The Emperor's Gunslingers

by Sevenstars

A winter vacation trip to San Francisco throws Slim back into contact with Adams and his men—and his old friend Flint McCullough—while Jess encounters another reformed gunslinger, the former Johnny Madrid. #2 in the trilogy.

The Emperor's Gunslingers

a Laramie/Lancer/Wagon Train crossover

by Sevenstars

SUMMARY: Slim and Jess's mysterious visit to the Barbary Coast, as referenced in "Dragon at the Door" (and, I naturally presume, more respectable parts of the City by the Bay), and the unexpected meetings that occurred in connection with it. Set over the winter of 1871-2, following the episode "The Sound of Bells," prior to the Second Season Wagon Train opener "Around the Horn," and sometime between the first and second seasons of Lancer. Second in my crossover series.

Many thanks to NokuMarieDeux for gracious permission to use her version of Johnny Madrid's first "gunfight," his mother's fate and what he did about it, and his first teamup, at fourteen, with "this other kid, Texas boy, little older than me." And, of course, to the ever excellent Gloria, peerless beta of novel-length fics.

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1. A Near Miss and Two Encounters

New Year's Day (Monday), 1872:

From Fort Point the Golden Gate shore fell back in a rugged shingle south to Baker's Beach and China Beach, then ran west for about a mile, beneath the entrance bluffs, to Land's End. Past Mile Rock the shore turned southward, and from there it curved off to the southwest, about another mile, past Starr's Rock to treacherous Point Lobos. On this, the southern shore of the harbor entrance, more than one ship had been pounded to pieces, and her cargo and broken timbers claimed by the sea; many another, especially in the earliest days, had missed the fog-shrouded strait entirely and gone blithely up or down the coast without being aware of her error. Beyond, the rough shoreline continued past Seal Rocks and the Cliff House, and then became the tawny beach where two men stood, their rented horses browsing in the salt grass a dozen yards behind them. The afternoon was cool, but to them, hardly cold: the sea breeze made their jackets welcome, but at fifty-odd degrees nothing more was needed by constitutions inured to the bitter winters of Wyoming.

Jess Harper had seen the Mississippi River—had in fact been boated across it, him and the horse he'd had at the time, on their way to join the Confederate Cavalry unit he'd been conscripted into. He remembered about it three chief things: that its shores were far apart, that its current was fearfully swift, and that its color was an unpleasant mud-yellow. Save for the infrequent bluffs, its banks had seemed a monotonous extension of tangled flatness, above which at a respectful distance from the river the watchful levees stood. But about the river itself there was nothing monotonous whatsoever. From moment to moment of its endless life it made prodigious jumps across necks of land, radically changing the relative positions of towns and landmarks. It moved sidewise, bodily, shifting its course almost wholesale; it built up islands that moved upstream as the current added a deposit of earth here, subtracted from it there. Whole trees, islands of trees, and parts of trees—trees that lurked beneath the surface or floated as tall obstructions; sand bars, shallows, floating islands, sudden changes in the riverbed; vagrant currents, enormous whirlpools, shallow rapids, widespread floods; everything that Nature could contrive to tax the skill and nerve of the navigator gave it the reputation of a "wicked river." Below Natchez, the land flattened out in broad plantations, and past Baton Rouge the river widened even more, till it was more like a lake; most of the time the far shore was only a faint, feathered line on the horizon. In that, it bore some resemblance to its ultimate goal, the Gulf of Mexico, which Jess had also seen, the time he'd ridden guard for a cotton train bound for Brownsville. The Gulf was certainly a vast expanse of water—to north and south and out ahead of you it extended farther than the eye could reach; but except when whipped savage by a storm, it was mostly tranquil, lacking the majesty of the huge Pacific rollers crashing against the sand some two hundred yards in front of him. And, too, the Gulf shore was perfectly flat and featureless, a sandy beach broken only by looping strings of kelp washed up by the tide, chunks of driftwood and scattered shells. Neither could equal what Jess saw before him now—or the steep cliffs rising abruptly directly to his right. He blinked and narrowed his eyes against the flying spume, his tongue flicking out to taste its salt on his lips.

"I'd heard it was big," he whispered, "but I didn't reckon—I dunno—somehow I never figured—" He stuttered to a halt and waved a black-gloved hand incoherently at the expanse of water.

"It sure is something, isn't it?" Slim Sherman agreed, and smiled. "I guess you know now how I felt the first morning I saw the sun rising over our mountain."

"I reckon I do," said Jess. "How come it don't trouble you none? You ain't been here before, have you?"

"No," Slim admitted, "I haven't. But I got a good look at New York Harbor a few years back, and a distant glimpse, from about six miles away, of the Atlantic—which isn't as big, but it's rougher, so it's just as impressive."

Jess considered that for a minute, then, with a sidewise look: "You got more schoolin' than me—how big is it, really?"

"If you're asking how far it is to the next land," said Slim, "the Chinese mainland's something over eight thousand miles due west. There are a few islands in between, but they're so small and the ocean's so big it'd be easy to miss them, except for Japan, maybe." Seeing that Jess seemed little more enlightened than he'd been when he asked the question, he explained, "That's about as far as from Laramie to San Antonio straight overland—nine times over." For a moment his light eyes took on a dreamy look. "That water you hear whispering up and down the beach has whitened the sands of Tahiti and tossed the ice floes in the Bering Sea. The spices you smell come from Cathay. You're at the end of the continent, Jess—think of that."

"I am thinkin' of that," his friend agreed softly. "I give some mind to comin' out this way once, but… well, it didn't work out, and… and I never rightly reckoned I'd get a second chance, 'cept fall before this, maybe…" His voice trailed off at the thought of that time, how he'd left Wyoming for, he was sure, the good of the people he had come to love, only to be followed and found by his hardheaded employer, shown once and for all how valuable he was to the people of Sherman Ranch, and brought home. He drew in a slow, steadying breath and gazed out over the endless water at the low-flying pelicans skimming the offshore sea, the fishing fleet standing north for the Gate and home, and a red sun sinking beyond the edge of the world, absorbing from it all a calmness and peace, serenity and beauty, such as he had never known.

A thousand feet or so offshore, a great dark form suddenly broke the surface, and a soft whistling sound rode the breeze inward. Jess caught his breath. "Slim… is that what I think it is?"

Slim remembered that the Texan had spoken of reading about whales and whaling in the illustrated papers. "Bigger than you figured he'd be, isn't he?"

Jess stared at the giant creature, astonished, marveling, dazed at the wonder of actually seeing it alive and in the flesh. He watched, looking about twelve years old, lips parted, eyes alight, as it surged downward, its back bowed, and struck the surface with its tail; vanished a moment and suddenly reappeared, lunging headfirst up out of the water. Jess let out a wild spontaneous Texas whoop, part amazement, part fear, part delight. The whale, as if it had heard, dropped back and disappeared. Jess stared at the place where it had been, waiting for it to come up again, then sighed. "He sure was some buckin' bronc," he said. "How'd you like to try and ride him, pard?"

"Maybe we should get back," Slim suggested gently. "We've still got to unpack, and we should get something to eat…"

There was no answer for a moment, then: "I reckon so. I can come back… there'll be time…"

Slim reached out and gripped his shoulder understandingly. "Plenty of time," he agreed. "Come on."

They turned away from the hypnotic view, rightward toward the Point Lobos heights, and as they did Jess's eyes, sweeping across the nearby vista as habit commanded, picked up the shape of a horse about another hundred yards up, just below the break of the Point. It was a creamy palomino with a flash of silver at its bit, and there was a man squatting on his heels beside it, staring out over the endless Pacific, toying with the hat that lay across his thighs while the wind off the sea tossed and ruffled his straight dark hair. He paid no evident attention to Slim and Jess as they moved toward their waiting mounts, but Jess's skin prickled under his chambray shirt and old blanket-lined brush jacket. You're gettin' slack, Harper, he told himself. You didn't even see him get here. He paused as he reached for the sorrel hack's reins, and frowned to himself, watching sidewise as the man stood up and replaced his hat on his head, noticing the bell-bottomed cut of his pants—Mexican style—and the bobtail jacket that matched, a salmon-pink shirt showing underneath. Why's it seem like he oughtta be familiar, like maybe I seen him somewhere before? he wondered, as the other gathered the reins into his hand and swung lightly into the saddle.

"Jess? You okay?" Slim had seen the other man too.

The palomino was already moving, the rider balancing gracefully to its pace as it scrambled across the rocks and weed toward Cliff House and the seaward terminus of the toll road, the same way they'd come themselves. He didn't look back, didn't even seem to have noticed them. "I reckon," Jess allowed after a moment's hesitation, but still that sense of familiarity gnawed at him. It made him think about too many things… about Mac, and Laurel, and Devon Salbridge, and Bannister.

"You're getting a chill or something," Slim told him. "Goose walking over your grave, my ma would've said. You need some hot coffee, or maybe one of those Pisco Punches I've heard about. Want to stop at the Cliff House? I'll buy."

Jess shook his head. "Too fancy for my taste. Ain't even sure of that hotel the line put us in."

Slim chuckled. "It's free, and we've earned it. You've got to stop acting like a brush-popper who's never been fifty miles from home, Jess. But maybe you're right. It'll be dark by the time we get back to the city…"

They mounted up, Jess on the sorrel and Slim on the taller black, and began working their way up the slope toward the building that perched high above the shoreline rocks. The first incarnation of the Cliff House, overlooking the Pacific, had been built (not on the present site, but on Sutro Heights, just inland) in 1858 by that enterprising Mormon, Sam Brannan. It was succeeded in 1863 by the current one, constructed by C. C. Butler and Senator John Buckley. Managed for them by Captain Junius G. Foster, it was at first a long, low-roofed tavern of modest appearance, known for good food and wine and warm hospitality, though getting there meant a long, bumpy ride across the sandy dunes (till then chiefly the haunt of quail- and rabbit-hunters) that covered the northwest quarter of the Peninsula. High prices and limited access, however, didn't deter San Franciscans; the carriage trade had money to spend, and the great restaurant and wonderful view made the place an instant attraction. Then in '64 the Point Lobos toll road was begun, and the trip from the city, six or seven miles away, became something less than an all-day jaunt, with horsecars running direct from Portsmouth Square to the shore for only half a dollar. The broad macadam road was an immediate success, taking the best-fixed patronage away almost overnight from the old Mission highway and the San Bruno turnpike. And it had another attraction: a mile-and-three-quarter speeding drive alongside, with a level clay surface constantly harrowed, rolled, and watered, where before long dozens of well-to-do men were whipping their trotters up and down. Businessmen and stockbrokers went out to the road for drives before breakfast and the daily grind at their offices and exchanges; mothers took their children there for afternoon airings; lovers spooned along it on moonlit nights, and on Thursdays and Saturdays everybody in the city, it seemed, was bound for the beach, until sometimes as many as 1200 teams would tie up outside Cliff House, and anyone too late to get a space there had to either turn around and go back or drive on down the beach and hope for tethering space when they returned.

Inside, waiting for their dinner of Hangtown fries or terrapin or breast of guinea, the men gathered at the bar to drink cocktails or toddies or Tom and Jerries, and the ladies sat on the glass-enclosed balconies, watching the ships and sea lions through binoculars, listening as the slick brown-coated creatures barked in disharmony (led by "General Butler" and the doxology-throated "Old Hundred"), and sipping their port and sherry. On holidays feats of daring drew crowds who happily paid a dollar a seat to crowd the big seaside windows and thrill at the sight of daring swimmers braving the treacherous riptides, or tightrope walkers like fearless James Cook or daring Rose Celeste walking a tightrope stretched high over the booming surf to Seal Rocks. But in '68 the building was remodeled to include a promenade and two wings, and after that, though it attracted greater crowds, they were no longer the genteel locals of before; instead it became a favorite meeting place of state and city bosses—as well as the seamier crowds from the Barbary Coast—and a trysting place for "gentlemen" and their paramours. High-society customers were scared off by the disreputable clientele, and soon the Cliff House became famous (or perhaps infamous) for indecent behavior, scandals, and unmentionable antics committed in the upstairs rooms.

The coming of a new year, in the custom of the time, was celebrated less on the Eve than on the Day: the former might occasion a dance and supper by lodges, by temporary groups formed for that purpose alone, or by liberal hosts and hostesses, but the latter invariably—since the '40's at least, if not earlier—meant, in any sizeable city, that "every woman that is 'anybody'" (as Lydia Maria Child had put it) must stay at home, dressed in her Sunday best and presiding over a spread of oysters, fruit, cakes, bread, and other light edibles and a bowl of eggnog usually well spiked with bourbon, and receive the gentlemen of her acquaintance from ten in the morning till no earlier than six—sometimes as late as nine. In practice the "gentlemen" were chiefly bachelors armed with fancy calling cards, making brief visits—a wish of Happy New Year, "sip, nibble, bow, and depart"—but they, and especially those who were more interested in becoming intoxicated than anything else, tried to rack up as many calls as they could, fifty being considered a nice round figure, and bragged of the number they made, while the ladies boasted of those they received and the younger ones collected calling cards like butterfly specimens. By this hour many of the young gentlemen of San Francisco had exhausted the possibilities of their circle, and the more befuddled of them, not yet ready to call it a day, were converging on such doubtful venues as the Cliff House. The resort's windows were ablaze with light, and the sunset salute of the sea lions competed not only with the crash of sea against rock but with shouts and laughter, music and song from the expanded tavern. Jess thought he caught a glimpse, just as they passed, of the palomino's creamy coat glimmering in the dusk marching down off the distant Sierras and across the Delta and the Bay, but it didn't pause any more than he and Slim did, and soon they found it advisable to ease off to the edge of the road to avoid the dogcarts, beach wagons, four-passenger buggies, six-passenger buckboards, and other vehicles carrying the celebrants toward their evening rendezvous. Some of these bore not only men but attractive young women—most of them probably either mistresses, commonly called "actresses," although that might sometimes be a euphemism, or companions of a more casual kind.

Dusk was gathering as they passed into the heart of the city proper and turned right off Point Lobos at Mason, riding four blocks down to Market and left onto it, past the drill halls of nearly half a score of militia companies strung out along the next couple of blocks, to McFarland's Livery Stables, next door to the Bancroft Building, where they'd rented the horses. But not the saddles—those were their own, Jess having stubbornly insisted on bringing his from Wyoming and Slim having found it easier to do likewise than to try to explain why he shouldn't. At that it had probably been a good idea; most San Franciscans would probably ride Kentuckys or McClellans or maybe Morgan or plantation saddles, not Western hulls.

"We'll be wantin' them horses again, like as not," Jess told the stableman, "and mind you lock them saddles up, you hear? Somebody makes off with either one and I'll take sixty dollars out of your hide." He twitched the skirt of the brush jacket aside to provide a glimpse of the utilitarian walnut-butted sixgun at his hip.

The man looked that way, brought his gaze back up to Jess's hard diamond-flashing eyes, swallowed visibly and nodded. "Yessir, I'll put 'em under lock and key. Anybody that's booked into the Occidental gets the best treatment here."

Slim looked on and hid a smile. He couldn't fault Jess's caution, but occasionally—even often—he found himself just a little amused at how intimidated people who didn't know Jess could find him. Not that Jess couldn't be a very dangerous man if sufficiently aroused, but he wasn't the kind of stone-cold killer many folks were inclined to think if all they knew of him was his reputation or his public face. He could, if he had to, bluff with the best of them, doubtless the result of Dixie Howard's training, though unlike many bluffers he was always prepared to back it up. On the other hand, there was no doubting that, even after a year and a half of becoming gradually more settled (or, some might say, civilized), he could still do "mean and ornery" better than anyone else Slim knew.

Sometimes, that was a plus. Sometimes it was even a comfort.

Half a long block and all of a shorter one brought them to the intersection of Market and Montgomery, and another block up from that they reached their hotel, the towering, five-storeyed Occidental at Montgomery and Sutter, which had been built in stages between 1861 and 1869, had been the most fashionable in San Francisco in its early days, and even now was counted among the city's five finest, with doormen, big rooms (the cheapest were as large as some sodbusters' whole houses), gaslights, and soft, cozy beds. Here in '66 the Dowager Queen Emma of the Hawaiian Islands and her retinue had stayed, while Mark Twain, recently returned from her domain, gave lectures at the Academy of Music only a block away. Here could be found a fine dining room serviced by an excellent kitchen, a high-class barroom with a gaming room opening off it, a billiard room, a music room, a ballroom, a children's dining room, a ladies' parlor upstairs. Stepping into the high-ceilinged lobby, into the wavering yellow gaslights of the great crystal chandeliers, Jess felt, for one of the few times in his life, totally inadequate to the situation, and wondered if he should have put on his range clothes—and his gun—when they got checked in and went up to find their room and take off their travelling outfits, which had been rather the worse for wear from train soot and smoke.

Yet Slim had done the same, and Jess trusted his better-schooled friend to show him the way in a situation like this one. And the most indispensable quality of the true aristocrat—whether man or hostelry—is the ability to put everyone at their ease, which was perhaps something Jess didn't realize yet. There were some people checking in, and while the pair from Wyoming stood back and waited, he looked around carefully, drinking in, with a mixture of unease and wonderment, this place that was unlike anything he had ever seen before—not even in Denver, which many Westerners considered the only town worth visiting between St. Louis and here. A great staircase, richly ornamented in gold and white, swept toward the upper floors, with an iron-grillework elevator (in which Jess had very nearly left his stomach behind when it took them up to their room) on one side of it, and on the other the massive marble-topped oak counter, with heavy iron grilles like those of a bank, where the clerk and cashier held forth. The wide doors that led to the bar, the dining room, the ballroom, were almost closed by red velvet draperies. Massive chairs, oil lamps with huge milk-glass bowls painted in red and green, and tables of India teak, Brazilian mahogany, and African ebony and satinwood gave the room the look of a millionaire's sitting room, and Jess averted his eyes from his own shabby reflection (as it seemed to him in the midst of such magnificence) in the ornately gold-framed mirrors.

The new checkers-in were heading toward the elevator now, escorted by a clutch of bellboys with their luggage, and Slim moved toward the counter with Jess sticking close. "Sherman and Harper, Room 427," the rancher told the clerk. "What's a good place to eat?"

"The dining room is open, sir," the man replied.

"I know, but—" Slim hesitated an instant as he tried to decide how to put his point across without embarrassing his ill-at-ease friend— "we've only got so much time to see San Francisco."

The clerk pondered. "There's the What Cheer House, only about four blocks up, at Leidesdorff and Sacramento," he suggested after a moment. "It's a combination hotel and restaurant that caters to men only, permits no liquor on the premises, and offers a lounge, a-la-carte service—it was the first place in San Francisco to do that—and solid comfort. And Jack's, on Sacramento between Montgomery and Kearny, which has been serving hearty meals since 1864. You could walk to either one. Or if you don't mind taking a cab, there's Maye's Oyster House, on Polk Street, a good dozen blocks from here. It's a favorite resort of our citizens; it's only been open since '67, but they've been thronging to it ever since then for oysters and fresh fish, oyster loaf and Hangtown Fry. Here's your key, sir," he added.

"What do you think, Jess?" Slim asked, accepting the brass-tagged key. "Maye's? You always used to like Jonesy's oyster patties…"

"Well, I'll be! It can't be—Slim Sherman? What in tarnation are you doin' so far away from Wyoming?"

Jess could see by the look on his friend's face that he knew the voice even before he turned toward the speaker and his face lit up with that beaming Sherman smile. "Major Adams!" The two of them clasped hands in a hearty shake. The other man was grinning too—a big man, heavily built, probably in his middle fifties, with gray hair, a broad, tough yet pleasant face, a trimly clipped mustache and shrewd, hooded eyes now alight with pleasure. Despite his size he didn't look at all out of place in a pale gray suit, elegantly tailored to his bulky form, with a Homburg hat jauntily angled over his brow, a red-flowered silk cravat with a pearl stickpin in it, a Paisley-print waistcoat and a pleated shirt of fine linen. He was clearly delighted to have found Slim here, and Slim, just as clearly, had never expected to encounter him but was equally delighted to have done so.

"I'm—we're on vacation," he explained. "Kind of an involved story… Major, I want you to meet a very good friend of mine, Jess Harper. Jess, this is Major Seth Adams. If it hadn't been for him, you might never have gotten the chance to work for me. His First Sergeant picked me up after I was wounded at Fredericksburg and took me to his battalion's camp, and they looked after me and kept me on as their guest till I was able to go back to my own company."

A Yankee, then. "I'm obliged to you, Major," Jess offered, holding out his hand. "Old Hard-Rock here's saved my life a couple times—reckon I wouldn't be around if wasn't for him, or for what you done for him."

Adams shook hands, chuckling. "Hard-Rock, is it? Well, considerin' the shape he was in the night I met him, it suits him. He had a saber cut right across his forehead, and another one on his arm…" He paused a moment, one eyebrow tilting. "Texas?"

"That's right," Jess agreed without hesitation. "48th Texas Cavalry, Hood's brigade. Wasn't with 'em that early, though."

Adams glanced past them. "We're blockin' up the trail here, boys, let's move out of folks' way." He steered them over to the side of the room, away from the paths of human progress. "Vacation, huh? Tell the truth, you struck me as such a sober, businesslike young fella, especially after what happened to your pa, I'd'a' never expected to hear you say that."

Slim shrugged. "Like I said, involved story. What about you, Major? Are you still running wagon trains? What about Bill and Charlie, are they still with you?"

"Yes to both," Adams told him. "We brought our fifth outfit over this season. And as for Hawks and Wooster, they're busy gettin' Bill's wife Emily onto her steamer, her and a lot of our luggage; she's goin' back East by the Isthmus route, gonna meet us in Boston. Say, I've had a young fella scoutin' for me this year, his first trip with us, says he knows you—Jim Bridger's boy, Flint McCullough…?"

"Flint? No! I don't believe it!" Slim's eyes were bright with pleasure. "Is he here too?"

Before Adams could reply, there was a stir near the doors, a quick murmur of awed voices, and as Jess looked that way with a gunfighter's ingrained urge to keep abreast of all changes in his environment, he saw women curtseying, men doffing their hats, and even a couple of small boys, one in a sailor suit and the other in the still-popular Garibaldi blouse and long pants, bowing at their mother's hissed command. What—? he wondered.

Slim and Adams were following his gaze. "Take your hat off, boy," the big man urged in a soft growl, "don't you know the Emperor Norton when you see him? Harper—your hat!"

Bewildered, but seeing that Slim was doing as he'd been told, Jess quickly yanked off his black Stetson and held it in front of him, wondering what all the fuss was about. A rather slight, wiry gentleman with gray hair and a goatee and heavy mustache that matched was making his way slowly and genially through the crowd of people—at this hour many of them were waiting for seating in the dining room, not all by any means residents of the hotel, for a family dinner out was becoming a common way to observe the first evening of the new year—smiling and nodding in acknowledgment of their greetings. He wore a dark-blue frock-coated suit that bore a striking resemblance to an Army officer's uniform, lavish with braid and epaulets and gleaming polished buttons, teamed with a beaver hat of middling crown height that was decorated with a gaudy rosette and a clutch of feathers, and carried an especially elaborate walking stick with a mahogany handle carved in the shape of a human hand grasping a snake. He was probably, Jess thought, somewhere in his fifties, but his eyes were bright and alert and his face had a pleasant, benign expression.

He caught sight of Adams and came toward him. "Major Adams, is it not? One of those brave and foresighted souls who bring the wagon trains across the Great American Desert every year?"

"Your Imperial Majesty," said Adams, inclining in a brief bow. "That's right, Sire—Major Seth Adams. With your permission, I'd like to present a young friend of mine—Matthew Sherman of Wyoming, formerly of Your Majesty's army, like myself. Slim—Norton the First, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico."

Jess was familiar with the word "emperor;" at least he'd seen it in the illustrated papers. He knew that Brazil and China had emperors, that Ancient Rome had had one—the Aztecs long ago in Mexico too, the Emperor Montezuma; and that Queen Victoria of England was also called "Empress of India," which he reckoned meant a female emperor, just like "actress" meant a female actor. He wasn't quite sure what an emperor was, but he'd pondered on it some and concluded it must be something like a king, only higher and more powerful.

But... an Emperor of the United States? No, that couldn't be. The United States had a President. He'd never voted for one, because he'd never stayed in one place long enough to register, but he'd read about the nominating conventions, and the inaugurations, and the speeches Presidents gave before Congress.

He couldn't ask, because Slim was apparently taking the title at face value; at least he bowed briefly, as he might have to a girl at the close of a dance, and said quietly, "Your Majesty… an honor." And then: "This is my—ah, foreman, Jess Harper."

Not sure just what was going on, Jess decided the wisest course of action was to simply do what Slim did, since Slim seemed to have some idea of who or what he was dealing with. He ducked his head in a shy, uncertain salute, but couldn't for the life of him decide what, if anything, he should say.

"A foreman?" The man called Norton looked both of them over with interest, observing their hats and range dress and the gunbelt draped around each one's middle. "Ah—Wyoming, of course! From the great cattle ranges of our dominions! Doubtless one of the bold men building empires on beef. Yes, I can see how such a man would be associated with one so dedicated to the Empire's expansion as Major Adams."

"Ah… no, my lord, I—I raise cattle, but on a very small scale—" For the first time Slim seemed equally as uncertain of himself as Jess felt.

"No matter, no matter. Mighty oaks, as the poet says. I should be interested to learn more of your part in the Imperial economy, Matthew Sherman. Perhaps you will call upon me while you are in my capital. Anyone here will direct you to the royal suite." He lifted his stick to his hatbrim in a gentleman's salute and continued on his way toward the elevator, where the boy was holding the grilled gate open for him.

It was only after it had closed behind him that the sense of faint unreality seemed to filter out of the room. "You did real good, Slim," Adams said quietly. "I wasn't quite sure, but I had to take the chance—I knew you've been schooled, so I figured the risk was worth it."

"It helps to like historical romances," Slim admitted. "I might not have known how to address an emperor, otherwise."

"He's not too well known outside California, I reckon," said Adams. "But the folks here in San Francisco, especially, seem to care a lot about not burstin' his bubble, if he's got one."

Jess couldn't restrain himself any longer. "Who is he?" he demanded. "Even I know the United States've got a President."

The Major gave him a thoughtful look, then nodded. "Reckon you've got a right to know. Come on, we'll have a drink and I'll tell you both. I'm supposed to be waitin' for Bill and Charlie anyway…"

---

2. How Things Happen

In the Occidental's quiet, luxurious bar, Adams ordered whiskey for himself, beers for his guests at their request, and they retreated to a secluded corner table. "I've been a lot of places in my life," he began, "but there's been none like this one. I reckon San Francisco's the most civilized and fascinating city in America. I've heard it said this is the wickedest, most corrupt and godless city on the face of the Earth—even more wicked than Marseilles or Port Said. Now I ain't been to those places, so I can't say of my own knowledge, but I reckon the people who built it had to have a lot of fire in 'em to make the trip, whether it was overland the way I bring 'em, or around the Horn, or across the Pacific, or over the Isthmus riskin' yellow fever and malaria. Them that make it—most of all the ones that prosper—have to be able, energetic, courageous, enthusiastic; good qualities to stir into the meltin' pot of a city. They're accustomed to hardships, reversals, strong disappointments, outrageous successes, and uninhibited pleasures. They can take ups and downs in the economy, the boom and panic of business, the destruction of fire, even earthquakes, all in stride; they can face changin' circumstances with perseverance and shed one career for another, and they know how to live it up. They've 'seen the elephant,' as the saying has it."

The Spanish had first settled here in 1776, and the first Anglo-Saxon visitor had been Captain George Vancouver of the British sloop-of-war Discovery, who called to renew his water supply in November, 1792. He was followed in 1806 by the first Russian ship. By 1842 no less than seven American couples had arrived and were settled there (though one of the wives was in fact the half-Indian daughter of old John McLoughlin, the Hudson Bay Company's "White-Headed Eagle"). The first Anglo-Saxon child, Mary Elizabeth Davis, was born on April 1, 1845. By 1847 a hundred ships annually were entering the Bay. And once gold was discovered, the city grew apace: by the end of 1849 30,000 people lived there—ten times as many as Wyoming's South Pass City when it was the biggest community in the Territory, two decades later—and San Francisco was spreading way beyond Mason Street and up the sides of Russian Hill, south beyond California Street and even Market Street. By the close of the '50's it had a population of well over 50,000—a figure achieved in less than a decade that had taken Philadelphia 120 years to reach, New York 190, and Boston 200.

San Francisco was, with the possible exception of Virginia City, Nevada, newer, bigger, brasher, and noisier than any other city in the United States. Conformity was considered mediocrity and extravagant individualism was encouraged and applauded—which, Adams speculated, might be one big reason Norton could function there. It was a blend of elements from just about every culture—the festal spirit of the original Spanish Californios, the Latin charm of the French and Italians, the self-discipline of the English and New Englanders, the robust ability of the Germans, the graciousness and hospitality of the Southerners, the laughter of the Irish, and the insatiable venturesomeness, sturdy character, and readiness to take chances of the seafarers and prairie-schooner pioneers. It was also almost the only town in the whole United States that hadn't been settled overland by at least some of the Puritan tradition. Except for the first Spanish, who came up from Mexico, it was founded mostly by gamblers, shady ladies, rascals, immigrants, and fortune-seekers who travelled across the Isthmus or the plains or around the Horn. They had their faults, but they weren't influenced by Cotton Mather. They were mostly transient, almost all male, and given to discarding past careers, but they came from all over the world—Orientals, South Americans, Australians, Europeans, Mexicans, and Americans from every state in the Union—and being thrown into such a mix of races, creeds, and religious differences, everybody was forced into a more liberal way of living than some might have preferred. And with the place being out on the far end of things, isolated from the whole rest of the country, it was easier to suspend old values. Thus San Francisco began life as a wide-open city, without the usual social norms, but also without the taboos and restrictions that go with them. The Gold Rush taught people the importance of liberality, individuality, independence of thought, defiance of accepted standards, sentimentality, inventiveness—like the German, Hermann Wenzel, who invented a clock that ran on compressed air, still unknown elsewhere in the world. Necessity created a tolerance for difference, a habit of accepting a person for himself, and experience taught that today's pauper could be tomorrow's millionaire, or the other way around, and that the most successful man in town could find his life ended by cholera or fire or an enemy with no warning at all. Being free from any national pattern for so long, people had to develop their own standards, which allowed the establishment of a highly spirited, innovative, cosmopolitan, unorthodox community. Individual differences being commonplace, they respected originality, or at least tolerated it, and embraced all eccentrics warmly, alive or fictitious.

The city was willing to give anyone a second chance—or a third, or a fourth. And people from all over the world took it up on the offer—Chileans and Chinese, Bengalis and Brazilians, Jews from all over Europe, ex-convicts from Australia, ex-Confederates from Mississippi, ex-slaves from Georgia, Mohawks from New York, Cherokees from the Indian Territory, Hawaiian laborers, Italian musicians, suave French thieves. Educated or illiterate, dirt-poor or well-capitalized, respectable or on the run, and every shading in between, everyone in San Francisco had come for one reason only—to make a fortune in this foggy, chilly city that had mushroomed into existence on the ashes of a muddy boomtown. The bay was jammed with shipping and the dockside warehouses were as full as the brothels. New buildings climbed up and over the hills, straining to accommodate an ever-burgeoning population. It was a shopping town without parallel, known fittingly as the Emporium of the Pacific. Even the bootblacks earned a very decent living from the filthy streets. No doubt many a man was running from a fuming brother-in-law, a forlorn fiancée, a cheated business partner or a landlord out the rent, in Argentina or Brooklyn, Scotland or South Africa. But it didn't matter. In San Francisco, any man could leave a disappointing past behind and get rich.

In 1870 the census had counted 149,473 people. A severe drought in 1869-70 crippled the state's agricultural industry, and in 1871 the stock exchange, chronically overstimulated the last ten or twelve years by Comstock silver speculation, fell from $80,000,000 in sales to $20,000,000 in less than a week. Yet it quickly recovered, and the city remained a bustling and prosperous place: as recently as August 5, the Morning Call—founded in 1856, when it was aimed primarily at the working-class Irish (hence its derogatory nickname, "the washerwoman's paper"), but since evolved into the sheet generally least guilty of inflammatory journalism—had reported that a mere 121 San Franciscans controlled $146,000,000 in private wealth: an average of somewhat over $1,206,000 apiece, though the actual range of those the paper listed was from half a million to twenty times as much.

Joshua Abraham Norton, as Adams explained, had done his best to become one of that august company. He was an English Jew, born, it was generally agreed, in 1818. When he was nine years old his parents took their two young sons (a third was born aboard ship) to Algoa Bay, South Africa, where his father became a leader of the local Jewish community. The group to which they belonged was called "the 1820 Settlers" and was instrumental in the creation of Port Elizabeth in the Cape Colony. When young Joshua was in his early twenties the family moved to Cape Town, where the father started a ship's chandlery. By the time Joshua was thirty his parents and brothers had died, leaving him the sole heir to an estate of something like $40,000—more than a skilled worker would earn in a lifetime, and a figure generally considered a fortune. Like so many others, he was lured by the word of gold in California, but from the beginning he was resolved not to break his back in the diggings. Instead he would make his fortune in business and real estate. And at first he did well. After a year or so of finding his feet, he established himself in a substantial granite building at 110 Battery Street, which housed the offices of several influential people, including the British Consul. He acquired parcels on three corners of Sansome and Jackson Streets, on which he opened a cigar factory, a small wood-framed office building, and a rice mill. He purchased a few lots by Rincon Point, the value of which increased dramatically when the Pacific Mail Steamship Company built a passenger terminal and warehouse nearby. And he bought several lots that were slated to be developed by Harry Meiggs on North Beach. He hobnobbed with San Francisco's business and social elite and was a charter member of the Occidental Lodge No. 22 of the Freemasons. He was remembered by those who had known him at the time as a shrewd, safe, prosperous man with more than ordinary intelligence, enterprising and fertile of resource.

Within four years of his arrival he had amassed $250,000, more than six times his original stake. At one time he was buying partner for three or four mercantile houses in the interior of the state, and manifested great business ability in that capacity. Then, in 1854, he thought he saw a way to double, and maybe triple, his money overnight, and tried to corner the rice market, perhaps with an eye to the increasing Chinese population, to whom it was the staff of life. He almost succeeded—until three ships bulging with the stuff unexpectedly sailed into the Bay. The rice market collapsed and he was forced into bankruptcy. The gold boom had faded, the Comstock's worth was yet to become known, and there was no chance for him to rebuild what he had lost. He more or less dropped out of sight for several years, then one day in 1859 walked into the office of the Bulletin and plunked down on the editor's desk a proclamation that read: "At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of the United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last nine years and ten months past of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of Feb. next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity." The Bulletin published it—on the front page—and San Francisco, which had always enjoyed playing the part of a tolerant host to eccentrics, found in him a perfect guest.

He took his new title seriously. Apparently deeply concerned with the worsening state of national affairs, he ordered Congress abolished "because of corruption in high places"—and when it met in defiance of the Imperial decree, ordered Winfield Scott, the former commanding general of the Army, to "clear the halls." (Scott, of course, did no such thing, and may not have even known of the command.) He abolished the California Supreme Court for a perceived slight. He fired Governor Wise of Virginia (who had earned his ire by sending John Brown to the gallows, instead of to the insane asylum, where Norton thought he belonged) and replaced him with John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, who was, at the time, otherwise occupied with the Vice Presidency of the United States. In July of 1860 he ordered the Republic to be abolished, stating, "We are certain that nothing will save the nation from utter ruin except an absolute monarchy under the supervision and authority of an independent Emperor." In 1863, in response to the French invasion that put Maximilian in power, he added "Protector of Mexico" to his title, making it clear that he would take an army across the border and restore order if the provincials in charge didn't do it themselves. (He seemed not at all disquieted by the fact that they didn't.) In 1869 he abolished the Republican and Democratic parties.

Yet he was a harmless sort of eccentric, and San Francisco took him to its heart. The people embraced him, providing him with food, clothing, and even living quarters. He became the darling of the city's newspapers, which published his proclamations with mock solemnity. His handsomely printed promissory notes (ten cents to ten dollars at 5%, due in 1880) were accepted everywhere, and the Donohoe-Kelly bank cheerfully cashed his worthless checks on the Royal Treasury. Tailors vied for the honor and publicity of outfitting him in his epauletted, frock-coated uniform (sometimes blue, sometimes gray—he was, after all, the Emperor of all the States), and were paid out of funds solemnly appropriated for the purpose by San Francisco's Board of Supervisors—to whom he responded with a gracious note of thanks and a "patent of nobility in perpetuity" to each member of the Board. Politicians courted him; to show him disrespect would be to lose votes. No play or musical performance would have dared to open without reserving a seat for him in the balcony. He levied a 25c. tax on shopkeepers (which they cheerfully paid), and ate free at fine restaurants, which placed signs in their windows declaring Emperor Norton Eats Here. He rode free on all the ferries and streetcars, and even the Central Pacific Railroad provided him with a pass so he could travel to Sacramento, where a chair was reserved for him in the State Legislature. Whenever he entered a theater or restaurant, patrons would rise in respectful silence and salute. He strode majestically up and down the streets, accepting the obeisances of his subjects, inspecting the sidewalks and making sure the policemen were on their beats, dropping in at a favored saloon (where he was hailed and toasted) to partake of the free lunch or into the theater of an evening, visiting the markets, the wharves, the banks and exchanges on California Street, and the boardrooms of businesses, passing out candy to children, and attending every meeting of the California Academy of Sciences, which were held in the First Congregational Church on the corner of Dupont and California. He visited the schools, and attended Saturday services at Temple Emanu-El and Sunday observances at various Christian houses of worship in rotation. "I think it is my duty," he once explained, "to encourage religion and morality by showing myself at church, and to avoid jealousy I attend them all in turn." He declared Christmas a holiday for children and commanded that a lighted tree be erected in Union Square for the occasion; the city obeyed. Twice a year he reviewed the police and fire departments as they paraded by, then made a grand speech to the assembled crowds. During the war he sent off imperial dispatches to Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Generals Grant and Lee. Later he considered himself responsible for successfully negotiating the end of the Franco-Prussian War. To him, at various times, came telegrams and cables (forged by practical jokers with the connivance of friends in the telegraph offices) from the Governor of California, the Irish philanthropist John Parnell, Prime Minister Disraeli of England, the President of Mexico, and the Czar of All the Russias; these he apparently accepted at face value. His proclamations were often witty and carried a little moral, and he rarely overstayed his welcome or forgot the dignity expected of the exalted. Somehow he seemed to know just how far he could go before tolerance turned to the ungentle solicitude of the asylum. He gave good value for the consideration he got.

