. There seemed so many pressing things
to do at home. The Boyle house was only partly furnished. Each morning
he and Nan went downtown and prospected for things needed. This was
Nan's first experience of the sort; and she confessed to a ludicrous
surprise over the fact that pots, pans, brooms, kitchen utensils, and
such homely matters had to be thought of and bought.

"I had a sort of notion they grew on the premises," she said.

Mrs. Sherwood gave them much valuable advice, particularly as to
auctions. In the Keiths limited experience auctions generally had meant
cheap or second-hand articles, but out here the reverse was the case. A
madness possessed otherwise conservative Eastern merchants--especially
of the staid city of Boston--to send out on speculation immense cargoes
of all sorts of goods. These were the despair of consignees. Heavy
freights, high interest charges, tremendous warehouse rates, speedily
ate up whatever chance of profits a fresh consignment might have. The
only solution was to sell out as promptly as possible; and the quickest
method was the auction. Therefore, auctions were everywhere in
progress, and the professional auctioneers were a large, influential,
and skilful class of people. Their advertisements made the bulk of the
newspapers. They dressed well, carried an air of consequence, furnished
refreshments, brass bands, or other entertainments to their patrons.
The era of fabulous prices was at an end, but the era of wild
speculation as to what the public was going to want was in full tide.
Keith and Nan found these auctions great fun, and piece by piece they
accumulated the items of their house furnishing. It was slow work, but
amusing. At times Mrs. Sherwood accompanied them, but not often. Her
advice was always good.

As to Mrs. Sherwood, Nan Keith found her attitude very vague. There was
no doubt that she liked her personally, admired her slow, purposeful,
half-indolent movements, the poise of her small, patrician head, the
unconscious, easy grace of her body, the direct commonsense quality of
her mind. One met her face to face; there were no frills and furbelows
of the spirit. Also, Nan was grateful for the other woman's first
kindness and real sympathy, and she wanted to "play the game." But, on
the other hand, all her social training and her instinct of formalism
tended to hold her aloof. She blamed herself intellectually for this
feeling; but since it was a feeling, and had nothing to do with
intellect, it persisted.

In the auction rooms, also, she seemed to meet--be formally introduced
to--a bewildering number of people, most of whom she could not place at
all. There seemed to be no reason for meeting them; certainly she would
not have met them in the East. Nevertheless, they all shook her by the
hand, and bowed to her whenever subsequently they passed her on the
street. Keith told her this was all usual and proper in this new and
mixed social order; and she was perfectly willing to make the effort.
She was really charming to everybody. The consciousness that she was
successfully adapting herself to their primitive provincial scope, and
her very gracious condescension to all types, filled her with respect
for her democracy and breadth of mind.

The afternoon they spent at the house receiving boxes and packages.
Keith worked busily, happily, feverishly, in his shirt sleeves. He
attacked the job on the principle of a whirlwind campaign, hammering,
ripping, throwing papers down, deciding instantly where this or that
chair or table was to stand, tearing on to the next, enjoying himself
dustily and hugely.

Nan was more leisurely. She found time to gossip with the drayman who
brought up the goods, actually came to a liking and a warm friendly
feeling for him as a person. This was a new experience for Nan, and she
explored it curiously.

John McGlynn was a teamster, but likewise a thoroughly independent and
capable citizen. He was of the lank, hewn, lean-faced, hawk-nosed type,
deliberate in movement and speech, with a twinkling, contemplative,
appraising eye, and an unhurried drawl. He told Nan he had come out in
'49.

"No, ma'am," he disclaimed vigorously, "I didn't go to the mines. I am
a teamster, and I always did teaming." He did not add, as he might have
done, that in those days of the individual he had been an important
influence.

His great pride was his team and wagon, and that pride was justified.
The wagon was a heavy flat affair, gayly decorated, and on the sides of
the box were paintings of landscapes. The horses were great,
magnificent creatures, with arching thick necks, long wavy manes and
forelocks, soft, intelligent eyes, and with great hoofs and hairy
fetlocks. They carried themselves in conscious pride, Their harness was
heavy with silver and with many white and coloured rings. In colour
they were dapple gray.

"That team," said John McGlynn, "is a perfect match. Took me two years
to get them together. Wuth a mint of money. That Kate, there, is a
regular character. You'd be surprised how cute she is. I often wonder
who Kate _is_. She must be some very famous woman."

John McGlynn was a very wonderful and very accommodating person, Nan
thought. He would help carry things in, and was willing to unpack or to
carry out the mess Keith's mad career left behind, it. Also he cast an
eye on the garden possibilities, and issued friendly, expert advice to
which Nan listened, breathless. They held long intimate consultations
as to the treatment of the soil.

"A few posies does sort of brighten things up; they're wuth while,"
quoth John.

Without previous consultation, he appeared one day accompanied by a
rotund, bland, gorgeous Chinaman, perched beside him on his elevated
seat.

"This is Wing Woh, a friend of mine," he announced. "You got to have a
Chink, of course. You can't run that sized house without help. Wing
knows all the Chinks in town, and bosses about half of them."

Wing Woh descended and without a word walked into the house. He was a
very ornate person, dressed in a skull cap with a red coral button
atop, a brocaded pale lavendar tunic of silk, baggy pale green trousers
tied close around the ankles, snow-white socks and the typical shoe.
Gravely, solemnly, methodically he went over the entire house; then
returned and clambered up beside John.

"All light," he vouchsafed to the astonished Nan.

Next morning she found waiting on the veranda a smiling "china boy"
dressed all in clean white. A small cloth bundle lay at his feet.

"My name Wing Sam," he announced; "I wo'k you thi'ty dolla' month.
Where you keep him bloom?"

That day John McGlynn stopped after unloading his boxes to give a
little advice.

"Chinks are queer," said he. "When you show this fellow how to do
anything, be sure to show him right, because that's the way he's going
to do it forever after. You can't change him. And show him; don't tell
him. And let him do things his own way as much as you can, instead of
insisting on your way."

McGlynn also advised Keith as to where he could to the best advantage
hire a horse and buggy by the month.

"You want a good safe animal, so Mrs. Keith can drive him; but you
don't want a cow. Jump aboard and I'll take you around. Never mind your
coat," he told Keith, "it's warm."

So they "jumped aboard" and drove down the street. Nan gurgled with
amusement over the episode. She sat on the high seat beside John
McGlynn's lank figure, above the broad backs of the great horses; and
Keith in his shirtsleeves, his hair every which way, a smudge of black
across his nose, balanced in the flat dray body behind. Nan tried to
imagine the sensation they would create in Baltimore, and laughed aloud.

"Is sort of funny," commented John McGlynn sympathetically. "But
everything goes out here."

Nan, aghast at the uncanny perspicacity of the man, choked silently. In
her world there had always been a sort of vague, unexpressed feeling
that the "lower classes" were dull.

They used the horse and buggy a great deal. It was delivered at the
hotel door every morning and taken from the same place every evening.
Innumerable errands downtown for things forgotten kept it busy. At
night they returned to the hotel pretty well tired out. It was a
tremendous task, much as they might be enjoying it.

"Seems to me the more we do the worse it gets," said Keith. "Let's dig
some sort of a hole and move in anyway."

"In a few days," agreed Nan, who as general-in-chief had a much clearer
idea of the actual state of affairs than the dusty private.




X


One morning the accumulated fatigue had its way, and they overslept
scandalously. It was after ten o'clock before they were ready to drive
up the street. As they turned the corner from Kearney Street they were
saluted by the ringing of numerous bells.

"Why, it's Sunday!" cried Keith, after a moment's calculation. In the
unexpectedness of this discovery he reined in the horse.

"It will never do to work to-day," she answered his unspoken thought.
"I suppose we ought to go to church."

But Keith turned the horse's head to the left.

"Church?" he returned with great decision. "We're going on a spree.
This is a day of rest, and we've earned it."

"Where?" asked Nan, a trifle shocked at his implication as to church.

"I haven't the remotest idea," said Keith.

They drove along a plank road leading out of town. It proved to be
thronged with people, all going in the same direction. The shuffle of
their feet on the planks and the murmur of their many voices were
punctuated by the _klop, klop_ of hoofs and occasional shouts of
laughter. All races of the earth seemed to be represented. It was like
a Congress of the Nations at some great exposition. French, Germans,
Italians, Russians, Dutchmen, British, were to be recognized and to be
expected. But also were strange peoples--Turks, Arabs, Negroes,
Chinese, Kanakas, East Indians, the gorgeous members of the Spanish
races, and nondescript queer people to whom neither Nan nor Keith could
assign a native habitat. At every step one or the other called
delighted attention to some new exhibit. Most extraordinary were,
possibly, the men from the gold mines of the Sierras, These were mostly
young, but long haired, bearded, rough, wilder than any mortal man need
be. They walked with a wide swagger. Their clothes were exaggeratedly
coarse, but they ornamented themselves with bright silk handkerchiefs;
with feathers, flowers; with squirrel or buck-tails In their hats; with
long heavy chains of nuggets; with glittering and prominently displayed
pistols, revolvers, stilettos, knives, or dirks. Some had plaited their
beards in three tails; others had tied their long hair under their
chins. But even the most bizarre seemed to attract no attention. San
Francisco was accustomed to it.

Indeed, the few fashionable strollers were much more stared at. Most of
the well dressed were in some sort of vehicle. The Keiths saw many
buggies like their own. A few very smart, or rather very ornamental,
double rigs dashed by. In these sat generally good-looking but rather
loud young women, who stared straight ahead with an assumption of
supreme indifference. Hacks or omnibuses careered along. In these the
company was generally merry but mixed, though occasionally a
good-looking couple had hired an ordinary public conveyance. Horsemen
and horsewomen were numerous. Some of these were very dashing indeed,
the women with long trailing skirts and high hats from which floated
veils; the men with skin-tight trousers strapped under varnished boots,
and long split-skirted coats. Others were simply plain a-horseback. The
native Californians with their heavy, silver-mounted saddles, braided
rawhide reins and bridles, their sombreros, their picturesque costumes,
and their magnificent fiery horses made a fine appearance. Occasionally
screaming, bouncing Chinese, hanging on with both hands, would dash by
at full speed, their horses quite uncontrolled, their garments flying,
ecstatically scared and happy, causing great confusion, and pursued by
curses.

"Evidently we're headed in the right direction," remarked Keith.

After a drive of two or three miles, never far from the bay they
arrived at what had evidently been a sleepy little village. The
original low, picturesque, red-tiled adobe buildings still clustered
about the Mission. But much had been added. The Keiths found themselves
in an immense confusion. Screaming signs cried everywhere for
attention--advertising bear pits, cock fights, theatrical attractions,
side shows, and the like. Innumerable hotels and restaurants, small,
cheap, and tawdry, offered their hospitality, the liquid part of which
was already being widely accepted. Men were striking pegs with hammers,
throwing balls at negroes' heads thrust through canvas, shooting at
targets. A racecourse was surrounded. Dust rose in choking clouds, and
the sun beat down heavily.

"Goodness, what a place!" cried Nan in dismay.

Had they known it, there were many quiet, attractive, outlying resorts
catering to and frequented by the fashionables, for "the Mission" was
at that time in its heyday as a Sunday amusement for all classes. As it
was, Keith drove on through the village, and so out to a winding
country road.