In 1862, when the Lick House was opened at 111 Sutter Street, it was called the city's finest and "the greatest hotel in the world," three storeys high, with a bar, billiard rooms, a reading room, and its own barbershop. But its showpiece was the dining hall, an exact replica of the Palace of Versailles, its thirty-two-foot-high walls covered with eleven large murals of California scenes such as Yosemite and the Golden Gate, painted by the noted landscapist Thomas Hill and separated by great mirrors in intricately-carved rosewood frames. The domed roof soared to forty-eight feet at its peak, its ceiling a combination of stained, ground, and cut glass. It could seat 400 diners at a time, and its 64x87-foot mosaic parquetry floor was made up of nearly 88,000 pieces of exotic wood. Twenty feet off the floor was an eight-foot-wide viewing gallery from which people not invited to banquets could look down at them. Norton commanded that Lick (who happened to have been his landlord when he first settled in California) relinquish his opulent hostelry so the Emperor could be installed in surroundings commensurate with his rank. Lick wasn't amused, but his competitors entered a spirited bidding war to provide Norton with suitable accommodations, and the year-old Occidental won. Norton had lived there ever since, in a comfortable suite provided free of charge for the publicity value of the gesture. He was an exemplary guest, never disturbing his neighbors or making unrealistic demands on his hosts. His "chamberlain" and constant companion was a Chinese by the name of Ah How.

Once, in 1867, a San Francisco cop named Armand Barbier made the grave error of arresting him for vagrancy. The newspapers set up an indignant howl, and the Chief released him with a full apology. Ever since then the police had saluted him whenever they met him on the street.

He was a voracious reader of books and newspapers and a very good chess player, and liked to attend lectures and debating societies and the presentations of the San Francisco Opera House. He could talk very readily on any subject, and observers noted that his opinions were "usually very correct, except when relating to himself." He was familiar with history and had considerable scientific knowledge. And he had his fair share of moral courage, too. Once when a mob threatened a few Chinese, he broke through the crowd, spoke the Lord's Prayer, and said, "We are all God's children." The mobsters, abashed, dispersed, knowing better than to offer him harm.

"I met him the first year I came out here, in '67," Adams finished. "Lucky I'd already been warned he lived here and had a chance to find out somethin' about him. I don't claim to know whether he really thinks he's what he says he is, or whether he's puttin' on an act, but if it's an act, it's the best one I've ever seen. And one thing I can tell you is that this city loves him. You saw how those people out in the lobby played to him. I don't reckon there's anyone in San Francisco who'd ever do or say anything to suggest he wasn't a genuine emperor."

Slim let out a low whistle of amazement. "I'd heard a little about him," he admitted. "We get people coming through our ranch in Wyoming—we run a change station for the Overland Stage on the side, the money saved my skin a few times in the beginning—and some of them are coming from here, and they talk. I've even seen a few issues of the Bulletin and the Call, with pieces about him. But I never realized how important a figure he really was, or knew how he'd gotten started—that all came before we had the relay contract, back when we were still pretty isolated."

"Which reminds me," said Adams, "Bill and Charlie are supposed to join me here for supper as soon as they've got Emily safely off—the ship's scheduled to sail with the tide, about quarter past seven. You want to join us? I know they'd be glad to see you again, and if I can run down that McCullough, I reckon he would too."

Slim shot a quick look at Jess, who had his poker face firmly in place. "I think we'll beg off for tonight, Major, if you don't mind. We just got in this afternoon, and spent a good part of the day before that either on the train or on the ferry from Oakland. Tomorrow maybe."

The older man nodded. "I reckon I can see that—them steam trains can be rough on a man's bones, and his disposition too. All right. You're in 427? I'll leave a note in your box to let you know when to meet us."

**SR - L - WT**

At the Cliff House:

"You're sure you know what to do?" asked the man in the dark-gray derby. His voice was pitched low, though there was probably little need of such stealth: the main dining room and bar were crowded, and the crowd loud and hilarious, disinclined even to notice the little group in the corner, much less eavesdrop on them.

"We know," was the sourly growled response. The speaker's stubby, flat-topped plug hat and rough brown tweed suit were a sharp contrast to the other's expensively loomed worsted, as were his orange necktie and gaudily patterned brocade waistcoat. He wore a huge diamond pinky ring, a pearl stickpin and double chains of gold across his vest, a trailing handlebar mustache and long sideburns. The effect was that of one trying to be impressive and coming across as simply tasteless—which he was. "Thursday night's the meeting of the Academy of Sciences, and he never misses it. We'll take him afterward."

"Just make sure nobody sees you," the first insisted. "Barbier will be close by in case you need him; he's had it in for the old man ever since that vagrancy flap. But nobody would believe Norton associating with you. And remember he's not to be damaged. If he gives you any trouble, there's the laudanum; you can keep him under control with that."

The third man at the table was younger than the other two, but dressed as incongruously as the second in striped trousers and a gaudy brown and yellow checkered tweed coat. His only jewelry was silver cufflinks and a silver lever watch on a chain that matched. "We'll do our job," he said. "You just make sure we don't have to drop him in the Bay real fast to keep from being found out. If anybody ever tumbles to this, we'll be lucky if all we do is spend the rest of our lives in San Quentin."

"Do you think I don't know that?" demanded the first. "Just think of the money."

"You really figure we can take 'em for $750,000?" asked the second. "That's a lot of lucre."

"It's only a little over five dollars per capita," was the reply, "and plenty will be willing to give more than that for him. Even if we don't get everything we ask for, you'll still do a lot better than you're ever likely to with your crimping and cheap whiskey."

"Our crimping and cheap whiskey's made us the kings of the Coast," the third reminded him, "and this scheme wouldn't go if we weren't willing to play a part, so just you think of that, Rafferty."

"Keep your voice down!" hissed the man so addressed, his eyes darting about the crowded room. "I'm taking enough of a risk even being in the same room with you."

"Not as much of a risk as us," retorted the second, "and don't you think for a minute that we won't bring you down if you cross us."

"Settle down, all of you," said the fourth member of the group, who up to now had said almost nothing. "Nobody's noticed us or cares about us, they're all too busy whooping it up. But if you make enough of a fuss they will notice us, and that's exactly what we want to avoid." He smiled thinly. "What you said about Barbier and Norton goes just as much for you and us. It's one thing for everybody in San Francisco to know their city government's as dirty as a saloon's outhouse, but it's another for them to see the President of the Board of Supervisors sitting with three prominent businessmen of the Barbary Coast and the red-light district." Unlike his two colleagues, he wore a well-cut blue suit and a soft Fedora hat, and his four-in-hand tie, popularized only a year or so earlier, made him look more like a banker than anything else; only his rich yellow brocade waistcoat, and a carefully trimmed mustache of the kind typical of gamblers, suggested otherwise.

Rafferty took a deep steadying breath, pulled out a blue silk handkerchief and dabbed at his face. "You're right, of course, Cullen. Maybe I'd better just slide out of here before the place gets any worse mobbed than it already is. The more people around, the likelier somebody will spot me."

"That's why we took this table," observed Number Three, who was a Welshman by descent (though born in the United States) and bore the name of Deiniol Hughes. "Just slide along the wall to the left of you and duck out the door in the corner. It'll take you out past the kitchen, where the staff's too busy keeping up with the crush to notice you, and from there you can get around to the front and find your horse."

"And besides," added the second, whose name was Carson Dunstable, "who'd think anything of it if they did see you? Everybody knows politicians love this place." He snorted. "It's one of the reasons the best people pretty much stay away now. Like Cullen said, they know how dirty the city government is, and they don't want to risk gettin' their skirts muddy."

"Just let me know if there's trouble," said Rafferty. "I've already made up the note; as soon as you pass me the word, I'll see that copies of it get to the Mayor and every newspaper in town."

"We'll do our job, you do yours," said the soft-voiced Cullen, who had been baptized John Carroll, after the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States.

The threesome watched as Rafferty made his way to the indicated door and slipped through it. "He's trouble," said Hughes after a minute.

"Still, he's got a brain," Dunstable admitted, his tone grudging but also admiring. "Who else would have thought of a deal like this? None of us would."

"All the same," said Hughes.

"He's got his uses," Cullen observed. "At least until we see how the wind blows, we need him. But you're right, Hughes, he's the weakest link in the chain. And besides, what does he need with any more money? He knows the man who makes it. We can make a lot better use of bigger shares of the payoff than he ever will."

"When do we take him out?" asked Dunstable, as if the issue had been decided long ago.

"When it's time," said Cullen coolly. "And I'll let you know when that is."

Hughes chuckled. "He's a fool. He thinks just because he came up with the idea he's the brains of this operation. He wouldn't last an hour on the Coast."

"That's not to do with brains," Cullen pointed out. "But still, you're right. Once we're sure of the money, he can meet with an accident. And so can Norton."

"Is that a good idea?" Hughes frowned doubtfully. "You know what most people think of him. If we work it right, we can keep him from ever knowing who's got him or where he's been kept, and without that information, how can they ever link it to us?"

"You leave lines loose, ships get wrecked," said Cullen. "This is a bigger ship than any of us is ever likely to see again. We can't risk exposure."

**SR - L - WT**

The Niantic Hotel, Sansome & Clay Streets:

Five blocks north of the Occidental, and two closer to the Bay, stood the Niantic Hotel, a plain but well-known three-storey frame building with an assortment of stores at grade and rooms on the upper floors, which had been built after one of the 1851 fires over the remains of the dry-docked Gold Rush-era ship of that name. It probably wasn't the kind of place anybody would expect him to stay at, but that was all to the good; he didn't want to be where he'd be expected—that was a good way to be found.

Johnny Madrid, who for a brief year and a half had called himself Johnny Lancer, slipped quietly into his room and paused to light the gas—every building in San Francisco, it seemed, had gas now—before sitting down on the bed to unbuckle his spurs, pull off his boots, and toss his hat on the brass bedpost with a flip of his wrist. It was, he reflected, a very decent hotel; the room seemed clean and was well furnished and at least as large as his own back at the ranch. Better, perhaps, than most might expect of lodgings located barely four blocks and a half from the excesses of the Barbary Coast, which he had far too much good sense to visit—a quality probably inherited from his Scottish father.

Eateries of many nationalities abounded in the city, and he'd had little trouble finding a Mexican one, where he'd just dined on watercress salad and thick lentil soup, a charcoal-broiled steak garnished with tiny boiled white onions and accompanied by homemade sauce, rice intermixed with peas, black beans, and peppers, and crusty dark bread, and a dessert of leche quemada, milk boiled with sugar and vanilla to the consistency of thick gravy, accompanied by coffee brewed and served in a brown earthenware pot, as it often was in Mexico. With his main course he'd had a glass of dark Benicarlo wine, which he hadn't tasted since he'd last visited his mother's country. Maria Elena could have provided American food or Mexican, as he'd preferred, but he'd made up his mind he might as well get used to the latter again—or to range cooking.

It had been a foolish choice to make, staying on at Lancer. Not that he regretted saving Murdoch's ranch for him, helping take down Pardee and his gang, even at the cost of some blood and pain—but he should have known it wouldn't work out. He was who he was, who his mother had raised him to be. He wasn't like Scott, who'd at least had the advantage of good schooling and a conventional family.

He'd taken nothing that wasn't his. Part of the thousand dollars the old man had paid him that first day had gone to replace the outfit he'd lost when the Mexican Army captured him—saddle, clothes, guns, trail gear, all were his personal property. Then, since he and Scott were equal partners in the ranch, he'd gotten a third of the profits at the end of last season and again at this, and because, like any peon, he mistrusted banks, he'd turned it all into $100 and $500 National Bank notes at the bank in Morro Coyo and kept them tucked away in an old tomato can, wrapped several times around in an end of tarpaulin and buried behind the barn. He figured he'd earned it—Murdoch had thought so, at least—so when he realized that he had to go, he'd gotten Teresa's garden spade out of the shed and dug it up before he left. He'd left $115 cash in the top drawer of his bureau, too, with a note to say it was payment for Barranca; he didn't know what value a horse trader would put on the palomino, but he figured it was a fair price for a horse of that breeding and potential. He was pretty sure Murdoch would eventually figure out he wasn't around, and the room that had been his since he'd arrived at Lancer would be a logical place for the man to look first when he tried to figure out what had become of him.

The strange thing was that he couldn't even remember, now, what they had quarreled about. Maybe it was just too painful for his mind to keep a record of. He knew it had started out quietly enough, but it had degenerated into Murdoch bellowing (which Murdoch, though generally soft-spoken in his steely way, was very good at doing; Scott had once said the man must be part Highland bull, and then he'd looked the critter up and showed Johnny an engraving of it—a big stocky thing with spreading armament not unlike a longhorn's and a coat of shaggy red hair that completely covered its eyes) and Johnny descending into Mexican gutter language and finally slamming out of the room and coming back only, well after midnight, to get his stash and gear.

They'll be better off without me, he told himself. Murdoch's got Scott—and Scott's got his faults, but at least he knows how to be a gentleman. That's what the heir to Lancer ought to be. A hired gun's not fit for a place like that.

No, it was past time he was gone. He should have pulled out long since. Maybe he'd head up to Idaho; there was a lot of gold and silver excitement up that way, miners had to eat, and with the stake he had he could pick up a few hundred head of cattle or sheep and go into ranching—he wasn't stupid by any means, unintelligent men didn't last in the gun trade, not at the level he'd reached, and he'd picked up a lot from Murdoch and the vaqueros these last eighteen months or so. Or he might catch a boat for South America; having grown up speaking Spanish, he'd have an advantage there, and the Argentine was said to be a coming kind of place, isolated still, but with a solid trade in beef, wool, leather, and hides. He hadn't decided yet. After all, it had only been four days he'd been in San Francisco. He had enough money to stay on a good while yet—though he did feel a certain unease about the possibility of being tracked down by his father and brother. He'd tried to keep away from people till he got to Sacramento, tried not to leave a trail, but Murdoch, being a Scot, was as stubborn as any mule, and having hired his sons found once, he might do it again. Though why he'd want to, after the way they'd parted, was more than Johnny could figure.

He shook his head to banish the uncomfortable memories, got up and peeled out of his clothes, hanging them neatly on the chair (and his gun on the bedpost within easy reach of his hand) before he opened the window, turned out the gas, and lay down with his hands locked behind his head. Forcing his thoughts into different tracks, he found himself remembering those two horsemen who'd been down on the beach below the Cliff House this evening. Not San Franciscans, any more than himself, not with those hats and saddles—or the guns. He frowned to himself in the shadows. The one with the dark hair… there was something about him… though of course many a gunfighter vacationed either west of the Sierra Madre or east of the Missouri.

Still… he'd seemed kind of familiar, somehow…

Well, whoever he was, he hadn't made any kind of aggressive move, and that was really all Johnny cared about. The last thing he wanted right now was to get into gun trouble; that would draw the San Francisco police, and the word might make it back to Lancer.

Maybe tomorrow he'd take a ride back to the beach. It was strangely peaceful there, a good place to think. Or he'd head up to Point Bonita and watch the ships going in and out; there'd be grass up there, he could turn his horse loose to graze, and be far enough away from the Cliff House that nobody'd be likely to bother him.

He sighed, wondering why he felt so uneasy, and determinedly closed his eyes.

**SR - L - WT**

The Occidental:

It was past nine when Slim and Jess finally got back to their room, which more accurately was a bedroom-parlor combination and was probably costing the Overland at least three dollars a day. They'd finally decided on the What Cheer House and ended up splitting something that was called a partridge (it was probably, Slim reflected, either a grouse or a quail, but he couldn't find fault with its taste or tenderness) with bread sauce, German fried potatoes, French peas, and mushrooms, hot rolls, lemon layer cake, and coffee. It had been a good meal, both tasty and plentiful, and Jess had done it justice, but still he seemed remote, preoccupied.

"I guess we might as well wait till morning now to unpack," Slim observed as he turned up the gas.

"Reckon so." Jess had flung himself down on the sofa, which, like the rest of the parlor suite, was upholstered in sage-green plush, much more comfortable to sit on than slick horsehair. Slim could feel the sharp blue eyes on his back, but he knew better than to push. Jess would say what was on his mind when he got ready.

"Reckon I'll just lay out a blanket on this sofa and sleep here," Jess continued.

Slim turned, his eyebrows rising. "Why? Plenty of room for two in the bed. I've seen smaller rafts on the Mississippi."

"Me too," Jess admitted, "but that ain't the point. Ain't easy with sharin' a bed. Ain't honin' to maybe wake you. I still get them dreams, y'know. Likely always will."

"I know you do," Slim agreed. "But you've been a lot quieter about it since Bannister was killed. I haven't heard you yell since you got back from New Mexico." He paused, head tilted, studying his friend keenly. "Jess… are you sorry you came? If you really didn't want to, you should have said; I'd have understood. But you've earned it."

The Texan hesitated, his expression uncertain, a little bewildered, as he thought of how they'd come to be here. The letter had come from the main line office in Denver on the first stage after that trouble Christmas Day. Slim had been puzzled by its thickness—line communications weren't usually so bulky. He'd opened it, pulled out a sheet of Overland letterhead and a little wad of other paper, and read the former through slowly, his eyes widening before he passed it on to Jess. Jess had skimmed through it, picking up the most important phrases: …excellent and devoted service for nearly five years… a record unmatched by any relay station in the division… your part, and that of your foreman Jess Harper, in removing from circulation such offenders against the line and its cargoes as Bud Carlin and Frank Bannister… actions by which you saved General Sherman from almost certain death… our ill-advised attempt to dictate to you, through Jack Slade, whom you should employ… award to you both a ten-day vacation in San Francisco, with all expenses covered, including costs of transportation there and back…

They'd stared at each other for a long minute, each asking silently if this was what it looked like. "Dad-gum," Jess had said softly at length, "I'd'a' never reckoned on it. What are we gonna do about it?"

Slim gave an uneasy little laugh. "Guess we might as well take it. They're not likely to offer again—not for another five years, at least…"

They'd called in Ben to run things while they were gone, with a couple of drifters to help him with the heavy outside work, not that there'd be as many stages at this season; the snow was later coming than it had been last year, but come it would sooner or later, and probably all the heavier for the delay. There'd been a pair of round-trip stage tickets in the envelope, Laramie to Reno and back, four days each way over what was mostly level desert, and at the latter they'd boarded a Central Pacific train for the long haul over the Sierras, where the shacklike snow-sheds kept the tracks clear in even the vilest winter weather; through Summit Tunnel at Donner Pass, and on down through the ruggedly beautiful Mother Lode country, to Sacramento and thence to Oakland, and so, after some eleven hours, to the ferry dock at the latter, which was the terminus of the rails, since no one had yet figured out how to bridge the treacherous deeps of the Bay, and past Yerba Buena Island over to San Francisco. There they'd caught a cab and been taken to the Occidental, where they'd presented the voucher that had been enclosed with the rest of the paperwork, and found that the management had already been notified to expect them. Still stiff and weary from the day-and-night jolting of the stagecoach (the last remnant of the central-route transcontinental line, and carrying on according to tradition) and the unfamiliar train journey (though most of that had been overnight), they'd decided to rent a couple of horses and loosen up with a ride before they did anything else, and since neither one had ever seen the Pacific, they'd headed that way without even really discussing the question.

"It ain't about not wantin' to come," Jess said slowly after a while. "I'm… plumb pleased I got a chance to look at the ocean... and that whale. It's just…" He waved a hand at the magnificence around them. "This ain't the kind of place I'm used to bein' in. You know?"

"Me neither," Slim admitted. "I haven't felt this out of place since the time Quentin Colville roped me into visiting his family in Brooklyn, almost ten years ago now."

"But you're so much better schooled than me," Jess pointed out. "You ain't got the kind of rough edges I do. Why, shoot, look at the way you was with that Norton feller tonight—I never could'a' done that. And… I ain't ever been easy where there's lots of people; comes out of growin' up on the Panhandle, I reckon—didn't hardly even get to Amarillo more'n twice a year, and even after I—left—the biggest places I was ever in was Santone and Denver, and St. Louis for a little while."

"Jess…"

"No," the Texan interrupted, "don't say it, Slim. I know what you're thinkin', and I'm grateful for it, same as I am for the way you and Andy and Jonesy took me in and give me what I was scared to admit I needed. But I can't change what I am, not so quick. You know that; you've had chances enough to see it." He paused, took a breath. "I'm here, and I'll stick. I don't quit midway of a job, and I ride for the brand. It's just… I reckon I won't ever be easy in my mind till we're home."

"And you won't be the only one, believe it or not," Slim told him. "I'm… I guess I'd have to say honored… that the Overland thinks so highly of me—of us—but I'm still Pa's son. No matter how short a trip I have to make, I can never really wait to get back to my—to our—own country."

Jess thought that over. "What about them friends of yours? Major Adams and the others?"

"The Major already said," Slim reminded him. "He included you in the invitation too."

"No," said Jess, blunting his headshake with a soft smile, "I'll pass, Slim. They're your friends. You'll have catchin' up to do, and I won't have a thing to share, bein' a Reb. You go on, tomorrow, and join 'em. I got me kind of a curiosity about Market Street and them two mountains down southwest of here. Ain't never seen a town with mountains plumb in the middle of 'er. Outside, like Denver or Cheyenne, that's different. Reckon a man could get a fine view of things from up yonder." He tilted his head. "What else you reckon to do while we're here? I mean, besides seein' the sights?"

"I want to check out the bookstores, maybe find some new titles I can have sent home by express," Slim admitted. "Maybe we could find something playing at one of the theaters that we'd both like to see—they say this is a great theatrical town. And I'd like to find a tailor and see if I can get a second good outfit made, for dances and weddings and such. You could use one too. A dress jacket, at least, to go with your gray pants, and maybe a fancy waistcoat. Maybe we could even order you a pair of made-to-measure boots. You've been talking about it, off and on, since Andy left for St. Louis…" His eyes asked the question he didn't dare, even yet, put into words: Are you planning to stay? Will you have any need for such things? Jess… are you really home?

And Jess smiled, that special smile that only three people ever saw. "Reckon it's good I dug my savin's out of the drawer and put 'em in my boot before we left. Always kinda wanted a pair of real fine boots—hand-worked, with silver trim… the kind that go for a hundred a pair…"

"You've got that much put away?" Slim blurted. "How do you do it on thirty a month?"

"Poker," said Jess, his grin broadening, "and good clean livin', and havin' my food and my lodgin' for free." He laughed aloud at Slim's expression, snatched a tasseled beadwork pillow off the sofa and flung it full force at his friend, who barely got an arm up in time to bat it aside.

"All right," Slim said at last, chuckling, "how about we call it a night, then? And no more nonsense about sleeping on the sofa, hear me?"

"I gotta be on the left side," Jess warned him, "so's I can be facin' the door and have a hand free for my gun. Reckon they got break-in artists in San Francisco same as you might find anywheres else."

Slim sighed, but nodded. "I guess that's true. Okay, you sleep on the left and I'll take the right."

---

3. The Streets of San Francisco

Tuesday, January 2

After breakfast at the hotel dining room, they inquired of the desk clerk (a different one from last night) where the more prestigious shopping district was, and were directed to Kearny Street, one block seaward, which since last decade's end had taken over as the city's fashionable "promenade." There they located what looked like a good tailor's shop, and after fixing the spot in his mind, Jess left Slim there to confer with the owner, walked to the livery stable, got his sorrel hack and his saddle, and rode down Market Street at an easy jog for some three miles until the street turned into a winding, climbing road that led up between the peaks. They were a bit over 650 feet apart, and fittingly known as "twin," each being about 925 feet in height. Jess turned his horse to the right, as most right-handed men would if there was no particular reason to do otherwise, and let the animal pick its way up the snaky trail to the top. There, at the crest of North Twin—sometimes called Eureka to South Twin's Noé—he found himself not only high above the city and, as he'd guessed last night, in a position to "get a fine view of things," but perched on a sort of weather divide: the peaks blocked off a strong sea wind from the west, while the east side, facing the morning sun, was warm and bright. He dismounted and cautiously worked his way a few yards down to get out of the wind, then sat down on the thin, sandy soil and reached into his vest for the nickel guidebook he'd picked up at a news agency he'd passed. Jess wasn't the reader Slim was, and he might impress a great many people as terminally stubborn, but he wasn't a fool, and if information was available he saw no reason not to make use of it.

Being in the midst of a seething city did make him uneasy, it was true. The smells, the noise, the bustle, the crowds, the unaccustomed luxuries, all left him more than a little discomfited, and the Pacific had completely overwhelmed him. As for the big buildings, that kept rising up one storey after another till a man got giddy just looking at them, it seemed to him that if people wanted to live that high up, they should be finding some of the hills and buttes that God had made for just that purpose. Yet somehow he thought he felt less out-of-place than Slim did. Perhaps a good deal of it was simply that flexibility had been a key ingredient of survival for him over most of his life—cowboying, soldiering, gunfighting, riding dispatch for the Army, hunting wild horses, even now working as an honest ranchhand (with occasional excursions into deputy work, scouting, and shotgun guarding), all required that he be able to adjust quickly to changing situations. Perhaps it was partly that Slim had had so much more time to get attached to the concepts of "home" and "family"—virtually his entire life, while Jess, grateful though he was to have found them again, had had neither one for ten of his twenty-six years (going on twenty-seven, come April); with that kind of history, it was probably natural that the big man would feel a greater degree of homesickness than could Jess, who was just barely getting used to having a fixed habitation again—and to the idea that it was really his, that he really belonged there and was welcome. And possibly it also had something to do with the fact that he had a shy but all-embracing curiosity about the world around him. Being presented with this new environment at once bewildered and fascinated him. He wanted to understand it, as he had wanted to understand how Slim's peculiar little household—his too now—had worked, and where he could fit himself into it. And the best way to understand a new place was to explore it.

San Francisco was still the child of Yerba Buena Cove—almost all its buildings occupied the northeast quadrant of the upper Peninsula. From his perch Jess could see that a good deal of the land, especially to the west of the Peaks, was much as it must have been when the Franciscans first arrived, the year after Ayala's expedition, and found the only inhabitants of the tawny sandhills to be a handful of local Indians, who had a rancheria at the corner of what was now Beach and Hyde Streets. Intermittently large herds of deer and elk had grazed along the edges of the marshes and through the sparse undergrowth of the hills. Bears had lumbered down to the beach, and coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions visited frequently; quail whistled in the brush. Back then, nearly half of the peninsula was covered with sand—some of it forming hills like those that obstructed later Market Street, but most comprising what the early settlers called the Great Dunes on the west side, whence it blew over the hills to fill the lowlands and valleys to the southeast, which soaked up the water from rain runoff and artesian springs to become marshlands, lakes, lagoons, and streams. Some of these dunes were barren, but most supported a covering of shrubs, creepers, and stunted trees—live oaks that never reached their potential, pines and spruce and cypress that grew nearly horizontally. None of the land was flat, and its form varied according to location, weather, and the winds; blowing sand, both fine and coarse, was a curse to the early residents. The hills and high dunes, and much of the levels too, had been covered then, as they were now where the city hadn't extended, with chaparral, wild currant and gooseberry and rosebushes, native bay and madrone trees, scrub oak and boxwood, mustard and yellow broom, wild blue lupine and golden poppies, hawthorn and red-barked manzanita, cypress, wild strawberries on Baker's Beach, a few dwarfed and twisted evergreen oaks, and some sycamores and acacias, more recently joined by eucalyptus brought in by the Australians during the Gold Rush. The scattered lagoons and marshes had been edged with watercress and white with the wings of thousands of geese, cranes, egrets, pelicans, and gulls, of which the latter two, at least, remained plentiful. Sand, marshland, shallow lakes and meandering streams obstructed easy movement from place to place; shallow coves and mudflats made it difficult to anchor ships, which might easily be stranded at low tide, and to unload their cargoes; rocks and small islands lurked beneath the waters of the bay, ready to rip the hull out of an unwary vessel, and the bay shore presented a scalloped look of points and coves.

The meadow-dappled hills were a soothing mix of browns and greens; the waters changed mood and color endlessly, and north of the Golden Gate the red rocks of the Marin hills were backed by elegant Mount Tamalpais watching over the land. This was winter and the days were cool—about like April back in Laramie—and often rainy, but how many other places, Jess reflected, turned green at that season? Most of the country was locked in cold and snow, but San Francisco and its surrounding hills and valleys wore robes of iridescent emerald. Sitting there in the pleasant morning sun, running a forefinger along the lines of type and occasionally sounding out an unfamiliar word to himself, looking up now and again to check what he was reading against what he saw spread out below, he began getting oriented.

Some dozen-odd miles below the beach they had visited yesterday, narrow Lake Merced sprawled less than 1500 feet from the edge of the sea, draining into it by way of an outlet creek, and low Montara Mountain formed the northern spur of the Santa Cruz range, which ran the length of the Peninsula and separated the Bay from the Pacific, passing through the 1839 land grant where Francisco Sanchez, once the alcalde of San Francisco, had had a cattle ranch, and his country home, until his death in 1862; his family owned the place still. The mountain was among the most prominent landmarks sighted by coastwise shipping up from the south, which saw the same landfalls that Ayala had seen in 1775: Point San Pedro and the brown hills of the Coast Range to the east, the often fog-wrapped island cliffs of the Farallones—a twelve-mile chain which had once been the home of hundreds of thousands of seals, until Russian and American sealers killed them off—to the northwest, Point Reyes to the north, and south of that Point Bonita, where a sixty-fathom line would fail to touch bottom. Off Point Lobos the Gate tides had washed the channel floor to a depth of 400 feet, and great submarine cavities lay in wait to swallow any ship unfortunate enough to go down there.

The guidebook told him that San Francisco Bay was technically an estuary—a new word to him, but he worked out its meaning when the text went on to explain that it mixed the cold ocean waters of the Pacific with the snowpack-sourced outflow of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. It was fifty miles long and ranged from three to twelve miles wide, and San Pablo Bay, opening off its upper end, added another ninety square miles of open water, as well as an outlet for eggs, poultry, dairy products, hay, hides, produce, and other such goods shipped down from Sonoma County, where the first nonsectarian settlements had been founded in the '30's. In 1826, one Captain Frederick Beechey, R.N., had discovered a great submarine shelf of rock northeast of North Point, halfway between Alcatraz and Yerba Buena Islands, by the simple expedient of ramming it with his ship, the sloop Blossom. (Both of them survived, and the rock came to be called Blossom Rock in honor of the ship.) An East Indiaman, the Seringapatam, ran aground on the same obstacle in the early '30's, and was saved from serious damage only by the providence of having a teakwood hull; she had to wait till the tide turned before she could slide off and resume her voyage. Finally, in 1866, Major R. S. Williamson of the Army Corps of Engineers was ordered to do something about it, as it presented a constant threat to ships bound for the naval yard at Mare Island up the Bay, or for the Sacramento River and the tangled San Joaquin channels. He had a survey made, and discovered the rock to be sandstone, about 190 feet long, 100 wide, and five feet under water at low tide (which explained why ships kept hitting it). A civil engineer named Von Schmidt won the bidding process to remove it, and he sank a thirty-foot shaft from which his workmen struck out lateral galleries and eventually hollowed out a great chamber over which the rock lay fifteen feet thick. This he filled with barrels and boiler-iron tanks packed with more than twenty tons of sodium nitrate blasting powder and waterproofed with asphalt. He connected them to one another with gas pipe and rubber tubing and flooded the cavity with bay water. On Saturday, April 23, 1870, by ten in the morning, spectators were scaling the steep side of Telegraph Hill and packing North Point and Meiggs's Wharf, apart from those who had boarded steamers and some 200 smaller craft to get a water-level view of the event. At two P.M., a boat paid out a single 800-foot insulated wire and anchored itself securely. At half past three, Von Schmidt gave a sharp twist to a battery crank that sent an electric current pulsing into the blasting powder. A muffled thud was heard (not by the people on Telegraph Hill, who were too far off), and a jet-black column of water shot 200 feet into the air, with timbers and fragments of rock at its crest. As they dropped, another wave boiled seventy feet upward, then rolled away in great circular swells. A spontaneous cheer broke from the crowd, steamers tooted their whistles, and people fired off guns. (Wisht I could'a' seen that, Jess mused with a faint grin.) From that point onward, even at low tide, twenty-four feet of water intervened between the surface and the rock.

Surrounded as they were by water on three sides, the city's residents had always required ferry service to travel north or east. As early as 1850, the steam-powered ferryboat Kangaroo was providing regular service to Oakland. By now there were nearly a dozen independent ferries transporting passengers, wagons, and cargo to and fro across the harbor. Outside the Golden Gate, small schooners plied up and down California's rugged shoreline, shuttling lumber and produce from ranches, farms, and mills to the growing city. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company provided its great sea-link to the rest of the world: it had the Federal mail subsidy and ran four different lines—the thrice-monthly Atlantic, from New York to Aspinwall on the east coast of Panama; the Pacific, from the latter's west coast at Panama City to San Francisco via Acapulco and Manzanillo, also thrice monthly; and the once-monthly China Line (to Hong Kong via Yokohama) and Shanghai Line (Yokohama via Nagasaki to Shanghai), which between them carried most of the Chinese immigrants who came to the city. Currently it had almost a dozen ships in service—the Constitution, Costa Rica, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, China, Great Republic, Alaska, Japan, and America; the Henry Chauncey had burned at sea off the Carolina coast on August 16, 1871, but her hull was being rebuilt for continued service. The PM's former coastwise trade had been taken over by the California, Oregon & Mexico Steamship Company, owned by none other than Ben Holladay, the one-time "Stagecoach King;" Holladay himself had moved to Oregon in '68, and was there up to his neck in railroads, but the shipping still went on, directed from offices at the corner of California and Leidesdorff Streets.

The San Francisco & San José Railroad, the first commuter railroad west of the Mississippi, had been completed in 1864, reducing the thirty-five-mile journey between its two eponymous termini from five hours by stagecoach to eighty minutes by train. The Central Pacific took it over four years later. It offered two daily trains, passing through the small towns strung between the Bay and the heavily-forested Coastal Range—South San Francisco, San Bruno, Millbrae, Burlingame, San Mateo, Palo Alto. West of them, the mountains were cut through with canyons and little creeks and punctuated by half-hidden valleys, many occupied by isolated ranches.

Originally San Francisco had consisted of two civilian centers—the village of Yerba Buena on the bay of the same name, and the Mission Dolores—travel between which required snaking around hills and dodging marshland. Its shoreline historically ran south and inland from Clarke's Point below Telegraph Hill, which formed its northern tip, to present-day Montgomery Street, where, at high tide, water sluiced into a lagoon halfway up the next block of Jackson to the west, causing the townsfolk, in 1844, to throw a wooden footbridge over the narrow neck of land at Jackson and Montgomery to make it easier to follow the edge of the cove. From there it turned eastward toward Rincon Point and Rincon Hill, enclosing a cove named Yerba Buena, the site's original anchorage. This was the first available anchorage for ships, now as thirty years ago; the north shores of North Point offered no place close to land where they could tie up. In the decade beginning in 1846, the face of the peninsula was so modified that someone who had seen it only before the coming of Commodore Stockton's fleet would hardly have recognized it; indeed a very large part of the city's 400 acres of "made ground" had come into being by 1850. Less than five years after the discovery of gold, the sleepy adobe village had become an instant city of 35,000 persons, 399 saloons, five theaters, a dozen newspapers, two libraries, and 117 dry-goods stores, many of which were owned by Jews, among them Levi Strauss, inventor of the jeans that bore his name. By 1857 their presence had inspired the founding of a Hebrew Young Men's Literary Association, which met every other week to hold debates on history, politics, economics, religion, and practical philosophy.

Shipping had to have places to tie up, so in the beginning wharves were constructed by a combination of city money, private citizens, and business firms; they ran hundreds of feet into the Bay—first from Broadway, Clay, and California Streets, and later from numerous other points—and were jammed from dawn to sundown with wagons and drays. By 1851 most of the cove was covered with a series of side-by-side piers, used as much to support buildings on the surface—ragtag shanties that creaked with the tides—as to berth ships. The Broadway Wharf, which was the first of its kind to be constructed—it was completed in September, 1847, just a few months before gold was discovered—reached 250 feet out from the shore, with eleven others coming in north and south of it from 1849 on. This was the city's waterfront, where the Pacific Mail steamers originally came in; hotels—the Illinois House, the Broadway House, the Broadway Hotel, Lovejoy's, the Lafayette—were built there, and nearby were grocery stores, butcher shops, drugstores, auctioneers' offices, coffeehouses, sailors' boardinghouses, taverns, a saddler, a tinsmith, a hat merchant. Commercial Street was laid out in 1850 and initially settled by French immigrants, but by the early '60's Chinese were settling into the west end of it, operating a variety of general-merchandise shops and a few manufacturing enterprises that dealt heavily in shoes and cigars, while the white population gravitated toward the waterfront as the wharves were extended farther into the Bay. The 2000-foot Long Wharf stretched into the Bay from its shore end on Leidesdorff Street; like its neighbors, it accommodated stores and saloons on its deck, and was also the domain of the auctioneers, whose nasal cries could be heard from as far as two blocks away. Steamboats, barks, schooners, and other vessels tied up there, transporting people and goods to and from destinations as near as Oakland and as far as China. Drays, handcarts, and even fine carriages rattled up and down its plank boards, and people from all over the globe, wearing a variety of dress and speaking a babel of languages, came to do their business—including gamblers, monte dealers, and shell-game con men who set up temporary stands to take money from the gullible. Thieves and pickpockets worked the crowd, and fights and robberies were not uncommon. Nearby was the two-storey Pacific Mail steamship office (more recently replaced by a five-storey Italianate cube at Market and First), along with auction houses and commission offices, hotels, taverns, and boardinghouses—R. B. Woodward's famous What Cheer House, where Slim and Jess had had supper last night; the Kremlin, Mrs. Moon's Cottage, the Kennebec House, and Squiro's, celebrated for its volcanic punches. Many Jewish merchants had taken up residence in the area in the early days, the Emperor Norton among them in his saner period.

Even before "the world rushed in," in 1839, the alcalde of the then tiny town (he happened to be an American, Washington Bartlett by name) had commissioned a survey, which was run by a Swiss ship captain named Vioget. Seven years later, an Irish civil engineer, Jasper O'Farrell, expanded upon it. He followed the neat but unimaginative grid patterns of his predecessor, carrying them three blocks out into the cove, where buyers paid $50 to $600 for the 450 or so "water lots" he'd created. These were land parcels that purportedly resided between the high and low water marks, and offered an opportunity to build wharves and stores out onto the bay tidelands; in fact most of them were completely inundated at flood tide and often quite soggy otherwise, many never seeing less than eighteen feet of water. Nevertheless, many an investor made a fortune by taking a chance on them and, when the Rush began in earnest and the cove was filled in, sold them for huge profits. O'Farrell also created Market Street, a 120-foot-wide thoroughfare (twice the width of any other street in town) that ran dead straight, northeast to southwest, following the old Mission Trail from Yerba Buena Cove to Mission Dolores and the Twin Peaks, cutting an angled swath through the grids which, as the city grew, became a booby trap for teamsters and city planners. Originally it was half a mile from the center of town and blocked by sand dunes that rose as high as eighty or ninety feet. But the first brick building on it, the Nucleus Hotel, was erected as early as 1853, and by 1860 excavations had levelled the land set aside for it and paved the way for a new downtown. Horse-drawn streetcars began plying it almost immediately, and wooden plank sidewalks were laid down.

Meanwhile, during the Rush, many of the hundreds of ships that lay deserted in the harbor—their crews having gone over the side to join the search for gold—were sunk to create landfill. Later, gradually, as the city grew, the cove and mudflats were transformed into useful land. By 1855 a seawall enclosed the cove and the tides no longer flooded the streets, and owners of water lots began filling in their property, as well as the spaces between the wharves, with the sand and soil from the nearby dunes and from Happy Valley, which had to be shovelled out of the way before the streets were laid down; with the rock blasted from the hills, and anything else that was available, often spoiled or unwanted merchandise and other trash. Slowly, foot by foot, pile drivers hammered long timbers, tall trees from the redwood country, into the muck of the seabed; chuffing steam paddies—steam shovels, a later generation would say—dumped sand on the shores between the wharves and the beached hulks, and top-heavy Irish men-of-war dropped cargoes of rocks to the harbor floor. Slowly, foot by foot, the little bay disappeared, and the waterfront moved eastward, into the harbor, making possible the laying out of a large segment of Market Street, a portion of East Street, almost a dozen blocks along Sansome and Battery from Bush to Broadway, and an area in between running inland almost to Kearny.

By the '60's, as the cove was filled in to create much-needed flatland, the wharf was transformed into a street, and the buildings were converted to shoe, slipper, and cigar factories run by Chinese merchants. The ragged jumble of piers were nothing more than extensions of the city streets, from the Telegraph Hill area down to Market Street, and by '63 these hastily built structures were a mass of rotting timbers, so unstable that the shanties on them tended to topple over into the noxious stagnant water below. To help stabilize the fill and better define the shoreline, a second seawall was erected in 1868, but its zigzag pattern at the water's edge made connections between piers difficult, and the resultant silting required constant dredging. It also did nothing to make the piers themselves any more sound; their hazardous condition remained a problem even now, and Jess resolved privately to stay away from that part of the shoreline.

At 555 Battery Street, between Washington and Jackson, the Greek Revival Custom House was built of granite, brick, and cast iron in 1852-5, with numerous Corinthian columns, a granite portico, two sweeping staircases, and the post office on the first floor; there was space enough (and it was often needed) to accommodate as many as 1000 people in front of the delivery windows. In the same year the first Merchants' Exchange, a classically grand three-storey brick-and-stone structure with Corinthian columns and statuary, went up just across from it, housing foreign newspapers, a library, and a meeting place for the burgeoning business community; both buildings were great sources of pride to San Franciscans in an era of muddy streets and mostly unplanked sidewalks. Clay Street became the dry-goods center of the city, and Kearny bustled with many retail shops. In 1848 a mere 1000 persons had lived in the Bay area; four years later, 36,000 more had flocked there; by 1858 it was a city, with rows of well-built homes, a prosperous business district fully recovered from the post-Gold-Rush letdown of 1852-7, small factories springing up on its outskirts, a harbor full of ships from trade with the Orient, a telegraph, a steam railroad on Market Street, omnibuses to the Presidio, horsecars in the business district, a full season of opera, and visits by the best plays and concert artists. By 1860 the population topped 56,000, and the census of 1870 had found a third of the entire population of California—300,000 people—living in or within a few miles of the city.

In the beginning, the city spread out from a shorefront scattering of canvas, adobe, and wooden structures—chiefly the last, since bricks cost a dollar apiece—that clambered inland over windswept, oak- and chaparral-studded hills. At about Stockton Street these hills rose high enough to be virtually impassable, imposing a western barrier on Washington, Clay, California, and parallel streets. Montgomery Street ran along the shoreline then, with its busiest section extending from California Street north through Broadway. Being made of such substances, it was hardly to be wondered at that the city had burned six times in the '50's and risen anew from its own ashes every time, bigger and gaudier than ever. Even more frequent were ground temblors: since 1769 over 200 of them had been recorded, an average of just under two a year. Most were minor; of major ones there had been, in recorded history, only four—in 1836, 1838, 1865, and 1868—besides one in 1827 that toppled the Mission's statue of San Emilio (ironically the protector against earthquakes) out of its niche. The most recent one listed in the guidebook was dated the previous September 18. When the ground shook, wooden houses swayed and creaked, but stood; occasionally windows shattered, bottles and china dishes crashed to the floor; but it was in the former swampy marshes and old Yerba Buena Cove that the landfill acted like jelly, trembling hideously and magnifying every quake. Jess controlled a shudder. Hope we don't have none of them while we're here, he thought. Must be plumb scary to feel the solid earth movin' under your feet. And then, out of his native curiosity: Wonder how come it does that? Maybe Slim knows…

From an early date the wiliest of the new city's entrepreneurs dealt in land. The richest men in Gold Rush San Francisco were said to have made "the best portion of their wealth" through real estate. Land speculators had a friend in the city's impoverished and overwhelmed government, which found that, aside from the sale of gambling licenses and the duty charged to any merchant who wished to claim a cargo consigned to him and ferried ashore for storage at the customs house, about the only quick way it could make money was by the sale of its own land, which it did in fifty-vara lots (a vara being reckoned, for California purposes, at 33 inches, making such a lot 137½ feet) that were priced, in the first municipal auction, at only sixteen dollars per. Following O'Farrell's survey, they cut that land up into cramped, unimaginative grid lots, so that instead of streets following the graceful contours of its hills, the city was stuck with streets that barged up, down, and across them, as if the whole place was as flat as old Yerba Buena Cove. This made tough going for horses, especially those drawing carts and wagons.

People spoke of "the seven hills of San Francisco" as they did of those of Rome, meaning Telegraph, Russian, Rincon, and 376-foot California Street (earlier known as Fern, then Clay Street, but not yet called Nob), the Twin Peaks, Mount Davidson, and Lone Mountain; but in actual fact there were at least fifty all told. Stockton Street ran from Ellis, just north of Market, up to Beach Street. For a brief period in the '50's, the part of it between Russian and Telegraph Hills attracted the well-heeled, and it became a prestigious and fashionable address, but they soon left for the Mission District and for Rincon Hill and South Park (and, from there, for the south slope of Russian Hill, which was to hold sway till the colonization of Nob). Close to the downtown district, the factories and the wharves, the area became an immigrant gateway, drawing newcomers by its sunny weather and low rents. It came to be known as the Latin Quarter, but in reality it was a savory mixture of laborers, craftsmen, merchants, and professionals newly arrived from all over.

Russian Hill towered 340 feet high and was little developed, being simply too steep for horse-drawn vehicles hauling building materials. A couple of hardy souls had put up frame houses on the north slope near Broadway and Taylor Streets in the early '50's. By 1849 there were already enough Jews in the city to hold Yom Kippur services in two separate locations—a hall on the second floor of a building on Montgomery Street, and a tent a few blocks away on Jackson Street near the corner of Kearney. The first group were mostly Westernized Bavarians, who thought of themselves as echt Deutsch and considered themselves culturally and socially superior to their Jackson Street counterparts, mainly ost Juden from East Prussia, Posen, and other "eastern" lands. As a result, two pioneer congregations were eventually formed. At the foot of Russian Hill, Congregation Emanu-El was established in 1850; its members had formed a Hebrew Benevolent Society the year before, but for a time had to rest content with renting the Masonic Hall for Holy Day services. When the time came to charter it, in 1851, the group fissioned, with those who favored the Minhag Polen—mainly the Poles, British, Anglo-Polish Americans, and some Prussians—splitting off to create Congregation Sherith Israel (with a benevolent society of its own), while the adherents of the Orthodox Minhag Ashkenaz (western and southern Germans, some Sephardic Americans, and at least one Prussian) retained the Emanu-El name, in 1854 erected its temple at a cost of $35,000, and eventually began testing new forms of worship as they emerged. Sherith preferred to stick with the old ones; by 1851 it had a handsome, capacious synagogue on Stockton Street for its 110 congregants. Within the next decade other groups also formed, including Shomrai Shabath, a band of thirty Orthodox (and strictly Sabbatarian) Russian and Polish Jews. A block townward from Emanu-El's facility stood Henry Brader's soda factory, and the former site of the Charlemagne Private College, where children of the best and most decorous families sat through their classes in the '50's with the strains of Barbary Coast melodeons drifting in through the open windows.

In 1864 the Emanu-El Jews moved to a new site, at 450 Sutter Street near Powell, a block back from Washington Square; here they built a more elegant edifice, completed two years later, which cost $134,000 and boasted two tiers of stained-glass windows, including a sprawling one over the front entrance, and severe Gothic lines exotically topped off by twin onion-domed towers, and the bare crest of the California Street hill beyond. It was the first landmark visible to ships rounding Telegraph Hill, which was no doubt a point of pride for the congregation. Their second rabbi, Elkan Cohn, had arrived in 1854 and helmed the temple since 1860. Meanwhile in 1855 the original group split into a Reform and an Orthodox camp, the latter of which established Congregation Ohabai Shalom, which appeared as early as 1864 and built a modest temple on Mason Street the following year. Behind their old site Broadway dwindled to a goat trail zigzagging up the hill, which sloped sharply and steeply upward to the grass-and-mustard-covered hilltop where, supposedly, Russian seal hunters had been laid to rest, hence the name. In the '50's it had hosted a succession of hangings, but already in 1853 people were settling there, for the Atkinsons' Italianate villa at No. 1032 Broadway was built that year. It was followed by the Homers' three-storey frame house at No. 1601 Taylor (now reached by way of two sets of wooden stairs which had been put in after Taylor between Broadway and Vallejo was graded, lowering the street level and exposing a sheer wall of earth reinforced by a stone-and-concrete retaining wall); the Morgans' 1854-vintage "House of Many Corners" at No. 1637 Taylor, with its staggered setbacks, each wall with its own window, designed to allow maximum natural light to penetrate the interior; the Ranletts and the Turners—all of whom, to get into town, had to cut across the grassy hillside to Pacific Street, a block away, which was then the only east-west street planked all the way to Van Ness Avenue, and along which, past the foot of the hill, herds of cattle were driven out to the Black Point slaughterhouse. In 1857 an octagon house—a brief architectural fad—went up at No. 1067 Green Street. Atop the hill, in 1861, a man named David Jobson erected an observatory, called Jobson's Tower after him, where he charged a quarter to anyone who wanted to climb its winding staircase and peer through his telescope at the panoramic views afforded by the height. And all through the '60's houses continued to rise on the hill, Italianate being a popular style.

Between the Hill and the Presidio was Cow Hollow, originally known as Spring Valley and later Golden Gate Valley, where the first dwelling had been built in 1847 by Elijah Ward Pell, originally one of Sam Brannan's Mormon contingent, who'd been excommunicated for "licentious behavior" during the voyage. There he lived in splendid hermitude until 1853, when the first dairy set up shop in that area. Irrigated by several freshwater creeks, it proved to be ideal grazing land and as such saw the establishment of many dairies and vegetable farms. Frank Pixley, New Yorker by birth, '49er, nonconformist (and agnostic), gifted orator, former city attorney, State Assemblyman, and State Attorney-General, erected a large house in the midst of a grove of trees in the mid-'50's, and lived there still. In 1861 George W. Hatman bought a couple of acres along what would one day be Union Street, built a house and started a dairy ranch to go with the truck-farming business he had established some years earlier. He was joined by James W. Cudworth, a Vermonter by birth, who would peddle his milk to the garrison at the Presidio for some twenty years before abandoning that line in preference to real estate and building a number of homes throughout the Hollow. By now there were at least thirty of these farms between the western slope of Russian Hill and the Presidio. Sixty cows was the average size, being what Hatman kept, but there were some that could tally as many as 200. As there was little natural forage for the animals, they were kept mainly in corrals or pens and fed on hay and "distillery slop," the residue from the mashed and heated grains, hops, and barley used in the making of whiskey and beer at nearby distilleries and breweries. The beloved child-actress Lotta Crabtree, too, had lived in Cow Hollow, and gone to elementary school there. And fronting on Filbert Street was a roadhouse dating at least to 1857, with shingle siding, French doors, and two verandas.

Almost directly below the place where Jess sat, shaped somewhat like a backwards letter P and bounded on the east by the straightaway of Douglass Street down to 22nd and on the west by the curvy line of Market Street where it skirted the foot of the peaks, was Eureka Valley, originally part of a land grant given to José de Jesús Noé, the last Mexican alcalde of the town, in 1846, just before the Americans took over. Originally the rancho had covered more than 4400 acres—around seven square miles—which to Jess seemed miniscule; Noé had begun to sell off chunks of it in the '40's and '50's, but it had barely begun to be subdivided yet. In 1855-6, the Van Ness Ordinance resulted in the laying out of a 500-block parcel from Larkin Street west to Divisadero—an area known (not illogically) as the Western Addition—and in legal title being granted to the squatters then occupying that part of town. Single-family homes had begun to be built in it as the decade opened, the first planned development being Tuckertown, which was built in 1870 by a jeweler named Tucker on a block bounded by Jackson, Buchanan, Washington, and Webster Streets. Now well-to-do folks were putting up large houses on corner lots and the more modest occupying the spaces in between. At the summit of the Clay Street Hill stood a large, two-storey white one, complete with barn and windmill, which had been erected in 1869 by a lawyer named Samuel Holladay (presumably no relation to Ben, Jess mused). Six years earlier he'd begun fencing in that part of his property, which stretched east to Van Ness Avenue. The city sued, claiming that the land had been set aside for a public park and that he was therefore a squatter. But Holladay, who had been City Attorney in the years 1860-3 and specialized in prosecuting squatters, had apparently learned enough tricks of the trade to be able to fend off the authorities. In fact, there would be four lawsuits up to 1896, and he would win every one.

One segment of the Addition, running from Van Ness (and, above Geary, Laguna) west to Divisadero Street and from Grove north to Sutter, was originally a vast area of shifting sand and sparse vegetation, populated by rabbits and quail and cut across by Bush Street, a rude planked roadway leading to Lone Mountain Cemetery and the other cemeteries west of Presidio Avenue. The first known inhabitant was one Charles H. Stanyan, who rose from miner and teamster to real-estate investor, built a cottage on Bush around 1860—an inconvenient mile and a half from downtown—and served on the Board of Supervisors from 1865-9. Developers had only just begun to erect tract houses in this area as the decade opened. Divisadero, which ran a few blocks to the northwest of the old mission, had been the western border of the city, and beyond it was what had been called the "Outside Lands," where, as in the rest of San Francisco, the dunes were ubiquitous. It was sparsely populated, but it did offer enough in the way of arable land, clumps of oak trees, and clear springs to attract a few ranchers and dairy farmers, who began claiming spreads there at about that time, and building cottages in Greek Revival and Victorian styles. Others moved in as far north as Sutter Street, where a German by the name of F. W. M. Lange had established himself between Broderick and Divisadero in 1864, a location from which in 1870 he had moved to a four-block parcel between Stanyan, Carl, Cole, and Grattan Streets.

The farmers continued to settle in the area through the '60's, but real interest in it hadn't developed till quite recently—1870, in fact; in that year a surveyor named William Hammond Hall had commenced the development of Golden Gate Park, a three-mile-long and half-mile-wide oblong on a wind-torn patch of shifting sand dunes, bordered by Stanyan and Fulton Streets on the east and north, Lincoln Way on the south, and the beach on the west. He had originally intended to begin the project at Divisadero, but squatters and land speculators who had claimed the intervening parcels proved difficult to dislodge, and at length, in 1867, a compromise was worked out whereby, in return for clear title to their other holdings, they would give up claims to a narrow strip of land, somewhat like the panhandle of the Indian Territory, between Fell and Oak Streets, leading into the main body of the park. At the same time a largely barren thirty-six-acre parcel a couple of blocks south of the strip was reserved as a smaller park, called Hill—not an illogical name since it rose to a height of 569 feet—though it hadn't yet been officially dedicated. By late in the decade Hall's creation, though far from complete, was to be one of the city's most cherished assets. And with the surge of wealth from the Comstock, real-estate companies were beginning to build vast tracts of houses—mostly of redwood, which was both plentiful and easily worked—that dripped with garlands, dentils, egg-and-dart molding, fluting, pilasters, collonettes, sunbursts, lattices, spindlework, cartouches, finials, festoons, arches, false turrets and towers, and bay windows which, in a pattern of narrow lots and shoulder-to-shoulder building, gave not only more floor space but better light and ventilation and provided more room for exterior embellishment—gingerbread fantasies comparable to the stonework of the Italian Renaissance masters. South of the park, stretching some thirty-five blocks westward at its greatest extent and running down to Sloat Boulevard, was the Sunset District, which ten years hence would still be a poverty-ridden district of sand dunes.

Parallel to Bush, California, and Washington Streets and Broadway, but farther north, Union Street ran westward from the docks three blocks to the steep, burnt-sienna cliffs of Telegraph Hill, where in 1855 the "snow-line" was on Union between Montgomery and Kearny; the houses marched no farther, and the top of the hill was occupied by flocks of goats, owned chiefly by Irish families, browsing there all year round and being chased by herds of boys. It climbed over the cliffs, crossed Montgomery, slid down the other side past Dupont Street and Washington Square, then climbed across the shoulder of Russian Hill, dropped into Cow Hollow to the west, and skirted Washerwomen's Lagoon on its way to the rolling mesas, barracks buildings, winding roads, and massive brick-and-granite fort of the 1500-acre Presidio, which sat atop the white cliff fittingly known as Fort Point. Raised by the Corps of Engineers at a cost of nearly $3,000,000, the fort had cisterns cut in the solid rock beneath its floor and 149 guns (though they had become more or less obsolete almost as soon as they were installed) to rake the approaches to the Gate. The point was now called Fort, and in the wake of the recent war it was developing into a major installation, with telegraph lines, water pipes, gardens and trees and trim frame barracks, and a military burial ground.

Less than a mile to the east of this was Fort Mason, located on hilly Black Point, just west of Van Ness Avenue. It had been a military installation since the days of the Spanish, who called it Batteria de San José, and had acquired its new name with the arrival of the Americans, after the dark laurel trees and low chaparral that covered the point and contrasted with the sandy white bluffs. In 1850 President Millard Fillmore declared it a military reservation, but with no troops to occupy it, civilians ignored the declaration and squatted on it—most notably John C. Frémont, who bought thirteen and a half acres of it in the mid-'50's. The Selby Smelting Company set up shop along the cove, as did the Pioneer Woollen Mill, which was destroyed in a fire in '61, rebuilt three years later, and found that during the last year of the war its thirty-one looms, fifty-two sewing machines, and nine sets of cards couldn't turn out blankets and uniforms fast enough for the Union Army, inconvenient though it must have been to get them to the men who needed them. Meanwhile Frémont and several other leading citizens built large homes on the bluffs above. In 1863, owing to the threat of possible attack by a Confederate warship known to be cruising about the Pacific, the government evicted them, and in the same year it constructed Camp Reynolds on Angel Island. But it allowed the factories around the cove to remain, and to this day swimmers came there often, enjoying the sheltered waters, which were frequently warmed by heated water exhausted from the mill, now manned heavily by low-cost Chinese labor.

Washerwomen's Lagoon, drained by a creek that carried the effluent out to the salt marshes by the Bay, was one of the institutions of the city. Almost three miles from the old plaza, it had originally been staked out by several enterprising Chinese families. Presently they were joined by Indian, Mexican, and Chilean women (such was the demand for their services that four of them shortly retired on fortunes of $15,000 to $20,000), then by burly red-shirted "washmen" who brought in three-legged iron kettles for boiling laundry and could be seen vigorously scrubbing clothes on their washboards at the water's edge. Ironing was done in tents. Dwellings started to go up in the area at an early date to take advantage of the lagoon's abundant fresh water, and in 1847 a surveyor named William Eddy laid out a forty-three-acre tract to the east and southeast of it, which he divided into two dozen 100-vara (275-foot) lots. Last came Thomas Bergin and his four sons, who established the city's only soap-making firm and supplied the laundry industry with soap and everyone else with soap and candles, and a man named Pratt who built a big commercial laundry. Thrifty housewives who preferred not to pay the Occidental's rates took to going there to do their clothes by hand, making a Sunday outing of it, taking their families and picnic lunches and the washing in wheelbarrows and dump carts. They would scrub it and rinse it down by the nearby shore, hang it on the chaparral to dry, and then take it home to be ironed next day. Jess grinned to himself at the practicality of the arrangement, something that appealed to his pragmatic character.

Telegraph Hill overlooked the bay at the northeast corner of the peninsula; its peak stood 300 feet above the surrounding landscape, and on its northern and eastern sides were high cliffs where blasters and earth-movers quarried fill for the tidelands and water-lots and ballast for the freight ships bound back around the Horn. Above these were small Carpenter Gothic cottages overrun with vines and flowering foliage, in one of which, at No. 5 Calhoun Street, the Booth brothers, Edwin and Junius Brutus Jr., had lived for a time, while others were the dwellings of sea captains or of Latin Americans (joined to the south and west by Italians and around Jackson Street by the French), and others again taken by poets and painters, who began arriving in the early '50's, about the same time as the Booths. As early as 1851 a two-storey brick commercial building was erected at No. 1301 Montgomery—one of the first in the city. Two years later a certain Captain Andrews, who despite his title was in fact a jewelry store owner and dealer in diamonds, built a three-storey frame house at No. 31 Alta Street. At No. 9 Calhoun Terrace stood the Gothic Revival home built in 1854 by David "Yankee" Robinson, the popular actor and theater impresario, though he hadn't lived in it since leaving the city in '57. These houses and their neighbors were reached by long flights of steps up from Broadway, precarious bridges flung across gullies, plank sidewalks and Jacob's-ladders that clung to the cliff faces. The carts of the baker, grocer, vegetable man, and water-vendor zigzagged up the steep, unpaved streets to ease the climb for their plodding horses. Caged parrots and bright canaries sunned themselves in the small gardens, and geraniums grew in the window boxes. Also clinging to the steep sides of the hill were the shacks and shanties of the Irish longshoremen, the Italian fishermen who draped their nets from the back porches of their houses and sang arias as they mended them with crude wooden shuttles, the stevedores and teamsters, and the dock and warehouse workers, who had begun to settle here in the early '50's. They built modest Carpenter Gothic and Italianate homes, grazed their goats freely, grew grapes in their tiny back yards and strung beans on their roofs, gossiped over the back fences and went quietly to bed at nine or ten o'clock every evening, and, in the case of the Italians, made their own wine. John Cooney, an Irishman who had come to America after a stop in Australia, lived at No. 291 Union Street in a house he had built in '51, and ran a small grocery store out of the building's first floor; another grocery had stood at No. 301 since 1860. The lateen-sailed Italian fishing boats, called feluccas, were moored where Vallejo Street met the Bay, and the songs and accordion music of the fishermen drifted over the hill at night. At its foot were the India Docks, where the China steamers and the South Seas fruit schooners docked, and the boys who lived on the Hill gathered wood for their mothers' kitchen stoves and swam off Cowell's dock. And at the very peak of the hill, till it blew down in '71, had stood the old two-storey Sweeny & Baugh signal tower for which the height was named, built in 1850 with wooden arms that could be manipulated to indicate to watching townsfolk what kind of ship would presently be arriving in their harbor, and on which men and women and children from all over the world had carved their initials after scaling the hill to see the view.

Southwest of Telegraph stood the California Street Hill, which, unlike the other, smaller hills near the cove, had proved too steep and solid to be levelled, and as it reared only five blocks from the original shoreline, its persistent presence had been largely responsible for the filling in of the cove. Its lower slope, primarily Stockton and Powell Streets west and north of Portsmouth Square, had become a choice residential area beginning in the '50's. The cross streets here weren't so steep as to inhibit access by horse-drawn vehicles, and it was originally inhabited by a few stout-hearted folk of modest means in modest homes, like Nicholas Yung, a German undertaker who had built his house there in '55, and a year later Dr. Arthur Hayne and his bride, the actress Julia Dean, whose workmen, when they put up the couple's wood-and-adobe cottage, had to hack their way through thick underbrush just to reach the site. One of the first large homes dated from the '50's and boasted a music room, a billiard room, a library, and a conservatory. Halfway up the slope, in 1853-4, St. Mary's Cathedral had been raised on land donated for the purpose by an early Irish pioneer named John Sullivan, who'd arrived in 1844, made a fortune in real estate, and in 1859 founded the Hibernia Bank, which he originally targeted at his own countrymen. It was the first Catholic cathedral on the West Coast and, when it opened with a Christmas Day Mass in 1854, the largest building in San Francisco, built of wood and granite blocks from China, brick and iron that had come around the Horn, and tall Gothic stained-glass windows fetched from the art centers of Europe. People all over the city could tell the time by the four-faced clock in its square tower, and in its loft was a fine organ, brought by clipper from New York City—"a secondhand instrument, but will compare with any in town for tone and power," according to the newspapers of the day. Beneath the clock face, over the door, were inscribed, in gold letters on black bronze, the words Son, observe the time and fly from evil, from Ecclesiastes.

In the '60's, residential development began reaching higher up the hill, and Taylor Street from Sacramento to Pacific became the nexus of elite habitation and the beginning of the association of wealth with this particular part of the city; it was attractive because it offered commanding views of the downtown and the Bay, but was protected from westerly winds by the higher ridge of Jones Street one block behind it. Many of the initial residents here were from the "southern aristocracy" that had earlier inhabited Rincon Hill and South Park. By mid-decade Lloyd Tevis, a leading lawyer and businessman (he was for a time president of the Wells Fargo bank), had moved there from Rincon, and in the current year his brother-in-law, James Ben Ali Haggin, the Kentucky-born attorney, would begin construction of a handsome sixty-room, $100,000 gray mansard house, fifty feet high and ninety feet square, on the east side of Taylor Street between Clay and Washington (not to be finished till 1874), while General David Colton, president of both the Amador Mining Company and the Rocky Mountain Coal Company, owner of one of the finest private art galleries in the city, and chief legal counsel for the Union Pacific, who had been worth $500,000 in 1871, would build a gorgeous white frame Italian villa on the very crest. (Thomas H. Selby, who had ended his tenure as mayor as of December 3, was the proud possessor of an even greater fortune—$1,500,000, made chiefly through his ore smelters at North Beach and his lead-pipe works and shot tower on First Street—and a beautiful country estate and cattle ranch at Fair Oaks; but his fine city home was on Rincon, not California Street.) But it wouldn't become a true millionaire's preserve until the California Street cable car line, in 1878, provided sturdy and regular access to its top. Almost exactly north of it, by a little west, was Russian.

California Street (the street, not the hill) began down near the waterfront, ran west and level to Montgomery Street, and then climbed its steep, grassy namesake to lose itself in the chaparral as it trailed off in the shifting dunes of the western city. It was best known as the home of the big banks that had sprung up when the Comstock exploded—William Ralston's Bank of California in its luxurious new quarters at the corner of Sansome Street (with his Mining Exchange, formerly on Pine Street, directly opposite), the Merchants' Exchange Bank, the Anglo-California Bank—and of the San Francisco Stock Exchange. The Marine Exchange stood at the corner of California and Leidesdorff; here the shipping men gathered, and a bell was tolled whenever a San Francisco vessel was lost at sea. At 316 Montgomery stood the First National Gold Bank of San Francisco, founded as recently as 1870 under Federal supervision and regulation; it was one of the few banks allowed by Congress to issue currency backed by gold, a medium much preferred to paper money both in San Francisco and throughout the West. J. & W. Seligman & Co., founded in 1864, was a prominent investment bank involved in the financing of railroads. The financial district was centered around the northern end of Montgomery between California and Washington Streets, with the majority of the banking, express, steamship, and stagecoach companies having their headquarters there, while the southern portion of Montgomery, down to Market, was mostly given over to retail establishments and large hotels—and the three-storey Gothic Revival Masonic Lodge, with its triform windows, which had risen at No. 1 Montgomery in 1860, and across from which, between Post and Sutter, stood a line of two- and three-storey structures with retail properties at grade and offices above. The millionaire capitalists flocked to Wainwright's Pantheon Bar for midday refreshers and a free lunch that might include anything from terrapin soup and roast pig to imported cheese and crackers. The brokers foregathered at Eppinger's, half a block off California on Leidesdorff, or up above Montgomery at Moraghan's Oyster Parlors, where the oyster cocktail had supposedly been invented, or at Clem Dixon's Ale Vaults on Summer Street, next door to the California Market. This open-air facility ran for an entire block from Pine to California Streets between Montgomery and Kearny. It had begun in 1867, when an Irishman nicknamed the "Oyster King" began selling oysters harvested from the bay tidelands near Burlingame; other vendors soon joined him, and now it was an impressive bazaar of stalls offering meat, fresh seafood, produce (including tropical fruits), and flowers to hotels, restaurants, and private citizens alike. Under its giant canopy, at Darbee & Immel's, M. B. Moraghan, Sam's Grill, the Pearl Oyster House, and Morgan's, shoppers could pause for a quick seafood snack; at Morgan's a typical two-bit meal consisted of a great mound of shellfish, a good small steak, and a mug of steaming coffee.

In the mid-'40s, when San Francisco was a ragged collection of adobe and frame buildings with a population of little more than 200 residents, Rincon Hill was an isolated shrub-covered landmark, rising 120 feet above the uninhabited sand dunes and swampy land south of later Market Street. But it soon became fashionable, for it had warmer and sunnier weather than the blocks north of Market, offered superb views of the bay and city from its summit, was protected from the wind and separated by its rise from the working class habitations below, and was both close to downtown and the waterfront and removed from the city proper and such of its nuisances as saloons, gambling dens, and brothels. A migration began in that direction, with the city's first elite—primarily merchants, bankers, and industrialists—leading the way, and by 1853 the houses on Rincon were both numerous and elegant. In 1854 enough people lived there that an omnibus line started running every half hour along Third Street to Portsmouth Square and North Beach. All through that decade and the next, the city's most prestigious residential neighborhoods were located south of Market Street on Rincon and in the nearby neighborhood, centered around First and Market Streets, that was known as Happy Valley, a suburb of houses surrounded by big yards, vegetable gardens, and trees that had been there before the Rush, with broad meadows on the hills. Slightly east and south of it was the government reservation at Rincon Point, where in 1853 the United States Marine Hospital—all brick and costing $250,000—was built, with a capacity of 500 to 700 patients.

Below Rincon Point, which marked the bottom of Yerba Buena Cove, lay a gently sloping beach, not illogically known as South, protected by low sand cliffs, which had classically provided an ideal spot for shipbuilding and repair, since a boat could easily be dragged out of the water there and later shoved back in. Below that in turn, Mission Bay, south of Steamboat Point, offered access to the Mission Dolores by way of Mission Creek, though it was tidal and only shallow-draft craft could use it—and even those could be stranded at low tide. Inland lay an area of rolling sandhills, pastures, marshland, creeks, and ponds, called Potrero Nuevo, or "new pasture," which under Spanish law had originally been set aside for the livestock of the local inhabitants. It stretched south past Potrero Hill to Islais Creek, which was about three feet at average high tide and bare mud at low; this marked the beginning of Potrero Viejo, the "old pasture," an addition to the Bernal land grant which extended from there to Bernal Heights and Hunters Point, named for an early family of settlers, where access to deep water attracted shrimpers, anchovy and salmon fishermen, and shipbuilders; here in 1867 the first permanent dry dock on the Pacific Coast had been built. Below that in turn, stretching down to Candlestick Point, the land was simply mudflats, which held little interest for San Franciscans even yet.

Mission Dolores, the core of San Francisco settlement, had been built, mostly by Indian labor, in 1788-91 beside a willow-shaded lagoon in a sheltered valley three miles southeast of the Presidio, which offered better soil and climate than most of the rest of the future city; this site received more sun, and its softly rolling hills, sandy soil, and abundant water made it ideal for row crops, grain, and orchards. The Mission's four-foot-thick walls and a clay-tiled roof supported on redwood timbers enclosed eighteenth-century altars carved in Mexico, hand-whittled statues, and ceiling designs painted in soft vegetable colors. Its cemetery was a profusion of pampas grass, pines, holly, juniper bush, violas, hydrangeas, alyssum, ivy, moss, ferns, poinsettias, rosebushes, purple hibiscus, baskets of fuchsias, green spikes of yew, azaleas and camellias, poplars and oxalis, and bougainvillea. Its tilting gravestones reflected the international character of the city, marking the resting places of not only its Hispanic founders (among them the first Mexican governor of California, Don Luis Arguello), but early French, German, Italian, Chilean, English, Irish, Scottish, Australian, Canadian, and American residents, including the two who'd been hanged by the Second Vigilance Committee in 1856, long after the church itself was closed in 1834. The mission property had remained in a neglected state until Mormon settlers moved into some of its vacant buildings; they were quickly followed by others, some of them Hispanic (including a former soldier, Candelario Valencia, who dwelt with his wife and six youngsters in a 200-foot-long adobe house on 16th Street between Dolores and Guerrero Streets) and many of them squatters. Until about 1859 the Mission itself served variously as a tavern and a dance hall, and the grounds were sometimes used for bull-and-bear fights, a favorite diversion of the Californios; land title issues had only been resolved late last decade. The good weather, flat land, and abundant open space of the district was already drawing formal development, much of it by "homestead associations" made up of dues-paying members who, beginning in the'60's, pooled their money to purchase blocks of land, divided the blocks into lots just big enough to hold a house (typically 25x100 feet), and built their homes on them.

By 1852 most of the swampland of Mission Bay had been reclaimed for vegetable gardens, and within five years thereafter the Mission itself was completely surrounded by neat square and oblong plots that provided produce for the 78,000 citizens living just to the north. But everything beyond Twelfth Street, south and west to Bernal Heights and the Mission Hills, remained mostly grazing lands for cows and sheep. In 1853 the Bay's isolation from the city was emphasized by a request made by several factory owners who asked the Board of Aldermen to set aside an area south of Mission Creek for a proposed industrial zone "so remote from the inhabited part of the city that no legal question would likely arise as to what might constitute a nuisance in the district, at least within the period named in the ordinance, until January 1, 1869." The factory owners ran slaughterhouses, and the area they had in mind was near Ninth and Brannan, on the creek. This became the early "Butchers' Reserve" by city ordinance. The butchers chose this location because the tidal waters from Mission Bay flushed the area twice a day, washing away the waste that was swept through their trap doors. The boys from south-of-Market earned pocket change by supplying patients from the French Benevolent Hospital at Sixth and Brannan with "healthy, warm animal blood, at 10 cents a cup, from the slaughterhouses on Mission Creek." The butchers had remained on Brannan between Sixth and Ninth Streets until as recently as 1870, when another city ordinance moved them farther south to First and Kentucky; there they used Islais Creek for their waste disposal. Bet the fishin's good down yonder, Jess thought, with so much for fish t'eat bein' easy come by.

Dozens of large, comfortable homes were built in the area bounded by Folsom, Fremont, Bryant, and Third Streets, reflecting the era's popular architectural styles: Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, and the mansard-roofed Second Empire. Some of these residences, particularly on Folsom and Harrison Streets near the top of the hill around Second Street, were large mansions surrounded by gardens. Rincon Hill, stretching from Spear Street past Main, Beale, Fremont, and First halfway up to Second, and from Folsom Street past Harrison to Bryant, and South Park, an elevated knob of land close to the latter, were the domain of fashionable society, especially the old Southern set, aristocrats who for some years had set the city's social tone with their receptions, theatricals, musicales, and grand dress balls. During the '50's and '60's these two neighborhoods saw the construction of an oval common rimmed with elegant townhouses built in the style of London's Regency era, and many grand Victorian houses, some built from timber cut in the redwood forests up north, others originally built on the East Coast, taken apart, brought around the Horn by ship, and reassembled, many with stables and carriage houses in the rear. Many of the residents had come primarily not to improve their financial situation, but to get in on the ground level of politics, for among the educated gentlemen of the South, to whom politics was a tradition, the new California, unlike the established South, offered endless opportunities for involvement and consequently for power. Here the leaders of the city's commercial, professional, and social worlds (among them Henry Halleck and Joseph Folsom) built their grand stone-fronted mansions, and from it they sent their young sons to Doctor Huddart's Union College at Bryant and Second Streets and their little daughters to Madame Zeitska's fashionable female academy. The Second Street area around Market became an elegant shopping mall to serve the dwellers there, and Third Street, handsomely planked, provided its main access. It was a democratic sort of neighborhood despite its wealth, for in 1860 Peter Donahue—an Irish immigrant who had founded the city's largest iron works out of a simple blacksmithery—built a grand home facing Bryant Street, occupying several city lots and flanked by formal gardens on both sides. And a year later the Sisters of Mercy, a group of Irish Catholic nuns, opened St. Mary's Hospital in the old State Marine facilities, a four-storey building on Stockton Street near Broadway on the crest, wherefore it was known as the "Hospital on the Hill."

Unfortunately for the Rincon community, commerce and declining esthetics quickly intruded. From an early date the surrounding area was busy with light industry—shipbuilding, dockyards, a drydock, lumberyards, foundries that made use of the iron ore that came in as ballast in ships carrying wheat, gristmills to transform that wheat to flour—and the Potrero Hill neighborhood south of Market became a settlement for the workers and owners, many of them Irish, who liked to live in close proximity to their church and established themselves around St. Patrick's on Market Street, though that was later moved to make room for the Palace Hotel. The promontory of land curved around to form the lower end of Yerba Buena Cove, where the residues from the First & Howard Streets Gas Works gave that part of town the name of Tar Flat. China Basin to the south, formerly Mission Bay, attracted smoky, unsightly industries—lumber mills, brickyards, foundries—and the China shipping trade, which spawned convoys of wagons and carts, as well as trains coming up from the south bay. In 1869 two major changes in the streets south of Market greatly changed the nature of the district. First was the notorious Second Street Cut, which nearly leveled the Hill altogether. The stated goal was to facilitate heavy goods traffic to and from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's docks and warehouses on the waterfront between First and Second Streets, but the hidden agenda was real estate speculation. In spite of granite facing, stairs, and a bridge at the Harrison Street crest, the cut proved brutal surgery on the hill. The sand that composed it kept slipping and caving, endangering workmen and leaving noble houses, including the $300,000 Latham mansion with its Mansard roof and three-storey square tower, teetering on the brink of a ditch ranging from sixty to seventy-five feet deep, which was only improved upon by heavy rains. For a time, the well-to-do families stayed in their homes. The Harrison Street hilltop, a neighborhood even now in its prime, was the location of several splendid mansions, and more were to be built this decade; here dwelt Charles McLane, general agent for Wells Fargo, in a three-storey Italianate house at No. 500 Harrison, and banker Joseph A. Donohoe in the mansion next door—to say nothing of Hubert Howe Bancroft next door to him. As late as 1877 cattle king Henry Miller would erect his city residence at the corner of Harrison and Essex, and through the '90's wealthy men would continue to establish themselves on the Hill. But the cleavage and subsequent bridging cost over $90,000, and ruined the character of the neighborhood, spurring an affluent retreat from the fine mansions and manicured gardens; as new, fashionable neighborhoods opened up, the wealthy slowly left the Hill, moving first to Stockton Street, then to new homes far out Mission and Howard Streets or to the Western Addition, or back across the city to Van Ness Avenue at the foot of Russian and Nob Hills, leaving the whole South-of-Market area to working-class residents.