"This is heavenly," said Nan, and laid aside her veil.

The road wound and meandered through the low hills of the peninsula.
The sun beat down on them in a flood, only its heat, no longer
oppressive, had become grateful.

"Doesn't it feel good on your back!" exclaimed Nan, recognizing this
quality. "One seems to soak it in--just the way a thirsty plant soaks
water."

The rounded hills were turning a ripe soft brown. Across their crests
the sky looked very blue. High in the heavens some buzzards were
sailing. Innumerable quail called. On tree tops perched yellow-breasted
meadow larks with golden voices. In the bottom of the narrow valley
where the road wound were green willow trees and a little trickle of
water. From the ground came upward waves of heat and a pungent clean
odour of some weed. Nan was excited and keenly receptive to impressions.

"It's a hot day!" she cried, "and the road is dusty. By rights it ought
to be disagreeable. But it isn't! Why is that?"

The little valley widened into a pocket. Back from the road stood a low
white much house. Its veranda was smothered in the gorgeousness of
bougainvillaea. A grave, elderly, bearded Spaniard, on horseback,
passed them at a smooth shuffling little trot, and gave them a sonorous
_buenas dias_, The road mounted rapidly. Once when Keith had reined in
to breathe the horse, they heard the droning crescendo hum of a new
swarm of bees passing overhead.

"Isn't this nice!" cried Nan, snuggling against Keith's arm.

Suddenly, over the crest and down the other side, they came on sand
hills. The horse plodded along at a walk. Nan hung far out watching,
fascinated, the smooth, clean sand dividing before the wheels and
flowing back over the rim, and so over a little rise, and the sea was
before them.

"Oh, the Pacific!" exclaimed she, sitting up very straight.

The horse broke into a trot along the smooth hard shore. The wind was
coming in from the wide spaces. A taste of salt was in the air. Foam
wreaths advanced and receded with the edge of the wash, or occasionally
blew in a mass across the flat, until gradually they scattered and
dissipated. The horse pricked up his ears, breathed deep of the fresh
cool air, expanded his nostrils snorting softly, pretended to shy at
the foam wreaths. The wash advanced and drew back with a soft hissing
sound; the wind blew flat and low, so that even on the wet parts a
fine, white, dried mist of sand was always scurrying and hurrying along
close to the ground. Outside the surges reared and fell with a crash.

After the tepid or heated atmosphere of the hills the air was
unexpectedly cool and vital. A flock of sickle-billed curlews stood
motionless until they were within fifty yards; then rose and flew just
inside the line of the breakers, uttering indescribably weird and
lonely cries. A long file of pelicans, their wings outspread, sailed
close to the surface of the ocean, undulating over the waves and into
the hollows exactly paralleling, at a height of only a few feet, the
restless contour of the sea. Occasionally they would all flop their
wings two or three times in unison.

"I believe it's a sort of game--they're having fun!" stated Nan with
conviction.

Everything seemed to be having fun. Close to the wash were forty or
fifty tiny white sanderlings in a compact band. When the wash receded
they followed it with an incredibly rapid twinkling of little legs; and
when again the wave rushed, shoreward, _scuttle, scuttle, scuttle_ went
they, keeping always just at the edge of the water. Never were they
forced to wing; yet never did they permit the distance to widen between
themselves and the inrushing or outrushing wave. There were also sundry
ducks. These swam just inside the breakers, and were carried backward
and forward by the surges. Always they faced seaward. At the very last
instant, as a great curler bent over them, they dipped their heads and
dived. If the wave did not break, however, they rode over its top.
Their accuracy of eye was uncanny. Time after time they gauged the wave
so closely that they just flipped over the crest as it crashed with a
roar beneath them. A tenth of a second later would have destroyed them.
Keith reined up the horse to watch them and the sanderlings.

"It _is_ a game," he agreed after a while, "just like the pelicans. It
isn't considered sporting for sanderlings to get more than three inches
away from the edge of the wash; or for a duck to dive unless he
actually has to. It must be a game; for they certainly aren't catching
anything."

At this moment the sanderlings as though at a signal sprang into the
air, wheeled back and forth with instantaneous precision, and departed.
The ducks, too, dove, and came up only outside the surf.

"Good little sportsmen," laughed Keith; "they play the game for its own
sake. They don't like an audience."

After a few miles they came to a cliff reaching down to the beach and
completely barring the way. Off shore were rocky islets covered with
seals and sea lions. A lone blue heron stood atop a sand dune,
absolutely motionless.

"I don't know where we are, or how we get out," said Keith, "but I'm
going to take that chap there as a sign post," and he turned his horse
directly toward the heron.

Sure enough, a track led them through the sand, and by a zigzag route
to the top of the knoll that had barred their way along the shore. They
came to an edge. Before them lay an arm of the sea, sweeping and
eddying with a strong incoming tide. Over the way stood a great
mountain, like a sentinel. Far to their right the arm widened. There
was a glimpse of sparkling blue, and of the pearl of far-off hills, and
the haze of a distant dim peak.

"It's the Golden Gate!" cried Keith in sudden enlightenment.

He told her that the mountain over the way must be Tamalpais; that the
pearl-gray, far-off hills must be Contra Costa; that the distant dim
peak was undoubtedly Mount Diabolo. She repeated the syllables after
him softly, charmed by their music.

Simultaneously they discovered that they were hungry. The wind whipped
in from the sea. An outpost tent or so marked the distant invisible
city over the hills. Keith turned his horse's head toward them. They
drove back across what are now the Presidio hills.

But in a hollow they came upon another ranch house, like the
first--low, white, red roofed, covered with vines. Keith insisted on
driving to it. A number of saddled horses dozed before the door, a
half-dozen dogs sprawled in the dust, fowls picked their way between
the horses' legs or over the dogs' recumbent forms. At the sound of
wheels several people came from the shadow of the porch into the open.
They proved to be Spanish Californians dressed in the flat sombreros,
the short velvet jackets, the slashed trousers, and soft leather
_zapatos_. The men, handsome, lithe, indolent, pressed around the
wheels of the buggy, showing their white teeth in pleasant smiles.

"Can we get anything to eat here?" asked Keith.

They all smiled again most amiably. The elder swept off his hat with a
free gesture.

"_A piedes ouestros, señora_," he said, "_pero no hablo Inglés. Habla
usted Español?_"

Keith understood the last three words.

"No," he shook his head violently, "no _Español_. Hungry." He pointed
to Nan, then to himself: "She, me, hungry."

This noble effort brought no results, except that the Californians
looked more politely distressed and solicitous than ever.

"They don't understand us," murmured Nan; "don't you think we'd better
drive on?"

But Keith, who had now descended from the buggy, resorted to sign
language. He rubbed his stomach pathetically and pointed down his open
mouth; as an afterthought he rubbed the horse's belly; then, with
apparent intention, he advanced toward Nan. A furious red inundated her
face and neck, and she held her little parasol threateningly between
them. Everybody burst into laughter.

"_Si! si! si!_" they cried.

Several started to unharness the horse. Others held out their hands.
After a moment's hesitation Nan accepted their aid and descended.
Keith's performance was evidently considered a great joke.

On the low veranda were two women, one most enormously fat, the other
young and lithe. They were dressed almost exactly alike, their
blue--black hair parted smoothly over their foreheads but built up to a
high structure behind, filmy _rebosas_ over high combs, and skirts with
many flowered flounces. They both had soft, gentle eyes, and they were
both so heavily powdered that their complexions were almost blue. All
the men explained to them at once. The younger answered gayly; the
older listened with entire placidity. But when the account was
finished, she reached out to pat Nan's hand, and to smile reassuringly.

Various foods and a flask of red wine were brought. There was no
constraint, for Keith threw himself with delighted abandon into
experiments with sign language.

"_Esta simpatica_," the Californians told each other over and again.

Their manners were elaborate, dignified, deliberate, and beautiful.
Keith, ordinarily rather direct and brusque, to Nan's great amusement
became exactly like them. They outvied each other. The women touched
smilingly the stuff of Nan's gown, and directly admired her various
feminine trappings. She, thus encouraged, begged permission to examine
more closely the lace of the _rebosas_ or the beautiful embroidery on
the shawls. A little feeling of intimacy drew them all together,
although they understood no word of each other's language.

One of the dogs now approached and gravely laid its nose on Nan's knee,
gazing up at her with searching soft eyes. The older woman cried out
scandalized, but Nan shook her head, and patted the beast's nose.

"You like?" asked the woman.

"Why, you do talk English!" cried Nan.

But either these two words were all the woman had, or she was unwilling
to adventure further.

"You like?" she repeated again, after a moment, and then, observing
Nan's interest, she uttered a command to one of the numerous ragged
small boys standing about. The urchin darted away, to return after a
moment with a basket, which he emptied on the ground. Four fuzzy
puppies rolled out.

"Oh, the darlings!" cried Nan.

The little animals proceeded at once to roll one another over, growling
fiercely, charging uncertainly about, gazing indeterminately through
their blue infantile eyes. The mother left her position at Nan's knee
to hover over them; turning them over with her nose, licking them,
skipping nimbly sidewise when they charged down upon her with an idea
of nourishment.

Nan was enchanted. She left the bench to stoop to their level, tumbling
them over on their backs; playfully boxing their ears, working them up
to a wild state of yapping enthusiasm.

"The little darlings!" she cried; "just see their fat little tummies!
And their teeth are just like needles. No, no, you mustn't! You'll tear
my flounces! Look, Milton, see this little rascal pull at my
handkerchief!"

Her cheeks were flushed, and as she looked up laughing from beneath her
hat, she made a very charming picture.

"You like," stated the Californian woman with conviction.

After a while it became time to go. Vaqueros brought out the horse and
harnessed it to the buggy. Keith made a movement to offer payment, but
correctly interpreted the situation and refrained. They mounted the
vehicle.

"_Muchas gracias!_" Nan enunciated slowly.

This effort was received with an admiring acclaim that flushed Nan with
an inordinate pride. She had picked up the phrase from hearing it used
at table. The fat woman came forward, one of the puppies tucked under
her arm. In spite of her apparently unwieldy size she moved gracefully
and lightly.

"You like?" she inquired, holding the squirming puppy at arm's length.

"_Si, si, muchas gracias!_" cried Nan eagerly, and employing at once
all her Spanish vocabulary. She deposited the puppy in her lap and
reached out to shake hands. Keith flicked the horse with his whip. He,
too, had recollected a word of Spanish, and he used it now.

"_Adios!_" he shouted.

But their hosts had a better phrase.

"_Vaya Con Dios!_" they cried in chorus.

Nan was in raptures over the whole episode, but especially over the
puppy. The latter, with the instantaneous adaptability of extreme
youth, had snuggled down into a compact ball, and was blinking one hazy
dark blue eye upward at his new mistress.

"Weren't they nice people," cried Nan, "and wasn't it an adventure? And
isn't he just the dearest, cutest little thing? You're not a little
Spanish dog any more, you know. You're a--what is it they call us?--oh,
yes! You're a gringo now. Why, that's a fine idea! Your name is Gringo!"

And Gringo he became henceforth.

"What kind of a dog is he?" she asked.

Keith grinned sardonically.

"Of course I do not know his honoured father," said he, "so I cannot
offer an opinion as to that half of him. But on his mother's side he is
bloodhound, bulldog, collie, setter, pointer, St. Bernard, and Old
English sheepdog."