The other change in street pattern was the creation of New Montgomery Street. The block of Mission Street from Second to Third had been subdivided by two inner streets, Annie, next to the new California Historical Society headquarters; and Jane, almost equidistant between Second and Annie. The east side of Jane Street became the west side of New Montgomery, and the Palace Hotel site (not yet graced by a building) occupied the former Jane Street right-of-way. The developers' intention for the new street was to break through the barrier of the opposing street grids at Market Street and provide a southern outlet for Montgomery, the crowded financial center, which till then had ended at Market. One of the more responsible speculations, this private project bought up all the properties in the vicinity from Market to Howard, opened the new street, and planned a uniform façade for all its buildings. The developers, adventurer-speculator Asbury Harpending and Billy Ralston, envisioned a district of fashionable retail shops (diverted from Second Street) and a continuation of the Montgomery Street type of businesses. The two blocks of New Montgomery could be cut because their New Montgomery Street Real Estate Company owned all the land in question. They also wanted the street to continue south from Howard to the water, but other property owners blocked it, and money (for once) didn't buy legislative approval.

Important structures soon arose on New Montgomery. Ralston and Harpending's $500,000 Grand Hotel, at the corner of Market Street, considered the best hostelry in the West when it was completed late in 1869, stood across from the future site of Ralston's projected Palace, dominating the vista from Montgomery. Its architect, John P. Gaynor, had responded to the earthquake of '68 by creating brick curtain walls around a heavy timber structural frame, with all parts fastened together by iron strapping. Four storeys tall (including a Mansard attic) and heavily ornamented, topped with a hexagonal cupola, its façade studded with two-storey hanging bay windows, it contained fine shops and 400 rooms. True to its name, it ranked among San Francisco's top six hotels, along with the five-and-a-half-storey Baldwin at Market and Powell with its convex Mansard roof, the Lick House and the Occidental (where the rates ran $3 to $5 a night), the Palace, and the four-storey Cosmopolitan, opened as recently as 1864, with its arched, almost-full-height windows at grade and a line of peculiar masonry protuberances all around its roof edges. The Russ House, built at 235 Montgomery in 1862 and filling the entire block from Bush to Pine, was owned by a German named Christian Russ who had started out as a businessman, jeweler, and assayer of gold. It was a respectable institution, a three-storey brick Italianate structure with pediments above the windows, balusters all around the roofline, and, according to San Franciscan custom, an assortment of stores at grade level, among them Colonel Andrews's Diamond Palace; it had a library, a first-class restaurant for the walk-in trade and a spacious, finely appointed dining room for the guests, and a grand ballroom; but it catered to farmers, merchants, and miners, charging only $2 to $2.50 per night. (Russ later converted his country property, at Harrison and Sixth near the road to the Mission, into a pleasure garden where his fellow Teutons in particular repaired for songfests and outings, perhaps the most notable of which was the May Day celebration, always involving a festive parade and a series of exhibitions and contests by the Gymnastic Musical Union, called in their own language the Turner Gesang Verein.) Across from it stood Lütgen's Hotel, built in 1849, which was to remain one of the favorite German resorts for over a quarter-century. At No. 222 was Platt's Hall, another three-storey brick building, which had opened in 1860; its chief attraction was a large square auditorium that served as the city's central gathering place for events that attracted large crowds—lectures, concerts, political rallies, school graduation ceremonies, boxing matches, and the appearances of visiting celebrities such as Henry Ward Beecher, Susan B. Anthony, and the famous midget General Tom Thumb.

The southern end of New Montgomery Street was the location of three elegant brick buildings containing ground-floor retail stores and, on their mansard-roofed top floors, armory-drill halls for militia units. The Grand Army of the Republic Hall also had a second-floor space called Sanders Hall, for meetings of organizations like the Swedish Society, Austrian Benevolent Society, Golden Gate Chapter No. 10 of Eastern Star, Lumbermen's Union, Shipwrights' Association, and Germania Club. The Olympic Club shared a building with the Commercial Yacht Club, rented the middle story to commercial and industrial tenants, and then sold it to the Third Regiment. The Armory Block had only two storeys. These three buildings were the only ones designed according to the uniform-façade scheme that Ralston and Harpending had envisioned for all of New Montgomery.

By 1869 Market Street from the waterfront to Third was solid with hotels, bars, stores, lumberyards, and stoneyards. That year the Harpending Block rose between First and Second Streets, a three-storey brick structure with a 250-foot frontage. And at 721-723 Market, on the south side between Third and Fourth, a five-storey brick building with an ornamental iron front was erected that year by Hubert Howe Bancroft, who had come to the city in 1852, only twenty years old, and built up, from an initial one-man bookstore on Montgomery Street, a combination book-and-stationery and publishing-and-printing empire that employed over 200 people and had made him a fortune. Along the way he had amassed a library that ultimately numbered 50,000 volumes, and was now engaged in the compilation of an encyclopedic History of the West, eventually to top out at thirty-nine volumes, on which, on the building's fifth floor, platoons of writers and researchers labored, ten hours a day, six days a week, writing outlines, sending out queries, conducting interviews, and cross-referencing their master's collection. The lower floors of the structure still housed Bancroft's successful retail business, which was managed by his brother Albert and handled not only printed matter but musical instruments as well. At Market and Valencia stood the northern terminal of the San José Railroad, and just west of Sixth the house built by Francis L. A. Pioche, who had been one of the backers of the road's construction. Pioche had also built a sort of country home, called the Hermitage, out by the Mission, and the newest of his domiciles, an immense, square, three-storey mansard-roofed mansion at 806 Stockton Street, which he put up in the early '60's, after the shops and factories and immigrant workers began invading South Park and Rincon Hill and making them no longer as fashionable as they had once been. With its grounds, it covered half a block, and here he entertained as lavishly as only a millionaire bachelor can, with dinner parties almost weekly that glittered with men and women important in the city's social, financial, and artistic circles.

At 920 Washington Street, on the corner of Dupont, stood the famous boardinghouse operated by the black entrepreneur known as Mammy Pleasants, who had opened it in 1849 after coming around the Horn from Boston. Mammy was in fact an octoroon—the daughter of a white man and a Haitian quadroon—and as a child had no trouble passing for white. She had been given a good education in a convent school, and later married a wealthy abolitionist, who died a few years later, leaving a small fortune. When her involvement in the Underground Railroad became known around her native New Orleans, she prudently removed to California. Though she could still have "passed" had she wished to, she chose not to conceal her race. For years hers had been the leading establishment of its kind in the city; on its register were the names of William Sharon, Newton Booth, Darius Ogden Mills, Billy Ralston, Senator David C. Broderick, Chief Justice David S. Terry of the State Supreme Court (who killed Broderick in a duel in 1859), and others who were to rise to prominence in California affairs. Louisiana shrimp, Southern fried chicken, and cornmeal pones were on the menu, and Mammy was also active in the abolitionist cause and once brought suit, in 1864, against the omnibus company when she was forbidden to ride the municipal streetcars—and won. She was a noted matchmaker who arranged introductions between her well-to-do boarders and assorted young, white, and beautiful protégées, whose lives she continued to manipulate whenever it would benefit her business. By eavesdropping on the boarders' dinner-table talk she gleaned profitable stock tips, and occasional nuggets of scandal, which she used to good advantage to improve her financial situation. She inserted strategically into employment numerous black servants—many of them penniless former slaves who had somehow made their way to the city—who gathered still further useful information for her, keeping her informed of every scandal and secret; she added more boarding houses, owned rental properties on the Barbary Coast, and invested in everything from laundries and livery stables to saloons and brothels. But there were whispers that she ran another business on the side, one that allowed her to wield a "mysterious influence" over the local mighty. It was said she was a voodoo queen, a procuress, and a dealer in blackmail, sorcery, and the buying and selling of babies.

A block north, Dupont crossed Jackson Street, and past that it wandered north along the Presidio Trail, across Pacific and Broadway, to lose itself among the shanties, dairies, market gardens, and abattoirs of the flatland that stretched past Telegraph Hill to the Bay. Here a cove extended from Black Point east to North Point, which lay at the northern base of Telegraph Hill. This inlet was North Beach, whose first settler was a Mexican woman, Juana Briones, who dwelt near Washington Square by 1844, if not earlier, and there kept a small dairy ranch and raised potatoes and vegetables. In 1850 "Honest Harry" Meiggs, fresh off the Isthmus route with a load of hardwood he'd picked up on the way, was looking for something in which to invest the $50,000 he'd made by selling his cargo in wood-hungry San Francisco. He found a brook, fed by two springs, near the waterfront, built a sawmill for it to power, and then built a 1600-foot pier at the foot of Powell Street from which to unload the timber cut in the forests along the Bay and up the Mendocino coast. Within a year he had 500 men cutting that timber and was worth $500,000. By 1852, when he and a couple of partners—Rudolph Herold and an Englishman named George Loder—organized the first San Francisco Philharmonic Society, he was accounted the richest man on the West Coast. By 1853 he'd put up a mill in Mendocino to process the timber closer to the source, and assembled a fleet of schooners to carry it to his pier (which he presently extended by 400 feet). He made up his mind that North Beach had unlimited possibilities—where else was the growing city going to expand?—and bought huge tracts of it on unsecured loans from trusting bankers. As an alderman, he engineered the grading and leveling of many of the streets.

But the city didn't co-operate, at least not northwardly; it grew south, toward Market Street. And in 1854, the declining Gold Rush boom deflated property values all over San Francisco. Like the Emperor Norton at the same time, Honest Harry found himself in a spot, but he came up with a way to wiggle out of it: he liquidated his dubious investments (netting thereby a cool million), obtained a clutch of blank municipal bond notes which he filled out to himself, looted the city treasury of nearly all its gold reserves (a matter of several hundred thousand dollars), chartered the bark American, stocked her to the bulkheads with fancy provisions, loaded his family aboard her for what was supposed to be a pleasure cruise on the Bay, and took off for Tahiti, leaving behind a large number of beachfront properties, the city's longest wharf, a mansion on Telegraph Hill at Montgomery and Broadway, and all his other immovable assets, plus a bagful of forgeries, spurious notes, and worthless stock, hundreds of ruined investors, and debts of $1,000,000, $800,000 of it in embezzled city funds; this brought on a full-blown financial panic, beginning on Black Friday, February 23, 1855, in which twenty of the city's then forty-two banks closed forever. As for Meiggs, eventually he fetched up in Chile, where he became a successful railroad contractor, and then moved on to Peru, where he rebuilt his fortune (now estimated at $100,000,000) and was hailed throughout the continent as a genius—"Don Enrique Meiggs, the Messiah of the Railways." He had built the spectacular Callao-La Oraya road, which clung to the almost vertical cliffs of the Rimac gorge, the Mollendo-Arequipa Railroad, and its 225-mile South Trans-Andean Railway extension to Puno, which crossed the Andean summit at Crucero Alto more than 14,000 feet above sea level. "Anywhere the llama can go," he said, "there I can take a train." And apparently he could. He had even begun to pay back the debts he'd left.

North Beach still didn't live up to Honest Harry's expectations. In the '60's Broadway between Kearny and Montgomery Streets—at that time the southern slope of Telegraph Hill—had been graded and lowered some sixty to seventy feet, thus opening Broadway as a direct route between the district and the waterfront, offering a means of avoiding the sordidness of the Barbary Coast just to the south. But what followed it was chiefly industry. Here were the breweries, Schwarz's, the Bavaria, the Empire, the Lafayette, the Old Stock, the St. Louis; Senator Jack Fay's soap factory, Josiah Stanford's Pacific Oil Refinery, John Everding's starch works. The waterfront area bustled with fish buyers, boardinghouse keepers, restaurateurs, and bargain-seeking poor folk dealing directly with the Italian fishermen or buying from wharfside stalls. Numerous boardinghouses dotted the streets running inland from this area, all with a characteristic tradition of simple home-style cooking. On the northeast corner of Stockton and Chestnut was the Home for the Care of the Inebriate, lodged in a solid-looking, four-storey brick-and-mortar building that had been built in 1859 by a German named Pfeiffer. He'd gone bankrupt from the expense, and the house had been converted to its present use in '62. Half a block north of it, at the corner of Pfeiffer Street, was a three-storey building in which Toland Medical College had been established in '64; six years later it had become the medical school of the University of California. And half a block north of that, in turn, on the southwest corner of Stockton and Francisco Streets, was the City and County Hospital, a three-storey brick building that had been built as a schoolhouse in 1854 and purchased and converted by the city-county government three years later. It was the "hospital of last resort" where the indigent sick and the insane were lodged, commonly in overcrowded conditions which had grown so bad that in this year the facility would move to larger quarters on Potrero Avenue. When it was built, the water's edge lay only half a block away from it, just south of Bay Street.

However, on Sundays the factories of North Beach were silent, and in a day before drives to the Cliff House or through Golden Gate Park were fashionable, the district was the place where San Francisco went of a Sunday afternoon. Its dazzling views of the Gate and the Bay attracted trysting lovers who liked to promenade out to the end of Meiggs's old lumber wharf and watch the catboats leaning to the leeward reach across the harbor. There were bathhouses to rent, and you could go in swimming, or visit Cockney White's museum, where dwelt an educated pig that played seven-up for a quarter a hand (and usually won), and at the landward end, on the northeast corner of Francisco and Powell Streets, you could stop at top-hatted Abe Warner's Cobweb Palace, which had been a feature of the area since 1856. Here visitors might enjoy a free dish of Abe's wonderful crab chowder, and marvel at his menagerie of parrots (one of which had the freedom of the place, frequently imbibed too much liquor, and could hurl curses in four languages), magpies, roaming cats and dogs and monkeys (the last begging for the peanuts that could be purchased from a crippled sailor who hung about nearby), kangaroos, and two cinnamon bears, and his collection of nautical odds and ends, including South Sea Island war clubs, stone images from ruined Aztec temples, an Eskimo canoe, a totem pole, a complete set of sperm-whale teeth, walrus tusks and whales' teeth handsomely carved with patriotic scenes, taxidermic specimens, and Asian Noh-theater masks and screens. Abe, who had an eccentric love of spiders and never swept down their webs (hence the name of the joint), stood behind the bar in a black suit, white apron, and battered silk opera hat and offered a selection of fine French brandy, Spanish wines, hot toddies, and other libations, as well as the finest seafood fare in the city, with an emphasis on clam and crab dishes—sweet, succulent cracked Dungeness crabs, clam chowder, and mussels, served with an excellent local French bread—which he had learned to make in Maine; his place was a favorite of the sea captains when they came ashore, and during the '50's had often welcomed the filibuster William Walker. A block or two away was Driscoll's Salt Water Tub Bathing Emporium, a favorite goal of those nursing hangovers from Saturday night, where they could get a dip in the steaming sea water and a rubdown by Bathhouse Jack. Here too was Charlie Schwartz's, where you could crack the shells of the great crabs with a mallet on a redwood block, and wash them down with cool lager or tall tankards of steam beer served out by a man in wooden shoes; and Paddy Gleason's, of the famous cocktails. Here, across from the Cobweb, was Riley's shooting gallery with its air rifles, and beyond that Mason's lot, where Jimmy Kenovan, who could dance a jig for twenty-four hours without stopping, had put up a greased pole with a five-dollar gold piece on top of it, a ham a little lower down, and a silver dollar lower still. Here too stood Heydenaber's Atlantic Hall, where dances and entertainments were held; and George Doherty's barn at Jones and Francisco Streets, where they staged prizefights between the neighborhood champs. The Alcatraz and Sausalito ferries left from the wharf as well, and the people who lived along Dupont Street "above the Bay" were wakened in the morning, if the wind was right, by the buglers on Alcatraz, where the Army had maintained a fort and military prison since 1859, and on Angel Island, blowing reveille for the soldiers stationed there. The clean smell of the Bay intermingled with the aroma of steamed crabs and shellfish, fresh-baked bread, and spices just offloaded from the ships; stevedores shouted out the contents of the cargoes, drayers cracked their whips and called to their mules, heavy-laden wagons rumbled off the docks, seagulls mewed and screamed, organ grinders played and children shouted and shrieked. Just west of the wharf canneries handled the sardines with which the bay teemed; Ghirardelli's chocolate factory sent forth delightful smells, and sawmills handling the virgin heart redwood brought in by the lumber ships turned out everything from plain lumber to fine wooden trim and scrollwork for pretentious mansions.

Not quite a block north of Broadway, at the corner of Dupont and Fresno Streets, stood Wagner's Beer Hall (whose proprietor, despite his name, was French, or rather Alsatian), established in 1861 in a building from the previous decade. He sold Bavarian beer for a nickel a mug, hot Scotch punches for a dime, and imported English ale and stout which he peddled in stone bottles from a horse-drawn wagon, and lived in the two upper storeys with his wife and two sons. At 610 Vallejo Street, just a hop, skip, and jump up Dupont and west, was St. Francis of Assisi Church, which served as the headquarters of a diocese that stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific; it had been established in 1849 by French Catholics whose original wood-frame building was replaced in 1851 by an adobe chapel, and replaced again in 1860 by a red-brick Gothic structure. Meanwhile, in 1856, the French began to feel crowded out by the English-, Spanish-, and Italian-speaking worshippers, and they moved to 566 Bush, where they built Notre Dame des Victoires. Between Union and Filbert Streets, three blocks up Stockton from St. Francis, was Washington Square Park, which had been platted as part of the O'Farrell survey and formally designated in 1862; here the people of North Beach relaxed of a Sunday.

Broadway was still pretty much the north end of town. Spurs of Telegraph Hill blocked it in one or two places, and about a mile from the waterfront it ran head-on into the sheer side of Russian Hill and stopped. To go farther west, through the wild mustard fields and thistles to the dunes, you took the meandering Presidio Trail, which before the '60's had been a dusty cattle run to the dairy farms in Cow Hollow, near Union Street. Or you went around the Telegraph spurs, crossed the bridge over the neck of Laguna Saluda, and reached Montgomery Street. A block or two back from the waterfront was the original site of Couzen's slaughterhouse, and above that the steep flanks of the Hill, where the "Sydney Ducks" had lived. Another block or two beyond that were the shacks of Little Chile on the southern slopes, the early Italian and French neighborhoods, and the noisy Mexican fandango parlors that comprised a bawdy, raucous annex to the Barbary Coast, only one block south. And across the street from these, between Kearny and Douglas Streets, was the three-storey Norman-style brick-and-stone building called the Broadway Jail, a dark, damp fortress that could house as many as 200 miscreants and in whose cobblestoned yard executions had been held since 1856, with Telegraph Hill looking down from one side and Russian—at the time the outermost fringe of the town—from the other. In one of its cells there currently languished Laura D. Fair, the lovely four-times-married boardinghouse keeper, whose story Jess remembered from Frank Leslie's. Her first husband had died of drink, her third (whose name she bore) had committed suicide, the fourth was divorced in 1871, and the second may never have been; she simply fled him when he proved to be a violent drunk. In 1864, following Fair's death, she had commenced an affair with the attorney A. P. Crittenden, of the distinguished Kentucky family to which Senator John Jordan Crittenden had also belonged; they met in Virginia City, at various summer resorts, and in San Francisco itself. Again and again she demanded that he put his wife aside and marry her, which he had been promising to do for years. But he had begun to weary of her, and of her unceasing demands on his pocketbook; so, in November of 1870, at the Oakland railroad station, she shot him through the chest. There followed a long and sensational trial at which it was implied that any woman so depraved as to enjoy a fulfilling sex life was doubtless guilty of far worse, and several "advanced" women (meaning suffragists and equal-rights agitators) attended every session of it; even Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, visiting the city for a convention of the cause, called on Laura at the jail. She was convicted on June 3, 1871, and sentenced to hang on July 28, but her lawyers got a stay of execution, and were currently appealing.

William Ralston, known to one and all as "Billy," had been an Ohio farm boy, the grandson of an owner of highly profitable ferries on the Ohio River, and worked on the Mississippi riverboats as a clerk and ship's carpenter in his youth. Twenty-three when the gold rush started, he went no further, in the beginning, than Panama, which he reached in 1852 and where he started a successful banking operation, then branched into shipping and captained a steamer plying between Panama and the Bay. When the boat was stranded, he skillfully brought it back to San Francisco, in recognition of which he was taken into the firm, and in 1854 he settled in the city, became a banker, and soon met with success; when he married in 1858, he grandly invited the entire fourteen-member wedding party along on the honeymoon to Yosemite Valley. He built a home on Rincon Hill and was considered among the leading citizens of the place. Ten years later he partnered with Darius Ogden Mills, then the city's leading banker, and with a $3,000,000 capitalization they opened the Bank of California—a two-storey building sheathed in blue sandstone, with alternating classical columns and arcaded windows all around on both levels, and an interior featuring nineteen-foot ceilings and an impressive array of black marble, Spanish mahogany, and other polished woods—at Battery and Washington Streets. Ralston was an energetic civic booster who envisioned a San Francisco with a glorious, unlimited future, which he hoped to make independent of Eastern manufacturers, and to that end he spread his cash around liberally. For over a decade he was to be its most conspicuous citizen. In 1864-7 he built a clapboard mansion, called Ralston Hall, at Belmont, twenty miles south, for his summer home—actually an improvement on a villa owned by an Italian count who, in 1852, had had it taken apart, crated, and shipped entire to California for reassembly. Ralston's version of it had over eighty rooms, greenhouses, a bowling alley, a Turkish bath, and a separate fifty-room house for the servants. There he entertained on a grand scale, sometimes hosting dinner parties for a hundred guests or more.

Ralston invested in a bewildering variety of schemes—Pacific shipping lines, inland waterways, portage and fur companies, at least three railroads, hydraulic mining, wheat farming, orchards, imported Hereford cattle, the reclamation of land for agricultural and industrial use, Alaskan fisheries, a huge drydock at Hunters Point, the Pacific and Mission Woollen Mills (which employed well over 800 workers between them), the San Francisco & Pacific Sugar Refinery, the Kimball Carriage Factory, the Spring Valley Water Company (which was the city's major water supplier), the West Coast Furniture Factory (built to supply the needs of his Palace Hotel), the Buena Vista Vinicultural Society (which owned 400 acres of vineyards in Sonoma County and Southern California), the Union Pacific Silk Manufacturing Company (for which he imported silkworms from China and Japan), the Culp Consolidated Tobacco Company (which grew Havana tobacco in the Santa Clara Valley), the Cornell Watch Company, the $2,000,000 New Montgomery Real Estate Company, and the California Theater. Most notably he invested in the Comstock Lode, which he and another partner, William Sharon, began buying up that first year and soon dominated. They inundated it with capital, installed bulky, expensive machinery to ventilate and drain its shafts, and hired engineers to devise new tunneling methods; Ralston lent generously to Peter Donahue's foundry and the Vulcan Iron Works, which supplied the equipment needed. By '65, thanks to their improvements, shares in the Comstock, which had been thought to be playing out, were being bought and sold feverishly once again, invigorating the city's economy, while almost everything the Washoe mines and miners consumed—from assaying equipment, drills, and shovels to foodstuffs and clothing—was either manufactured in the San Francisco area or brought in through the port. All this activity led to widespread prosperity, which in turn generated a building boom, and while only a few San Franciscans grew truly rich, Ralston's investments benefited the entire city. Many people looked upon him as the town's first citizen. As for himself, he was so overwhelmed with Nevada silver that even he, with his fruitful mind, could scarcely discover enough ways to spend it. Last year he had commenced construction, at Market, New Montgomery, and Second Streets, of the Palace Hotel, which was to be the largest of its kind in America—four times too large for the city—and wasn't to be finished till 1875, five weeks after his death.

When the filling in of the cove was completed in 1855, the center of business and commerce shifted toward Montgomery and Market Streets where it had room to grow. Montgomery, which in Spanish days had been known as Calle della Fondacion, ran parallel to the original shoreline, a block east of Portsmouth Square and less than that from the wharves. In the '50's it was the business heart of the town, with office buildings, banks, ship's-chandleries, cargo warehouses, and grog shops lining it; in the later '60's it had become the fashionable "promenade," beginning with Tucker's "jewel palace" at the corner of Sutter, past the silk shop of Belloc Frères and the Ville de Paris, and ending, after various turns, at the Post Office at Stockton and Washington. Here the ladies could peer into the wonderful windows of the shops, at the wares, their own reflections, or those of the approaching young "bucks." Since the end of the decade it was Kearny, with its exciting new shops, that had become the "Ambrosial Path," and here, from two till five-thirty every Saturday afternoon, a solid procession of beautiful women in the height of fashion—some 2300 of them by actual count—could be seen passing along the five blocks between Market and Powell and Sutter and Kearny.

Union Square, bounded by Powell, Post, Geary, and Stockton Streets, was a residential neighborhood. Originally it had been the site of a massive sandbank called O'Farrell's Mountain. In 1850, Mayor John W. Geary donated it to the city for a public plaza, and like much of hilly downtown, it was levelled by steam paddies and the sand dumped into Yerba Buena Cove. The square's name had been given to it in honor of the rousing rallies held there by the Reverend Thomas Starr King, who had become pastor of First Unitarian in 1860 and immediately set to work countering secessionist sentiments in the city. The first buildings around it were churches and private clubs, and by 1865 there were five of the former—Calvary Presbyterian, First Unitarian, and three more Protestant houses of worship—plus the Pacific Union, Concordia, and Argonaut Clubs.

But "south of Market" had been first opened up in 1850, when a plank toll road forty feet wide was built over the Mission Trail from Third to Sixteenth Streets, which would mark the limit of Mission settlement. The toll road had been an expensive and time-consuming project—one of the forty-foot piles being driven into the sand and marsh to provide a solid foundation for it had disappeared utterly with just one blow from the pile driver, and a second placed in the same hole met a like fate. It was planned as a straight shot between Yerba Buena Cove and Mission Dolores, but it didn't take into account the hundred-foot sandhills that intervened, including one at Third Street, which could only be circumnavigated by detouring on Geary and Dupont Streets. Eventually, however, it became Mission Street, one block south of Market, and opened up all the South of Market region as a suburban living area. It led, originally, past dunes and chaparral, shacks and gardens, and a raffish neighborhood of boardinghouses, hotels, saloons, racetracks, and cockpits, but it was a great success, charging two bits for a horseman, six for a two-horse wagon, and eight for a four-horse team; in the '50's it was the town's boulevard, a frontier promenade like Montgomery's Ambrosial Path, only with carriages. On sunny days the dandies and women of fashion, gamblers and men of consequence, even babies squalling in their nursemaids' arms, all went rocking and rumbling over the plank road toward the Mission and on to the open country beyond it. Half a mile from Third Street they passed over a bog, beyond which was the trail leading off over the sandhills to the Yerba Buena Cemetery, the tiny cottage of Stephen C. Massett on the left, and a few hundred feet beyond it the two-room cabin where the young Edwin Booth and his friend David C. Anderson had lived over the winter of 1853-4. Beyond that again lay the roadhouses, where you could rest your horses and sit in the shade with a milk punch—the Grizzly Bear, with its mascot, a small cinnamon bear, chained to an oak tree in the front yard; the Nightingale, where Judge Ned McGowan hid from the Vigilantes in '56; the Mansion House and Witzeleben's brewery hard by the Mission; farther down yet, at the end of the plank road, two racetracks, the Union and the Pioneer, the first of which was built as early as 1850; and across from the latter the Willows, an enterprise of Francis L. A. Pioche—a resort with a theater, open-air restaurant, lawns and gardens, merry-go-round, aviary, sea-lion pond and zoo, and a pavilion for moonlight dancing. This was flooded out early in the war and disappeared from the scene, creating a body of murky water known as Pioche's Pond, in which from first to last at least a dozen young swimmers drowned. Two early bullrings out by the Mission proved insufficient for the newly expanded community: in 1850 two additional ones were constructed closer in, one next to the Catholic church on Vallejo, the other near Washington Square, and the sport continued to thrive for another decade. Still farther out in the country were the Red House, which proudly advertised Bird, Chicken and Wine Breakfasts served at all hours of the Day and Night, and Chris Lilley's, a favorite rendezvous for politicians and duelists.

Water had been an issue for San Franciscans since the beginning, there being very few sources for the drinkable kind; some very promising springs here and there, but none with sufficient force to be connected to mains. A brisk traffic developed in shipping tanks of pure water brought in from Sausalito on small steamers. An early initiative for the development of a system of reservoirs and artesian wells came to nothing, and in 1852 the city council granted Arzo Merrifield a contract to pipe in fresh spring water. That project was begun the year after and likewise collapsed. In 1857 the San Francisco Water Works finally made it practical to bring in water by wooden flumes from Lobos Creek along the coastline, past Fort Point, and so into the side of the hill. Eight years later Spring Valley, which had begun in 1860, succeeded it, still using the same system.

Of necessity, San Francisco, like most of California, had learned to be self-sufficient; isolated on the far side of the continent, forced to cope with limited cargo space and high freighting charges, it was a matter of survival, both physical and economic. With thousands of people from all over the country swarming through, it was natural that the vast majority who failed to strike it rich would try to redeem themselves (rather than going home penniless) by turning to the trades they had followed before, from farming to crafts to hotel-keeping to manufacturing; and many of the minority that had prospered had money to lend them. So stores and factories were built, restaurants and hotels established, farms and ranches staked out, fishing fleets put into service, railroads laid with rails brought around the Horn—and, in many cases, families sent for. The handling of repeated municipal crises, most notably the fires of 1850-1, was energetic training for later disasters like the recent earthquake, and determination in the face of adversity was a built-in characteristic of San Francisco. As well, more than half the Rushers were in their twenties, and as late as 1869 the population was still 70% male (indeed, not till after the turn of the century would the sexes reach near parity in numbers, which was perhaps one reason why a union of women printers had found it possible to organize in 1868), the large majority of them under fifty. Their natural vigor and spirit of adventure made for a great inclination toward risk-taking, and many of those risks thrived.

By 1854 most of the state's food was being produced within its own borders, and San Francisco had acquired a reputation for its cooking. The importation of fresh oysters from Washington Territory's Shoalwater Bay was begun in 1850 in response to the huge demand for the bivalves and the fact that they couldn't survive the long sea voyage from Boston or Baltimore, the heat of the Isthmus, or the lack of ice in transit from Mazatlán; by the end of that decade three San Francisco firms were bringing in 35,000 baskets of them every year—4375 for every month the creatures were officially "in season." Flour mills and sawmills were early developments, as were iron foundries. So were salmon canneries, which found a ready supply of product in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers; in 1857 the former's yield alone amounted to 200,000 fish. By the mid-'60's Californians pressed the finest olive oil, grew luscious fruit just below the city's borders, grazed sheep and cattle on the grassy hills, and raised fat, healthy pigs and chickens within the city limits; many gold miners found they could make a better living tapping the state's other natural resources, and by 1870 it had been found that the value of agricultural production and the number of men employed therein had surpassed those of mining. As late as 1867 the city's Municipal Report for Farms found 5000 acres planted in barley and oats, 1100 in potatoes, and 300 in hay, and noted a harvest of ninety tons of turnips, thirty of pumpkins and squash, and hundreds of bushels of beans, peas, onions, and beets, besides 3000 fruit trees, a hundred raspberry canes, seventy-five grapevines, 30,000 strawberry plants, and dwelling within city limits nearly 7500 horses, over 4000 milk cows and 5600 hogs, and nearly 5000 chickens. The enormous consumption of champagne in the parlor houses and wine (a pint with each fine meal) in the substantial number of mid-range restaurants, usually French- or Italian-inspired, along with the generally high level of drinking throughout the city, assured the prosperity of the wine industry—and brought many of the champagne dealers, obliquely, into the bordello business, financially backing the houses, lending and sometimes donating everything from rent to bail money, and paying protection insurance as often as needed. The firm of Kohler & Froehling, in the '50's, rented the entire basement of the Montgomery Block and divided it into ten large cellars for the making and selling of wine; by 1860 it had a New York agent dealing exclusively in its label. The Sainsevain Brothers acquired a Los Angeles vineyard in 1855 and likewise prospered. By 1859 no less than twenty-three Los Angeles winemakers were stocking commercial depots in the city, while General Mariano Vallejo produced wine at his Sonoma County estate; two of his daughters (one after the other) married his friend and business partner, a Hungarian named Colonel Agoston Haraszthy, who introduced him to European grape stock superior to the Mission kind with which he'd begun, and a niece married Edward Bale, an English doctor who kept a vineyard as part of an extensive ranch in the St. Helena area; one of her daughters in turn married winemaker Charles Krug in 1860.

When the war broke out and the major transport of goods and supplies to the West was cut off, local industries were spurred on in their development, and investment in these sound businesses remained the foundation of the city's economy until speculation in mining stock began running wild. Some 800-odd factories of different kinds were listed in San Francisco this year, including sixteen iron foundries casting farm implements, mining machinery, locomotives, riverboats, windmills, buggies, and even goods to be shipped to China and Japan, and six brass foundries. There were woollen mills and tanneries, glass factories, candle factories, soap factories, match factories, a glue factory, oil refineries, potteries, cement-pipe plants, boot and shoe manufacturers, sugar refineries, canners and preservers of fruit and produce, meat packers, smokers, and curers, marble works turning out gravestones and billiard tables. Coffee had been ground on a large scale—with the help of an engine salvaged from a sunken river steamer—since the '40's. Five horse-drawn railroads wove a web through the city's streets. Reduction plants and smelters treated lead, Comstock silver, gold, zinc, copper, and iron ore. Two telegraph offices—the Atlantic & Pacific and the Western Union—and their branches connected the city with the rest of the country; the San Francisco Gas Company had been illuminating it since 1854. Home factories were meeting almost the entire local demand for wagons, carriages, and buggies, and local firms were beginning to turn out boats specifically designed for towing—tugboats, a boon to the busy port. Most of the city's stone coal had been supplied from nearby Bellingham Bay since 1854, and the quarry on Yerba Buena Island, established in 1851, yielded a blue rubblestone that proved excellent for building, particularly valuable when the city, after 1854, required that all downtown commercial buildings to be of brick or stone, an edict that within two years resulted in the construction of 1500 of them.

Regular steamship service between San Francisco and Sacramento had been a fact since 1849, and local and international transportation of people, merchandise, and supplies by water was big business within two years thereafter. Numerous dependent enterprises—warehouses, customs brokers, merchants' exchanges, sailmakers, shipbuilders, dry-dock facilities, hotels, schools of navigation, chronometer and watchmaking shops, marine suppliers, assembly plants for the putting together of large vessels shipped out from the East in sections like prefabricated housing, and various less legitimate ones—grew up around the port to serve it, and the Bay swarmed with Whitehall boats, manned by enterprising oarsmen, which carried runners from every conceivable shore-based business that a ship's company might need, and sometimes even went out beyond the Gate and waited the night through for a vessel due the next day. On a more refined level, silkworm culture had been introduced to California in the late '50's, and beginning in the next decade the manufacture and marketing of silk ribbons and spools of sewing silk brought the California Silk Manufacturing Company, the Union Pacific Silk Manufacturing Company, and Belding Brothers and Company into being. With the revival of the Comstock, ingenuity and inventiveness had become profitable, and watching a common, uneducated man such as "silver king" John W. Mackay rise to the mastery of men, to become an entertainer of presidents and (eventually) an in-law of royalty, kept hope springing eternal in the breast of a population that believed fervently in gambling for the long shot—which, in turn, kept speculation and new ventures bubbling away at fever heat. By 1868 the city boasted forty-six churches, eight theaters, and innumerable saloons, gambling houses, music halls, beer gardens, brothels, hotels, and restaurants, all geared chiefly toward serving the visiting miners from the Comstock; over a thousand new buildings had been erected in the past year, some described as "very costly and elegant."

Children were a rare species in the days of '49, but the Rushers felt strongly about education. California Wesleyan University in San Jose had been founded in 1851, and in 1855 the College of California opened in Oakland as a private liberal arts school, directed by two clergymen; the embryo University of California took it over in '68 and admitted its first class in '69. The first normal school in the state began training teachers in 1862, and the first kindergarten was established the following year. Mills Seminary, a private nonsectarian college, had been opened, also in Oakland, by one Dr. Cyrus Mills only last year. By 1870 there were two medical schools, one headed by Dr. Hugh Toland of South Carolina and the other by Dr. Levi Cooper Lane, although there was no procedure for licensing the graduates (or any other practitioners), and the average doctor had had less than a year of instruction coupled with a program of practical apprenticeship. A high school was established as early as 1856. The miners were hard drinkers and fast gamblers, but also avid readers; they set up libraries in many of the camps they established, and the Society of California Pioneers (1850), the YMCA and the Mercantile Library (1853), the Odd Fellows and the Mechanics' Institute (1854) all did so in San Francisco. The last also offered a chess club, lectures on science and technology, and instruction in mechanical and freehand drawing. The Verein Library was inaugurated in 1853, the 12,000-volume Bancroft in 1859, the Medical University in 1864, the German Turnverein, the Swedenborgian, and the Home Institute in 1866, the Almshouse in 1870, the Theological in 1871. There were two St. Mary's Libraries, one dating from 1863 and the other four years younger. R. B. Woodward's fashionable What Cheer House acquired its library in 1861, providing both some 3000 books and an array of newspapers from all California, as well as the principal journals of the eastern U.S. and Europe.

The Poodle Dog, which had been started in 1849 in a simple three-bayed, two-storey frame building at Washington and Dupont and moved to an Italianate structure of fireproof pressed brick at 415-425 Bush Street in 1868, was not only one of the premiere gathering places of the city's sizeable French colony—others included the Maison Riche at Dupont and Geary Streets, the Maison Dorée, and Marchand's—but a resort of a kind unique to the city, with both a respectable and a risqué side to its business. Henry Bruen had introduced the Parisian cabinet particulier—literally a small private room for restaurant guests—as early as 1851, and the concept had spread quickly, so that a number of places had two entrances, one for family parties and the other for private clients. Bankers, judges, lawyers—not a few former '49ers who'd made good, who had a little more culture and grayer hair, but neither to the extent that they didn't have a twinkle in their eye, a sprightliness in their step, and a fondness for discreet visits "upstairs"—dined at the Dog; women, their identities shielded by heavy veiling, descended from shaded carriages to slip upstairs for intimate suppers and whatever romantic intrigues good food and drink might inspire. A typical repast could go to twelve to eighteen courses and take six hours to consume, all in an atmosphere of couches, locks on the doors, buzzers and velvet pulls, and the most discreet waiters. It wasn't unusual for clients to stay the night. The lavish first-floor dining room offered public accommodations where a man could safely take his wife and daughter to dine in elegance, and a decor in a style torn between the Rococo and Louis XIV styles. Priced at around a dollar, it offered the highest quality cuisine in the city—French food, which had been popular in the city from the Days of '49. The second floor hosted private dining rooms suitable for a meeting and dinner with a member or two of the opposite sex; said to be risqué but not particularly terrible. Accessed via a side door leading to an elevator, on the third, fourth and fifth floors, one found cozy rooms for private assignations only whispered about. Each suite included an elegant parlor and bedroom (with equally elegant bed), rich Axminster carpets from Europe, a bathroom attached, and (later) its own telephone. The elevator operator became a very wealthy man on the tips provided "for service." In the basement was a secret passageway that led to convenient hotel rooms next door, where a man and his girlfriend could finish what they'd started over their café diable. Propriety, and later bribes, kept the upstairs activities from developing into public scandals touching many of the city's elite, and the private dining rooms and love nooks lent a sort of Parisian air to the city's night life. The sixth floor was again "respectable" territory, where a main banquet room hosted opulent parties of up to 250 guests with a hidden alcove for the orchestra, and a smaller one was available for "presentations, college fraternities, lodges, anniversary dinners, etc." Ain't that somethin', Jess thought in amazement. Don't know as I ever heard of anythin' like it.

Throughout the '50's and '60's, the Irish were settling in the warm Mission District, and the area around Dupont Street was already known as "Little China." Blacks congregated in the area west of Montgomery and north of Jackson, around Pacific Avenue and Broadway; life here centered on the church, but there was also a black cultural organization, the San Francisco Athenaeum, which supported its own library, and a weekly newspaper, the Elevator, established as recently as 1865. The posh Oriental Hotel, on Market at Bush and Battery, hosted Richard Henry Dana in one of its commodious rooms when he returned in 1859 to the Bay he had visited twenty-four years earlier; it boasted four storeys, a ballroom, and multiple porticoes. Two or three blocks west of Montgomery, beyond St. Ignatius's College—actually a Jesuit academy on the European order, founded in 1855 at 835 Market and boasting a library of several thousand volumes—at Fifth Street, stood Henry Casebolt's carriage factory, till he moved it to Cow Hollow, and by it he prospered so notably that in 1866 he was able to build a grand Italianate villa on a ridge at 2727 Pierce Street, which was then (and still) way out in the country. In 1860 the tiny steam trains of the Market Street Railroad Company—the first mechanical, public transportation in the city—began to run, through sandhill cuts all the way out to the Italian truck gardens of Hayes Valley, and opened up both that neighborhood and the Western Addition to the city's increasing population, where Mr. Pioche (he of the luckless Willows) bought up the sandhills by the acre and sold them as building lots. Service was constantly interrupted by sand-slides on the right of way, and conditions were little better at the eastern end, where the reclaimed land near the waterfront frequently sank below grade and became so flooded during the rainy season that it was called "McCoppin's Canal."

Jess looked up from his guidebook and tucked it away in his vest pocket again, then reached for his silver hunting-case watch on its braided thong, quite plain except for his initials on the case. He was surprised to discover that it was past one o'clock, and his stomach confirmed the fact with an impatient growl. With a chuckle, he got up to dig in his other saddlebag for the box lunch he'd picked up at a Market Street café—fried chicken, bread and butter, potato salad, rosy watermelon pickles, a wedge of cherry pie (the cherries were probably canned, but the pie was still delicious), a stoneware bottle of lemonade.

After he'd eaten, he tucked his trash into the saddlebag for later disposal and started back down the hillside for a little in-person exploration. As he'd guessed, "south of Market" was above all blue-collar country, and as such felt "right" to a man raised in a family where "hard cash" was seldom come by. The Selby Smelting & Lead Company's shot tower, where they made artillery shells, rose 200 feet above the corner of First and Mission, and the five-storey brick citadel of Gordon's Sugar Works had stood at Eighth and Harrison since 1857. The Union Iron Works, which had grown from a simple blacksmith shop founded by the Donahue brothers when they arrived from Ireland in '49, was the premiere producer of mining, railroad, agricultural and locomotive machinery in the state. Until the '60's, when they started filling in the old shoreline, everything northeast of No. 274 Brannan had been underwater, except for a bluff twenty to forty feet high, stretching along Federal Street. At this spot, from 1853 till 1865, a Chinese fishing village had stood, inhabited by some 150 fishermen who devoted their time chiefly to sweep-seining various kinds of fish (largely sturgeon, shark, herring, some salmon, and assorted rock and bottom fish) and the netting of shrimp. It was one of many shrimping camps that dotted the shores of San Francisco and Tomales Bays (the latter of which was more like a narrow oblong inlet and looked almost like an artificial cut of some kind) and stretched all the way up to the Marin shoreline outside San Rafael, where almost 500 people dwelt on a secluded cove in China Camp, supporting their own school, stores, barber, and doctor. But by 1867 the effort had advanced as far as No. 650 Delancey Street, where a complex of Pacific Mail warehouses and wharves, centered by the Oriental Bonded Warehouse, was established at Second and Brannan Streets; here the First Street Wharf served as the chief port-of-entry for the vast majority of Chinese immigrants landing on the West Coast, who trudged down the gangway with all their worldly goods slung over their shoulders on the ends of long bamboo poles, and were lodged in the wharf's wooden sheds before being transported to Chinatown. Shipyards and docks, boiler factories and iron foundries, steel mills and gashouses, rolling mills and hay wharves, refineries, lumberyards, and brickyards, had moved in along the beach of Mission Bay, and with them had come the families of the men who worked there. Frame cottages set close to the sidewalks lined the narrow alleys that paralleled Market and Mission—Natoma, Jessie, Stevenson, Clara, Clementina, Minna, Tehama—and Third was one of the "big streets," five miles long and leading off Market to cut past South Park to the waterfront, then following the Bay beach south all the way to the San José road, with its first blocks a family neighborhood of cottages, flats, corner grocery stores, social halls, clubrooms, shops, and bars, and its lower reaches crossing dank tidelands over bogs and blue mud. On it dwelt the streetcar drivers and beat cops, the foundry workers and slaughterhouse hackers, the shipbuilders and longshoremen, bricklayers and draymen and train engineers. The air was full of the smells of stew-meat cooking and potatoes boiling, of the gashouse and the factory smoke, of washing on the line, and the sounds of drinkers singing snatches of song over their tall steam beers, babies crying in packing-case cradles, and women gossipping over backyard fences in Dutch, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, and Irish-brogued and Scottish-tinged English. Fascinated youngsters, attracted by the sight of Jess's Stetson and spurs, his sidearm and saddle, shouted and pointed and formed a kite's-tail of curious followers, which he tolerantly pretended not to notice.

The signs he saw proclaimed that this was a neighborhood where ordinary folks lived, and shopped for their needs: Caesar Brun's grocery and the restaurants of Sarcin and three-fingered Johnny Killa-da-Fly, Huckmeister's fruit stand and Dan Twigg's stationery store and Duff's crockery shop, the saloons on Third and Townsend; Dr. Rottanzi's Statuary Drug Store on the corner of Second and Folsom, with its marble sidewalk and Greek and Roman statues; Mrs. Attell's secondhand store, Uncle Benjamin's pawn shop, and Pincus Funkenstein's variety store; the Folsom Street bars—the Whale, the New York Casino, the Chief, the Eagle's Nest, Happy Jack Harrington's—and the Third Street clothing stores, Mrs. Mark's, J. Bull's, Deasy's Shoe Store, Healy's, Quinn the Hatter's; the Americus Democratic Club at Third and Market, Ginty & Blanchard's Saloon, Regan's Restaurant ("Two Eggs, Any Style—10 Cents"), Martin's Oyster House, Lundy the jeweller's, Beamish the haberdasher's, and C. C. Keene's music store in the Nucleus Building at the corner of Third and Market. He saw rowing clubs—the Pioneer, South End, Neptune, California—and once caught sight of Tom McKelvey's bumboat on its rounds, peddling candy, cigarettes, and fruit to the revenue cutters and lighthouse tenders anchored off the beach at the side of McCovey Cove, just the far side of Berry Street, overlooking which, at No. 123 Townsend Street, was the Citizens Gas Company works, a large brick building attended by a gas tank forty feet high and ninety around and a fifty-foot-high wooden coal depot facing the docks; here was produced the coal gas that lit San Francisco's streets and buildings. The slaughterhouses ran from about Sixteenth and Bryant to Third and Townsend, where the cattle trains came up from the great ranches of the south. The wooden causeway called Long Bridge, built in 1867 to connect Potrero and Hunters Points and avoid the necessity of detouring around Mission Bay and Islais Creek, crossed the tide flats and stretched over the Mission Bay marsh lands, through the Islais Creek basin to Hunters Point, terminating at the ornate Bay View Racetrack; fishermen dangled their lines off it, people in buggies took Sunday rides over it, rowing clubs and small waterside cafés found it hospitable, and the kids went swimming off it and stole bagfuls of kindling wood from the Pope & Talbot lumberyard for their mothers' kitchen stoves. From its far end a dusty road led over the hills and south to San José, and there wasn't much between Butchertown and the county line except grazing land for the dairy farms that were beginning to move in from Cow Hollow, a brewery or two and a couple of silk factories, the racetrack on the flats, the roadhouses like the Four-Mile and Five-Mile Houses, and Purcell's South San Francisco Park, where they had church fairs and Sunday picnics, rat-killings and dances. South of 26th Street lay Bernal Heights, an isolated settlement predominantly Irish in tone, made up chiefly of milk ranches, truck gardens, geese and sheep and flocks of goats.

Water venders trundled their two-wheeled barrels along the street, one-horse dumpcarts with no seats and the drivers standing up rattled by, Chinese vegetable peddlers walked along with baskets swinging from their shoulder poles, rag-pickers chanted as they passed the cottages, and the razor-grinder pushed his wheeled grindstone up the street, jangling his hand bell and calling out "O-ho, get your razors ground!" in a droning nasal cry. Leather-aproned brewery-wagon drivers rolled kegs of steam beer through the swinging green doors of corner groceries, varicolored sidewalk displays fronted the dry-goods emporia, jars of red and green liquid glowed in the drugstore windows. Pushcart peddlers hawked mallards and wild geese along Sixth Street. Morosco's Union Hall Theater over the car-barns on Howard, half a block off Third, had placards up advertising Amy Robsart this week ("adapted from Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth"), with T. B. deWalden's Kit, the Arkansas Traveller coming next. Jess liked the theater—much more than he'd ever had the nerve to admit to Slim yet, or had the occasion to, Laramie not yet being blessed with one; Dixie had introduced him to it when they'd gone to Denver together in '61, and while his natural inclination was for the livelier kinds of entertainment booked into saloons and dance halls, all through his years alone, when things got to pressing down on him, he'd found that an evening in the artificial glamor of some historic spectacle or stagey melodrama helped him to forget, for a while, how long it was taking him to settle the score for his family. He remembered that Slim had spoken of getting tickets to some play. Maybe this would be a place worth going to.

After work the immigrants and gashouse terriers and iron-foundry bully boys swaggered uptown from Tar Flat and Happy Valley and Irish Hill, Pleasant Valley and South Park and Rincon Hill, and all the district west to Twelfth Street, to show off their double-breasted beaver coats and peg-top pants, their flowered vests and shining high-heeled boots. They learned the mazurka and schottische at Professor Dave FitzGibbon's dance academy in Charter Oak Hall over McFarland's Livery Stables, and when class was over, they descended on the public dance hall at the City Gardens for a few more hours of dancing and some steam beers, then straggled home singing and getting into fights and maybe breaking up a horsecar. But not tonight, for many of them belonged to the military companies that were the pride of the city—thirty-five or forty of them all told, which swung smartly up Market in parades in their bright, dazzling uniforms while the bands played and the girls cheered and threw flowers from the curbstones. They had their headquarters and drill halls in second- and third-storey lofts along Market, and the rolling of their drums and the stamping of their feet on practice nights (which this was for several) was as much a part of the street's life as the tinkle of horsecar bells and the clatter of carriage wheels over cobblestones. Between Third and Fifth were the halls of the First Light Dragoons, the Jackson Dragoons, the San Francisco Hussars, the California Tigers, the Union Guards, the Franklin Light Infantry, the Ellsworth Rifles, the Ellsworth Zouave Cadets, and the Germania Guards. Farther down, between First and Second, were the headquarters of the Irish companies: the MacMahon Grenadier Guards, the Hibernia Greens, the Mission, Meagher, and O'Neil Guards, the Montgomery Guards with their splendid scarlet jackets and enormous bearskin headgear, the Shields, the St. Crispins, the St. Patrick Cadets, the Emmett Life and the Wolf Tone Guards. Gradually shedding his followers as their mothers hollered them home for supper, Jess rode past the uppermost ones, grinning to himself in the gathering dusk at the martial noise from above. The sorrel hack, who lived in the middle of all of it, seemed not in the least disturbed.

Feeling now much more comfortable about this unexpected vacation, since he was beginning to gain some understanding of his surroundings, Jess turned in at McFarland's, waved off the stableman, and took the time to brush down and feed the sorrel himself, a kind of task that always relaxed him. It wasn't till he'd started up the centerway toward the saddle room to put his rig away that his instincts woke up again with a jolt. Only three or four stalls up from the one where he'd left the sorrel stood a creamy palomino he was sure he recognized.

Wasn't here when we come in last night, he told himself, pausing to set the saddle down and move toward the animal, talking quietly to prevent a kick. The brand it bore was unfamiliar to him, but of course in California that was more likely than not. Horses were generally branded only once no matter how many times they were sold, unlike cattle, but somehow he didn't think it was one of the stable's own animals. He wondered whether its sudden appearance meant anything, and remembered that gnawing uneasy sense of familiarity he'd felt at sight of the horse and its rider out by the Cliff House.

Can't have nothin' to do with us, he told himself. Even if somebody had been after one or both of them, it wouldn't have been possible for a rider, supposing he'd reached Laramie after they left and found out where they'd gone (as he'd almost had to have done, since there'd certainly been no hint of that kind of trouble before that), to have gotten here on the same day they did. Their own journey by stage and train, better than 1100 miles from Laramie, couldn't have been covered by a horseman in any less than fifteen days or so, and that would be pushing; this horse hadn't been pushed, not recently.

And yet…

"Hey!" he hollered, stepping out of the stall. "You wanta come unlock this door so's I can put my gear away?"

"Be right there," came the stableman's voice from up front somewhere, and a moment or two later he appeared, a bit breathless from having had to duck into the office to get the key. Jess hoisted his hull onto his shoulder and followed him to the saddle room. It was lined with rows of sturdy sawhorses, each holding a saddle belonging to someone who boarded his personal horse here; in San Francisco, owing to the rather tight dimensions of the lots, most people who owned their own mounts made use of the commercial stables for this purpose, except for the wealthy who could afford to buy multiple plots. Most of the saddles were Morgans, Kentuckys, plantation saddles, or the new civilian-model McClellans. It didn't take Jess long to spot the one that probably went with the palomino: the "California," or Mexican, type, with a single center-fire cinch, double rounded skirts fore and aft, and a deeper-dished, higher cantle and higher, slimmer horn than the Texas models he was accustomed to, fancy stampwork and long strings of tanned elkhide. A simple headstall bridle, fitted with a bit distinguished by a loose-jawed shank and a halfbreed port, was hung over the horn; silver flashed on its planes in the lanternlight.

He dropped his own gear on a vacant sawhorse next to the one that held Slim's, draped the damp saddle blanket across the horn and cantle to air, and casually turned back in the direction of the one he'd targeted, letting his eyes slide quickly over it, picking up every detail as any range boy learned to do early on. The cantle was turned in his direction, and boldly tooled on the middle of its curve were two letters: JM.

Jess's breath caught a moment in his throat. No wonder I felt like I knew him. JM. Johnny Madrid.

He thought fast. "Say," he said casually as he preceded the stableman out of the room, "there's a horse up the aisle from mine—don't know as it belongs to you folks, but I might be interested in buyin' it, if the owner's lookin' to sell. The palomino." The ploy might not work if the man knew he was from out of state, but then probably a good many people bought horses here for ranches elsewhere, and California palominos were famous.

"Oh, sure," the man agreed at once, "I know which you mean. This one, right?" and he flipped a thumb at the proper stall as they passed it. "That's Mr. Madrid's. He got in… let me think a minute… 29th of December, it was. Been with us ever since."

"Madrid?" Jess repeated as innocently as he could. "Sounds Spanish."

"He looks a little Spanish," the other admitted. "Dresses like it too, belled trousers and a short jacket. Hat's American, though, and he's got no accent that I could make out."

"Got any idea where he'd be stayin' at?" Jess pursued. He was sure the stableman did; most people boarding a personal horse would leave word as to where they could be contacted in case the animal became ill or were stolen. The only question was whether stable policy held such information to be confidential.

The man frowned thoughtfully. "You know, we got so many private horses here, I can't keep 'em all straight. But I can look it up in the office book."

Two minutes later he did. "There it is. He's at the Niantic Hotel. That's at Sansome and Clay. You go on up Market to Battery Street, then up four and a half blocks, turn left and one over and you can't miss it."

"Obliged." Jess thumbed a half-dollar out of his pocket and flipped it into the other's eager hand, then walked on out to the street and paused. He can't be after either of us. It don't make sense.

Only… s'posin' he's after one of them friends of Slim's? The Major, or that feller McCullough that I ain't met yet? I reckon even wagonmasters and scouts make enemies…

He shook his head, uneasy, hesitating. Ain't no lookout of mine…

But if he is… Slim could get pulled into it, just like he got pulled into my trouble with Mac, or Gil, or Laurel, or Salbridge…

It'd be just like him to stick his oar in… dad-gum good Samaritan, can't mind his own business for tryin'…

His lips pulled tight with resolve, he turned up Market to look for the Battery Street intersection.

---

4. Two Reunions and a Search

The Occidental Hotel dining room:

"Slim Sherman!" Laughing, Flint McCullough wrung his old friend's right hand in his own, while thumping the younger man on the shoulder with his left. "When the Major told me he'd run into you I couldn't believe it! I still don't. What's the odds of the two of us bein' in San Francisco at the same time, after more than thirteen years? Stand off and let me look at you! You look great, kola," using the Sioux word for "friend."

"So do you," Slim told him. "That's not ordinary scouting gear, surely?" Flint was dressed in tight biscuit-colored pants, a knee-length, powder-blue frock coat, and a broad-brimmed planter's hat, with a green silk foulard necktie knotted under the stiff white wing collar of a shirt patterned with pale-blue stripes, and a florally-embroidered silk vest. Only the high-heeled rider's boots that showed below the cuffs of his trousers gave any hint of "Jim Bridger's boy" as Slim had known him back in the emigrating season of 1858.

"No," Flint admitted, "but I got a kick out of how surprised the Major and the others were when they saw me in it. What are you doin' here, anyway?"

"We'd like to know the same," said gray-haired, but still youthful-faced Bill Hawks, "so how about we get a table and you can catch us up while they're gettin' our supper ready?"

After they had given their orders, Slim explained his presence in the city, which naturally involved bringing Flint up to date on his father's death and the acquisition of the Overland relay franchise. The scout's freckled face and laughing eyes sobered at the news of Matt Sherman's fate. "I'm sorry to hear it, Slim," he said quietly. "I haven't been back that way in… I guess since the war was still on." For a moment a flash of painful memory showed, but it was gone as quickly as it came; if Slim hadn't become sensitized to Jess's various hauntings he might never have noticed it. "Bridger thought highly of your pa, I know, and even the little time I knew him I could tell he was a good man. And your ma, she was a real lady, the kind I like to think my own might have been. But it's good you've got a friend you can depend on, and I guess you can, if the line awarded this trip to both of you."

"I'd be lost without him," Slim admitted, "especially now that Andy's at school and Jonesy's gone along to look after him. It takes at least two men to run a relay station with any hope of success, and when it's a cow spread too—just having him there for company and support, never mind helping with the work—I don't know what I'd have done if he wasn't around, someone I know I can trust and depend on… someone I don't have to be anyone but myself with…"

"I'd like to meet him," Flint said. "Where'd you say he was from—Texas? We should get along. How about we do a little sightseein' tomorrow?"

"That suits me," Slim agreed. "Meet you in the lobby after breakfast? Jess isn't fully human before he has his coffee…"

Their suppers arrived about then, and over a first course of mock-turtle soup Slim asked, "Major, how was it that you only took the main trail to California that first time? Isn't it longer the way you go now—I mean, all the way down the Front Ranges, and then across New Mexico and Arizona and back up again to get here?"

"Yeah, it is," Adams allowed. "If we went straight across we could do it in five, six months. Takin' the southern route, startin' from St. Joe, adds close to another seven hundred miles. But most of that—more than five hundred, from San Diego up to Sacramento—is by the Central Valley, where there's water and grass and towns along the way, and it gives our folks a good chance to get a look at the country and maybe pick out a place to settle. Plus we don't have as much worry about snow in the passes, or all that bad terrain in the Great Basin—you just came over it by stage, I reckon you got a notion what it's like for heavy wagons and green travelers. 'Course we go through Apache country, they can make a regular nuisance of themselves, and the Utes in Colorado aren't much better. But we'd have the Sioux and Cheyenne and the blasted Diggers if we took the main route, so it's a matter of payin' your money and takin' your chances, and even the Apaches aren't much inclined to bother a big, well-armed, well-organized train. We average around twelve miles to the day, though on the level plains we can make twenty to twenty-five if we don't have a big river crossing to slow us down." Slim nodded; he remembered making the same kind of mileage with his family in '58. "In the mountains and on the desert we're lucky to do ten, but it evens out. Goin' six days out of the seven, we can get to Sacramento in around eight months, and from there it's an easy three days to Oakland and the ferry here. We actually did better than normal this time, but with the Valley trail, if we're a little late, it don't matter much. Nobody dies of thirst, or gets snowbound, in the Valley."

"And to get back?" Slim pursued. "You said you sent Mrs. Hawks by the Isthmus route…" He knew that while this wasn't the fastest way between the two coasts—that honor went to the stages and the railroad—it came pretty close: even in the days of '49 it had taken only about six weeks to go from New York to San Francisco across Panama, assuming you made good connections on the Pacific side, and since '55 the time had been shortened even further by the new Panama railroad and the rival transit route across Nicaragua by way of the San Juan River and its magnificent lake, both of which linked up with regularly scheduled steamers from the Golden Gate. It also cost about half what passage around the Horn did, and was a lot smoother and less risky than either that or the stage, though still haunted by the specter of yellow fever.

"That's the way we've gone each year up to this," Hawks agreed. "And Emily, well, she's…"

"—She's got you buffaloed, is what," Charlie Wooster teased his friend. "Surprises me she's gone along with us as many times as she has. Reckon she don't trust you, Hawks."

The ex-sergeant glared at him. "She's got no reason not to, and you know that, Charlie. It's just—" this directed to Slim— "she gets seasick. It'll be hard enough on her goin' the short sea route. Around the Horn… she wouldn't've made it. At least she can rest a day or two at Aspinwall before she takes the boat to New Orleans, and that's a coaster—it shouldn't be as hard on her. Then she'll just go up the Mississippi by steamer to St. Louis, and take the train from there."

"But how about you?" Slim wondered. "I mean, I'm glad you stayed long enough for us to get together, but why not take the same boat yourselves?"

Flint snorted. "They claim they're gonna retire," he said before any of the others could answer— "in Boston, of all places."

"Now, look, McCullough," Adams rebuked, "we don't tell you where to go or what to do now that the trip's over, so what makes you figure you can do us that way? It's all fine and dandy for a young whippersnapper like you to pound a saddle for twenty-five hundred miles or so, and get arrows shot into you—"

"You make it sound like you're ready for a rockin' chair, grandpa," Flint retorted, "and you know that's not true. You'll die of boredom back there, if anything."

Slim knew—having seen it both on the Shawnee Trail and during the war—how the experience of facing danger together could create a bond between men. And possibly because of the occasionally eccentric nature of his own friendship with Jess, he sensed that for all their mockery, McCullough was in fact very fond of Adams and the others, and they of him. Slowly, he ventured, "Have you really given this enough thought, Major? You're a Westerner—Illinois wasn't far out of being the frontier when you were born, just like Ohio when my pa was. People like you, or him, or Jess and me for that matter—we don't belong in Eastern cities with no 'give' in their thinking or their ways. It's fine to visit them, but we need air and room and freedom—and work that means something to us."

"Now don't you start," said Adams, but not as sharply as he'd responded to Flint. "The three of us are goin' by clipper around the Horn—we've always heard about it, and we've decided we want to see what it's like. Our ship's scheduled to weigh anchor early on the twelfth. Then we'll go on up to Boston, meet up with Emily again, and find some good investment to get into; we've already changed our year's pay into bank drafts and sent 'em on ahead by express. What McCullough's doin' is up to him."

"Well, I guess you've had time enough to think it over, after five seasons on the trail," Slim said, trying to keep the note of doubt out of his voice. "Whatever you end up doing, I wish you all the best at it. You know where to write—keep in touch."

**SR - L - WT**

"'Evenin'," Jess greeted the clerk behind the Niantic's lobby desk. "You happen to have a feller named Madrid stayin' here?" If the man knew what his guest's profession was, or read the angle of Jess's own Colt rightly, he might balk at answering. But this was San Francisco, a civilized city, and odds were that a man who lived here wouldn't be familiar with a gunfighter's tells.

"Mr. Madrid? Why, yes, he's in Room 17," said the clerk, "but he's not in right now. You just missed him. He stopped in about fifteen minutes ago to ask for a good place to eat."

"Where'd you send him?"

"To the Collins & Wheeland Grill," was the reply. "It's on California and Montgomery, across from the Mining Exchange. Just go one block west and two south."

"Much obliged," said Jess, and went out again.

He wasn't surprised that Madrid hadn't been aware of the place the clerk had mentioned: he nearly missed it himself. It was a long, narrow bar-cum-restaurant with an unassuming façade whose single broad window was draped in cream-colored curtains and rich red drapes. To one side of this was a carven doorway with a frosted-glass door set in it. Jess eased in quietly and found a small hat-check window to his left, a bar stretching along the wall directly in front of him, and to the right, taking up most of the space and set off from the counter by a row of pillars and a profusion of potted rubber plants, the dining area. This was a large room with a thick rug, many small tables set with linen and silver and burning candles, private booths with drapes that matched the ones on the window, walls paneled in oiled walnut, and cut-glass chandeliers marching down the length of the ceiling. Waiters in red jackets with shiny brass buttons were serving the diners who filled perhaps a third of the tables; Jess wasn't familiar with big-city customs, but he'd heard that people there tended to time their suppers against the eight o'clock rise of the curtain in the theaters.

He found a stool about halfway along the bar, noticing with satisfaction that it had a mirror, just like the saloons he knew—or, more accurately, five mirrors, oval-shaped, set in elaborate ormolu frames. A bartender in a brass-buttoned jacket—his was white—came up to inquire his pleasure. "You got some of that steam beer?" the Texan asked.

"Sure do," and the man vanished to get it. Jess had discovered steam beer only last evening, when Adams had bought them drinks in the hotel bar. It was, he'd explained, a San Francisco invention, developed during the Gold Rush. At that time lager yeast had been but recently discovered by German brewmeisters; it made a beer lighter than traditional ales, but required a large amount of ice, as lager fermented ice-cold for long periods, where ale fermented at room temperature in a few days. Beer had been a popular beverage here from the first days of the Rush, the Adam Schuppert Brewery having established itself on Jackson Street in 1849. When beer-making began in the city, the brewers had lager yeast, but ice was scarce or priced sky-high. So they tried bottom-fermenting their yeast in large shallow pans at sixty to seventy degrees, in the manner of English ale—and, wonder of wonders, it worked, thanks to the city's year-round cool temperatures, which were yet never cold enough to reach the freezing point. What resulted was very clear and refreshing, and had the alcohol content of a lager, but the rich satisfying flavor of an ale; it was called "steam beer" not because steam had anything to do with its creation, but because additional keg fermentation resulted in a blast of foam and a loud hiss of escaping gas when the keg was tapped, a sound not unlike the release of a steam boiler's valve. Owing to both the great popularity of beer and the fact that it was too bulky to ship economically, it had become the sole brew available in both San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest, with hundreds of breweries operating in the mining districts and twenty-seven in the city—all using the same method even though their names, and even their formulae, weren't the same. Jess had liked it at once.

He waited for his drink, put down a quarter and paused to see if he'd get any change (he didn't), and settled down to sip the golden liquid slowly, eyeing the reflections in the mirrors and watching for a familiar face. Like the restaurant itself, he nearly missed the man he was watching for; he hadn't gotten too good a look at him last night, with dusk coming on, and it had been some few years since they'd last met—a man changed over that length of time. He spotted the hat first, not the kind of city hat he'd noticed in the checkroom—silk and beaver toppers, melon-shaped felts, bowlers and derbies and Fedoras, Panamas and planters, Homburgs and pork-pies—and wasn't surprised Madrid hadn't left it off there; a good hat could cost as much as fifty dollars, and most range men felt naked without it anyway. It was a simple dun-colored Stetson with an undented flat-topped crown and a brim trained into a barely noticeable curve on both sides, the dark leather band threaded with six or seven silver conchas, a long hard-twisted jaw strap dangling below and held by a starburst slide with a turquoise in the middle of it. No one else in the place seemed to have anything remotely like it. The open-throated, salmon-colored shirt and dark bolero jacket only confirmed Jess's certainty that this was the man he'd come looking for.

He watched Madrid quietly in the mirror, sipping his beer. Madrid was eating what looked like pork chops, dipped in egg and crumbs and crisp-fried, and beside his plate was, not a cup of coffee or the squat shot glass of whiskey, but a taller, stemmed glass, possibly of wine. Jess couldn't see whether he was wearing a gun, but he'd have been surprised if the man wasn't; like himself, Madrid was a professional, and he'd feel plumb naked without his iron. Off-balance, too.

He knew that gunfighter's instinct might eventually warn the man that he was being watched, but Madrid wouldn't be able to lift his head for a look around without the hatbrim tilting and giving warning; he'd always had a way of setting his hat dead level. When, after a while, it moved, Jess was ready; his eyes dropped immediately to his beer and he continued sipping slowly, savoring it, making it last. He didn't look in the mirror again; he didn't have to. If Madrid guessed he was being watched, he'd know there was only one way anyone could do it unobtrusively, and he wouldn't leave the place without pausing by the bar to see whose eyes he'd felt. If he didn't do that, it would be because he hadn't left before Jess did. Jess drained off the last of the beer undisturbed, slipped off the stool and out of the restaurant as quietly as he'd entered. There was a gaslight just outside. He set his back against it, putting himself in a pool of light, and waited.

After a time the restaurant door opened and a figure in a Western hat and belled Mexican trousers stepped out. Jess held himself still—a move might be interpreted as a threat—and said quietly, "Hey, Johnny Madrid."

The younger man came to full alert, his eyes glittering in the hatbrim's shadow as he swept them around to look for the speaker. "Who's there?" he demanded, his voice low and even and his hand held with fingers spread, a good three inches from the pearl handle of his sixgun.

Jess wasn't fooled. "Here," he said, slowly pushing his shoulders off the lamppost. He raised his right hand and shoved his hat back so the light would fall on his face. "Been a spell, but I reckon I ain't changed as much as you."

There was a brief pause; he still couldn't see Madrid's face clearly, but he could sense the man's puzzlement as he leafed back through his memory, trying to place the voice and the features. "Harper?" he ventured after a moment. "Is that Harper? Jess—wasn't it?"

"That's right." Jess stood where he was. "This don't have to be trouble."

"I'm not lookin' for any," Madrid replied.

"Not with me, no," Jess agreed. "But could be you got it anyhow. Could be not. I got one question to ask you, and if you answer it right we don't need to have nothin' more to do with each other. You in this town on business, Madrid?"

Another hesitation, and then, slowly, "If you mean am I workin' for anybody, no. I'm… between jobs."

"Figurin' to stay long?" Jess proceeded.

"Haven't made up my mind yet," Madrid admitted. "But likely not. Gonna be movin' on soon enough, just haven't decided where to." His head tilted slightly. "You gonna be offended if I ask why you're askin'?"

Jess let his breath out slowly, not so much because of anything the other had or hadn't said, as because experience and his own well-honed perceptions told him there was no danger here, not to himself or to anyone he cared about, not even secondhand. "Reckon I ain't. I'm here with a friend, vacationin', and he's got a way of takin' a hand in things if he thinks it's right. And he's just met up recent with some folks he knows, so if you happened to be… interested in any of 'em, like as not he'd step in. And then I'd have to. That'd tip the odds way against you. Figured after what happened some few years back, you deserved the warnin', if it was needed."

Madrid shook his head slowly, and the gaslight gleamed on a brief flash of very white teeth in his olive-hued face. "It's not needed, Jess. Tienes me palabra [you have my word]."

"That's good enough for me," Jess told him. "Your word always was, Madrid."

The other chuckled briefly. "Reckon we could quit actin' like a pair of gallos de pelea [gamecocks] tryin' to decide which way to fly first?"

"Reckon we could," Jess agreed. "Care for one of them steam beers?"

"You buyin'?"

"You can buy the second one."

"You're on, compadre viejo."

**SR - L - WT**

Murdoch Lancer let himself into his room, leaving the door open long enough for the aura of the hall gaslights to let him find his own. Once he had the wall fixture lit, he shut it and crossed slowly to the heavy tapestry armchair, lowering himself wearily into its cozy embrace and leaning forward to tug his boots off. Though he was only in his early fifties and had kept himself in good condition with years of physical labor as he struggled to build his ranch, tonight he felt old for almost the first time in his life.

It had taken him two or three days to realize that John had gone; he respected his sons too much—they were both, after all, grown men, and had been strangers to him, as he had to them, as recently as eighteen months ago—to go snooping around in their bedrooms, and it wasn't till Teresa came to him and reported that the upstairs maid, Consuela, had told her that "Señor Johnny"'s razor was missing from his shaving stand that he'd gone up for a look of his own. A few minutes' quick checking had established that it wasn't only the silver-inlaid, ivory-handled razor—he'd given each of the boys one for their first Christmas here—that was missing; it was John's two second-favorite shirts, his good chaqueta and boots and his Sunday shirt, his comb and shaving gear, a change of calzoneras, three pair of socks and a set of underwear, and all his camping gear. In place of the clothes had been $115 in cash and a brief, brusque note explaining that it was to pay for Barranca. He must have come up the big old wisteria vine that Catherine had planted; it had grown prodigiously in a quarter of a century, enough that it would bear up the weight of a lean, wiry young man who only needed to use it to get as high as the balcony of the corner guest room—once he'd done that, he could move easily across the façade of the casa grande and reach his own room without disturbing anyone else.

It had hit Murdoch like a blow. Till then he'd supposed that John was off in some far part of Lancer range, trying to regain his emotional equilibrium after their quarrel. I should have thought, he'd told himself, as Teresa and Scott looked on in silence, almost as stunned as himself. Just because it didn't come to this when he was new here, doesn't mean it didn't have the prospect of happening sometime later on. His younger son was, after all, half-Mexican, and Mexicans were a proud people. The fact that he'd earned his way with his gun for more years than Murdoch was quite sure of only improved upon his naturally prickly temperament: men with quick hands were inclined to be quick to take offense, as Murdoch had been long enough on the frontier to know. In some ways, too, he reflected, John was by far the older of his two sons. Had seen more, done more, endured more, than Scott. Not that Scott was in any way weak or ineffectual; he'd survived a stint in the war, a stay in a prison camp, and come out of it apparently undamaged, unchanged, except perhaps for having decided to make up for lost time. The Pinkertons had told Murdoch that his eldest was an idle dandy and something of a dilettante (he'd had to look that word up); at first, he'd wondered whether Scott would be much use against Pardee and his lot. John, now, he'd never had any doubts about John's ability to be of use—supposing that John would be willing to trouble himself.

"He's gone, isn't he?" Teresa had said at last.

"I'm afraid so," he said, and folded his hand around hers, each of them trying to take and give comfort in a difficult moment.

"Well, we're not going to just stand here and—and forget about him, are we?" Scott burst out then.

"What do you suggest?" Murdoch retorted. "He has a good horse under him, and—supposing he came back here the night after our fight—a good forty-eight-hour start. He could be halfway to anywhere by now—a hundred miles away at least, maybe more."

"And he'll get farther the longer we stand around talking about it!" Scott snapped. Then: "I'm sorry, Murdoch. It's just… we don't react to things the same way, you and I."

"But he's right," Teresa said suddenly. "If Johnny's serious about leaving, we mustn't wait to try to find him."

The unshakeable resolve that had maintained Murdoch for three decades of struggle swept in then to uphold him. "You're right. You're both right. Scott, you're closer to him than the rest of us. Has he ever mentioned any particular place he's been that he'd like to go back to? Or one that he hasn't been but has thought about visiting?"

Scott frowned in thought. "Offhand, I don't think so. It's not the kind of thing we've talked much about. But I'd guess we can rule out Mexico, or at least Coahuila, and probably most places that get cold in the winter."

His father nodded. "And there's nothing brewing down south of here—around Los Angeles or San Diego—that might lead to the kind of situation where he could find work; we'd have heard of it. Besides, neither one's big enough for him to hide out in, if he doesn't want us to find him; Los Angeles only has around 5700 people, and San Diego less than half that."

"What about Virginia City?" Teresa suggested. "Ever since Ralston and Sharon got things started up there again, it's been buzzing like a kicked-over beehive. It's big—over 20,000 people now—and there might be all kinds of jobs there for someone with Johnny's skills."

"He may not need a job, not right away," Scott observed. "I know he doesn't have a bank account—they asked me the last time I was putting some money in mine whether he had any plans to open one—but he must have done something with his share of two seasons' profits. Mexicans only trust cash, and that's probably what he's kept squirrelled away somewhere."

"All the same," said Teresa, "he's had a taste of a different kind of life here, something he never knew when he was growing up. He might want to save his stake for—for something permanent. Until he can decide where he wants to light, he'll need to earn his way, and the best skill he has is with his gun."