"Which?"' asked Nan puzzled.

"All," asserted Keith.

Now suddenly the sun was blotted out. They looked back: a white bank of
fog was rolling in from the sea. It flowed over the hills like a flood,
reaching long wisps down into the hollows, setting inertly in the flats
and valleys, the upper part rolling on and over in a cascade. Beneath
its shadow the warmth and brightness of the world had died.

"It strikes me we're going to be cold," remarked Keith, urging forward
the horse.

The roadbed became more solid, and they trotted along freely. The
horse, also, was anxious to get home. Signs of habitations thickened.
The wide waste hills of the ranchos had been left behind. Here and
there were outlying dwellings, or road houses, the objectives of
pleasure excursions of various sorts and degrees of respectability from
the city. From one of the latter came a hail.

"Oh, Keith! I say, Keith!"

From a group of people preparing to enter a number of vehicles two men
came running. Ben Sansome and Morrell, somewhat out of breath, came
alongside. They were a little flushed and elevated, but very cordial,
and full of reproaches that Keith had so entirely dropped out of sight
during the past week.

"I tell you, you must come over to our house for supper," said Morrell
finally. "Everybody comes."

"The Morrells' Sunday night suppers are an institution," supplemented
Sansome.

"I wish I could persuade you," urged Morrell. "I wonder where Mimi is.
I know Mrs. Morrell ought to call, and all that sort of thing, but this
is not a conventional place. We live next door, y'know. Do be
delightful and neighbourly, and come!"

Nan hesitated; but the lure of the well-dressed company, so thoroughly
at ease with one another, was irresistible in the reaction. She
accepted.




XI


The Keiths arrived to find the Morrells' informal party in full blast.
The front parlour was filled with a number of people making a great
noise. Out of the confusion Mrs. Morrell arose and came to them, as
they stood where the China-man had abandoned them.

"Mimi" Morrell was a tall woman, not fat, but amply built, with a full
bust and hips. Her hair was of the peculiar metallic golden blond that
might or might not have been natural; her skin smooth and white, but
coarse in grain, would look better at night than by daylight. Her
handsome, regular features were rather hard and set in their expression
when in absolute repose, but absolute repose was rare to them. In
action they softened to a very considerable feminine allurement. She
moved with decision, and possibly her general attitude smacked the
least bit of running things. She gave the impression of keeping an eye
open for everything going on about her. To Nan she seemed tremendous,
overwhelming, and a little magnificent.

Immediately, without introductions, the whole party moved through the
double doors into the dining-room. There they took their places at a
table set out lavishly with food and drink in great quantity. Mrs.
Morrell explained in her high level voice that servants and service
were always dispensed with at her Sunday nights. She rather carelessly
indicated a seat to Mrs. Keith, and remarked to Keith that he was to
sit next herself. Otherwise the party distributed itself. Ben Sansome
promptly annexed the chair next to Nan, and started in to make himself
agreeable.

A complete freemasonry obtained among all the party. There was a great
deal of shouting back and forth, from one end of the table to the
other. Each seemed to have a nickname. One young man was known
exclusively as "Popsy," another answered as "Zou-zou," a third was
called "Billy Goat"; a very vivid, flashing young woman was "Teeny,"
and so on. They conversed, or rather shouted, to a great extent by
means of catch words or phrases, alluding evidently to events the
purport of which the Keiths could by no possibility guess. There were a
great many private jokes, the points of which were obvious to only one
or two. Every once in a while some one would say "Number Seven!" and
everybody would go off into convulsions of laughter. The vivid young
woman called Teeny suddenly shrieked, "How about Friday, the
twenty-third?" at Popsy, to Popsy's obvious consternation and
confusion. Immediately every one turned on either Popsy or Teeny,
demanding the true inwardness of the remark. Popsy defended himself,
rather pink and embarrassed. The young woman, a devilish knowing glint
in her eyes, her red underlip caught between her teeth, refused to
answer.

Keith warmed to this free and easy atmosphere. He was friendly and
sympathetic with the lively crowd. But in vain he tried for a point of
contact. All this badinage depended on a previous knowledge and
intimacy, and that, of course, he lacked. Mrs. Morrell, sitting beside
him very straight and commanding, delivered her general remarks in a
high, clear voice, turning her attention impartially now to one part of
the noisy table, now to another.

Suddenly she abandoned the company to its own devices, and leaning her
left elbow on the table, she turned squarely to Keith, enveloping him
with a magnetic all-for-you look.

"Do you know," she said abruptly, "something tells me you are musical."

"Why, I am, a little," admitted Keith, surprised. "But how could you
tell?"

"La, now, I was sure you had a voice the first time I heard you speak.
I adore music, and I can always tell."

"Do you sing, too?" asked Keith.

"I? No, unfortunately. I have no more voice than a crow. I strum a bit,
but even that has been a good deal neglected lately. There's no
temptation to keep up one's music here. I don't know a single soul in
all this city who cares a snap of their finger for it."

"We'll have to have some music together," suggested Keith.

"I'd adore it. Isn't it lucky we're neighbours? I've been so
interested"--she said it as though she had almost intended to say
"amused"--"in watching you this past week. You are the most domestic
man I know. I never saw a man work so singlemindedly at his house and
home. Domesticity is a rare outworn virtue here, I assure you. It is
really quite touching to see a man so devoted these days."

She said these things idly, a little disjointedly, looking at him
steadily all the while. Her manner was detached, and yet somehow it
impelled him strongly to protest that he was really not a bit domestic.

"Have you met any of the people of the place?" she shifted suddenly,

"Well--I really haven't had much chance yet--a few of the men."

"Well--you'll find things pretty mixed. Don't expect much; one has to
take things pretty much as one finds them."

To this simple speech was appended one gesture only--a slight raising
of the eyebrows. Yet the effect was to sweep Keith into the intimacy of
an inner circle, to suggest that she, too, found society mixed, and to
imply--very remotely--that at least certain members of the present
company itself were not quite what he--or she--would choose in another
environment. In unconscious response to this unspoken thought, Keith
glanced about the table. There was a good deal of drinking going on;
and the fun was becoming even more obvious and noisy. Mrs. Morrell
occasionally sipped at her champagne. She emitted a slight but rather
disturbing perfume.

"Why did you come out here, anyway?" she asked him. "I can't make out.
I'm curious."

"Why shouldn't I?" demanded Keith.

"Well, men come here either for money, for adventure, or to make a
career." She marked each on the tablecloth with the end of a fork.
"Which is it?"

"Guess," laughed Keith.

"You don't need money--or else you have a wonderful nerve to take the
Boyle house. I believe you have the nerve, all right. Men with your
sort of close curly hair are never--bashful!" she laughed shortly.

"Boyle's rent is safe--for a while," admitted Keith.

"Career?" she went on, looking him in the eyes speculatively, and
allowing her gaze to sink deep into his. He noticed that her eyes were
a gray green, like semi-precious stones of some sorts, with surface
lights, but also with grayer radiations that seemed to go below the
surface to smouldering depths--disturbing eyes, like the perfume.
"Career?" she repeated. "I think you hold yourself better--a career in
the riff-raff of this town." She shook her head archly. "But adventure!
Oh, la! There's plenty of that--all sorts!" She gave the impression of
meaning a great deal more than she said. "I wish I were a man!" she
exclaimed, and laughed.

"I'm glad you're not," rejoined Keith sincerely.

She tapped him lightly on the arm with her fan.

"Oh, la!" she cried.

Keith laughed meaningly and mischievously. He was feeling entirely at
home--in his mental shirtsleeves--thoroughly at ease.

"You're a lawyer, are you not?" she asked him.

"Try to be."

"Going to practise?"

"If any practice comes my way."

She looked at him, smiling slowly.

"Oh, it'll come fast enough." She seized her glass and held it to him.
"Here's to your career!" she cried. "Bottoms up!"

They clinked glasses and drank.

"You must meet people--influential people," she told him. "We must see
what we can do; I'll have some of them in."

"You're simply fine to take all this trouble for me!"

She tapped him again on the arm.

"Silly! We take care of our own people, of _course!_ Let's plan it.
Have you any connections in town at all?"

"Well, I've met quite a few people about town, and I have some letters."

"Casual acquaintances are well enough, but your letters?"

"I have one to Calhoun Bennett, and to Mr. Dempster, and Mr. Farwell,
and Truett--"

But she was making a wry face.

"What's the matter with, them?" he demanded.

"Cal Bennett's all right--but the others--oh, I suppose they're all
right in a business way--but--"

"But, what?"

She made a helpless little gesture.

"I can't describe it--you know--the sort that are always so keen on
doing their _duty!_"

She laughed; and to his subconscious surprise Keith found himself
saying sympathetically:

"I know the sort of people who always pay their debts!"

They looked into each other's eyes and laughed in comradeship. In sober
life Keith did his duty reasonably well, and was never far behind
financially.

She fell silent for a moment; then with a muttered "excuse me," she
leaned directly across his shoulder to impart something low-voiced and
giggly to the woman on his right. To do this she leaned her breast
against his arm and shoulder. The conversation lasted some seconds.
Keith could not hear a word of it; but he was disturbingly aware of her
perfume, the softness of her body, and the warmth that struck even
through the intervening clothing. She drew back with a half apology.

"Feminine nonsense," she told him. "Mere man couldn't be expected to
understand." She was herself a little flushed from leaning over, but
she appeared not to notice Keith's rather breathless state. He muttered
something, and gulped at his champagne.

"Do you know Mrs. Sherwood?" he asked, merely to say something,

But to his surprise Mrs. Morrell answered him shortly, her manner
changing:

"No, I don't. We draw the line _somewhere_!"

Again she addressed the woman on the right, but this time without
leaning across:

"Oh, Amy, the fair Patricia has another victim!" and laughed rather
shrilly. Suddenly she rapped the table with the handle of a knife.
"Stop it!" she cried to the company at large. "You're making too much
noise!"

They all turned to her except one youth who was too noisily busy with
his partner to have heard her. Failing in another attempt to get his
attention, Mrs. Morrell picked up a chunk of French bread and hurled it
at him.

"Good shot!" "Bravo!" "Encore!" came a burst of applause, as the bread,
largely by accident, took him squarely between the eyes.

The youth, though astonished, was game. He retaliated in kind. Keith
whipped up an empty plate and intercepted it. The youth's partner came
to his assistance. Keith, a plate in either hand, deftly protected Mrs.
Morrell from the flying missiles. The implied challenge was instantly
accepted by all. The air was full of bread. Keith's dexterity was
tested to the utmost, but he came through the battle with flying
colours. Everybody threw bread. There was much explosive laughter, that
soon became fairly exhausting. The battle ceased, both because the
combatants were out of ammunition, and because they were too weak from
mirth to proceed. Keith with elaborate mock gallantry turned and
presented Mrs. Morrell with the two plates.

"The spoils of war!" he told her.

"He should be decorated for conspicuous gallantry on the field of
battle!" cried some one.

The idea took. But they could find nothing appropriate until Teeny
McFarlane deliberately stepped up on the table and broke from the glass
chandelier one of its numerous dangling prisms. This called forth a
mild protest from Morrell--"Oh, I say!"--which was drowned in a wild
shriek of delight. The process of stepping down from the table tilted
Teeny's wide skirts so that for an instant a slim silken leg was
plainly visible as far as the knee. "Oh! oh!" cried every one. Some
pretended to be shocked, and covered their faces with spread fingers;
others feigned to try for another look. Teeny was quite unperturbed.