"All right," said Murdoch. "Scott, I want you to take the train up over the Pass to Reno. You can hire a horse there—or buy one—and get to Virginia City in less than a day. Unless John caught a train too, you'll probably beat him there, but talk to Roy Coffee, he'll know whether there's anything brewing in his territory that would call for hired guns, anything we may not have heard about, or he'll be able to find out. Ride out to the Ponderosa and see if Ben Cartwright has picked up something."

"I'll start packing," Scott agreed at once. "What about you?"

"I'll go with you as far as Stockton and check with the Barkleys," Murdoch replied. "If they haven't seen or heard anything of him, he may have headed for San Francisco. He's been on the run enough to know that the best place to hide yourself is in a large, busy town, and that's the biggest one in California."

Within twenty-four hours they'd both been on their way, leaving Teresa to keep things running in their absence and promising to keep her up-to-date on their whereabouts and findings. They'd parted at Stockton, the third-largest city in the state but still more of a farming and cattle center than anything else, and Murdoch, after a brief visit to the Barkley spread, had gone on to Sacramento, where he'd picked up word that a man and horse answering to the description he gave had been seen there a bit less than a week earlier. He checked with the hotels and boardinghouses and concluded that John hadn't stayed. It was time to take a chance on San Francisco.

He took the riverboat down through Suisun and San Pablo Bays to Oakland, and there, at the ferry terminal, he hit paydirt. Most people taking the boat across to San Francisco were either travelers off the Central Pacific, who had baggage but no horses, or commuters heading to the city for work or shopping, who had neither. The few exceptions were mostly people with carriages or wagons of some sort rather than saddle horses. But a deckhand told him that a man answering John's description—early twenties, five feet ten, dark-brown hair, olive skin, blue eyes, carrying a pearl-handled sixgun and wearing a Mexican bobtail jacket and calzoneras—had led a palomino horse aboard only a day and a half after he (or his twin) had been sighted in Sacramento. There weren't likely to be two such young men within a circle of less than ninety miles' radius. Murdoch handed the man a five-dollar gold piece and went aboard.

He knew, of course, that—as he'd already pointed out at home—a city San Francisco's size would serve well to hide a man who didn't want to be found. Unless John had gotten into some kind of trouble—gotten arrested, or been hurt and sent to the hospital—finding him right away would be next to impossible. Checking each hotel individually, as Murdoch had done in smaller Sacramento, was even less likely to turn him up, supposing he was even still here, or stayed on till Murdoch could call at each of them. But Murdoch Lancer wasn't a man to sit with his hands folded when there was something to be done. Inactivity galled him—above all if it was connected to his ranch or either of his sons, with whom, to the surprise of all three of them, he had forged a genuine bond since their reunion.

He stopped at Police Headquarters first of all, hoping that he'd get lucky and find out that John had been arrested. It was there that he first began to understand the enormity of the task he'd set himself. In Morro Coyo, in Sacramento, even in Stockton where he was known as a friend of Tom and Victoria Barkley's, Murdoch was a man of consequence, but San Francisco didn't much know or care about Valley cattlemen, even successful ones. And, unlike the Barkleys with their interests not only in beef but in mining, lumber, river shipping, factories, mills, a foundry, olives, peaches, barley, wine grapes, sugar beets, and orange groves, he wasn't diversified. He also didn't have much occasion to go to the city or transact business there—hadn't, in fact, visited the place since back during the war. He hadn't realized just how much it had changed since the early days.

The California Gold Rush had brought all sorts of people to San Francisco, most of them for the same reason: to get rich and get rich fast. A few hit it big in the Sierras digging for gold, but more found that to be too much like work, or else they looked in the wrong places. Many had better success in relieving miners of their hard-won nuggets and dust by stealing, swindling, and scheming. Pickings were so good that before too long a time came when many a man went west with the actual intent of engaging in a life of crime. And since most of those who struck it eventually filtered down to San Francisco either to spend their bounty, settle, or find a ship to take them and their new-found wealth "home," the city naturally also became the favorite goal of those who would prey upon them. It could, indeed, be said to have been the birthplace of the "wild" West, for wild it certainly was.

From the beginning, San Francisco's politics hadn't suffered from undue concern with honesty or the sanctity of the ballot box. Its first election in 1848—and just about every one thereafter—was mud-spattered. Much of its violence was generated by its restless politics: judges shooting senators, politicians shooting editors, all four shooting one another. But the Eastern bacillus of political bossism arrived quickly enough, by way of future State Senator David Broderick, originally of New York, who came in '49, and the Irish—many of them Tammany Democrats from New York City, as was shown by the fact that the notorious young blackguards called the Hounds, and later the Regulators, named their first headquarters (a large tent at Kearny and Commercial Streets) Tammany Hall—who flooded in in quest of gold but in many cases had the wit to see that they could make more money with less effort in California's only true city than in the goldfields. Moreover San Francisco was at that time also the seat of the county of the same name, which extended halfway down to Santa Cruz, and in 1856, when the bulk of the Peninsula split off and became San Mateo County, it became the consolidated city and county of San Francisco. The mayor became also the county executive, heading up a branch of government that also included other citywide elected and appointed officials; the Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch, was headed by a president (next in line for the succession if the mayor died or resigned) and was responsible for passing laws and budgets, its eleven members being chosen as representatives of specific districts within the city. With the Board being elected every two years and a general election at least once a year—sometimes twice—there was plenty of opportunity for tomfoolery, and the New Yorkers wasted no time in creating it. The respectable element was for the most part content to ignore the indecencies that lurked out of their sight, and by now civic virtue was as rare as a snowstorm.

Of course Murdoch could hardly live in California without knowing that the entire state was a hotbed of political corruption, heavily influenced by the Central Pacific Railroad (which controlled both its political parties) and other well-funded groups and individuals, who used their economic influence to form trusts and monopolies that guaranteed them power. Many of these people lived in San Francisco, and used corrupt politicians and city bosses to reinforce their hold on ascendancy. They had no particular reason to care one way or the other about a Valley cattleman's missing half-Mexican son, but neither did they have any bent to help him in his quest.

It was common knowledge that the city government was corrupt, but things did get done. There was always building going on. More and more streets were being paved. Fortunes were being made, businesses prospered, theatrical and opera stars visited the city, elegant hotels were available. Gump's, founded in 1861, sold moldings, mirrors, gilded cornices, marble mantels and pedestals, fine porcelains, vases, and figurines, and European artwork to those made wealthy in the Mother Lode or on the Comstock. The Ville de Paris dry-goods company, located in the Occidental Hotel, had been dealing in luxury goods—laces and silks, bonnets and gowns, wines and liqueurs—since 1851, and Shreve had for nearly as long been one of the city's premiere jewelers and purveyors of fancy bric-a-brac, objets d'art, art goods, fine china and glassware. Tobin & Duncan's Chinese Sales Room, opened in 1852, specialized in Oriental goods, as its name suggested, but also offered European oils, Sèvres porcelains, antiques, and curiosities, many of them formerly the property of the fabled "crowned heads of Europe." Nathan-Dohrmann, founded in 1868, sold household essentials, crockery, kitchenware, and the like, and Goldberg-Bowen, grocers and tea merchants, supplied all manner of imported delicacies. Siegfried & Brandenstein on California Street advertised as tea importers, and Hart & Brandenstein as manufacturers and importers of saddlery, harness, Van Deusen whips and Spooner patented horse collars. John G. Ils sold French cooking ranges in the 800 block of Kearny—a commentary on the city's culinary leanings—and Cyrus Delmonico, a kinsman of the original Delmonico Brothers of New York, had opened in 1850 a Delmonico's that remained a part of its restaurant picture.

Comstock gold and silver was pouring down from the Washoe, and San Franciscans lived life to the full, as they had been doing ever since the end of the spectacular gold era—enthusiastically enjoying the gay elegancies of their city, the theater and amateur theatricals, opera, debuts and weddings, concerts, dinners, military "dance-dinners" at Angel Island, the "pedestrians" and "Roman wrestlers" at the circus, walking marathons, the billiards mania, the archery mania, horse-racing, the roller-skating crazes of 1866 and 1870, the concerts of the Handel and Haydn Society, the dances and muscular displays at the Olympic Club, the Art Association, the Mechanics' Institute Fairs which had been held at various locations almost annually since the '50's, the perennial Cocos Island treasure hunt, thrilling balloon ascensions, "avitor" flights, velocipedes, Rose Céleste's tightrope-walking feats from the Cliff House to Seal Rocks, spiritualism and planchette, the visits of notables both native and foreign, and balls of every kind—Dickens Character Balls, Calico Balls, Washington's Birthday Balls, the Governor's Inaugural Ball every four years, balls featuring the new elaborate figures of the German. They found diversion, too, in masked balls, many-coursed banquets at French restaurants, Sunday breakfast at the Cliff House and weekends in Monterey. When they went to the theater, they thrived on romantic acting, melodrama, musical comedy, farce, and burlesque, plays that treated familiar themes rather than pushing messages of reform or social significance, and found experimental and serious drama of only limited appeal. The city went through several periods when it was "mad for opera," but even unto the '80's grand opera couldn't single-handedly sustain a theater for a complete season, and serious musical presentations were interspersed with variety acts, light comedies, plays featuring celebrated actors, and concert performances by the great voices of the day.

The city's great (or rather their women) bought their gloves at Martial's Glove Shop, their shoes at Kast's on Market Street, their hats at Mme. Oulif's ultra-fashionable bonnet shop at Dupont and O'Neill, their furs (particularly sealskins) at Liebes', their laces at Samuel's Lace House, the fabrics for their gowns at the Ville de Paris, Davidson's, Sullivan's, Eugene Kelly & Co., O'Connor Moffatt (which dated from 1851), and the White House Department Store at the corner of Kearny and Post, which vied with the Ville for the title of the city's most luxurious, and was known for its impeccable customer service and exquisite goods imported from France, though it had opened as recently as 1870; went to Wakelee's or Fred C. Keill's for their cosmetics and perfumes, to Shreve & Company, Anderson & Randolph's, Branerman & Levy's, and Colonel Andrews's Diamond Palace for their jewelry. They (or rather their men) went to Robert S. Atkins, at the corner of Clay and Montgomery, and Bullock & Jones, on Montgomery between Sutter and Bush, for imported gents' clothing and furnishings, shopped for cassimere, Shaker flannel, merino wool, silk and serge suits, morning coats and smoking jackets, headgear of every kind, lamb's-wool underwear, and knickers and sailor outfits for their sons at Roos Brothers in a three-storey building at 33 Kearny, just across from the White House. They had their tailoring done at Hart Brothers, W. & I. Steinhart, and S. Fleishhacker, bought imported shotguns, rifles, and pistols at Curry Brothers on Sansome Street. They gathered at Jack's Rotisserie, at No. 615 Sacramento Street between Kearny and Montgomery, which had been established in 1864 and was the place where the most powerful men in the city rubbed elbows; they met at the Addisonian Literary Society, founded in 1865, which specifically excluded women from its membership, and at the Pacific Club (founded in 1852), which met in the Parrott Building above the Wells Fargo offices and boasted a first-class billiard room, wine cellar, and cigar supply, the Union Club (1854), or the Yacht Club (1869) with its clubhouse on Long Bridge. Those of Scottish ancestry belonged to the Society of St. Andrews, a benevolent organization founded in 1863 to promote Scottish arts and culture in northern California, or to the Caledonian Club, three years younger, which was limited to native-born Scots, their sons, and their grandsons, and whose annual outings centered on popular competitions in Scottish games; and some belonged to the Sportsman's Club of California, based on a common interest in hunting, which had a standing $50 reward for the arrest and conviction of anyone violating the state game laws, a copy of which was provided to each member.

They went to Sherman's, the music retailer and publisher, which had been A. A. Rosenberg's from its founding in 1853 until a clerk named Leander Sherman bought out his boss in 1870. They sent their daughters to San José or the convent at Benicia for their educations, or to Paris—or if not that, at least gave them a tour of Europe before they married. They speculated on a hundred schemes—not just Comstock silver, but water and gas franchises, steamship lines and irrigation projects, gold, barley, wheat, wool, ice, wildcat mines, guano islands, coal fields, railroads (conventional, narrow-gauge, and prismoidal), tide lands, timber lands, new towns, mineral springs. They travelled to Europe and to all the fashionable Eastern watering places—Long Branch, Sharon, Richfield, Saratoga—and some married their daughters to European nobility. There was a good deal of ostentation still, left over from the early years of the bonanza, when the newly rich, who had never before possessed sufficient wealth to display themselves at the theater, filled the boxes in great glittering droves, the men squirming and fussing with their searchlight diamond stickpins and smoothing their macassared hair, the women fluttering their gem-handled ostrich-feather fans and fingering their triple-strand pearl necklaces, bidding for as much attention as possible; but it was beginning now to tone down, and toward the end of the decade even the worst of them would begin to acquire something of "that repose which belongs to aristocracy."

But behind this prosperous façade, permission for everything from streetcar routes and gas rates to saloon licenses to prizefights was up for grabs. There were bribes—mostly to the city commissioners—and influence and lots of money changing hands. "Favor for favor" was the accepted way of doing things; the quarry owners made use of their political connections and financial grease to keep their dangerous and damaging enterprises going, despite the protests of hill-dwelling citizens whose homes were endangered by their blasting; foreigners with many business dealings—imports, investments, land speculation—found it prudent to keep on the good side of their local commissioner, who was always described as "a very respected member" of the Board that decided so many issues: licenses and license renewals, zoning, tax levies. The French restaurants, with their upstairs trysting rooms, made their payoffs; so did corporations and respectable businessmen. Prostitution had been officially made illegal in 1855, but through payoffs and graft it continued to operate openly and under police protection; the doctrine of Victorian compromise held that vice could never be totally stamped out, and that it made better sense relegate it to certain side streets and established "districts" that people could seek out or avoid, as they chose. Certain bordellos were invested in by city officials, who skimmed the profits. They protected the purveyors of sin in both Chinatown and the Barbary Coast in return for a share of the proceeds, and they kept the slave trade in Chinese girls going, and schemed with the tongs even as the Six Companies worked to stop it. And there were independent Chinese operators, too, who ran multiple gambling clubs of various sizes, kept numerous houses of prostitution, collected thirteen dollars a month from each gambling house not their own and eight from each lottery, and squeezed an extra five from each resort for paying white lawyers to fight the law. They were hated and feared throughout the district, but if anyone testified in court against them or their employees, they put up money to kill him. Then there were the "special police," who were hired by the quarter's gambling clubs to protect them—from what wasn't clear—and reputedly received five dollars a week from eighty such concerns. Thirteen dollars more a month was paid to what was vaguely referred to as "City Hall representatives." The "special policemen" also watched the brothels, at fifty cents per prostitute per month. As for the regular municipal police, if an officer needed money, he requested the Chinatown beat as a matter of course; the Chinese were used to bribing officials, since that was the way of life in the Far East. Crime, when it occurred there, was ignored to regulate itself. All of this was known, but the citizens blithely ignored it in much the same way that "decent" women ignored the existence of the other kind.

It was a rare thing to find an honest policeman in San Francisco's force, though they had a reputation for toughness. It was known that anything valuable they found at a crime scene was never returned to its rightful owners, under the excuse of "confiscating as evidence." Most were too busy collecting graft to even know it if a notorious criminal happened to be operating in their territory. Murders were common in the scruffier parts of the city, but the police operated on the theory that the deaths of felons—male or female, violent or otherwise—were a benefit to society, and expended little effort on such cases, bothering only with routine investigations. Only when prominent citizens were slain, or the victims were young women, or the family of the deceased applied legal pressure, did the detective squad mount a serious investigation. The Department was overworked and understaffed, as well as corrupt and generally incompetent.

Yet still an occasional honest official was to be found, like the brave and popular David Scannell, the third sheriff of San Francisco, who had stormed the heights of Chapultepec as a first lieutenant in Colonel Ward Burnett's Second Regiment of Foot in '47, arrived in the city in 1851, joined the volunteer fire department and helped found a militia unit called the San Francisco Blues, and been elected in 1855. The following year he lost two prisoners to the Vigilantes and became embroiled in controversy over submission of his bond of office. He kept his badge till 1857 despite efforts to dislodge him—the State Supreme Court even ruled in his favor—but decided not to seek another term. Instead he joined the Fire Department, was elected Chief of the Volunteers in 1860, and became the Department's first paid Chief when it converted from volunteer to professional last year. Murdoch knew him well, and respected him. When a day of getting the run-around at City Hall and two days of pounding pavements and describing his missing son to beat cops got him nowhere, he looked up Scannell's home address in the city directory and went to see him. Scannell was in his early fifties now, a bit portly and getting gray, but still an impressive-looking specimen with an erect stance and keen, penetrating eye. He heard Murdoch out and said, "You could hire the Pinkertons, as you've done once before. But good as they are, they don't know this city, and that's what you need, especially if you're concerned that your son might only be here temporarily. I know just the man for the job."

He went on to describe the record of Isaiah W. Lees, who had first come to California in '49 at the age of eighteen. After limited success in the goldfields, he worked for a time for a blacksmith, and then, in 1853, took a job as a patrolman with the newly formed San Francisco Police Department. One of his first accomplishments began when he saw a local thug heave a cobblestone through a window of a saloon. He followed the man to a back alley and told him he was under arrest. The man pulled a short-barreled revolver and shot at Lees, hitting him no less than five times. Lees took the gun away from the man and proceeded to beat him senseless with it. After depositing the man in the lockup, he consulted a doctor for his wounds. As luck would have it, he had been protected by his heavy clothing and had only five red, painful welts on his torso.

By this time, Lees's days of walking a beat were already numbered, and after only a year he was promoted to Assistant Captain. One of his early cases involved the so-called "Chinese Moles." This began innocently enough when a patrolman who had been assigned to watch one of the local gambling halls saw a customer trying to trade a diamond stickpin for cash. A Chinese man quickly snatched the pin from the customer and ran from the building. The officer chased the thief to a Chinese lunchroom and into the basement, where the kitchen was. The thief disappeared through a door. The officer prudently declined to follow: he kept a vigil on the door and had someone nearby summon more help.

One of the responding officers was Isaiah Lees. He proceeded to arrest every Chinese in the room and had them all carted off to jail. When he opened the door, he found numerous rice sacks which proved to be full of dirt. Further investigation found that the Chinese had been tunneling underground into a nearby bank. When Lees entered the tunnel, he was attacked by one of the men inside and struck by a crowbar. Lees promptly shot and wounded his assailant and dragged him out. After searching him, he found his victim to be the stickpin-thief, and discovered the piece hidden in his hair. Of course, he also broke up the planned bank burglary.

At the onset of the war, Lees, now a full Captain, received information that a Confederate schooner, the J. M. Chapman, was in the vicinity, armed and set to raid coastal shipping. In March of 1863, word leaked out that she had entered San Francisco Harbor, and Lees went into action. He placed an around-the-clock watch on the boat and was alerted when she set sail. Thereupon, with a handpicked crew, he shoved off in a tugboat and quickly captured the vessel. Although the crew had already started destroying evidence, Lees was able to seize enough to convict the conspirators, and his exploit made national headlines. Though his honesty was a rare bird in the corrupt police department, his fame had become such that even the bosses hesitated to move against him. Sometimes, after all, it was helpful to have a clever straight arrow around, just in case someone influential set up a clamor.

"He sounds like a gifted man," Murdoch admitted, "but can one man—any one man—help me locate John in a city this size?"

"He can with the help of the Department," Scannell replied, "and even though they have their faults, our cops don't openly defy their superiors. It's just that there are some places and situations where they don't meddle—but I doubt your John is likely to be in any of those."

"All right," said Murdoch, "the next question is whether he'd be willing to help at all. I'm not a citizen of San Francisco, I don't help pay his salary—and as far as I've been able to find out up to now, John's committed no crimes here."

"Isaiah doesn't believe that solving crimes is the only responsibility a law officer has," Scannell told him. "He thinks that preventing crime is important too. If it were put to him that John is a stranger in the city, unaccustomed to its less wholesome aspects and therefore vulnerable to harm, that would engage him. I'll call on him tomorrow and explain the situation to him. He'll probably want to speak to you in person—which hotel are you staying at?"

Murdoch told him, and so now had just returned, too weary even to go downstairs and get something to eat. Yet with Scannell, and soon perhaps Lees, in his corner, he felt a little lift of hope. If he could find his son, could make him listen long enough to apologize, to ask his forgiveness, all might be well for them yet…

---

5. Seeing the Town

Wednesday, January 3

Jess always had a certain tendency to reserve in the early stages of any relationship, but the fact that Flint McCullough was an old friend of Slim's—and a Southerner besides—seemed to incline him to accept the man. He didn't volunteer any information about where he'd spent the previous day and evening, and Slim didn't ask. They stopped at the tailor's on Kearny Street so he could get measured for a jacket and waistcoat of his own—unlike Slim, who had specified a Prince Albert frock that flattered his height, he selected a lightweight, easy-fitting sack coat which was not only about a third as expensive as his friend's, but whose short, rounded skirt would be easier to sweep aside if he found it necessary to go for his gun—then picked up their horses (as being more convenient than hopping on and off streetcars) and set out to see something of the city.

Flint turned out to be a surprisingly well-informed guide, familiar with even the oldest parts of a city constantly engaged in re-inventing and rebuilding itself. In Jackson Square, an eight-block district bounded by Washington on the south, Battery on the east, Broadway on the north, and Columbus Avenue on the west, he showed them one of San Francisco's the oldest commercial neighborhoods. The buildings here were mostly two- and three-storey brick ones which had been erected after the disastrous fires of 1849-51, and in many cases stuccoed over in the '50's to look like stone and make them more impressive to the eye. At No. 722 Montgomery stood Langerman's Building, a former tobacco and sugar warehouse that had been built in 1851 on bay mud and landfill, founded on an eight-foot-thick "raft" of redwood beams. It had become a theater late in 1857, and Lotta Crabtree had performed in it; in the '60's it had housed the offices of a commission merchant and auctioneer; now it was a Turkish bathhouse. Its four gaslight lampposts, bare brick façade, dentiled cornices, and the arched pediments over the windows remained unchanged. Next door at No. 728 was the Genella Building, a three-storey Italianate brick structure constructed sometime between 1851 and '54 for Joseph Genella's china-and-glassware business, and used additionally as a meeting hall by the Odd Fellows. Bret Harte had lived in it, and written "The Luck of Roaring Camp" on the premises. And next to that, at No. 732, was the Golden Era building, named for the weekly newspaper that had occupied a second-floor office there in 1852-5; the raised letters on the bases of the cast-iron pilasters on Hotaling Place at the back gave its date as 1857, though in fact that part of it hadn't been completed till six years after the rest was built.

At the corner of Montgomery and Jackson was the Pioche & Bayerque Bank, housed in a three-storey '50's-vintage brick building, and across Montgomery from that, at No. 802, stood the Bank of Lucas, Turner & Co. Building, likewise three storeys, which was faced with Italianate granite on the Montgomery side and stuccoed red brick on Jackson; this was the bank of which William Tecumseh Sherman had been first manager, having wearied of the slow pace of promotion in peacetime and resigned his commission to establish it and build a home for it. The 400 block of Jackson was given over almost entirely to wholesale wine and liquor merchants, except for No. 434, where stood the four-storey White House Hotel, a less fashionable hostelry that had been built as the Tremont in 1855 and operated under that name for fifteen years. At 470-2 were the two Solari Buildings, East and West, built in 1850-2, and at 463-73, 451-5, and 445 were three buildings of stuccoed brick, of which the second, a beautiful three-storey Italianate structure that had risen as recently as 1866, was the office and warehouse for Anson P. Hotaling's real-estate and wholesale-liquor businesses. The one at No. 472 had housed the French consul's office since 1865, and was also the location of a French wine and liquor dealer, while at 468-470 a three-storey brick structure housed more wine importers and liquor dealers. 415-31 and 407 Jackson were the home, since 1857, of Ghirardelli's California Chocolate Manufactory, where in 1865 the Broma process for making cocoa powder had been accidentally discovered. At 298 Pacific stood a brick hotel with a barroom called the Old Ship Saloon, in honor of the beached three-master Arkansas which had been converted to an alehouse and sailor's rooming house after her crew deserted in '49.

Portsmouth Square, originally a potato patch owned by a Mexican rejoicing in the name of Candelario Miramontes, later a produce market, horse-and-cattle corral, gathering place for town meetings and political events, and the center of the village of Yerba Buena, and since 1856 fenced around with wrought-iron bars broken only at each of the four corners, was a half-block in extent, with Washington Street to the north and Clay to the south (both going on to scale the hill to the west), Kearny to the east, and to the west a lane called Brenham Place. By night it was haunted by street strumpets, footpads, and tramps, but by day it was a favorite stopping place of the Emperor Norton on the rounds of "his capital," and a place where San Franciscans of every kind came and went freely—stock traders, street venders and preachers, Kearny Street promenaders, sailors, pigtailed Chinese in their coolie hats of woven straw. On Clay Street, Eadweard Muybridge had a bookstore, and was also world-famous for the large photographs he had made of Yosemite Valley in '68. To the west, Washington Street climbed through Chinatown to Stockton Street, past the iron-fenced mansion of Captain Martin R. Roberts, the shipping magnate, on that corner, and the mansion and stables and green lawns of the millionaire James Ben Ali Haggin, who since 1862 had been breeding horses on the old Rancho del Paso outside Sacramento. It continued past the old Ebbets homestead, built by a pioneer whose mercantile firm, one year in the '50's, had made $50,000 from the sale of top hats alone; up over the shoulder to the California Street Hill, down to Van Ness Avenue, and from there scaled Pacific Heights, at the summit of which stood a little park called Lafayette Square, where George Davidson, the president of the California Academy of Sciences, had erected a small telescope to peer at the stars. The First Baptist Church stood between Dupont and Stockton Streets, half a block from the decorous Louis Quatorze interior of Peter Job's fancy-pastry-and-ice-cream parlor, where all the best people stopped for refreshments of an evening. Down near Montgomery Street stood the Clipper restaurant, one of the city's many "three-for-two" eateries, so called because they offered any three dishes—usually good plain food, a soup or vegetable, a portion of beef or mutton with potatoes, and a dessert—all for two bits, plus bread and butter free and coffee, tea, chocolate, beer, or wine for a dime extra; they all provided generously-sized servings, a long list of choices, and a clean tablecloth at each setting, but the Clipper's great claim to fame was that it sent the orders to the tables on the flatcars of a miniature railroad. Across the street was the Auction Lunch saloon (named for the auction houses nearby and once owned by "silver kings" James Flood and William S. O'Brien), and the Occidental Restaurant (where ex-Sheriff Dave Scannell and the other five boys from Engine No. 1 had been wont to sit four or five hours over their dinners, always including the finest delicacies available) on Washington Street. And here too was M. L. Winn's popular Branch Extension, a restaurant especially favored after the show by the companies from the nearby theaters. By 1853 Winn's Fountain Head—originally located on Long Wharf, followed by the "Branch" on the corner of Montgomery and Washington Streets, then the "Extension" on Clay Street, and at last a new property at 78-80 Commercial Street—had been one of the premier "ice-cream saloons," restaurants, and catering establishments in town, offering not only the sweets in which the owner had originally specialized, but "fine venison steaks, oysters, ducks, geese, partridge, snipe, teal," and other delicacies.

On a triangular park between Larkin, McAllister, and Market Streets, the Yerba Buena Cemetery had been started in 1850, and ten years later it was full to capacity. Here, following the relocation of the remains, work had begun in 1870 on the construction of a new City Hall. It was to be a grand structure, or rather a grand complex of buildings, befitting the spectacular metropolis that San Francisco was certainly destined to be. The state had appropriated the land and auctioned off portions of the property, the scheme being to raise a million and a half dollars for construction costs, and get it built in three years. In the end the building wouldn't be finished till 1897, at a cost of $6,000,000 (much of its construction graft-influenced and shoddy, as the earthquake of 1906 would show).

At 628 Montgomery Street, on the corner of Washington, stood a four-storey building that had been begun in October, 1852, by Henry W. Halleck, later General-in-Chief of the Union Army, and finished fourteen months later at a cost of $3,000,000, in a day when even a third as much meant something. It was founded on a huge mat of redwood logs that had been dovetailed into tiers, linked with iron clamps, and sunk twenty-two feet down, then covered with a second layer of the same and a third of 12x12-inch ship's planking. The building itself comprised cement from England, glass and mirrors from Belgium, France, and Germany, iron fittings, beams, doors, and wrought-iron balconies brought around the Horn from Philadelphia, and 1,747,800 bricks made into three-foot-thick walls. It was four storeys high—the largest building on the Pacific Coast at the time, and the first earthquake-proof one in San Francisco. It was said to be the first commercial structure in the world to have inside rooms opening on an inner courtyard. Its earliest prime tenant had been Adams & Co., bankers and express agents, whose office was fronted for security with iron doors a foot thick. When it was a-building, they'd called it Halleck's Folly, because they figured it would sink out of sight in the mud. Its official name was the Washington Block. But San Franciscans always called it the Montgomery Block. Though technically located in the Barbary Coast district, it housed the offices of many outstanding attorneys, financiers, judges, engineers, theatrical agents, land-management companies, and other business and professional men, along with writers, actors, and artists, including Bret Harte, who lent it a certain bohemian-hangout reputation. On its second floor the editor James King of William had died after being shot by Supervisor James Casey, igniting the Second Vigilance Committee. Tucked cozily into one corner of it was Duncan Nichols's Bank Exchange & Billiard Saloon, which had opened its doors in 1853, with its carved walnut bar, black-and-white checkered marble floor, Wedgwood porcelain beer pumps, and overstuffed cowhide chairs; it was famous the world over for its "Pisco punch," which cost twenty-five cents (a high price for the time), seduced the palate, slipped smoothly down the gullet, and bounced back with a prizefighter's punch. This was an invention of Nichols himself, who served as his own barman and never disclosed the formula, although it was generally agreed to be based on Peruvian brandy. Also in the building was "Papa" Coppas's Italian restaurant, one of the tonier eateries in town, where Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and Joaquin Miller had all sat down to eat or drink.

Another building that was in the Coast but not of it was the three-storey Mansard headquarters of the California Society of Pioneers, erected in 1863 at Montgomery and Gold Streets; this body, organized in 1850, was open to any man who had arrived in the state before January 1 of that year. A large Masonic Temple stood at Post and Montgomery, and between this and the Montgomery Block was the Parrott Granite Block at 405 Montgomery—an early merchant bank, built in 1852, four storeys of pre-cut and numbered blocks of Chinese granite (imported along with a crew of Chinese masons to fit them together) and a powerhouse in the city's financial affairs. The masons labored from dawn to dusk at a daily wage of one dollar, a quarter-pound of fish, a half-pound of rice, and an hour off to eat them. So stoutly was it constructed that when in 1866 a worker attempted to open a package that contained nitroglycerin, the huge explosion that resulted killed nine people (including several members of the elite Pacific Club, meeting in their rooms upstairs) but left the building itself virtually unscathed. Nearby, at 400 Montgomery, stood Sam Brannan's Express Building, a four-storey edifice with a stone façade and iron balconies in New Orleans style around the upper windows. At the corner of Mission and Fifth Streets was the lot where the U.S. Mint was undergoing construction; the cornerstone had been laid on May 26, 1870, though the building wasn't to be completed till 1874. Until then the first branch mint at 608-10 Commercial, near Montgomery, a Greek Revival building erected in 1853 and opened the year after, had to suffice, although it had become too small for the job after the silver began flooding down from the Comstock.

"How does a wagon-train scout happen to know so much about San Francisco?" Slim asked his friend.

Flint winked. "I wasn't always a wagon-train scout. The Major and the others don't know this, but soon after the war this town was my headquarters. I was drivin' stage out of it, with Caleb Jamison—his pa owned the line—and when I was here at the end of a run I got a lot of opportunity to look around." He grinned. "That's something, isn't it? You run a relay station, and I used to be a stagecoach man."

"I've heard of the Jamison line," Slim allowed. "I guess everybody in the stage business has." It ran over 2700 miles, by way of 139 stations, from Springfield, Missouri, to Fort Smith, Arkansas, thence across the Nations to Sherman, Texas, through Forts Belknap, Phantom Hill, and Chadbourne, to Mustang Spring; over seventy-five miles of desert to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos, then north to Delaware Peak, over the river, past Guadalupe Peak to Franklin (which some now called El Paso), north to Mesilla, through Fort Fillmore, Soldier's Farewell, and Mexican Springs, over the Arizona line to Stern Springs, Apache Pass, Tucson, Maricopa, and Yuma, across the Colorado River to Warner's Ranch and Los Angeles. In the beginning it had gone from there through Tejon Pass and up the interior valley to San José and San Francisco, but now, with the railroad serving the valley, it took the 420-mile coastal route, through the quiet rural town of Ventura, through Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo, Salinas (from which a thirty-mile branch route led to Monterey), and Santa Cruz to the city. This provided the ranchers who dwelt in the rich valleys draining onto the sea with a communications linkage somewhat more dependable than coastwise schooners that could find no proper anchorage between Monterey Bay and San Pedro in any case. By 1860 the Jamison stages had been running twice a week and carrying more mail than the Pacific steamers. They lost the government contract to the central route in 1861, owing to the obvious imminence of war, but the old man pulled back like a turtle into its shell and continued running within California's borders and north into Oregon, and when peace was restored he took a chance and repossessed his old facilities. He still didn't carry the transcontinental mail, but local mail and express had to move through his original haunts, and that meant Wells Fargo, which needed coaches to put them on; so Jamison was back in business full-scale again.

"Well, how about Chinatown next?" Flint proposed. "We're not far from it, and it's a cheap place to eat—I don't know about you two, but I'm startin' to get hungry."

Jess frowned. "I dunno… I hear tell them Celestials eat some mighty peculiar things."

"What, like bird's-nest soup? Well, yeah, some of their cooking is kind of strange, at least to white people," Flint admitted, "but they're quick learners too, and they pick up our way of food really fast; ask anybody who's got a Chinese cook, and hundreds of people do. Anyway, they eat familiar things too—chicken and pork and spareribs and fish."

The Irish and the Germans were the city's two major ethnic groups, the former comprising one-third of the population as of the 1870 census, the latter numbering between five and six thousand as early as 1854 and providing the lion's share of its professional musicians, beer-parlor owners, and cigar-stand proprietors, organizing the San Francisco Harmonie in 1854 and the Germania Philharmonic Society the year after, and supporting a school, a newspaper, and intermittently a theater, as well as various benevolent and social organizations. But the Chinese weren't far behind. Most of them had begun as farmers from the Pearl River delta near Canton, which suffered repeated crop failures and high unemployment throughout the '40's. Shipping agents in Canton and Hong Kong flooded both cities with flyers describing California as Gum San, the "Gold Mountain," and the Chinese believed it. Passage cost as little as forty dollars, and when rebellion broke out in 1850 and more hordes sought to get away from it, brokers proved willing to advance that money to the hopefuls on the understanding that it would be repaid out of the fortunes they would undoubtedly make there. Forty-five shiploads of them sailed for the New World that year alone.

In the beginning they aroused feelings largely of curiosity, and the Alta, in May of 1851, said they were "among the most industrious, quiet, patient people among us… [and] seem to live under our laws as if born and bred under them…" It further called them "very quiet, good citizens… deserving the respect of all." They participated in community activities along with everyone else, taking part in the celebrations that marked California's admission to the Union, in parades and holiday observations, and in the services to the memory of Zachary Taylor: a hundred strong marched along with the Sons of Temperance, the Odd Fellows, the Davy Crockett Lodge, and whole contingents of foreign consular officials, in the funeral procession held a month after his death, holding a sign identifying them as "China Boys." They won approving comments for their public spirit, the quaintness of their manner, and the exotic character of their costume. Even the miners regarded them, in the beginning, as somewhat comical, but harmless and admirable. But by '52 they had become the primary focus of anti-foreign sentiment, as a total of 20,026 passed through San Francisco's customs house in that year alone, more than 2000 of them in a single forty-eight-hour period. In the diggings they were resented for their industry; tough, disciplined, and more accustomed to back-breaking work than were many Americans, they often labored from dawn to dark, and even when permitted only to mine tailings and abandoned claims, which whites considered unprofitable, more often than not they made a profit off them. As more of them came, particularly to work on the railroads in the '60's, they became targets for discrimination and increasing hostility—as early as '64 a gang of Irish hoodlums stoned a Chinese laundryman for fun while a policeman tolerantly looked on and did nothing—and laws began to exclude them from most occupations in which they might compete with whites. By now racism was reaching a fever pitch. On the other hand, their enclave had been a major tourist attraction for at least ten years, despite a growing unsavory opium-den-and-slave-girl reputation, which followed naturally from the fact that most of its residents were male—men who had always intended to make their fortunes and then either send for their families or return to their native land.

At first they had lived scattered all over the city and its suburbs, but by 1852 the Herald had estimated that there were 3000 of them there, and it was soon afterward, in reaction to the growing hostility of the whites, that they began, for self-protection, to gather into a distinct colony of their own, bounded by California, Stockton, Broadway, and Kearny Streets. By now, with the exception of a handful scattered through other districts, every one of them in San Francisco lived in the eight blocks straddling Dupont Street from Sacramento to Pacific, and when you crossed the former, it was like crossing the Pacific. They had settled on the eastern slope of the California Street Hill, because it was climatically one of the mildest parts of the city; the brisk summer fogs and winds that assaulted its upper reaches arrived on the other side with vigor spent. From Stockton Street westward their settlement climbed the hill, up Clay and Washington and Jackson Streets. The district had had its roots about two decades earlier, when the first appreciable numbers of Chinese began to arrive, and merchants and businessmen wanting to cater to their needs began to coalesce on Sacramento Street near Kearny and along Dupont, establishing groceries, dry-goods stores, and other similar concerns; very soon there were thirty-three retail stores, half as many pharmacies, and five bustling restaurants in that area, not to mention a Chinese theater, a semi-weekly community newspaper begun in 1854, and a bilingual journal, the Oriental, a year later. In the late '50's and early '60's, Western merchants began moving out of the Portsmouth Square area to the new shopping districts then emerging on Market Street and at Union Square, and the Chinese moved into the buildings left behind.

Washington Street was on the fringe of the Barbary Coast, a district of dilapidated lodging houses and one small stable where the three men left their horses ("You can't really take anything bigger than a goat into Chinatown," Flint explained, "and they can get a feed while we do"), then went up one block and joined a stream of pedestrians, both Oriental and Western, as it surged through the tightly-packed streets of the quarter. The Chinese had taken land nobody else wanted, and being confined to that area had made the most of it. They extended their living space with balconies above the sidewalks. They had carved pedestrian thoroughfares into and through many of the blocks in their densely packed area, in a direct borrowing from their villages back home, where such venues provided access and more privacy as well as (in some of them) main entrances to dwellings; these alleys were prime locations for vice, primarily gambling, opium, and prostitution. They had dug basements and sub-basements and maybe even sub-sub-basements to find enough room to live. Rumor had it that they had burrowed five, six, seven, eight storeys underground, a myth not to be exploded until the destruction attendant on the big quake of 1906.