Keith was the centre of attention and a great success. But there were
no more tète-à-têtes. Mrs. Morrell managed to convey the idea that she
was displeased, and Keith was of a sufficiently generous and ingenuous
disposition to be intrigued by the fact. He had no chance to probe the
matter. In a moment or so Mrs. Morrell rose and strolled toward the
drawing-room. The others straggled after her. She rather liked thus to
emphasize her lack of convention as a hostess, making a pose of never
remembering the proper thing to do. Now she moved here and there,
laughing her shrill rather mirthless laugh, calling everybody "dearie,"
uttering abrupt little platitudes. Keith found himself left behind, and
rather out in the cold. The company had quite frankly segregated itself
into couples. The room was well adapted to this, filled as it was with
comfortable chairs arranged with apparent carelessness two by two. The
men lighted cigars. Keith saw Nan's eyes widen at this. She was sitting
near the fire, and Sansome had penned her in beyond the possibility of
invasion by a third. At this date smoking was a more or less doubtfully
considered habit, and in the best society men smoked only in certain
rigidly specified circumstances. In a drawing-room such an action might
be considered the fair equivalent to powdering the feminine nose.

In such a condition, Keith was left rather awkwardly alone, and was
fairly thrust upon a fictitious interest in a photograph album, at
which he glowered for some moments. Then by a well-planned and
skilfully executed flank movement he caught Mrs. Morrell.

"Look here," he demanded; "what has the standing army done to deserve
abandonment in a hostile country?"

But she looked at him directly, without response to his playful manner.

"My friend," she said, "this is a pretty free and easy town, as no
doubt you have observed, and society is very mixed. But we haven't yet
come to receiving women like Mrs. Sherwood, or relishing their being
mentioned to us."

"Why, what's the matter with her?" demanded Keith, astonished. "Is she
as far from respectability as all that?"

"Respectable! That word isn't understood in San Francisco." She
appeared suddenly to soften. "You're a dear innocent boy, so you are,
and you've got a dear innocent little wife, and I'll have to look out
for you."

Before the deliberate and superior mockery in her eyes as well as in
her voice, Keith felt somehow like a small boy. He was stung to a
momentary astonishing fury.

"By God--" he began, and checked himself with difficulty.

She smiled at him slowly.

"Perhaps I didn't mean all of that," she said; "perhaps only half of
it," she added with significance. "My personal opinion is that you are
likely to be a curly haired little devil; and when you look at me like
that, I'm glad we're not alone."

She looked at him an enigmatic moment, then turned away from the table
near which they had been standing. "Come, help me break up some of this
'twosing,'" she said.

Shortly after this the party dispersed. Mrs. Morrell said good-bye to
them carelessly, or not at all, according as it happened.

"You must come again, come often," she told the Keiths. "It's pretty
dull unless you make your own fun." She was half sleepily conventional,
her lids heavy. "Perhaps we can have some music soon," she added. The
words were careless, but she shot Keith an especial gleam.

The Keiths walked sociably home together, almost in silence. Keith,
after his habit, super-excited with all the fun, the row, and the
half-guilty boyish feeling of having done a little something he ought
not to have done, did not want to seem too enthusiastic.

"Jolly crowd," he remarked.

"They were certainly noisy enough," said Nan indifferently; then after
a moment, "Where _do_ you suppose some of them get their clothes?"

Keith's mind was full of the excitement of the evening. He found
himself reviewing the company, appraising it, wondering about it. Was
Teeny McFarlane as gay as she appeared? He had never seen women smoke
before; but that dark girl with the red thing in her hair puffed a
cigarette. Perhaps she was Spanish--he had not met her. And Mrs.
Morrell--hanged if he quite dared make her out--it wouldn't do to jump
to conclusions nor too hastily to apply Eastern standards; this was a
new country, fatal to make a fool mistake; well-built creature, by gad--

Nan interrupted his thoughts. He came to with a start.

"I think we'd better put the big armchair in the front room, after
all," she was saying.




XII


Next morning Keith allayed what little uneasiness his conscience might
harbour by remarking, as he adjusted his collar:

"Mrs. Morrell is an amusing type, don't you think? She's a bit vulgar,
but she seems good hearted. Wonder what colour her hair used to be?"

"I suppose they are all right," said Nan. "They are a little rowdy.
They gave me a headache."

Illogically rehabilitated in his own self-esteem, Keith went on
dressing. He was "on" to Mrs. Morrell; her methods were pretty obvious.
Wonder if she thought she had really fooled him? Next time he would be
on guard and beat her at her own game. She was not a woman to his
taste, anyway--he glanced admiringly at Nan's clean profile against the
light--but she was full of vitality, she was keen, she was brimming
with the joy of life.

The long drive over the Peninsula to the sea and back, the episode of
the Spanish people, the rowdy supper party, had one effect, however: it
had made so decided a break in the routine that Keith found himself
thrust quite outside it. He had worked feverishly all the week, at
about double speed; and in ordinary course would have gone on working
feverishly at double speed for another week. Now, suddenly, the thought
was irksome. He did not analyze this; but, characteristically,
discovered an irrefutable reason for not going on with it. They rescued
Gringo from Sam's care, and drove up to the house. On the way Keith
said:

"Look here, Nan; do you suppose you and Wing can get on all right this
morning? All the heavy work is done. I really ought to be settling the
office and getting some lines laid for business."

"Why, of course we can get on, silly!" she rejoined. "This isn't your
job, anyway. Of course you ought to attend to your business."

Keith again consulted Palmer, Cook & Co. The same clerk showed him
offices. He was appalled at the rents. Even a miserable little back
room in the obscurer blocks commanded a sum higher than he had
anticipated paying. After looking at a dozen, he finally decided on a
front room in the Merchants' Exchange Building. This was one of the
most expensive, but Keith was tired of looking. The best is the
greatest economy in the long run, he told himself, and with a lawyer,
new-come, appearances count for much in getting clients. Must get the
clients, though, to support this sort of thing! The rest of the morning
he spent buying furniture.

About noon he walked back to the Bella Union. His horse and buggy were
not hitched to the rail, so he concluded Nan had not yet returned for
lunch. Mrs. Sherwood, however, was seated in a rocker at the sunny end
of the long veranda. She looked most attractive, her small smooth head
bent over some sort of fancywork. Before she looked up Keith had
leisure to note the poise of her head and shoulders, the fine long
lines of her figure, and the arched-browed serenity of her eyes.
Different type this from the full-breasted Morrell, more--more
patrician! Rather absurd in view of their respective places in society,
but a fact. Keith found himself swiftly speculating on Mrs. Sherwood's
origin and experience. She was endowed with a new glamour because of
Mrs. Morrell's enigmatic remark the evening before, and also--for Keith
was very human--with a new attraction. Feeling vaguely and boyishly
devilish, Keith stopped.

She nodded at him, laying her work aside.

"You are practically invisible." she told him.

"Making ourselves a habitation. Seen Mrs. Keith?"

"No. I don't think she's come in."

Keith hesitated, then:

"I think I'll go up to the house for her."

Mrs. Sherwood nodded, and resumed her work calmly, without further
remark.

At the house Keith found Nan, her apron on, her hair done up under a
dust cap, very busy.

"Noon?" she cried, astonished. "It can't be! But I can't stop now. I
think I'll have Wing pick me up a lunch. There's plenty in the house.
It's too much bother to clean up."

Keith demurred; then wanted to stay for the pick-up lunch himself. Nan
would have none of it. She was full of repressed enthusiasm and
eagerness, but she wanted to get rid of him.

"There's not enough. I wouldn't have you around. Go away, that's a good
boy! If you'll leave Wing and me entirely alone we'll be ready to move
in to-morrow."

"Where's Gringo?" asked Keith by way of indirect yielding--he had
really no desire for a picked-up lunch.

"The little rascal! He started to chew everything in the place, so I
tied him in the backyard. He pulls and flops dreadfully. Do you think
he'll strangle himself?"

Keith looked out the window. Gringo, all four feet planted, was
determinedly straining back against his tether. The collar had pulled
forward all the loose skin of his neck, so that his eyes and features
were lost in wrinkles.

"He doesn't yap," volunteered Nan.

Keith gave it as his opinion that Gringo would stop short of suicide,
commended Gringo's taciturnity and evident perseverance, and departed
for the hotel. In the dining-room he saw Mrs. Sherwood in a riding
habit, eating alone. Keith hesitated, then took the vacant seat
opposite. She accorded this permission cordially, but without coquetry,
remarking that Sherwood often did not get in at noon. Immediately she
turned the conversation to Keith's affairs, inquiring in detail as to
how the settling was getting on, when they expected to get in, how they
liked the house, whether they had bought all the furniture.

"You remember I directed you to the auctions?" she said.

She asked all these questions directly, as a man would, and listened to
his replies.

"I suppose you have an office picked out?" she surmised.

At his mention of the Merchants' Exchange Building she raised her
arched eyebrows half humorously.

"You picked out an expensive place."

Keith went over his reasoning, to which she listened with a half smile.

"You may be right," she commented; "the reasoning is perfectly sound.
But that means you must get the business in order to make it pay. What
are your plans?"

He confessed that as yet they were rather vague; there had not been
time to do much--too busy settling.

"The usual thing, I suppose," he added: "get acquainted, hang out a
shingle, mix with people, sit down and starve in the traditional manner
of young lawyers."

He laughed lightly, but she refused to joke.

"There are a good many lawyers here--and most of them poor ones," she
told him. "The difficulty is to stand out above the ruck, to become
noticed. You must get to know all classes, of course; but especially
those of your own profession, men on the bench. Yes, especially men on
the bench, they may help you more than any others--"

He seemed to catch a little cynicism in her implied meaning, and
experienced a sense of shock on his professional side.

"You don't mean that judges are--"

"Susceptible to influence?" She finished the sentence for him with an
amused little laugh. She studied him for an instant with new interest,
"They're human--more human here than anywhere else--like the rest of
us--they respond to kind treatment--" She laughed again, but at the
sight of his face her own became grave. She checked herself.
"Everything is so new out here. In older countries the precedents have
all been established. Out here there are practically none. They are
being made now, every day, by the present judges. Naturally personal
influence might get a hearing for one point of view or the other--"

"I see what you mean," he agreed, his face clearing.

"Join a good fire company," she advised him. "That is the first thing
to do. Each company represents something different, a different class
of men."

"Which would you advise?" asked Keith seriously.

"That is a matter for your own judgment. Only, investigate well. Meet
all the people you can. Know the newspaper men, and the big merchants.
In your profession you must cultivate men like Terry, Girvin, Shattuck,
Gwin. Keep your eyes open. Be bold and use your wits. Above all, make
friends; that's it, _make friends_--everybody, everywhere. Don't
despise anybody. You will get plenty of chances." She was sitting
erect, and her eyes were flashing. Her usual slow indolent grace had
fallen from her; she radiated energy. Her slender figure took on a new
appearance of knit strength. "Such chances! My heavens! if I were a
man!"

"You'd make a bully man!" cried Keith. Mrs. Morrell, uttering the same
wish, had received from him a different reply, but he had forgotten
that.