Underground annexes or no, Chinatown was a warren of alleys and streets and interconnected buildings. The latter were rickety Italianate wooden tenements, of two main types: squat and dingy, or tall and bristling with bright-painted, elaborately-curlicued woodwork. It was primarily their decorations—signboards and wall posters in handsome calligraphy, colorful paper lanterns strung along the balconies (iron ones in the Chinese style or rickety wooden ones), banners, fluttering ribbons, gaudy colors—and the exotic foods and endless variety of Oriental trappings that crammed the shops that set the area apart from the rest of the city. In 1876, B. E. Lloyd, in Lights and Shades in San Francisco, would report that a family of five or six people would live, cook, eat, sleep, and perhaps carry on a small manufacturing business in a single eight-by-ten room. Ten bunks in a room eight-by-twelve was the Chinese idea of social contact. They had learned in the family circle to subordinate their personal desires to the rights of the clan. Trained in centuries of stifling gregariousness, they had come to like crowds and clamor and elbow-jostling. They had had to conserve space, funds, and time—but they had never learned to conserve, or stifle, beauty. They loved it, and if they couldn't indulge their taste for art with Ming vases, they created it subconsciously out of food, fragments, even refuse. Window ledges had become fragmentary gardens and fire escapes transformed into balconies; lilies like carved ivory glowed in a tenement doorway.

From an early date the Chinese of San Francisco had begun to dominate the laundry business: the nation's first Chinese laundry had been opened by one Wah Lee at Washington and Dupont in the early spring of 1851. He charged five dollars to wash a dozen shirts—less than half what some citizens had been spending to send their shirts to Honolulu and Hong Kong—and got rich doing it. In less than three months scores of others had appeared throughout the city; by now almost 2000 Chinese were engaged in that trade. Around the same time they had also commenced to establish highly popular eateries. They fished for crab off the city wharves and sold their catch at six bits the dozen—some 1,200,000 of the crustaceans a year. They worked as waiters, dishwashers, busboys, and cooks in the city's restaurants. Many American employers found them very satisfactory owing to their strong work ethic, physical endurance, and willingness to labor for low wages; as servants and cooks they proved so suitable that householders paid them well above the going rate for their services—sometimes even double. For the first fifteen years or so the attitude of San Franciscans toward them was much more tolerant than that in other regions of the state, but by late last decade considerable antagonism had developed, particularly among the laboring classes. Still, at this time there was little organized violence against them. During the war, when some Chinese were hired to do grading on railroad property in the city, a band of Irishmen had set upon them, given them a beating and burned down their shacks. Ten white workmen were arrested, convicted, fined $500 and given ninety days in the county jail. This had apparently served to cool the ardor of the opposition, and no further discord was to be reported until 1873—not in San Francisco, at least, regardless of riots in the mining districts and occasional labor disorders, and the Los Angeles Massacre of 1871, in which some twenty Celestials had died, most of them left hanging on the gallows for all to contemplate. Indeed, in 1868 the Emperor of China had sent a good-will embassy to the Western world; led by Anson Burlingame, who had been named Minister to the Celestial Empire by Lincoln in 1861, its first stop was naturally San Francisco, and there it was welcomed with a great reception in the banquet hall of the Lick Hotel, which was attended by some 225 prominent Americans and reported in detail in all the newspapers.

By now, congregating in their busy ghetto, the Chinese had slowly established, through hard work and brilliant organization, virtual monopolies in cigar making (by 1866 half the city's cigar factories had been Chinese-owned) and the garment industry, and also held strong positions in fish packing and in boot-, match-, broom-, cigar-box-, and brickmaking, among other enterprises. They had been found to be speedily adept in mastery of the sewing machine, and ran up overalls and common underwear with lightning rapidity. They worked in the woollen mills, in the knitting industry, in lace-making, embroidery, and piecework; in 1870 they had owned eleven of the city's twelve slipper factories, and in this very year it would be found that they held half its factory jobs. Down south on the Peninsula, they raised flowers for cutting in great quantities; on the perimeter of the city they leased plots of land for truck gardens and carried their fruits and vegetables in to market. They were, moreover, much in demand for low-paid labor, being cheap, docile, and efficient. Around 1870 they had begun to be shipped to other parts of the country—as far as North Adams, Massachusetts, and New Orleans—as strikebreakers. They were also being hired by the great baronial landowners who dominated the interior, and who were beginning to experiment with oranges, grapes, plums, figs, olives, nectarines, and other classic Mission crops. They reclaimed the marshes, dug the irrigation ditches, cultivated the vineyards and gathered the fruit, all for a dollar a day—and boarded themselves. They chiseled out cellars for wineries at eight dollars a month (as against $30 for white laborers) plus board; they built numerous stone bridges, fences, and mountain roads.

The Chinese were a serene people who faced the inevitable with a heartening calm and were notable for steadier nerves than Caucasians and a capacity to withdraw into themselves in spite of the distractions surrounding them. Even their worst critics never found them to be drinkers, although their habit of smoking opium did attract some criticism, and gambling (chiefly on fan-tan and similar games) was a besetting obsession with them. Grounded in conformity and obedience, they never struck for higher wages or questioned the length of the working day. They did the meanest labor uncomplainingly, took on the dirtiest assignments for little pay, were rarely sick, didn't ask for time off to go to church, and were noted for their industry and thrift, their reliability, their cheerfulness in poverty. They made a virtue of necessity, and wherever they dwelt, their homes, however humble, soon began to show unique touches. Self-sufficient and proud, in America they withdrew more and more within themselves—a habit Europeans took for ignorance or timidity. Their venerable reserve and indifference to justification was—not unnaturally in a people who could boast six thousand years of civilization—simply the superiority of the old, who have learned that argument and self-revelation are futile, and are not given to explanation. And occasionally individual Chinese defied the prohibitions laid on their people and even gained respect and success. Dr. Li Po-Tai, born in 1817, was one of the most revered physicians of any nationality in the city, treating everyone from Caucasian bankers to Chinese vegetable-sellers—even railroad magnates. On an average day he saw from 150 to 300 patients, and his practice earned him as much as $75,000 a year. He maintained that the liver was the seat of all human ailments, and herb tea the universal cure.

America didn't make life easy for them. They couldn't own land, vote, homestead, hold public office, serve on juries, send their children to the public schools (although in that they weren't alone, for no non-white could do so), seek treatment in San Francisco City Hospital, get jobs on municipal projects, testify in any court case that involved a white man, obtain bail through any of the normal channels, apply for citizenship, or even ride the streetcars till 1864. There was a perception—above and beyond their strange food, different dress, and "pagan gods"—that they carried unpleasant diseases and had a low sense of morality. Hoodlums (a word invented here)—the West Coast equivalent of the Bowery Boys of New York—were wont to attack without provocation any Chinese who ventured into those parts of the city where they were especially numerous and powerful, notably the waterfront, the Telegraph Hill district, North Beach, the northern Barbary Coast, and Tar Flat, near the gas-works south of Market. They sometimes cornered one and strung him up to a lamppost by his queue; they set fire to laundries and washhouses, invaded Chinese businesses and robbed and beat the proprietors, stole the earnings of the slave girls, and even stormed the houses where the latter were on display and compelled them to submit to frightful abuses. In 1868 a score of young rowdies had captured a Chinese crab-fisherman and dragged him beneath a wharf, where they robbed him, beat him with a hickory club, branded him with hot irons in a dozen places, and slit his ears and tongue. As for the Chinese, they knew better than to even put a toe over the invisible border between the Coast and their own neighborhood, for there as in Tar Flat, virulent hatred of the Chinese ran strong; any who did would be quickly picked up by the local bullyboys, taunted and tormented with swats and kicks, and finally beaten. Sandlot agitators bellowed in protest against "Chinese cheap labor," as Bret Harte had called it in the Overland Monthly in September of 1870, and anti-vice ladies shrilled against the Chinese slave girls, some of whom were far too desirable to be tolerated on the loose by waspish, suspicious wives. Ministers thundered from the pulpit against the fan-tan parlors, although these were exclusively Chinese and so no threat to their parishioners—and the game, like mumblety-peg, was one purely of chance and impossible to rig, which made it more honest than a lot of other games in the city.

The Chinese had to not only adapt to a completely new social structure (which was true of many other newcomers), but to do so without the help of the elders and village leaders, scholars, educators, and artists who didn't in general participate in the early exodus. So they developed, of necessity, into a unique subculture. The first arrivals, merchants and businessmen, became the leaders, often the exploiters, of their working-class brethren, and not only set the tone for the community but transformed into its mandarins. The enclave was governed by the Six Companies (originally five), an association of businessmen, or perhaps more properly an alliance of district benefit associations, grown out of the trade guilds and district associations which had flourished in China for centuries. In San Francisco, they were first organized based upon family name, district of origin, occupation, or—in some cases—criminal activity. Over time they grew and divided, and presently six leading ones emerged. There was the Ning-Yeung Company (which was the oldest, founded in 1854), the Hop-Wo, the Kong-Chow, the Sam Yup, the Young Wo, and the Yan-Wo, each with its own chairman, secretary, treasurer, and interpreter, offices that changed hands annually. Each was composed of leading men from one of the districts of China. They were generally controlled by well-to-do merchants, who brokered the immigration of new sojourners, imported Chinese goods, and operated shops and restaurants. In the '60's they had banded together and formed what became known as the Chinese Six Companies, or Consolidated Chinese Benevolent Association, whose purpose was to combat discrimination by the white community, mediate disputes among the Chinese themselves, and promote Chinese business affairs.

Originally responsible for the importation and regulation of workers from their native land, the Companies flourished on the Chinaman's need for mutual help in a land that not only denied him the rights of citizenship but even, for some time, the protection of the courts, and eventually became the chief force of law and order throughout all the state's Chinese communities. They built halls and meeting-places and installed in each a temple or altar to the local divinities of each district, and usually also to T'ien Hou, the goddess of sojourners and seafarers, who was particularly important to a people who had universally arrived in their current home by sea. They provided hospitalization on a simple scale, and ran a home for indigent men; they operated schools; their representatives travelled up and down the state, checking up on deaths, making calculations for decomposition, and gathering up the remains of their late countrymen for shipment to China, where they would be laid to rest in ancestral tombs. They served as the Chinese community's spokesman and highest court, and as a de facto diplomatic embassy of the Chinese government (for China supported no official one in the United States at this time), passing messages between Washington and Peking. They mounted legal battles against the anti-Chinese legislation that plagued their people. Through agents in the homeland they advanced money to emigrants who desired to go to America, and when these arrived met them off the boat, provided lodging, board, and other necessities until more permanent arrangements could be made, and either found jobs for them or outfitted them for the mines. They served as a court of final appeal in matters pertaining to the hiring of labor, the repayment of transportation money that had been advanced by private concerns, disputes between families that couldn't be settled by the family councils, difficulties over debts, rows between trade guilds, fights between members of the rival districts that made up the organization of the Companies themselves. When a Chinese decided to go home—permanently or only for a visit—he applied to the Companies for permission to do so, and they checked up on his record and made sure his financial obligations had been fulfilled; only then did they give him a clearance paper. Their president might as well have been the Mayor of Chinatown. After these came the workers' guilds and fraternal organizations. In their own country, the Chinese had never been a people to "go to law;" controversies that couldn't be settled in the family councils were, for the most part, arbitrated by the elders of the village. Official courts existed, but it was accounted a disgrace to be compelled to use them. In Chinatown, which was very much like an overgrown Chinese village set down in an alien land, the Companies acted as village elders. The family associations, which arose later, assumed responsibility for mutual welfare and the adjudication of differences.

The Companies were entirely legitimate, as even the city government conceded. Although many Caucasians didn't believe it, they were always actively opposed to anything that might hamper the commercial growth of their enclave—the bagnios, the opium joints, the gambling houses—and for many years they tried to secure the deportation of the most notorious lawbreakers of their race, complained often that the anti-vice laws weren't being enforced, and furnished much of the information on which the police based their infrequent raids. Vice, on the other hand, was controlled by the infamous "tongs," innocuously-named organizations such as the On Leong Society (meaning "Chamber of Tranquil Consciousness"), which was one of the neighborhood's chief traffickers in slave girls. By 1869 this trade had reached such proportions that the Chronicle described it as "the importation of females in bulk," and in 1876 it would be reported by Lloyd that between 45,000 and 50,000 Chinese lived in the city, 2000 of these were women, and 1900 of the women were prostitutes, though this was probably untrue: virtuous Chinese wives seldom ventured outside their homes and were therefore difficult to enumerate, and one count was to discover that in 1860 about 85% of Chinese women in the city were prostitutes, but by 1880 only 21% were, as former ones married and left the business.

In China, the word "tong" could refer to any kind of fraternal guild—a trade guild, which regulated the price of labor, arranged terms, and boycotted unfair competition; a merchant guild, which did something of the same, but generally on a larger scale; a benevolent lodge, an informal savings-and-loan association, or just a plain racketeering organization. In America, though many of them had started as social organizations in the mining camps, it was most often the last. Many of their members were probably revolutionists who had fled China a hop, skip, and jump ahead of the headsman's ax—the conquering Manchus had been on the throne for over two centuries, and their rule seemed safely ironclad enough to the casual observer, but there were always revolts against the invaders being quietly strangled behind the scenes—and had set up in Australia, the Straits Settlements, and the New World standards of blackmail and violence not to be matched until the rise of the gangsters of Prohibition days. In California many had initially sought refuge among political sympathizers, but as the generosity of local sponsors began to slacken, they resorted to blackmail and shakedowns to keep them in line. From the '60's onward, the big tongs controlled both legitimate and (more frequently) illegitimate enterprises, and attracted many otherwise unwilling members through fear of reprisals or as a means of protecting the individual's place in the business community.

The earliest American tongs—the Hop Sings and Suey Sings, who also owned the distinction of having engaged in the first tong war—had arisen in the Mother Lode country, that being where most of the Chinese (along with everyone else) went at the time. In later years these organizations spread to the railroad construction camps and other venues where large numbers of coolies were employed, to the coastal cities where Chinese settlements had been established, and finally throughout the United States. The first San Francisco tong, the Hip Yee, had been founded in 1852 for the purpose of importing slave girls into the country. It became so notorious that the leading Chinese merchants, under the leadership of the Six Companies, decided in 1863 to check its activities. They succeeded temporarily, but with the influx of Chinese for the building of the railroad, the problem became too great, and in three years the Hip Yees were again flourishing like the green bay tree. They were soon joined by the Chee Kungs, which was thought by many Americans to be a sort of Freemasonry (in part because its name translated as "Chamber of High Justice"), but was a bandit organization pure and simple. Rooted in the Tai Ping Rebellion, which broke out in 1850, it had formed its plot with such inscrutable secrecy, and under such artful disguises, that all the vigilance of the Chinese government failed to catch a hint of what was coming; afterward, it threw out its tentacles so that every American city or village that boasted a Chinatown eventually felt its grip and paid tribute to it—even in the East. Then there were the Suey Sings, down from the gold country; the Sum Yops, who in future years would be ruled, along with their allied tongs, by the infamous "Little Pete," under whom, instead of buying girls, they commenced to steal them, primarily from the Sue Yops; the Hip Shings ("Hall of Victorious Union"), which controlled the gambling clubs; the Wa Ting Shans, who levied tribute on the brothels; the Kwong Taks ("Chamber of Far-Reaching Virtue") and On Leong, which dealt in slave girls; and the Hip Sees, which started out as an importer of women, but over time became more of a tribute levier, asking $40 from her owners for every woman brought in, and a weekly tribute for as long as she remained in the business. These fees were shared with the white men who "stood guard" over the brothels in the role of "special police."

The tongs and the Companies were, as the Chinese themselves would have put it, like yin and yang—opposing forces in perfect balance, always at odds yet equal and inseparable. But at this point the Companies tolerated no nonsense from the tongs, who had yet to initiate a true reign of terror over the quarter. Still, they could be retained to blackmail a rival into acceptance of terms, and were for hire by the legitimate trade and merchants' guilds, who, when a member or a rival got too big for his britches, were wont to order the advertising of bids for the upstart's murder. This was done by way of printed circulars which offered a substantial reward for the deed, and promised counsel fees and three dollars a day for confinement if the killer should be arrested; if he were executed, a lump sum would be paid to his relatives. Such commissions were most often taken by the tongs' hired killers, who were called boo how doy, or "fighting men," in Chinese, "highbinders"—or sometimes "hatchet men"—in English; the first term came from their habit of tying their braided queues up under their caps to make them harder to grab, and the second, of course, from their favorite weapon, although they also armed themselves with bludgeons, daggers, knives, and slung shots, metal balls hung from two-foot whips. A hatchet man on retainer by a tong received a regular salary (and indeed was often referred to as a "salaried soldier"), with extra pay for exceptional bravery in battle, and bonuses based on the number of men he killed. He was also recompensed similarly to a successful assassin—"sympathy money," as much as $500, to his friends in the case of his death; engagement of a surgeon to attend him if wounded; $10 per month if he was laid up; $250 if he was incapacitated for life, plus a subscription to defray the expenses of his passage home; $100 per year to his family at home if he were imprisoned. Since the tongs, like the mountaineers of the Appalachians, held that the enmities of any member of the group were also the enmities of all, if he was attacked his tong would post a chun hung—a "challenge to battle"—directing the perpetrators to admit their error, apologize, and compensate the victim for his injuries, or, if they refused to do so, "sincerely and earnestly requesting" them to meet for mortal combat. All this was done quite brazenly; the tong chiefs weren't afraid of the police—they had City Hall and its "machine" behind them, and the sharpest shyster lawyers in town besides. False charges against a hapless victim, and false testimony in court, lodged many an innocent Chinese who had incurred the wrath of a highbinder tong in jail, and few were brave enough to speak up in behalf of such a victim. Shifty white lawyers, generous bribes, and the assumption (generally not far wrong) by city officials that the white population of San Francisco was unconcerned with the administration of justice in Chinatown enabled everyone concerned to get away with it. The tongs were also aided by a maze of small alleys and connecting basements that created a confusing labyrinth of pathways and escape routes; a hatchet man on the run could enter a building on one side of Chinatown and come out on the other, travelling entirely underground.

Just about every street in Chinatown was lined with shops and restaurants—all but the narrow lanes lined with cribs, where women leaned in dilapidated doorways, peered out cracked windows, and watched passersby stone-faced from rickety balconies. The two blocks of Dupont from Clay to Jackson were rife with Chinese gambling clubs, as were Waverly Place, Bartlett Alley, and Ross Alley (which housed no fewer than twenty-two of them, each with an entry door fortified with iron boiler plate against police raids), and behind or upstairs from many innocent-appearing shops were gambling parlors where fan tan, mah-jongg, and other games were played for high stakes, the fronting business taking a hefty percentage. Narrow, dead-ended Duncombe Alley, off Jackson Street between Stockton and Dupont, was lined with opium dens, mostly in basement rooms lit only by nut-oil lamps—dark, smoky places that contributed to the district's sinister reputation. Parlor houses were found primarily on Dupont Street, Waverly Place, Ross Alley, and a few other important thoroughfares in or adjacent to the section, many sumptuously furnished with a great clutter of bamboo and teak and porcelain, soft couches, wicker armchairs, plush red carpets, embroidered hangings, silken cushions, exotic paintings alternating between nature scenes and pictures that would make a sailor blush, and clouds of fragrant incense to emphasize the languorous atmosphere of the Orient, the girls on staff all richly clad and seductively perfumed. The cribs were located on Jackson and Washington Streets and in China, Bartlett, Stout, Church, and other alleys, lining both sides of the first of these, which was a dingy passage fifteen feet wide that ran from Jackson to Washington. The parlor houses were for white men only, but the cribs catered to men of all races and colors, and till the late hours of the night, in all these narrow, dirty byways, the plaintive voices of the crib girls could be heard crying in a shrill, monotonous singsong, "Two bittee lookee, flo bittee feelee, six bittee (or sometimes "one dolla") doee!", occasionally broken by a brief spiel—"China girl very nice! You come inside please, and I make you happy!" The Chinese of means tended not to patronize the professional women, since he usually maintained his own harem, with anywhere from one to a dozen concubines depending on the extent of his prosperity. But Chinese prostitutes who yielded themselves to white men, or solicited their custom, were strictly taboo among their own countrymen. There were alleys given over to such women, but Chinese men didn't frequent them.

It hadn't taken long for Christians to begin establishing missions in Chinatown; the first was organized by a citizens' committee in 1852. It established itself at Stockton and Sacramento Streets, the mortgage on the property later being taken over by the Presbyterian Board. But the early missions were for Chinese men. Rescue missions for prostitutes and domestic slaves came later, run by the evangelical churches and staffed chiefly by women. The first such movement was instituted by a Methodist lady, Mrs. H. C. Cole, in 1869; she operated on more or less an individual free-lance basis, pushing her way into the few family homes that existed, interviewing wives primary and secondary, and stumbling on occasion into brothels to the indignation of the house "mothers" and the terror of the girls. In 1871 her church had founded a "Mission for Women," more aptly a shelter. It was still awaiting its first inmate; the tongs and other traffickers in female flesh were careful to indoctrinate their merchandise, long before the boat reached American soil, in all sorts of frightening untruths about "white foreign devils." By 1868 the city had established a Magdalen Asylum to which forty-three freshly-imported girls (all of them under thirteen) were sent after being taken off the ship, and the police announced that jobs would be found for them in domestic service, but many of them eventually appeared in the bordellos.

To the Chinese, being Chinese meant more than being German or Italian or Irish or whatever meant to any other immigrant group. Clothes, food, neighbors, customs, religion, if you were Chinese, everything was Chinese, and so it remained. And so they had recreated, as accurately as they could, the look and feel, sound and smell of their homeland in this alien country. The narrow streets and narrower, crooked alleys were thronged with pigtailed folk dressed mostly in blue linen or lower-caste black. They were filled with otherworldly sounds and smells—the blending aromas of sandalwood, medicinal herbs, cedar, lamp oil, spices, dried fish, garlic, herbs, pork, soy, mustard, and brewing tea, joss sticks burning, and the thick-sweet odor, like that of burning peanuts or orange peel, of opium smoke; from the shops the click of abacus or the high-raised voices of merchants and customers arguing; a gust of weird alien music from the Chinese Theater or the gambling clubs—clashing cymbals, flute, squeaking moon fiddle and butterfly harp; the singsong chanting of crib girls behind their lattice windows, an old woman wailing a Chinese lament, the steady click of gambling counters, the lilting dialects of Canton, Shanghai, and the other provinces of Old China; the rattle of dominoes and reek of tobacco from clay pipes drifting through an open window. Cobblers mended shoes in windows and on unused doorsteps, and cigar stands occupied niches no larger than a large dry-goods box. Jewelers worked in plain view of a street audience, drawing gold out into a wire, beating it into thin plates, or inserting jade into rings and hair ornaments, working over tiny lamps fed on nut-oil. Sidewalk food sellers camped in the alleys, cooking their wares over charcoal braziers, one little boy two-handedly tonging bao—rolls of steamed bread stuffed with some savory filling like shredded pork—out of a steaming pan; a tinsmith heated lead for soldering on one, and chair menders wove thin strips of bamboo into broken seats or worked at making willow deck-chairs whole again, both sitting on boxes to ply their trades; peddlers balanced their baskets on bending shoulder poles. Bankers in long, full sleeves, with fingernails sometimes so long that they curled like an eagle's talons, traced accounts in paper-covered books with a brush dipped into incredibly thick ink, or added them up by virtue of rows of bright balls strung on thick wire. Grave gentlemen surveyed the world through eyeglasses in heavy tortoise-shell frames, cobblers in fur earmuffs bent over their lasts, boys played shuttlecock with their heels, and merchants sat awaiting customers in lovely coats of quilted plum-colored silk, smoking their brass-and-enamel water-pipes, in which they burned tobacco mixed with nut-oil that imparted a curious odor to anything with which it came in contact. Through the throng wove soup vendors calling their wares and bakers peddling cakes. Most of the Chinese on view were men, but here and there could be seen serving women out shopping for their mistresses, and once in a great while a lady of quality, almost always attended, teetering on her "lily feet," dressed in azure-blue and apple-green silk, rings of jade and strings of seed-pearls, or a young girl with her hair in a betrothal knot. There were Caucasians too, surprisingly many of them, some browsing the shops, others bound for the tea-houses and restaurants to enjoy a snack or light meal according to the Cantonese custom; the Chinese had been in the restaurant trade in the city since the first days of the Rush, and San Franciscans had enjoyed their food thoroughly from their first experience of it.

Little tables of fruits and nuts jammed the sidewalks, and networks of clotheslines displayed fluttering laundry. Sidewalk vendors of all sorts of small wares operated from boxes and foldout wooden benches. Restaurants flew distinctive three-cornered pennants of yellow silk. Everyone cooked, not in fireplaces or over stoves—there were scarcely any of either in the neighborhood, except in the laundries, where circular stoves were used to heat the sadirons; even then, many such establishments preferred to use the beautifully-chased little copper and brass irons that were filled with charcoal—but over open fires in the lanes and alleys, or on gleaming beds of charcoal, usually in a brick bench laid in mud or mortar and set on a balcony or before a window. A bolt of royal-blue silk shimmered beneath the branches of a jade tree in a shop window; grocery stores and herb shops displayed bottles of preserved chicken or snakes or dried seahorses, platters of crooked ginger root, green mongo beans, candied melon rind, lichee nuts, and sugared strips of coconut; bakeries offered cakes stuffed with rice or sesame seed or bits of pork or chopped hazelnuts, and once the trio passed a market displaying everything from live rabbits and quacking ducks and squawking chickens, through here and there fat geese stuffed to breathless obesity, to dried fish bellies and a case of steel-gray squid with staring golden eyes. Handcarts of shrieking, flapping chickens wove their way through the press, and small boys pursued fugitive pigs under the very feet of passersby. A clothier's rubbed elbows with a sidewalk fruit-and-vegetable cart filled with produce from cabbages to apples to oranges.

In a class by themselves were the old-fashioned apothecaries' shops, some consisting merely of a pine-plank counter laid across two barrels and a hundred-drawer chest of mahogany or black lacquer behind it, others conventionally indoors, each with its rows of brass-handled red-lacquer boxes, its rich carvings, its teakwood chairs ranged against the walls beneath botanical prints. The Chinese could neither afford the services of white doctors nor communicate well with them, so they fell back on the traditional herb shops of their native land, which typically carried over 2000 substances ranging from birds' nests to rare roots, including sharks' fins and virginal deer antlers, dates and sea slugs, barks, berries, flowers, moss, nuts, dried scallops and mushrooms and seahorses, withered toads on wooden crosses, and one of the most popular, ginseng root, considered the "king of herbs" for its ability to both relax and invigorate. The shop owner, somewhat like a pharmacist, could recommend a prescription for minor ailments, while in cases of more serious symptoms, the sufferer betook himself to an herb doctor, who, on the basis of a pulse diagnosis, issued a prescription to be taken to the herb shop and filled.

The barber shops were marked by a four-legged frame with green legs, topped by red knobs. Every self-respecting Chinaman went to one to be shaved every ten or fifteen days—for they were little inclined to facial hair. More important than shaving the face was the scraping back of the forehead by several inches, the washing and scraping of the skin from the shoulders upward, the washing, combing, oiling, and braiding (with an intertwining of red silk if the customer was a dandy) of the queue, the cleaning of the eyes and ears and nose. Fifteen cents was the standard charge. Every available space was plastered eight or nine feet up from the ground with signs and posters lettered in Chinese—newspapers, announcements, and tong proclamations on vermilion paper, which offered bounty money for the killing of such-and-such a person, always with some kind of justification. Owing debts, however, was not a justification. The tongs wanted debts to themselves paid, and dead men didn't pay off debts. A certain amount of "making uncomfortable," yes, but never real harm. And no tong would ever dare to put a public bounty on a white; despite lurid tales to the contrary, the city's Chinese had wit enough never to molest a Caucasian. They valued a low profile and had no desire to instigate a purge of their district. They murdered each other with near impunity, but a single instance of kidnap, let alone killing, could have brought the ax down on all of Chinatown—and well they knew it.

It was a din and a dazzle such as Jess had never known in his life, something even more outside his experience than San Francisco itself had been, and he reacted as his past urged him, putting on his tightest poker face and trying to watch all ways at once. These people, though he had no real prejudice against them, seemed more alien than any other breed of humanity he had ever encountered—even Indians—and his instinct was to be prepared for either mutual defense or some threat to Slim, who—as he had known since Vernal, though he hadn't said so out loud—was his brother. Yet no one offered the threesome any indignity: certainly they attracted notice—white people were not unfamiliar here, but white people dressed in range fashion and visibly armed were another matter—but that was as far as it went.

Flint brought them to a clean, quiet, dimly-lit restaurant patronized by what was apparently the best class of Chinese—plump, chatty, and cheerful. The room itself was hung with bright tapestries and gorgeous lamps of ebony and silk painted with shadowy Mandarin figures, and the woodwork was thick with ornate swirls and curlicues. Jess half expected the scout to address the waiter in Chinese, but instead he used a combination of signs and elementary English to get his point across, and soon the three men were tucking into a five-course meal—won ton soup to begin, then steamed fish done with brown beans, ginger, and seasoning, chicken with mushrooms, boneless spareribs sweet and sour with green peppers and pineapple, and a dessert of egg-custard tarts and steamed pears with honey, besides an array of exotic side dishes—fried rice, egg rolls, Chinese green beans, glazed carrots, chilled melon fruit salad. Cost per diner, only thirty-five cents. "The secret to enjoying Chinese food," Flint said, "is to eat the rice—all of it. That's what fills you up."

Despite his early doubts, Jess found all the food quite enjoyable, and this and the lack of any untoward gestures by the locals went a long way toward making him feel less on edge. After a time he said, "What about this Barbary Coast I've heard tell about? Where's that at?"

Flint gave him a look that immediately reminded him of some of Slim's. "I don't recommend the place," he said, "but it's not far from here—just northeast, actually. I guess if you really want to have a look at it, daylight's the best time to go, though there's a lot less action then—but that's all to the good."

"Can't be no worse than some trail towns I been to," said Jess—a supposition he was later to wish he could retract.

The scout sighed. "Fools rush in," he murmured, and looked at Slim: "I don't suppose you can head him off?"

Slim shook his head. "When Jess gets a notion fixed in his mind, it would take nitroglycerin to get it out again. The only way to change his opinion is to let him see for himself how he was wrong and why."

"Well, all right, then," Flint agreed. "At least there are three of us and we're armed, so we can look after one another. One thing to keep in mind: no matter what you do, don't take a drink…"

---

6. A Friend on the Coast

For all its exoticism and the railings of reformers, Chinatown had no monopoly on immorality. San Francisco in the '60's had been a paradise of prostitution with a red-light district larger than those in cities many times its size, and little had changed since decade's end. In so rich a city there were bound to be plenty of better-grade bordellos, of which many were celebrated for their costly and ornate furnishings as well as the professional skill of their inmates; moreover they were usually honest in their dealings with customers, the picking of pockets and slugging of gentlemen in wine being frowned upon. The melodeons and variety halls of the Barbary Coast, on the other hand, attracted a class of roughs and no-goods. This notorious hive of gambling hells, bordellos, gin mills, beer cellars, seedy taverns, honky-tonks, blowzy boardinghouses, and unsavory saloons ran along six or eight blocks of Pacific and Kearny Streets and Broadway—ironically less than a dozen blocks from the fashionable shops and luxury hotels—and centered around Pacific Street near the waterfront, under Telegraph Hill. It was a place of danger, intrigue, and debauchery that had gained its name around 1860, when a sailor drinking in one of its resorts raised his glass with the toast, "Here's to the Barbary Coast, where if the whiskey don't knock you out, the harlots and hoodlums will." He had borrowed the name of the pirate-infested North African coast of an earlier day, but it stuck, and by mid-decade was in common use throughout the city as well as elsewhere. Here swarthy old salts, crowding into dark, smoky groggeries, could spin tales from one end of the Pacific to the other—and have a pretty good time, if they kept their wits about them and avoided the bludgeoning blackjack or the subtler knockout drops (not yet called "Mickey Finns"). Here unwary sailors (and landsmen) might be served the proverbial chloral hydrate and shanghaied, or an unsuspecting maiden (or semblance thereof) could be sold into what wasn't yet popularly called white slavery.

The district had probably begun in the early '50's, when a flood of ruffianly veterans of the frontier towns of Australia, joined by escaped convicts and ticket-of-leave men from New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, began to arrive in San Francisco, where they became known as "the Sydney Ducks," and where the more enterprising spirits among them took over the flimsy frame and brick buildings of the old Chilean neighborhood and began opening lodging houses, dance halls, groggeries, and taverns there. By 1860 the area had already been cleaned out twice by the Vigilantes, but after the Second Committee disbanded in '56 it once again began to grow with dives, gambling halls, and houses of prostitution, as the very factors that contributed to San Francisco's progress—growth as a seaport, commercial activity, and perhaps not least the extraordinary richness of the nearby Comstock—not only opened it to a new flood of criminals, but so occupied the citizens, now busy and prosperous, with their own affairs that a third uprising became ever less likely. By '62 old Sydney Town and its environs were again notable for dives, dance halls, and depravity, and the region's transformation into its current incarnation had begun.

The name "Barbary Coast" was eventually applied to the entire area—including the red-light district—where criminals and prostitutes congregated. Its limits fluctuated over the years as periodic spasms of civic virtue and the encroachments of residential and business development nibbled away at its edges, but for fifty-odd years forty blocks bounded by East Street along the bay, Dupont to the west, Broadway on the north and Commercial to the south were to comprise not only the West Coast's busiest port, but a transient home to thousands of sailors, and a district infamous for both revelry and mayhem. Its most iniquitous features were concentrated within a rectangle enclosed by Washington, Montgomery, and Stockton Streets (respectively on the south, east, and west) and Broadway (on the north). Within this area were also innumerable alleys, many of them dead ends, the more notorious of which included Murder Point and Hinckley, Pinckley, Bartlett, China, Dupont, Sullivan, Bull Run, Moketown, and Dead Man's.

Though steamships, as long as the coal held out, could keep going regardless of the wind and follow courses requiring a minimum of sea-miles regardless of the weather, they were no more efficient labor-wise than the wind-driven craft. A sailship usually ran a crew of twenty-eight to thirty-five, including, at minimum, the master, First, Second and Third Officers, a steward, cook, ship's carpenter, bo's'n, and about twenty able-seamen and ship's boys. If the ship had an engine, it actually needed a few more personnel to work below decks. Moreover, since there were no coaling stations in the middle of the ocean, steam was most efficient for coastwise work and routes plying the Caribbean isles; in the earliest days, a ship on a long course had to devote a great deal of her storage space to bulky fuel, which, of course, cut down on the amount left free for cargo, and so diminished profits. Around 1868, therefore, the sea lanes had begun to see more and more of the so-called "hybrid ships," which carried both sail (considered more reliable and economical) and steam (providing greater speed and, especially in the tropics, more dependable power). The smaller compound engine, which operated on about half the fuel of previous kinds and thus meant less space for coal and more for freight, and the more efficient screw propeller had both begun to appear during the war, kicking off a boom in steam-craft construction. And with the completion of the Suez Canal in '69, steamers were becoming the freight carrier of choice.

Still, sail was far from dead, and indeed, three-masted square-riggers would still be built into the late '80's—and used commercially right through the 1920's. By the beginning of this decade, immense crops of wheat had been flowing from the bountiful San Joaquin Valley into San Francisco. There was strong European demand for the grain, and Scottish shipbuilders on the River Clyde were inspired to surpass Americans in the development of steel-hulled sailing vessels. Besides their greater durability and cargo capacity, such craft could be rigged as barks, which required less crew than a ship rig, having a minimum sixteen sails to the latter's nineteen, and proportionately less in the way of ropes. They became known as the "grain fleet," and for thirty years they were to carry the lion's share of world cargo. They regularly sailed from Europe around the Horn to San Francisco, on to Australia, and back to Europe, although many confined themselves to the Europe-California circuit, eager to get the wheat to market before it could spoil.

A ship built on the Clyde, of course, could be bought by anyone who had the money, and many an American firm did exactly that. But the working crews of American ships were no longer the eager native youths who had manned the earlier merchant marine. In his heyday the American seaman had been well-paid and enterprising, and with his colorful, distinctive outfit, from shiny hat to bell-bottomed "dungarees," he was "the best-dressed of mankind," according to Emerson. The tender hearts that followed every American ship out of port had expectations on which they could reasonably hope to capitalize; "Jack" was a freeman with decent wages and a career before him. Young men starting as common sailors quickly rose, in that explosively expanding trade, to command their own vessels; one Beverly skipper who began as a foremast hand on a ship out of Salem recalled that every one of his mates, in a crew of thirteen, had risen to become a master, and many an ambitious boy did so in his teens or early twenties, gaining prestige and frequently fortune while still young. By 1850 such lads had just about passed into history, as ships were owned far less often by their captains and more by entrepreneurial landsmen who accumulated large fleets. The forecastles of the packets and clippers housed a mixed breed who worked at cheap labor: deserters from French, Dutch, Greek, Italian, German, Scandinavian, Russian, and Spanish ships, many of whom barely understood the orders they were given; "packet rats," the highest quality seamen of the lot, English-, Irish-, or Welshmen who'd sailed on the packet ships running between American and English ports, wild, rough, dirty, uncouth and ignorant, understanding no law but force, yet superb sailors who feared neither wind nor weather; and a few professional fo'c's'le hands of American birth who, for one reason or another, had never made it to the quarterdeck and consequently were generally of a resentful character—"sea lawyers," great talkers and arguers who caused much discontent among the crew. Often they were involuntarily shanghaied into service because no self-respecting American youth would now stand the gaff of brutal masters and mates, low pay, and the relentless demands of a hard, routine performance—not when the workshops of New England, the prairies of the Midwest, the mines of the distant West Coast, and now the cattle trade offered brighter chances. Shipmasters couldn't or wouldn't compete with these better opportunities, and a peculiar type of sailor vanished from the sea. Yet more men were needed than ever before, and they were recruited by fair means and foul, often through ruse or force, and kept at their dangerous tasks, if need be, by threat of a belaying pin or heaver in the hands of a tough "bucko mate." Frequent juries of landsmen were called upon to decide whether mutiny or abuse of authority had caused a fracas at sea. When a ship was manned by a dissolute, fractious crew and ruled by demanding, despotic officers, it was usually impossible to fix blame.