She laughed again, the tension broke, and she sank back into her usual
relaxed poise.

"But, thank heavens, I'm not," said she.




XIII


Affairs for the Keiths passed through another week of what might be
called the transition stage. It took them that long to settle down in
their new house and into some semblance of a routine--two days to the
actual installation, and the evenings full of small matters to arrange.
Nan was busy all day long playing with her new toy. The housekeeping
was fascinating, and Wing Sam a mixture of delight and despair. Like
most women who have led the sheltered life, she had not realized as yet
that the customs of her own fraction of one per cent, were not
immutable. Therefore, she tried to model the household exactly in the
pattern of those to which she had been accustomed. Wing Sam blandly
refused to be moulded.

Thus Nan spent all one morning drilling him in the proper etiquette of
answering doors. Mindful of John McGlynn's advice, she did this by
precept, ringing her own door bell, presenting a card as though calling
on herself. Wing Sam's placid exterior changed not. A half hour later
the door bell rang, but no Wing Sam appeared to answer it. It rang
again, and again, until Nan herself opened the door. On the doorstep
stood Wing Sam himself.

"I foolee you, too," he announced with huge delight.

Painstakingly Nan conveyed to him that this was neither an amusing game
nor a practical joke. Later in the day the door bell rang again. Nan,
hovering near to gauge the result of her training, saw Wing Sam plant
himself firmly in the opening.

"You got ticket?" he demanded sternly of the deliveryman outside. "You
no got ticket, you no get in!"

Which, Nan rather hysterically gathered, was what Wing Sam had gained
of the calling-card idea. After that, temporarily as she thought, Nan
permitted him to go back to his own method, which, had she known it,
was the method of every Chinese servant in California. The visitor
found his bell answered by a blandly smiling Wing Sam, who cheerfully
remarked: "Hullo!" It was friendly, and it didn't matter; but at that
stage of her development Nan was more or less scandalized.

Nan's sense of humour always came to her assistance by evening, and she
had many amusing anecdotes to tell Keith, over which both of them
laughed merrily. Gringo added somewhat to the complications in life. He
was a fat, roly-poly, soft-boned, ingratiating puppy, with a tail that
waved energetically but uncontrolledly. Gringo at times was very
naughty, and very much in the way. But when exasperation turned to
vengeance he had a way of keeling over on his back, spreading his hind
legs apart in a manner to expose his stomach freely to brutal assault,
and casting one calm china-blue eye upward.

"Can there anywhere exist any one so hard-hearted as to injure a poor,
absolutely defenceless dog?" he inquired, with full confidence in the
answer.

The iniquities of Gringo and the eccentricities of Wing Sam Nan
detailed at length, and also her experiences with the natives. She as
yet looked on every one as natives. Only later could she expand to the
point of including them in her cosmos of people. Nan was transplanted,
and her roots had not yet struck down into the soil. In her shopping
peregrinations she was making casual acquaintance, and she had not yet
become accustomed to it.

"I bought some darling little casseroles at Phelan's to-day," she said.
"The whole Phelan family waited on me. Where do you suppose the women
get their perfectly awful clothes? Mrs. Phelan offered to take me to
her milliner!" or "You know Wilkins--the furniture man where we got the
big armchair? I was in there to-day, and he apologized because his wife
hadn't called!"

They went to bed early, because they were both very tired.

Keith also had generally passed an interesting day. Immediately after
breakfast he went to his office, and conscientiously sat a while.
Sometimes he wrote letters or cast up accounts; but there could not be
much of this to do. About ten or eleven o'clock his impatient
temperament had had enough of this, so he drifted over to the
Monumental engine house. After considerable thought he had decided to
join this company. It represented about the class of men with whom he
wanted to affiliate himself--the influential men of the lawyer,
Southern-politician, large business men type. There were many of these
volunteer organizations. Their main purpose was to fight fire; but they
subserved other objects as well--political, social, and financial.
David Broderick, for example, already hated and feared, partly owned
and financed a company of ward-heelers who were introducing and
establishing the Tammany type of spoils politics. Casey, later in
serious trouble, practically manipulated another.

Among the Monumentals, Keith delighted especially in Bert Taylor. Bert
Taylor likewise delighted in Keith. The little chubby man's enthusiasm
for the company, while recognized as most valuable to the company's
welfare, had ended by boring most of the company's members. But Keith
was a new listener and avid for information. He had had no notion of
how complicated the whole matter could be. Bert Taylor dissertated
sometimes on one phase of the subject, sometimes on another.

"It's drills we need, and the fellows won't drill enough!" was Bert
Taylor's constant complaint. "What do they know about hose? They run it
out any way it comes; and roll it up anyhow, instead of doing a proper
job."

"How should you do it?" asked Keith.

"It ought to be laid right--so there's no bends or sharp angles in it;
it should never be laid over heaps of stones, or any kind of uneven
surface--it all increases the water resistance. If there are any bends
or curves they should be regular and even. The hose ought never to rest
against a sharp edge or angle. And when you coil it up you ought to
reverse the sides every time, so it will wear even and stretch even. Do
they do it? Not unless I stand over them with a club!"

He showed Keith the hose, made of India rubber, a comparatively new
thing, for heretofore hose had been made of riveted leather. Bert
Taylor made him feel the inside of this hose with his forefinger to
test its superlative smoothness.

"Mighty little resistance there!" he cried triumphantly.

The nozzles, all in racks, he handled with almost reverent care.

"These are the boys that cost the money," said Taylor. "If the inside
isn't polished like a mirror the water doesn't come smooth. And the
least little dent makes the stream ragged and broken. Nothing looks
worse--and it isn't as effective on the fire. It ought to be thrown
like a solid rod of water. I can't get the boys to realize that the
slightest bruise, dent, or burr throws the stream in a ragged feathery
foam. The result of that is that a lot of water is dissipated and lost."

Keith, who had taken hold of the nozzle rather negligently, returned it
with the reverent care due crown jewels.

"How long a stream will it throw?" he asked.

"With thirty men on a side she's done a hundred and twelve feet high,
and two hundred and eighteen for distance," said Bert with simple pride.

He picked up the nozzle again.

"See here. Here's an invention of my own. Cost money to put it in, too,
because every other nozzle on earth is made wrong."

He explained that other nozzles are made so that the thread of the hose
screwed into the nozzle; while in his, the thread of the nozzle screwed
into the hose.

"If there's a leak or a bad connection," explained Bert, "with the old
type, the water is blown back into the fireman's face, and he is
blinded. His whole efficiency depends on a close joint. But with my
scheme the leak is blown forward, away from the lineman. It's a
perfectly sound scheme, but I can't make them see it."

"Sounds reasonable," observed Keith, examining perfunctorily a device
to which later he was to owe his life.

Item by item they went over the details of equipment--the scaling
ladders, the jumping sheets, the branch pipes, the suction pipes, the
flat roses, standcocks, goose necks, the dogtails, dam boards, shovels,
saws, poleaxes, hooks, and ropes. From a consideration of them the two
branched off to the generalities of fire fighting. Keith learned that
the combating of a fire, the driving it into a corner, outflanking it,
was a fine art.

"I say always, _get in close_," said Taylor. "A fire can be _put_ out
as well as just drowned out."

It struck Keith as interesting that in a room a stream should always be
directed at the top of a fire, so that the water running down helps
extinguish the flames below, whereas in attack at the bottom or centre
merely puts out the immediate blaze, leaving the rest to spread upward
or sideways. Taylor put himself on record against fighting fire from
the street.

"Don't want a whole lot of water and row," he maintained. "Get in close
quarters and make every drop count."

When Bert's enthusiasm palled, Keith always found men in the
reading-room. The engine house was a sort of clearing house for
politics, business schemes, personal affairs, or differences.

Once a day, also, as part of his job in his profession, Keith went to
the courthouse. There he sat in the enclosure reserved for lawyers and
listened to the proceedings, his legal mind alert and interested in the
technical battles. At no time in the world's history has sheer
technicality unleavened by common sense been carried further than in
the early California courts. Even in the most law-ridden times
elsewhere a certain check has been exercised by public opinion or the
presence of business interests. But here was as yet no public opinion;
and business interests, their energies fully taxed by the necessities
of a new country, were willing to pay heavily to be let alone.
Consequently, lawyers were permitted to play out their fascinating game
to their hearts' content, and totally without reference to expedience
or to the justice of the case. The battles were indeed intensely
technical and shadowy. Points within points were fought bitterly. Often
for days the real case at issue was forgotten.

Only one of the more obvious instances of technical triumph need be
cited. One man killed another, on a public street, before many
witnesses. The indictment was, however, thrown out and he released
because it stated only that the victim was killed by a pistol, and
failed to specify that his death was due to the discharge of said
pistol. The lawyer who evolved this brilliant idea was greatly admired
and warmly congratulated.

The wheels of the law ground very slowly. One of the simplest and most
effective expedients of defence was delay. A case could be postponed
and remanded, often until the witnesses were scattered or influenced.
But there were infinite numbers of legal expedients, all most
interesting to a man of Keith's profession. His sense of justice was
naturally strong and warm, and an appeal to it outside a courtroom or a
law office always got an immediate and commonsense response. But inside
the law his mind automatically closed, and a "case" could have only
legal aspects. Which is true of the majority of lawyers to-day.

On the adjournment of court Keith generally drifted over to the El
Dorado or the Empire, where he spent an hour or so loafing with some of
his numerous acquaintances. He was of the temperament that makes itself
quickly popular, the laughing, hearty sort, full of badinage, and
genuinely liking most men with whom he came in contact. There was
always much joking in the air, but back of it was a certain reserve, a
certain wariness, for every second man was a professed "fire-eater,"
given to feeling insulted on the slightest grounds, and flying to the
duel or the street fight instanter.

This hour was always most pleasant to Keith; nevertheless, he went home
about five o'clock in order to enjoy an hour or so of daylight about
the place. He performed prodigies of digging in the new garden:
constructing terraces, flower beds, walks, and the like. While the
actual construction work was under way he was greatly interested, but
cared nothing for the finished product or the mere growing of the
flowers.

Gringo received his share of training, at first to his intense disgust.
Twice he refused obedience, and the matter being pressed, resorted to
the simple expedient of retiring from the scene. Keith dropped
everything and pursued. Gringo crawled under things, but was followed
even to the dustiest and cob-webbiest farthest corner under the porch;
he tried swiftness and dodging, but was trailed in all his doublings
and twistings at top speed; he tried running straight away over the
sand hills, and at first left his horrible master behind, but the
horrible master possessed a horrible persistence. Finally he shut his
eyes and squatted, expecting instant annihilation, but instead was
haled back to the exact scene of his disobedience, and the command
repeated. Nan laughed until the tears came, over the large, warm,
red-faced man after the small, obstinate, scared pup, but Keith refused
to joke.

"If he finds he can't get away, no matter what happens, I'll never have
to do it again," he panted. "But if he wins out, even once, it'll be an
awful job."

Gringo tried twice. Then, his faith in his ability to escape completely
shattered, he gave up. After that he adored Keith and was always under
his feet.

Keith saw nothing of any of the women. Mrs. Sherwood seemed to have
dropped from their ken when they left the hotel. Once Keith inquired
casually about Mrs. Morrell.

"She's been over twice to see the place," replied Nan.

"We ought to go over there to call," proffered Keith vaguely; but there
the matter rested.




XIV


One night Keith was awakened by Nan's suddenly sitting up in bed. There
came to his struggling consciousness the persistent steady clangour of
many deep bells. Slowly recognition filtered into his mind--the fire
bells!

He hastily pulled on some clothes and ran down the front stairs,
stumbling over Gringo, who uttered an outraged yelp. From the street he
could see a red glow in the sky. At top speed he ran down the street in
the direction of the Monumental. In the half darkness he could make out
other figures running. The deep tones of the bells continued to smite
his ear, but now in addition he heard the tinkling and clinking of
innumerable smaller bells--those on the machines. He dashed around a
corner to encounter a double line of men, running at full speed,
hauling on a long rope attached to an engine. Their mouths were open,
and they were all yelling. The light engine careened and swayed and
bumped. Two men clung to the short steering tongue, trying to guide it.
They were thrown violently from side to side, dragged here and there,
tripping, hauling, falling across the tongue, but managing to keep the
machine from dashing off at a tangent. Above them, high and precarious,
swayed the short stout figure of Bert Taylor. He was in full
regalia--leather helmet, heavy leather belt, long-tailed coat, and in
his free hand the chased silver speaking trumpet with the red tassels
that usually hung on the wall. He was in his glory, dominating the
horde. His keen eye, roving everywhere, seeing everything, saw Keith.

"Catch hold!" he roared through the trumpet.

Keith made a flying grab at a vacant place on the line, caught it, was
almost jerked from his feet, recovered himself, and charged on, yelling
like the rest.

But now Bert Taylor began to shriek something excitedly. It became
evident, from glimpses caught down the side streets, but especially
through the many vacant lots, that another engine was paralleling their
own course a block away.

"Jump her, boys, jump her!" shrieked Bert Taylor. "For God's sake,
don't let those Eurekas beat you!"

He danced about on top of the waterbox of the engine, in imminent peril
of being jerked from his place, battering his silver trumpet insanely
against the brake rods, beseeching, threatening profanely. And
profanity at that time was a fine art. Men studied its alliteration,
the gorgeousness of its imagery, the blast of its fire. The art has
been lost, existing still, in a debased form, only among mule drivers,
sailors, and the owners of certain makes of automobiles. The men on the
rope responded nobly. The roar of their going over the plank road was
like hollow thunder. A man dropped out. Next day it was discovered he
had broken his leg in a hole. At tremendous speed they charged through
the ring of spectators, and drew up, proud and panting, victors by a
hundred feet, to receive the plaudits of the multitude. A handsome man
on a handsome horse rode up.

"Monumentals on the fire! Eurekas on cistern number twenty!" he
commanded briefly.

This was Charles Duane, the unpaid fire chief; a likable, efficient
man, but too fond of the wrong sort of friends.

Now it became evident to Keith why Bert Taylor had urged them so
strongly in the race. The fire was too distant from the water supply to
be carried in one length of hose. Therefore, one engine was required to
relay to another, pumping the water from the cistern, through the hose,
and into the waterbox of the other engine. The other engine pumped it
from its own waterbox on to the fire. The latter, of course, was the
position of honour.

The Eurekas fell back grumbling, and uttering open threats to wash
their rivals. By this they meant that they would pump water into the
Monumentals faster than the latter could pump it out, thus overflowing
and eternally disgracing them. They dropped their suction hose into the
cistern, and one of their number held the end of the main hose over a
little trapdoor in the Monumental's box. The crews sprang to the long
brake handles on either side, and at once the regular _thud, thud,
thud_ of the pumps took up its rhythm. The hose writhed and swelled;
the light engines quivered. Bert Taylor and the Eureka foreman, Carter
by name, walked back and forth as on their quarterdecks, exhorting
their men. Relays, in uniform assumed on the spot, stood ready at hand.
Nobody in either crew knew or cared anything whatsoever about the fire.
As the race became closer, the foremen got more excited, begging their
crews to increase the stroke, beating their speaking trumpets into
shapeless battered relics. An astute observer would now have understood
one reason why the jewellery stores carried such a variety of fancy
speaking trumpets. They were for presentation by grateful owners after
the fire had been extinguished, and it was generally necessary to get a
new one for each fire.

Keith, acting under previous instructions, promptly seized a helmet and
poleaxe and made his way to the front. The fire had started in one of
many flimsy wooden buildings, and had rapidly spread to threaten a
whole district. Men from the hook and ladder companies were already at
work on some of the hopeless cases. A fireman or two mounted ladders to
the eaves, dragging with them a heavy hook on the end of a long pole.
Cutting a small hole with their axes, they hooked on this apparatus and
descended. As many firemen and volunteers as could get hold of the pole
and the rope attached to it, now began to pull.

"Yo, heave ho!" they cried.

The timbers cracked, broke, the whole side of the house came out with a
grand and satisfying crash. An inferno of flame was thereby laid open
to the streams from the hose lines. It was grand destructive fun for
everybody, especially for the boys of all ages, which included in
spirit about every male person present.

This sort of work was intended, of course, to confine or check the fire
within the area already affected, and could accomplish nothing toward
saving the structures already alight. The roar of the flames, the
hissing of firebrands sucked upward, the crash of timbers, the shrieks
of the foremen through their trumpets, the yells of applause or of
sarcasm from the crowd, and the _thud, thud, thud, thud_ of numerous
brake bars made a fine pandemonium. Everybody except the owners or
tenants of the buildings was delighted.

Keith, with two others, was instructed to carry the Monumental nozzle
to the roof of a house not afire. Proudly they proceeded to use their
scaling ladders. These were a series of short sections, each about six
feet long, the tops slightly narrower than the bottoms. By means of
slots these could be fitted together. First, Keith erected one of them
against the wall of the building, at an angle, and ascended it,
carrying another section across his shoulder. When he reached a certain
rung, which was painted red, he thrust his foot through the ladder and
against the wall, pushed the ladder away from the wall, and fitted the
section he was carrying to the top of the section on which he was
standing. He then hauled up another section and repeated. When the
ladder had reached to the eaves, he and his companions dragged the
squirting, writhing hose up with them, chopped footholds in the roof,
and lay flat to look over the ridgepole as over a breastwork. All this
to the tune of admiring plaudits and with a pleasing glow of heroism.
There was a skylight, but either they overlooked or scorned that
prosaic expedient.

At the other end of the ridgepole Keith made out the dark forms of two
men from another company. His own companions, acting under orders, now
descended the ladder, leaving him alone.

The next building was a raging furnace, and on it Keith directed the
heavy stream from his nozzle. It was great fun. At first the water
seemed to have no effect whatever, but after a little it began to win.
The flames were beaten back, broken into detachments. Finally, Keith
got to the point of chasing down small individual outbreaks, driving
them into their lairs, drowning them as they crouched. He was wholly
interested, and the boy in him, with a shamefaced half apology to the
man in him, pretended that he was a soldier directing a battery against
an enemy.

Along the ridgepole cautiously sidled the two men of the other company,
dragging their hose. Keith now recognized them. One was a vivid,
debonair, all-confident, magnetic individual named Talbot Ward, a
merchant, promoter, speculator, whom everybody liked and trusted; the
other a fair Hercules of a man, slow and powerful in everything, called
Frank Munro.

"Look here," said Ward, "does it strike you this roof's getting hot?"

Recalled to himself, Keith immediately became aware of the fact.

"The house is afire beneath us," said Ward; "we've got to get out."

"What's the matter with your ladder?" asked Keith.

"They took it away."

"We'll use mine."

They let themselves cautiously down the footholds that had been chopped
in the roof, and looked over. A blast of smoke and flame met them in
the face.

"Good Lord, she's all afire!" cried Keith, aghast.

The flames were licking around the scaling ladder, which was already
blazing. Keith directed the stream from his hose straight down, but
with no other result than to break the charred ladder.

They crawled back to the ridgepole, and worked their hose lines around
to the end of the building, out of the flames. Here a two-story drop
confronted them.

"This thing is going to fall under us if we don't do something,"
muttered Ward.

"Duane's forgotten us, and those crazy idiots at the engines are too
busy trying to keep from being washed," surmised Keith.

"Look here," said Munro suddenly; "I'll brace against a chimney and
hang on to the hose, and you can slide down it like a rope."

"How about you?" demanded Ward crisply.

"You can run for more ladders, once you're on the ground."

At this moment the water failed in Keith's hose. He stared at the
nozzle, then rapidly began to unscrew it.

"Cistern empty or hose burst," surmised Munro.

But Talbot Ward, cocking his ear toward a distant pandemonium of
cheering, guessed the true cause.

"Sucked," said he. By this he meant that the Monumental crew had
succeeded in emptying their water box in spite of the Eureka's best
efforts.

"Get off your nozzle quick!" urged Keith.

Munro, without stopping to ask why, bent his great strength to the
task; and it was a task, for in his hose the pressure of the water was
tremendous. It spurted back all over him, and at the last the nozzle
was fairly blown away from him.

"Now couple my hose to yours quick, quick, before my hose fills!" cried
Keith.

"They won't go--" Munro began to object.

"Yes, they will, mine's a special thread," urged Keith, who had
remembered Bert Taylor's reversed nozzle.

All three bent their energies to catching the threads. It was a fearful
job, for the strength of the water had first to be overcome. Keith was
terribly excited. Time was precious, for not only might the roof give
way beneath them, but at any moment the water might come again in
Keith's hose. Then it would be physically impossible to make the
coupling. All three men concentrated their efforts on it, their feet
gripping the irregularities of the roof or slipping on the shingles.
Frank Munro bent his enormous back to the task, the veins standing out
in his temples, his face turning purple with the effort. Keith helped
him as well as he was able. Talbot Ward, coolly, deliberately,
delicately, as though he had all the time in the world, manipulated the
coupling, feeling gingerly for the thread. The water spurted, fanned,
sprayed, escaping with violence, first at one point, then at another,
drenching and blinding them.

"There!" breathed Ward at last, and with a few twists, of his sinewy
hands brought the couplings into close connection. Munro relaxed,
drawing two or three deep breaths. Without the aid of his great
strength the task could not have been accomplished.

"Hook her over the chimney," gasped Keith.

With some difficulty they lifted the loop of the throbbing hose over
the chimney.

"Down we go!" cried Keith, and slid hand over hand down the way thus
made for them. The others immediately followed, and all three stood
looking back. It was a wonder the building had stood so long, for in
both stories it was afire, and the walls had apparently burned quite
through. Indeed, a moment later the whole structure collapsed. A
fountain of sparks and brands sprang upward in the mighty suction.

"There goes our good hose!" said Keith.

The remark brought them to wrath and a desire for vengeance.

"I'm going to lick somebody!" cried Keith, starting determinedly in the
direction of the engine.

"We'll help," growled Munro.

But when they came in sight of the engine their anger evaporated, and
they clung to each other, weak with mirth.

For the Monumental was "washed," and washed aplenty. This was natural,
for now the water was pouring into her box from _both_ directions, and
would continue so to pour until the hose coupled to Ward's engine had
burned through. The water was fairly spouting up from the box, not
merely overflowing. Her crew were still working, but raggedly and
dispiritedly. Bert Taylor, his trumpet battered beyond all recognition,
was fairly voiceless with rage. An interested and ribaldry facetious
crowd spared not its sarcasm.

"My crowd must be in the same fix!" gurgled Ward; "the back pressure
has 'washed' them, too." Then the full splendour of the situation burst
on him, and he fell again on Munro for support.

"Don't you see," he gasped. "They'll never know! The hose will burn
through. Unless we tell, they'll never know! We've got even, all right."

At this moment Duane rode up, foaming at the mouth, and desiring to
know what the assorted adjectives they were doing there. The crews
awoke to their isolation and general uselessness. Bert Taylor, still
simmering, descended from his perch. They followed the hose lines to
glowing coals!

"Here, this won't do," said Talbot; so they reported themselves before
the news of a tragedy had had time to spread.

The fire was now practically under control. It had swept a city block
pretty clean, but had been confined to that area. An hour later they
dragged their engine rather dispiritedly back to the house. Ordinarily
they would have been in high spirits. Fires were to these men a good
deal of a lark. The crews were very effective and well drilled, and the
saving of property was as well done as possible, but that was all
secondary to the game of it. But to-night they had been "washed," they
had lost the game, and the fact that they had put out the fire cut very
little figure. There was much bickering. It seemed that Bert Taylor, in
his enthusiasm, had, out of his own pocket, hired extra men who
appeared at the critical moment to relieve the tired men at the brakes;
and it was under their fresh impetus that the Monumental had so
triumphantly "sucked." Now Bert Taylor was freely blamed. The regular
men stoutly maintained that if they had been left alone this would
never have happened.

"These whiskey bummers never can last!" they said. Everybody trooped
upstairs to the main rooms, where refreshments were served. After some
consideration Keith decided to tell his story in explanation of how it
was that the Monumentals were washed. Instantly the company cheered up,
A clamour broke out. This was great! With Talbot Ward and Munro to
corroborate, no one could doubt the story. Taylor ran about jubilantly,
returning every few moments to pat Keith on the shoulder.

"Fine! fine!" he cried. "We've got those _Eurekas_! I can't wait for
morning!"




XV


Keith got home about daylight to find Nan, terribly anxious, waiting up
for him. He brushed away her anxiety with the usual masculine
impatience at being made a fuss over, gave a brief account of the
fire--omitting mention of his narrow escape--and insisted that she go
to bed. After a few moments she obeyed, and immediately fell asleep.
Keith bathed himself and changed, made a cup of coffee, and wandered
about rather impatiently waiting for time to go downtown. Wing Sam
appeared, the morning paper came. The sun gained strength, and finally
tempted him outside.

For some time he prowled around, examining Nan's efforts at gardening.
There was not much to show as yet, but Keith had already the eye of
faith so essential to the Californian, and saw plainly trees, shrubs,
and flowers where now only spears of green were visible. The Morrells'
garden next door was already well grown, and he cast on it an
appraising eye. No sign of life showed about the place except a thread
of smoke from the kitchen chimney. It was still early.

Nevertheless, five minutes later Mrs. Morrell opened the side door and
stepped forth. She had on a wide leghorn hat, and carried a basket and
scissors as though to gather flowers. Immediately she caught sight of
Keith and waved him a gay greeting. He vaulted the fence and joined her.

"Aren't these early morning hours perfect? Isn't this glorious
sunshine?" she greeted him.

As a matter of fact Mrs. Morrell seldom rose before noon, and detested
early morning hours and glorious sunshine. She was inclined to consider
the usual remarks in their praise as sheer affectation. But she adored
fires, and often went to them when they promised well enough. Sometimes
she attended in company with certain of her men friends; and sometimes
alone, cloaked as a man. She liked the destruction and stimulation of
them. She had been to the fire just extinguished, and seeing Keith in
the garden, had put on her fluffiest and gone out to him. It was time
this most attractive young man next door paid her more attention.

"How does the hero of the fire survive?" she asked him archly.

"Hero?"

"Don't pretend ignorance. Charles told me all about it. He heard your
tale at the Monumental."

"It's hardly heroism to get out of a scrape the best way possible."

"It's heroic to save lives, I think; but especially heroic to keep your
head in an emergency."

"Mr. Morrell all right?" asked Keith, to change the subject.

"He is sleeping off the fire--and the after effects. You men need
watching every minute--even when we think you must be in danger of your
lives."

She laughed and clipped a few flowers at random.

"Have you been moving furniture all these days? We've seen nothing of
you. I thought we were going to have some music. I do my little
five-finger exercises all by myself and nobody knows but I am playing
Beethoven. You ought in Christian charity to help me out--whether you
want to or not. What do you think of our garden? Don't you adore
flowers?"

"No, I don't believe I do," replied Keith bluntly. "I like to see a
pretty woman amongst 'em," he went on gallantly, "they set her off.
It's like dresses. No good to show me pretty frocks--unless they're
filled."

"La! You are so clever; at times I'm really afraid of you," said she.

She went on tossing a few blooms into her basket. Under the stimulus of
the fire she had acted on impulse in going out into the garden. She
realized it as perhaps a mistake. Keith's early morning freshness and
fitness made her feel less sure of herself than usual. She had an
uneasy impression that she was not at her best, and this reacted on her
ability to exercise her usual magnetism. In fact, Keith, the least
observant of men in such things, could not avoid noticing her rather
second-hand looking skin, and that her features were more pronounced
than he had thought.

"Do come over this evening for some music," she begged. "You can take a
nap this afternoon, and you can go home early."

Keith had been just a little uneasy over this second interview with
Mrs. Morrell. His straightforward nature was inclined to look back on
the impression she had made on him at the supper party with a
half-guilty sense of some sort of vague disloyalty he could not
formulate. Now he felt much satisfied with himself, and quite relieved.
Therefore, he accepted.

"I shall be very glad to," said he.

At breakfast, which was rather late, he told Nan of the meeting and the
invitation. Nan's clear lines, fresh creamy skin, bright young eyes,
looked more than usually attractive to him.

"Perhaps she _can_ play," he said. "Let's go find out. And you must
wear your prettiest gown; I'm proud of my wife, and I want her to look
her very best."

A little later he remarked:

"I wonder if she isn't considerably older than Morrell."




XVI


When he had at last reached downtown after his late breakfast, Keith
found it in a fair turmoil. Knots of men stood everywhere arguing,
sometimes very heatedly. Eureka members were openly expressing their
anger over what they called Taylor's "dirty trick" in putting hirelings
on the brakes, men who did not belong to the Monumental organization at
all. If it had not been for that the Monumentals could never have
"sucked" at all. On the other hand, the Monumentals and their friends
were vehemently asserting that they were well within their rights.
Fists were brandished. Several fights started, but were stopped before
they had become serious.

Keith avoided these storm centres, waving a friendly hand, but
smilingly refusing to be drawn in. Near the Merchants' Exchange,
however, he came on a quieter, attentive group, in the centre of which
stood Calhoun Bennett. The Southerner's head was thrown back haughtily,
but he was listening with entire courtesy to a violent harangue from a
burly, red-faced man in rough clothes.

"And I tell you that sort of a trick won't go down with nobody, and the
story of why you were washed won't wash itself. It's too thin."

"I have the honah, suh," said Bennett formally, "to info'm yo' that yo'
do not know what yo' are talkin' about."

His silken tones apparently enraged the man.

"You silk-stockinged----of a----!" said he.

Without haste Calhoun Bennett rapped the man across the face with his
light rattan cane. Venting a howl of rage, the Eureka partisan leaped
forward. Calhoun Bennett, quick as a flash, drew a small derringer and
fired; and the man went down in a heap. Superbly nonchalant, Bennett,
without a glance at his victim, turned away, the ring of spectators
parting to let him through. He saw Keith, and at once joined him,
drawing the young man's arm through his own. Keith, looking back, saw
the man already sitting up, feeling his shoulder and cursing vigorously.

Bennett was fairly radiating rage, which, however, he managed to
suppress beneath a well-bred exterior calm.

"These hounds, suh," he told Keith, "profess not to believe us, suh!
They profess, suh, that our explanation of how we were washed is a
fabrication. You will oblige me, suh, by profferin' yo' personal
testimony in the case."

He faced Keith resolutely toward the Eureka engine house. Keith spared
a thought to wonder what he was being let in for by this handsome young
fire-eater, but he went along unprotesting.

Around the Eureka engine house was a big crowd of men. These fell
silent as Bennett and Keith approached. The Eurekas represented quite a
different social order from the Monumentals. Its membership was
recruited from those who in the East had been small farmers, artisans,
or workingmen in the more skilled trades; independent, plain, rather
rough, thoroughly democratic, a trifle contemptuous of "silk
stockings," outspoken, with little heed for niceties of etiquette or
conduct. Bennett pushed his way through them to where stood Carter, the
chief, and several of the more influential. Keith, looking at them, met
their eyes directed squarely into his. They were steady, clear-looking,
solid, rather coarse-grained, grave men.

"I have brought Mr. Keith here, who was an eyewitness, to give his
testimony as to the events of last evenin'," said Bennett formally.

Keith told his story. It was received in a blank noncommittal silence.
The men all looked at him steadily, and said nothing. Somehow, he was
impressed. This silence seemed to him, fancifully, more than mere lack
of words--it conveyed a sense of reserve force, of quiet appraisal of
himself and his words, of the experiences of men who have been close to
realities, who have _done_ things in the world. Keith felt himself to
be better educated, to own a better brain, to have a wider outlook, to
be possessed, in short, of all the advantages of superiority. He had
never mingled with rough men, and he had always looked down on them. In
this attitude was no condescension and no priggishness, Now he felt,
somehow, that the best of these men had something that he had not
suspected, some force of character that raised them above his previous
conception. They might be more than mere "filling" in a city's
population; they might well come to be an element to be reckoned with.

When he had quite finished his story, there ensued a slight pause. Then
said Carter:

"We believe Mr. Keith. If Mr. Ward and Frank Munro were there, of
course there can be no doubt." Somehow Keith could not resent the
implication; it was too impersonally delivered. Carter went on with
cold formality and emphasis; "Mr. Keith had a very narrow escape. It
was lucky for him that your hired men had 'sucked' your waterbox. In
view of that we can, of course, no longer regret the fact."

"It was a dirty trick just the same!" growled a voice out of the crowd.

Carter turned a deliberate look in that direction, and nothing more was
said. Bennett ignored the interruption, bowed frigidly, and turned
away. The Eureka leaders nodded. In dead silence Keith and Bennett
withdrew.

"That settles _that_!" observed Bennett, when at a little distance. "A
lot of cheap shopkeepers! It makes me disgusted every time I have
anythin' to do with them!"

As they walked away, one of the hangers-on of the police court
approached, touching his hat.

"For you, Mr. Bennett," he said most respectfully, proffering a paper.

"Me?" observed Bennett, surprised. He unfolded the paper, glanced at
it, and laughed. "I'm arrested for wingin' that 'shoulder-striker' up
the street a while back," he told Keith.

"Anything I can do?" asked Keith anxiously.

"Not a thing, thank you. There'll be no trouble at all--just a little
nuisance. May call you for a witness later."

He went away with the officer, but shortly after Keith saw him on the
street again. The matter had been easily arranged.

Keith went to his office. In spite of himself he could not entirely
take Bennett's point of view. Several of the men at Eureka headquarters
looked interesting--he would like to know them--perhaps more than
interesting, the potentiality of a reasoning and directed power.




XVII


The afternoon nap suggested by Mrs. Morrell was not enjoyed, and Keith
returned home feeling pretty tired and inclined to a quiet evening. Nan
had to remind him of his engagement.

"Oh, let's send a note over by Wing," he said, a little crossly. "I
don't feel like making an effort to-night."

But Nan's convention could not approve of anything quite so radically a
last-minute decision.

"It's a little late in the day for that," she pointed out. "She may
have stayed in just to see us. We can leave early."

Keith went, grumbling. They found Mrs. Morrell in full evening dress,
showing her neck and shoulders, which were her best points, for she was
full bosomed and rounded without losing firmness of flesh. Nan was a
trifle taken back at this gorgeousness, for she had not dressed. Keith,
with his usual directness, made no secret of pretending to be utterly
overwhelmed.

"I didn't know we were expected to dress for a real concert with
flowers!" he cried, laughing.

Mrs. Morrell shrugged her fine shoulders indifferently.

"This old rag!" she said. "Don't let that bother you. I always like to
put on something cool for the evening. It's such a relief."

It developed that Morrell had an engagement, and could not stay.

"He was so disappointed," purred Mrs. Morrell.

She was all eager for the music, brushing aside this and other
preliminaries.

"You play, sing?" she asked Nan. "What a pity! I'm afraid you're going
to be terribly bored."

She turned instantly to Keith, hurrying him to the piano, giving the
impression of being too eager to wait--almost the eagerness of a
drunkard in the presence of drink. And this in turn conveyed a
vibrating feeling of magnetism, of temperament under restraint, of
possibilities veiled. The impact struck Keith's responsive nature full.
He waked up, approached the piano with reviving interest. She struck
idle chords and flashed at him over her shoulder a brilliant smile.

"What shall it be?" she demanded, still with the undercurrent of
eagerness. "You choose--a man's song--something soulful. I'm just in
the mood."

"Do you know the 'Bedouin Love Song?'" he inquired.

"The 'Bedouin Love Song?' No--I'm afraid not. We are so far out of the
world."

"It's a new thing. It goes like this."

He hummed the air, and she followed it hesitatingly, feeling out the
accompaniment. Mrs. Morrell knew her instrument and had a quick ear.
Occasionally Keith leaned over her shoulder to strike for her an
elusive chord or modulation. In so doing he had to press close, and for
all his honest absorption in the matter at hand, could not help
becoming aware of her subtle perfume, the shine of her flesh, and the
brightness of her crown of hair.

"You play it," she said suddenly.

But he disclaimed the ability.

"I don't know it any better than you do, and you improvise wonderfully."

They became entirely absorbed in this most fascinating of tasks, the
working out little by little of a complicated accompaniment.

"There!" she cried gayly at last. "I believe I have it. Let's try."

Keith had a strong smooth baritone, not too well trained, but free from
glaring faults and mannerisms. It filled the little drawing-room
ringingly. He liked the song, and he sang it with fire and a certain
defiance that suited it. At its conclusion Mrs. Morrell sprang to her
feet, breathing quickly, her usual hard, quick artificiality of manner
quite melted.

"It's wonderful!" she cried. "It lifts one right up! It makes me feel
I'd run away----" She checked herself abruptly, and turned to where Nan
sat in an armchair outside the circle of light, "Don't you just _adore_
it?" she asked in a more restrained manner, and turned back to Keith,
who was standing a little flushed and excited by the song, "You have
just the voice for it--with that vibrating deep quality." She reseated
herself at the piano and struck several loud chords. Under cover of
them she added, half under her breath, as though to herself, but
distinctly audible to the man at her shoulder; "Luck for us all that
you are already taken."

Keith would have been no more than human if he had not followed this
cue with a look. She did not lower her eyes, but gave him back his gaze
directly. It was as though some secret understanding sprang up between
them, though Keith,--in half-angry confusion, could not have analyzed
it.

After this they compared notes until they found several songs they both
knew. Mrs. Morrell brushed aside Keith's suggestion that she herself
should sing, but she did it in a way that left the implication that he
was the important one vocally.

"No, no! I've been starved too long. I'm as tired of my little reed of
a voice as of the tinkle of a musical box."

The close of the evening was brought about only by the return of
Morrell from his engagement. Keith had utterly forgotten his fatigue,
and was tingling with the enthusiasm to which his nature always rose
under stimulus. The Englishman, very self-contained, clean-cut,
incisive, brought a new atmosphere. He was cordial and polite, but not
expansive. Keith came down from the clouds. He remembered, with
compunction, Nan sitting in the armchair, the lateness of the hour, his
own fatigue.

"You should hear Mr. Keith's new song, Charley," said Mrs. Morrell.
"It's the most wonderful thing! The 'Bedouin Love Song,' You must
surely sing it at the Firemen's Ball. It will make a great hit. No, you
surely must. With a voice like yours it is selfish not to use it for
the benefit of all. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Keith?"

"I'll sing it, if you will play my accompaniment," said Keith.

On their way home Keith's enthusiasm bubbled up again.

"Isn't it great luck to find somebody to practise with?" he
cried--"Unexpected luck in a place like this! I wish you cared for
music."

"Oh, I do," said Nan. "I love it. But I just can't do it, that's all."

"Did you like it to-night?"

"I liked it when you really _sang_" replied Nan with a little yawn,
"but it always took you such a time to get at it."

A short silence fell.

"Are you really going to sing at the Firemen's Ball?" she asked
curiously.

"I haven't been asked yet," he reminded her. "Don't you think it a good
idea?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Nan, but her voice had a little edge. Keith
felt it, and made the usual masculine blunder. He stopped short,
thunderstruck at a new idea.

"Why, Nan," he cried reproachfully, "I don't believe you like her!"

"Like her!" she flashed back, her anger leaping to unreasonable
proportions--"that old frump!"

No sooner had the door closed after them than Morrell's conventional
smile faded, and his countenance fell into its usual hard, cold
impassivity.

"Well, what is the game there?" he demanded.

"There is no game," she replied indifferently.

"There is very little money there, I warn you," he persisted.

She turned on him with sudden fury.

"Oh, shut up!" she cried. "I know my own business!"

"And I know mine," he told her, slowly and dangerously. "And I warn you
to go slow unless I give the word."

She stared at him a moment, and he stared back. Then, quite
deliberately, she walked over to him until her breast almost touched
him. Her eyes were half closed, and a little smile parted her full lips.

"Charley," she drawled wickedly, "I warn _you_ to go slow. And I warn
you not to interfere with me--or I might interfere with you!"

Morrell shrugged his shoulders, and turned away with an assumption of
indifference.

"Please yourself. But I can't afford a scandal just now."

"_You_ can't afford a _scandal!_" she cried, and laughed hardly.

"Not just now," he repeated.




XVIII


Perhaps this unwise antagonizing by her husband, perhaps the idleness
with which the well-to-do woman was afflicted, perhaps a genuine liking
for Keith, gave Mrs. Morrell just the impulse needed. At any rate, she
used the common bond of music to bring him much into her company. This
was not a difficult matter. Keith was extravagantly fond of just this
sort of experimental amateur excursions into lighter music, and he
liked Mrs. Morrell. She was a good sort, straightforward and honest and
direct, no nonsense in her, but she knew her way about, and a man could
have a sort of pleasing, harmless flirtation to which she knew how to
play up. There was not, nor could there be--in Keith's mind--any harm
in their relations. Nan was the woman for him; but that didn't mean
that he was never to see anybody else, or that other women might
not--of course in unessential and superficial ways--answer some of his
varied needs.

Mrs. Morrell was skilful at keeping up his interest, and she was
equally skilful in gradually excluding Nan. This was not difficult, for
Nan was secretly bored by the eternal practising, and repelled by Mrs.
Morrell's efforts to be fascinating. She saw them plainly enough, but
was at first merely amused and faintly disgusted, for she was proud
enough to believe absolutely that such crude methods could have no
effect on Milton, overlooking the fact that the crudities of women
never appear as plainly to a man as they do to another woman. For a
woman is in the know. At first she offered one excuse or another, in an
attempt to be both polite and plausible. She much preferred a book at
home, or a whole free evening to work at making her house attractive.
Later, Keith got into the habit of taking her attitude for granted.

"I promised to run over to the Morrells' this evening," he would say,
"More music. Of course you won't care to come. You won't be lonely? I
won't be gone late."

"Of course not," she laughed. "I'm thankful for the chance to get
through with the blue room."

Nevertheless, after a time she began to experience a faint,
unreasonable resentment; and Keith an equally faint, equally
unreasonable feeling of guilt.

Left to itself this situation would, therefore, have righted itself,
but Mrs. Morrell was keen enough to give it the required directing
touches:

"Too bad we can't tear your wife away from her house and garden."

"If you only had some one to practise with regularly at home! Your
voice ought to be systematically cultivated. It is wonderful!"

And later:

"You ought not to come here so much, I suppose--" rather doubtfully,
"Any sort of practice and accompaniment--even my poor efforts--does you
so much good! You or I would understand perfectly, but it is sometimes
so difficult for the inexperienced domestic type to comprehend! An
older woman who understands men knows--but come, we must sing that once
more."

The effect of these and a thousand similar speeches injected apparently
at random here and there in the tide of other things was at once to
intensify Keith's vague feeling of guilt, and to put it in the light
somehow of an injustice to himself. He had an unformulated notion that
if Nan would or could only understand the situation and be a good
fellow that every one would be happy; but as she was a mere woman, with
a woman's prejudices, this was impossible. It was absurd to expect him
to give up his music just because she wanted to be different! He had
really nothing whatever to conceal; and yet it actually seemed that
difficulty and concealment would be necessary if this sort of unspoken
reproach were kept up. Women were so confoundedly single-minded!

And as the normal, healthy, non-introspective male tends to avoid
discomfort, even of his own making, it thus came about that Keith spent
less and less time at home. He did not explain to himself why. It was
certainly no lessening of his affection for Nan. Only he felt
absolutely sure of her, and the mental situation sketched above left
him more open to the lure of downtown, which to any live man was in
those days especially great. Every evening the "fellows" got together,
jawed things over, played pool, had a drink or so, wandered from one
place to another, looked with the vivid interest of the young and
able-bodied on the seething, colourful, vital life of the new
community. It was all harmless and mighty pleasant. Keith argued that
he was "establishing connections" and meeting men who could do his
profession good, which was more or less true; but it took him from home
evenings.

Nan, at first, quite innocently played into his hands. She really
preferred to stay at home rather than be bored at the Morrells'. Later,
when this tradition had been established, she began to be disturbed,
not by any suspicion that Milton's interest was straying, but by a
feeling of neglect. She was hurt. And little by little, in spite of
herself, a jealousy of the woman next door began to tinge her solitude.
Her nature was too noble and generous to harbour such a sentiment
without a struggle. She blamed herself for unworthy and wretched
jealousy, and yet she could not help herself. Often, especially at
first, Keith in an impulse would throw over his plans, and ask her to
go to the theatre or a concert, of which there were many and excellent.
She generally declined, not because she did not want to go, but because
of that impelling desire, universal in the feminine soul, to be a
little wooed to it, to be compelled by gentle persuasion that should at
once make up for the past and be an earnest for the future. Only Keith
took her refusal at its face value. Nan was lonely and hurt.

Her refusals t

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