The ordinary pay for a common sailor was twenty-five to thirty dollars a month, less any gear he might need to purchase from his ship's "slop chest," and, like a cowboy, he got his food (such as it was) and lodging for free. Also like a cowboy, at least when a roundup or trail drive was in hand, his days were long: twelve-hour workdays were normal for everyone in the crew, and if an emergency arose, like a gale or the breakdown of vital gear, all hands of both watches turned to till the problem was cleared up. But sailors, unlike cowboys, weren't paid once a month: not until the ship had completed her voyage and dropped anchor in her home port—a period that could stretch from four months to as many years—did they see a penny of their earnings, apart from anything their captain might advance them in the way of pocket money while in port. If they deserted, they forfeited the entire amount owed them.

And shipmasters, unlike ranchers and foremen, didn't give much attention to their men's rights or comforts, possibly because a sailor couldn't simply draw his pay, saddle up his personal horse, and move on if he decided he didn't like it where he was; his only hope was to wait until the vessel made port, then go over the side and hope to find a better craft on which to work his way home. The work was monotonous and back-breakingly hard, the hours long and the environment cramped and sometimes foul and abusive. Sail changes were constantly having to be made, lines and gear checked over every watch. The "standing rigging"—shrouds, stays, backstays, and the like—was made of hemp, which stretched readily as the sun dried it, and needed constant "setting up," or tightening. Painted trim had to be rubbed with damp canvas and fine sand until it was smooth as velvet. Rigging had to be tarred, ratlines overhauled, new lines reeved off, chafing gear made and installed, old rope picked into oakum, the anchor chain overhauled and painted. There was seizing, worming, parceling and serving—dozens of jobs of "sailorizing." And if the decks weren't absolutely clean, they had to be holystoned—which meant getting down on hands and knees with a porous stone about the size of a Bible, and scouring them with sand as an abrasive until they were white. The crew's quarters in the forecastle were cramped and uncomfortable, wet in heavy weather, unbearably hot and stuffy in the tropics, ill-lit, vermin-infested, and with no facilities for hanging clothes neatly or drying them when wet; all a sailor's poor possessions were stored in his sea chest, where they were soaked if the forecastle flooded, as it often did in rough seas. The food, though adequate in volume, was monotonous and incompetently prepared, where any cattleman knew that a good cook could make or break his crew. The wonder wasn't, then, that men deserted or mutinied; it was that they ever went to sea at all.

The men who sailed most of the ships that entered San Francisco Bay had been a long time at sea—two years, maybe three. They were sick of the sea, sick of the bad, inadequate food, sick of the cursing martinets who ran the ships. They wanted to forget it all in a gaudy pageant of wine, women, and song—and if they could get enough wine and women, to hell with the song. Naïvely, they all believed they could get drunk the quickest, stay that way longest, and enjoy the most glamorous whores at the lowest prices on the Barbary Coast. Many of them got to enjoy none of these. Minutes after they reached shore, they were hit on the head with a heavy club or dosed with a drugged drink, and when they were kicked awake the next day, they were miles at sea again, bound for Singapore, or perhaps a three-year whaling cruise. Frequently this was the only way the rough, hard-driving masters could get a crew at all. Certain voyages were difficult to staff even when men were available: the run from San Francisco to the Chinese city of Shanghai, for example, was unloved because there were no ships sailing directly between the two; usually you had to ship all the way around the world to make it home to San Francisco, which could easily take more than a year. Thus the term.

The business had begun as early as 1849, and inside three years there were nearly two dozen gangs more or less openly engaged in it. From San Francisco it spread to other ports, reaching New York within a decade. By now it was down to a science. The moment a ship appeared in the Bay, it was immediately swarmed upon by boats filled with "runners" representing the sailors' boardinghouses. By plying the crewmen with doped cigars or jazzed-up gin, or promising them free board and unlimited supplies of free liquor, plus harems of desirable and willing drinking companions, they sought to entice them ashore—an effort in which the master would often collude by making conditions especially harsh before entering port, for if a sailor left ship before his term was up, he lost his entire wage. The sailors, hustled overboard and rowed ashore, were taken to these places, which were grouped along lower Pacific Street and around the corner on Davis, where policemen walking the beat carried knives a foot or more long in their breast pockets, as being faster to draw than pistols. Sometimes they were hijacked on the way by other men's runners, a specialty in which one fellow known as the Shanghai Chicken, who worked (not illogically) for Shanghai Kelly, was particularly adept, until he was hung for murder late in 1871.

Once in the boardinghouse, the first drink served the unfortunate sailors was a tumbler-full of equal parts brandy, whiskey, and gin, with a dash of opium, or sometimes laudanum or chloral hydrate. After a couple of these, a seaman generally didn't care about much of anything, but if he did, he was worked over with a billy. Before he knew it, he was dropped through a trapdoor, flung into a boat, and rowed out through a maze of piers to a ship that needed a crew. The crimper—as the supplier of said crew was called—received twenty to thirty dollars a head, sometimes up to a hundred (or, in the '50's, as much as three times that, owing to the temptations of the gold fields) if demand was high, plus whatever he managed to steal from the sailor, and often an advance on two months of the victim's pay, which was entered on the ship's books as reimbursement for getting him a job (whether he wanted one or not). This amount was theoretically to be paid to the sailor himself upon his signing the ship's articles, so he could outfit himself rather than having to depend on the slop chest, but much more generally it went into the pocket of the crimp, ostensibly in payment for lodging and other shore expenses. These gains were split with the runner, who usually got three to five dollars per man; in busy seasons he could earn as much as $500 to $800 a week, and many a boardinghouse master banked $50,000 a year clear profit over a long period.

Assuming he escaped the crimpers, the sailor found the houses no sanctuary: there he was routinely robbed, his gear seized, and his bills outrageously padded with invented charges till he was so hopelessly in debt that ship's masters in search of a crew had little difficulty signing him on by simply paying off what he owed, which meant that he basically forfeited the entire proceeds of the voyage he was about to begin. Additionally, in San Francisco at least, some ship captains made arrangements with the owners of the secondhand-clothing stores, where sailors purchased most of their supplies, to pay any bills contracted by members of their crews; the storekeeper would charge exorbitant prices for everything and occasionally advance the sailor a few dollars in spending money, which he would then pad by two or three times on the bill. Just before the ship sailed, the captain would pay the amount demanded, deduct it from the seaman's future pay, and usually get a share of the graft for his cooperation.

And if a man got through the runners, the clothing merchants, and the boardinghouse gang still standing, he faced the entrapments of the gin mills, dance halls, bordellos, and melodeons, where customers nautical and otherwise were treated to rotgut laced with laudanum, opium, or chloral hydrate, clobberings with belaying pins, billy clubs, slung shots, or bungstarters, fleecings, and sometimes even murder if there was enough profit in it. The trapdoor in the floor sent many an unsuspecting reveler, drink still in hand, hurtling into the black hole beneath it, thence to be lugged, anesthetized, to some hellship gathering a crew, regardless of his actual profession. Specialists developed in dealing with whalers, greenhorn farmers, various ethnicities, and other distinguishing categories.

Most sailors were more or less stupid, hulking brutes of scant sensitivity and little intelligence; held under iron discipline aboard ship and accustomed to brutality from their officers, they naturally expected the same sort of treatment from everyone else and were seldom disappointed. They also had no legal rights that anyone, including the authorities, recognized, and no idea of how to obtain justice even if it had occurred to them that they were entitled to any. Since there was no clamor for better treatment from them, and they had no advocates ashore with sufficient power to force changes, the custom of, in effect, enslaving them had become established quite quickly once the old system of captaincy/ownership and promotion from fo'c's'le to quarterdeck declined in popularity. There were plenty of state and city laws under which the activities of crimpers and runners could have been curtailed or even prevented, including one of the latter that imposed a hundred-dollar fine on any person who boarded a vessel without the captain's consent—but little or no attention was ever paid to them, for the politicians and city officials protected the trade just as they did purveyors of sin in Chinatown and on the Coast.

There were at least a dozen prominent crimpers at the apex of the port's pyramid, besides many lesser ones. Two of the most villainous—the Amazonian Mother Bronson of Steuart Street and the more diminutive Miss Piggott of Davis Street—were female. Jim Laflin, known as "Jimmy the Drummer," had begun as a cabin boy on the three-master Arkansas, served as bartender when she was converted to the Old Ship Ale House, become a "runner" on the Coast in 1850, and from there worked his way up to crimper, a nefarious trade he would follow till his wealthy death at age seventy-three. Laflin, Bob Pinner, Horeseshoe Brown, and Shanghai Brown all ran saloons known for shanghaiing sailors and landsmen alike. A notorious Chileño known as Calico Jim operated a notoriously dangerous place at Battery Point. Others, like the German George Roeben, operated boardinghouses where they maintained a room-board-and-liquor tab for their seafaring clients and shipped them out to cover what they owed. But the king of all crimpers was James "Shanghai" Kelly, he of the fiery red beard and temper to match, who kept a boarding house on and later ran the Boston House at the corner of Davis and Chambers. His saloon was said to have three trapdoors through which unconscious sailors—whether drugged or knocked on the head—were dumped and then spirited away to waiting ships. It was said that Chinatown cigarmakers made up special brands for him, laced with opium, to give to unsuspecting Sailor Jack, and that he shipped out corpses and even, once, a cigar-store Indian. Curiously, it wasn't always necessary for him to resort to violence or subterfuge in order to acquire his "merchandise;" certainly he did it when he had to, but many sailors put themselves in his power of their own accord and with full knowledge of the fate that awaited them, because he provided them with free liquor and free women and permitted any sort of debauchery a man might fancy—and men who had been several years at sea could come ashore with very exotic ideas. He preferred to deal in bona fide sailors, partly because they were more docile and there was seldom any risk of reprisal no matter how they were treated, but if it proved necessary to fill out a crew, he would shanghai whoever fell into his hands—and, for a price, he would shanghai any man whose enemies wanted him out of the way. He was to remain active through the '70's—until he was shanghaied himself, and ended up in Peru, where he was supposedly shot by one of his former runners. In any case, after that, San Francisco saw him no more.

Though it was impossible to keep any accurate record, the annual turnover of shanghaied sailors out of San Francisco must have been several thousand. Yet not every visitor to the Coast ended up at sea. Foreign shipmasters wanted nothing to do with the crimpers, and indeed unless taken off by force (as was sometimes known to happen), their crews often resisted the blandishments of runners. The "old salt," a figure uncommon on American ships except in the fishing fleets, was still frequently met with under other flags, which suggested that such crews were better treated (if perhaps little better paid) and therefore likely to sign on willingly for the homeward voyage. Many men were given shore leave by their captains and returned to their ships when it expired; others ended their voyage in San Francisco and were paid off there; and others again deserted of their own accord and came in contact with the boardinghouse masters (through whom the great majority of sailors, even if not shanghaied, were shipped) and the crimp-on-the-side resort owners only when their money was gone and they were ready to ship out again. There were also honest drinking places such as seven-foot-tall, 300-pound-plus Olaf Frisson's saloon in Harrison Street, much frequented by officers and men from Norwegian ships, on whose premises shanghaiing was verboten. Some establishments catered particularly to Scandinavians, some to Germans, Englishmen, or Frenchmen, and perhaps a score to Negroes.

The section of northern waterfront stretching from Pacific Avenue to Filbert Street had, during the Gold Rush, been second only to the Barbary Coast as a hotbed of shanghaiing, and was still infamous, with Miss Piggott's saloon and lodging house being one of the most notorious resorts. Even resorts that didn't cater to captains in need of crews were likely to relieve the customers of their cash with "pretty waiter girls," bunco plays, and rigged games of chance. Yet there were also scores of dance halls and famous saloons that were honest enough, the latter including the Balboa, the Foam, the Bowhead, the Grizzly Bear, and Sverdrup's, all on East Street, which provided sailors and miners a decent place to drink and a fair return for their investment. And then there were the places frequented by ships' officers, most of which were located well away from the Coast—the Bank Exchange, the Cottage Bar on Stevenson Street, John Denny's grocery and saloon at Salmon and Pacific Streets, which was also a noted political rendezvous, the Cobweb Palace, and the Martin & Horton saloon on Clay near Montgomery. At the last the free lunch was unexcelled and liquor especially cheap, and in the years 1875-83 one of its most infamous patrons was to be a shy little man who tended to sit unobtrusively at the back of the room. That no one molested him was proved by the fact that he was, in fact, Black Bart, the very successful highway bandit who held up stages in northern California with an unloaded gun (to the tune of sometimes thousands of dollars a year) and always left behind a bit of poetry signed "Black Bart the PO8."

Likewise legitimate were the concert saloons like the Eureka, the Olympic, the Pacific, the Adelphi, Gilbert's, Bert's New Idea, and the Bella Union, the last of which, on Kearny Street between Washington and Jackson, was probably the most popular resort that ever operated on the Coast, crowded practically every night. It had begun as a gambling saloon, then become a melodeon—a term, derived from the mechanical reed organs which had formerly provided music for the shows in such places, that was the local name for a burlesque saloon providing liquor and theatrical diversion, featuring bawdy songs, skits, and dances by a string of comedians and singers and a chorus of cancan dancers. Though located on the Barbary Coast, it catered to all strata of local society and featured all manner of performances both high and low. It was the favorite haunt of the young bloods of the town whenever they wanted to see a bit of life in the raw (or what they thought of as such)—as recently as 1869 the Call had observed "young men of respectable family connections" among the patronage—and no sailor considered his San Francisco shore leave complete unless he managed a visit there. It had stood at the same address since 1849, though not in the same building: the fires of the '50's had burned it repeatedly, but new quarters had been raised each time, the most recent in 1868. Lotta Crabtree had played there during the Gold Rush, and a local character known as Oofty Goofty had made a famously ludicrous attempt to portray the male lead in Romeo and Juliet. It was currently operating as a melodeon under the ownership of one Samuel Tetlow, who had been running it since '56. The Bella Union and its fellows were somewhat more respectable than most of the other places on the Coast; their shows were coarse and vulgar, but not particularly obscene, and the owners made an effort to have notable performers appear in them. They had no dancing and no "waiter girls," and drugging and robbing were discouraged. Each customer in these places paid from twelve and a half to fifty cents admission, and they derived their revenue chiefly from that and the sale of liquor, although the female performers were required to hustle drinks in between appearances on stage, and in the curtained boxes that were a feature of each house they were permitted to do whatever in their judgment might persuade a reluctant customer to buy.

At first, as Flint had suggested, Slim and Jess found the quarter relatively somnolent. During the daylight hours, it was a maritime district of cargo warehouses, ships' chandleries, and auction houses. The streets were crowded enough, with seamen, sports, gamblers, pickpockets, swindlers, and roaming prostitutes. But for all that, at this hour things were quiet, almost orderly. Less than a third as many predators and their prey prowled the streets as could be found there after sundown. Some of the more notorious gambling dens and parlor houses were open for business, along with the more scabrous cribs and deadfalls, but they were thinly populated. And the nighttime babel of pianos, hurdy-gurdies, drunken laughter, the cries of shills and barkers, and the shouts and screams of victims was mostly absent too. The worst of the rapacious were creatures of the night, and it was during the dark hours that most of their victims—mainly sailors off the ships anchored along East Street—succumbed to the gaudy lure of sin and wickedness. Not until darkness settled were a man's valuables—and in some parts of the Coast, his life—in genuine jeopardy.

Drawn by the two cattlemen's curiousity to see in person the ships they'd read about, they made their way down to East Street and walked along the waterfront. To one side was a bewildering thicket of towering masts with their mazes of rigging and longitudinal bundles of reefed sail, seagulls and pigeons perching on the yards, bowsprits drawing undulating lines of shadow on the cobblestones below, pulleys and ropes and yardarms casting crisscrossing ones, men working in the rigging reduced to inky silhouettes by height and sunshine, colorful figureheads suspended above the docks, tall placards announcing the name and destination of those craft being readied to set out; to the other, three- and four-storey buildings, signs and doors and awnings, stacks of crates and pyramids of barrels, men pushing barrows and heaving casks; and everywhere the polyglot babel of languages, the exotic smells of foreign cargoes, and the sailors in their coarse jeans or bell-bottomed trousers with a front fall, their striped or solid-colored pullover jerseys, broad brass-buckled leather belts, knitted caps, and short, heavy pea-jackets of closely woven dark blue cloth. The sailors for their part eyed the trio warily, registered their confident air and prominent handguns, and left them alone.

But before they knew it, dusk was beginning to settle over the piers and wharves, and as the longshoremen ended their day and headed for home, the visitors found that the place gave them what Jess called "the fan-tods." Less in quest of entertainment than in an effort to get away from the shadowy, sinister, gradually more deserted environment, they began moving inland, and now the duo from Wyoming discovered indeed how the Coast had gained its reputation. In the evening the district transformed into a seductive siren, with many of the businesses along its streets employing everything from solo piano players to small orchestras to draw the customer inside.

When they first turned off East Street, it was onto Jackson, which led them half a dozen blocks inland past establishments so gaudy that their come-ons were actually off-putting, even to Jess, who had lived a far rougher life than either of his companions. But when they noticed a fair number of well-dressed young men in city garb all going approximately the same way, even Slim was intrigued, and by following these apparently incongruous visitors, who somewhat reminded them of themselves, they found their way to the door of the Bella Union, where the handbills posted outside seemed not dissimilar to those of the variety shows they had all seen in saloons and dance halls. The performers were apparently members of a single company, which called itself Cropper's English Folly, and beneath their name were listed a good fifteen separate acts, with much emphasis on sketches, "specialties," and "comic songs." The performance was advertised as beginning "at 7 o'clock precisely." Jess reached into his vest for his watch and held it out for Slim to see; there was about ten minutes till curtain time.

This doesn't seem too bad, thought Slim critically, noticing the quality of dress of many of the patrons. "Want to give it a try, Jess?" he asked.

The Texan grinned and shrugged. "Why not? Ain't like we was back in Laramie and had to be respectable relay operators all the time."

Jess knew concert saloons well enough; they weren't common in smaller towns like Laramie, which tended to drinking-saloons-cum-gambling-houses and dance halls, but any large city, like Denver, or trailhead, like Dodge, would have them. As the name suggested, they were basically bars with mid-size stages that offered "low-grade entertainment" in the form of bands, piano players, dancers, singers, acrobats, minstrel shows, burlesque (which meant, in that day, an impudent satire of conventional stage and literary forms, especially grand opera and romantic melodrama, with music and humor that included plenty of double entendres and raunchy behavior, and since 1860 or so bevies of scantily dressed female dancers, from which they had come to be called "leg shows"), and even an occasional genuine concert. The shows they presented tended to be on the rough side, patronized chiefly by men, and some few women of questionable reputation, with on the side dancing and liquor, but the real attraction was the best-advertised part of the setup, the "abandoned women," called "waiter girls," employed to serve "cheap drinks" to the patrons while they enjoyed the entertainment. Most often the raunchiest part of the show was likely to be the high-kicking, leg-baring cabaret dance called the can-can or the closely related clodoche, both generally danced by half a dozen girls at a time and exposing chiefly rustling froufrou, a froth of dessous, batiste bloomers, elaborate garters, and above them two fingers of real, white flesh. Some weren't even that shocking, confining themselves to variety entertainment such as gymnasts, contortionists, jugglers in pairs, tightrope artists, minstrel shows, animal acts, female trapeze artists, frequently magicians, and sometimes lecturers. Jess anticipated an enjoyable if slightly raunchy evening's entertainment, and that was exactly what he got.

They paid fifty cents apiece at the door—about the maximum such fee, had they known it—and entered a large barroom through which they followed the crowd of patrons apparently familiar with the place, to a rather attractive little theater-room at the back, with a circle of curtained boxes around the perimeter, tables in place of seats filling the central floor, and a badly painted drop curtain masking the stage. When it rose, as it did soon after they had found seats, they were presented with a sketch by three men and a woman, which according to a placard displayed beside the proscenium was an interpretation of Somnambulism. "What's that?" Jess demanded in confusion.

"Sleepwalking, now hush," said Slim.

Satisfied, Jess sat back to watch. The sketch was a bit raw, certainly not something a "respectable" woman would care to see, and not entirely to Slim's more puritanical tastes, but not as bad as he'd half expected, while Jess, once he understood the thrust of it, seemed both amused and intrigued. It was followed by a male-and-female song-and-dance team, an Irish comedian, a gymnast-contortionist, a female dance team, a magic-lantern exhibition, a comic singer, another skit (this one in blackface), a pair of aerialists (female and skimpily clad, but no worse than those in most circuses), a magician (rather good, Slim decided), a strongman, a mesmerist, a balladeer, and a company of female minstrels, interspersed with dancers, mostly quite pretty girls, who offered elboleros, cachuchas, Scotch flings, strathspeys, and a lively hornpipe, and female weightlifters and boxers in scanty, tight-fitting costumes. The comedy routines universally featured earthy, ribald humor revolving around sexual innuendo, and there was of course a troupe of suggestive female dancers in the French can-can tradition, since that was indispensable to any such presentation. Last came a presentation of tableaux vivants that included re-creations of Lagrénée's Venus and Nymphs Bathing, Devedeux's Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, Regnault's Pygmalion, Bonnemaison's Young Woman Overtaken by a Storm (why she had been out walking in a diaphanous off-one-shoulder drape that left few of her charms to the imagination was left to the viewer to work out for himself), and other paintings primarily by French artists of this and the previous century. Almost every act seemed to include at least one attractive female, and in between times they worked the audience, soliciting the purchase of drinks by the all-male patronage. "A bottle of champagne?" was the query of the first one who appeared at the threesome's table. "Only five dollars, now don't be stingy."

"It's not about stingy," Slim told her. "I've tried the stuff, and I can't say I care for it."

"Claret, then," the girl suggested. "Two-fifty."

This time it was Jess who gave a polite refusal. "Got to keep a clear head to enjoy the show," he said.

"At least a whiskey?"

This plea was addressed to McCullough, whose Southern gallantry responded immediately to the disappointed droop of her lips. "Three of 'em," he said. "How much?"

"Two and a quarter," said the waitress-performer, with renewed brightness. It was half again what they would have paid in the costliest resort in Laramie, but when she came back with her tray, it proved to have been worth the surcharge.

They made the liquor last, and while occasionally Slim, at least, felt just a bit discomfited at some of what went on, he admitted to himself that, on balance, it wasn't all that shocking. Outside again, the damp, salty breeze blowing in from the Bay cleared the cobwebs out of his head, and he said, "That wasn't half what I'd expected."

"Me either," Jess agreed. "Come on, hardcase, the night's young and we're on vacation, remember? Let's see what else this part of town's got to offer."

But as they continued their explorations, Slim began to think it hadn't been such a good idea to go along with his friend's suggestion. Most of the dance halls and concert saloons—which were virtually identical except that the former boasted a cleared central space for dancing and the latter didn't—were low-ceilinged, rectangular cellar rooms with a bar along one side and a stage at the end. Sailors, miners, and thrill seekers could choose from dozens of squalid dives, including Canterbury Hall, the Cock o' the Walk, the Every Man Welcome, Brook's Melodeon, and the Coliseum. Above many of these were the Coast's most sordid attraction, one or two floors of tent-like cribs where drug-addicted women and "pretty waiter girls"—so called regardless of age; the term had apparently originated in New York, where Slim had in fact first encountered it and where it was equally common—in low-cut bodices, very short skirts, high tasselled red boots, and no stockings sold themselves to lonely sailors seeking female companionship after months at sea. But even worse were the two blocks between Kearny and Stockton, which harbored some of the most sordid and crime-ridden saloons of the area. And northward, the east side of the block of Kearny between Pacific and Broadway, known as "Battle Row," was a mixture of about a dozen low-class dance halls, deadfalls, and brothels where the business was so blatant that the shades weren't even drawn; passersby could get a thrill by watching the activity inside. These parts of the Coast was remarkable chiefly for their sordid and vicious character, and scarcely a day passed in which each of them wasn't the scene of at least one robbery and half a dozen brawls, many of which ended fatally. The northern limits of the quarter were marked by a row of Mexican fandango houses on Broadway (ironically just across from the county jail)—particularly disreputable joints where the favorite dance was a very torchy version of the eponymous Mexican one, accompanied by guitar.

The "waiter girls," and the women who performed in the melodeons and concert halls, were paid on about the same basis, the latter (most of whom had very little real talent, although the customers didn't seem to care) being required to sell liquor in between their appearances on stage and, in most resorts, to be sexually available to any man who wanted them. For this they received from $15 to $25 a week, a twenty per cent commission on the liquor they sold, half the proceeds of their prostitution if carried on during their hours of employment, and half the income from their dancing, which varied from ten to fifty cents a turn. Generally speaking, except in the tonier resorts, their first duty was to determine whether a drinker or dance partner had any considerable amount of money, and if he did, the whole machinery of the place was set in motion to extract it from him. As long as he spent freely and drank heavily, he was unmolested, but if he once displayed an inclination to keep his purse closed, or a restlessness that might hint at planned departure, he was immediately drugged. If he survived that, and was both husky and pugnacious, he was allowed to depart, but as he made his unsteady way through the narrow passage that was almost invariably the only way in or out, he would be clubbed senseless, robbed, and rolled into the gutter.

Coast business clustered largely around slop shops, cheap clothing stores, pawnshops, gambling dens, booze parlors, bawdy houses, and lewd entertainment. Pacific, the heart of old Sydney Town, was likewise the heart of the Coast, and among the establishments that lined it there were only three kinds that could be considered legitimate, all of them closed for the night: a couple of restaurants, the cheap-john clothing stores that catered principally to sailors and fleeced them unmercifully with shoddy and worthless merchandise, and a few auction places where goods of all sorts were disposed of at prices far above their actual worth. Otherwise, the four blocks from East Street to Kearny were almost wall to wall with the highest concentration of the quarter's dance halls, concert saloons, brothels, cheap groggeries, "deadfalls" (beer and wine dens which were the lowest grade of the establishments, with no entertainment at all), and melodeons. A few places that catered primarily to Mexicans and blacks featured obscene poses by "finely formed females."

The single block bounded by Front, Pacific, Davis, and Jackson Streets was the waterfront section of the Coast and a mean, violent part of town, especially after dark, with two of the more notorious saloon/boardinghouses—Shanghai Kelly's and Miss Piggott's—being located there, the one at 33 Pacific and the other on Davis near Jackson. Near Murderer's Corner and Dead Man's Alley, "ropers" guided unsuspecting sailors and slummers into "tigers' lairs," gambling joints where as long as they spent freely they were left alone. But as soon as they slowed or staggered helplessly from liquor, the "capper" would finish them off with a drugged drink or a blackjack. The Whale (not the same as the one south of Market) was as tough a barroom as San Francisco ever boasted; the most famous criminals of the time could frequently be found there, since for the most part even the police were afraid to enter. The Cowboy's Rest, on Pacific Street near Kearny, was little better. Sailors, miners, crooks, country boys, and unwise tourists from every global cranny, in search of women and liquor or simply eager to satisfy their curiosity, packed the Moro, the Thunderbolt, the Boar's Head, the Nymphia, the So Different (a.k.a. "Nigger" Purcell's), the Fierce Grizzly, Parenti's, Cowboy Mag's, the Thalia, Fat Daugherty's, the O.K., the Hippodrome, the Crutch, Spider Kelly's, and the Dew-Drop-Inn, and "nymphs du pavé" haunted the dark alleyways. Strumpets serviced their customers in the very alleys. The area crawled with street toughs and enforcers known as "Rangers," a term applied to anyone actively involved in any of the sordid businesses of the Coast, but here meaning chiefly a set of ruthless thieves whose favorite sport was to roll a drunk or "jayhawk a webfoot"—meaning rob a newly arrived Oregonian. Hardly a night passed, especially during the two decades 1860-80, when there wasn't at least one murder and innumerable robberies in the district, and the police dared not enter alone or without pistol and truncheon; every officer assigned to waterfront duty was especially selected for strength, bravery, and huskiness, and by preference they worked in pairs or even groups. That the city had but a hundred of them in 1871—one for every 1445 inhabitants, where New York City had one for 464 and London one for 303—only increased the likelihood that they would leave the Coast to its own devices. In any case, despite occasional attempts at regulatory statutes and frequent outbursts of journalistic horror and indignation, it was nearly impossible to obtain convincing evidence against the inhabitants, and the Rangers had plenty of political friends who came to their aid as promptly as those of twenty years ago had been wont to do when the Sydney Ducks were threatened. Bribery and protection money kept Coast proprietors and city politicians alike prosperous and entirely content with the situation as it stood. As recently as 1869 the Call had compelled the passage of an ordinance prohibiting the employment of women in melodeons, dance halls, and concert saloons, but no effort had ever been made to enforce it.

One of Pacific Street's most infamous resorts was the celebrated Bull Run (also known as Hell's Kitchen), located in a three-storey building on Pacific Avenue and Sullivan Alley. It was a relative newcomer to the Coast scene, having opened its doors in the fall of '68 and celebrated its first Christmas with a free-for-all fight that left half a dozen men seriously injured. It was managed by an Irishman known as One Year Tim, who was both emcee and chief bouncer, but the owner was Ned Allen, known as Bull Run Allen because he had fought at both the battles of that name. He was a huge man with a very large and very red nose, about which he was extremely sensitive, and from which he perhaps hoped to distract attention by the enormous cluster of diamonds he wore on the bosom of the snow-white ruffled shirt that was his trademark garment. His resort had a dance hall and bar in the cellar, another at grade, and a brothel upstairs, each of the first and second having a long bar on one side, a sawdust-covered dance floor in the middle, tables and chairs on the other side, and a stage at the back where a quartet of musicians kept the patrons entertained with stomping dance music. Forty or fifty "pretty waiter girls" in gaudy costumes served drinks, danced, and (at 75c. to a dollar) catered to customers' baser instincts. They also kept a sharp eye out for gents flush with money and either plied them with enough liquor to induce a drunken stupor or loaded their drinks with knockout drops. Once such a patron was helpless, he would be quickly "rolled" and tossed into the alley. Unlike most landlords of the Coast, Allen expected the women in his employ to drink real liquor, or at least beer, since their antics when drunk were considered an amusing feature of the place. If one of them happened to pass out, which they frequently did, she was carried upstairs and laid on a bed, and sexual privileges sold to all comers for anywhere from two bits to a dollar, depending on her age and beauty, plus another quarter if the man wanted to watch his predecessor. Such a girl was not uncommonly abused by as many as thirty or forty men in the course of a single night. She was supposed to receive half the proceeds, but seldom collected. Most died young of cirrhosis, consumption, syphilis, pneumonia, or the violence inflicted on them by their customers or employers.

But it was the Opera Comique, at Jackson and Kearny Streets—a spot known as Murderer's Corner—that drew Jess's attention. It was one of the most famous melodeons in town, though of course he didn't know that, and perhaps the only one that wasn't below grade; its owner, Happy Jack Harrington, was a dapper rogue who fancied himself the Beau Brummel of the Coast and wore a bowler hat, ruffled shirts, and lavender trousers. He engaged French and Spanish waitresses who danced the fandango and performed the most obscene and bawdy shows on the Coast, as well as the Galloping Cow and the Dancing Heifer, a gargantuan pair of sisters, formerly laundresses, in pink tutus, who, with their waddling pirouettes and popular song renditions, brought tears of laughter to knee-slapping sailors. On the walls hung paintings of reclining nudes in ornate gold-leaf frames. Occasionally the smoky, boozy throng got out of hand and a free-for-all of flying fists, chairs, and bottles ended the evening's raucous entertainment. Across the street was Denny O'Brien's saloon, in whose cellar was a pit where dogfights were staged, and also battles between terriers and rats, the latter being trapped under the wharves by the street boys and sold to O'Brien at ten to twenty-five cents apiece depending on size and ferocity.

All Jess saw (and heard) at first was a concert saloon whose house band, to judge by the din, was either falling down the stairs or being trampled by buffalo. Why it lured him he never knew, but he found his feet carrying him to the open door. To look at, it was little different from many cowtown bars, except for being made of red brick (a sensible material to use in a town historically ravaged by fires), with a two-storeyed wrought-iron portico festooned with dangling knobs and iron grillework, and a gaudily-colored sign across the front of the upper one. The frosted-glass windows gave him no hint of what was going on inside, and even when he crossed the threshold the sudden blaze of light dazzled him long enough that at first he didn't see all of it. The nudes on the walls, the sawdust-covered oaken floor, the gilded moldings, polished woodwork, and wooden pillars, the immense black-painted bar and gaudy backbar mirror painted with suggestive figures, the blaze of light from the gas lamps, all weren't too different from what he associated with all-male resorts. The shouting patrons, by their dress, were mostly sailors, some crowded around the varnished-wood tables, others standing in serried ranks wherever they could find space along the walls, all facing toward the back of the room, where there was presumably a stage and a dance floor.

But when Jess peered through the smoke and past the heads and shoulders of the men in his way, he got the shock of his young life—and he had considered himself fairly unshockable up to that moment. The skit that was being played was as frankly obscene as anything he'd ever come across. He was dimly aware of Slim coming up on his left, the familiar hand on his shoulder that froze there as the rancher got a good look at the performance, and then, almost without warning, the stage cleared, several illuminated transparencies (equally as raunchy as the skit) tumbled down from the top of it, and soon rolled up again to reveal a line of female dancers whose costumes, at least above the waist, were notable for their absence. Jess wasn't even entirely sure they had anything on under their petticoats, although the activity of the latter was such that there was no way he could confirm this. He stared in consternation, astonished and dumbfounded that any halfway self-respecting bar owner would permit such things to happen on his premises.

Alongside him, Slim's reaction was very similar, but he had also been half prepared for it by the sight of Jess's sudden pallor and the glazed look of his eyes. His friend seemed fixed in place like a rooted tree, unable to move by his own volition or be moved by anyone else. Flint, Slim noticed peripherally, had moved up on the Texan's other side and was protecting his flank, which was probably a good idea: as hypnotized as Jess was, anyone could have lifted his sixgun, picked his pocket, or knocked him over the head and he probably wouldn't have noticed it.

Neither of them was ever quite sure how long the act went on, but it ended at last with a discordant crash of chords and the emphatic fall of purple draperies across the stage. The sailors whooped and hollered, stomped on the floor and pounded on the tables, demanding more, and a detachment of the female performers moved in to distract them before their good-natured frustration could take a turn for the worse. The curtains went up again, to reveal the musicians only, who sailed into a somewhat discordant rendering of "Bounding Billows" (no doubt in recognition of the sailorly makeup of most of the audience), and one of the girls came up to Jess. "Drink, handsome?" she wheedled, rubbing up against him.

Jess started like a scared longhorn and seemed to come awake, wide-eyed and shaken as he was after one of his nightmares. Slim reached into his vest pocket, extracted a silver dollar and flipped it to the girl. "Not tonight, peanut," he told her.

She caught the coin deftly, shrugged, and vanished into the crowd in search of another sucker. "Jess? You okay?" Slim asked.

"Get me out of here, Slim," the Texan said shakily.

Slim glanced across at Flint, and the two of them, each holding Jess by an arm, turned him firmly around and began pushing their way through the eager newcomers who were crowding into the entrance behind them. A few of the latter got a toe stepped on or an elbow thrust shrewdly where it would do the most good, but they were so fixated on the anticipated delights within that they made no fuss about it.

Flint steered them out into the middle of Jackson Street, where they'd be less likely to be assaulted from behind. "I think we'd better call it a night," he said quietly.

"I think you're right," Slim agreed. "You know this town best—which way to the stable?"

The scout took only an instant to orient himself. "Come on," he said, and turned back the way they'd come, toward the waterfront. In less than half a block they came to the angled crosscut of Columbus Avenue and he crossed that and moved briskly along Jackson, quickly leaving much of the noise and hilarity behind. Slim kept a hand firmly around Jess's arm; his friend seemed dazed, moving blindly, like a sleepwalker, stumbling once or twice. As they came to the Battery Street corner and turned right toward Washington Street, he paused, pulled in a deep breath full of salt air and exotic odors from the docks, shook his head hard and said, "Dad-gum, that was—that ain't no kind of fun for an innocent Texas boy like me."

For so widely travelled a man, Slim reflected, his friend could be as naïve as a six-year-old about some things—which wasn't to say that Slim himself had found the show all that much to his taste. But he, at least, had read and heard more about this quarter than he suspected Jess had, and what was more, being by nature the more prudent of the two of them, he'd taken Flint's warning to heart and been in some sense prepared for almost anything—primarily felonious assault, but also the kinds of sights that wouldn't be approved of by one's Great-Aunt Matilda (or, for that matter, his own Aunt Ella).

In fact, Jess wasn't naïve; given the life he'd lived, most of his experience with women had been with the less-than-decent kind. And except for his service in the Confederate forces, he'd spent his life west of the Missouri, where practical businessmen understood that a flourishing vice community attracted military personnel, footloose workers such as cowboys and miners, and even legislators, and preferred to concentrate on restricting vice to a given area and curtailing the most flamboyant behavior there. Even the more conventionally inclined towns inevitably had two factions: those who wanted strict law enforcement to protect their lives and property, and those who, being in the business of purveying liquor, women, and other indulgences, wanted visitors with plump wallets treated diplomatically. In capital cities such as Austin, the more discreet madams and prostitutes plied their trade in political circles, protected by their contacts, and didn't hesitate to call the police when property was stolen from their rooms, while those who acted as a "public nuisance" were scooped up by the law. Other towns like San Antonio, despite a conservative tone, were committed to toleration of all prostitution for the gratification of the military. Any town that hosted a floating male population—cattle towns, mining towns, railroad towns, towns near military posts—invariably had a sufficient number of girls to warrant a "line," a "maiden lane," a "boarding house" or two, or a hotel in a declining section of the business district that was known all around as the local whorehouse, if not indeed some combination of these, and the general attitude was that the presence of "bad" women helped to distract unwanted attention from the "good" ones. Large cities like Denver routinely supported the publication of directories in which the local madams advertised the attractions of their establishments; these "Red Books" and "Blue Books" gave addresses and descriptions of the buildings where prostitutes were available.

With typical Victorian hypocrisy, all Western city councils passed laws prohibiting the presence of brothels and gambling dens, but instead of enforcing them used fines as a kind of taxation. In Dodge the prostitutes were fined ten dollars a month each plus two dollars in court costs, and brothel keepers paid twenty dollars (twenty-five if they sold whiskey) plus five. In return for this amount the city administration more or less overlooked their quarrels: even when gunplay resulted and some innocent bystander was slightly wounded, the shooter was only fined three dollars for discharging a dangerous weapon within city limits. Laramie charged brothel inmates a fine of seven dollars, and in Jess's year and a half there (so Mort Corey had told him) had made over $125 (earmarked for the town's school fund) from this source. In some other towns, when the police raided the bordellos, which they did at monthly intervals, each madam would pay a fine of fifteen to a hundred dollars, depending on the number of her employees, and each girl ten, and they would go right back to practicing their trade. Yet in fact citizens rarely demanded the expulsion of "undesirables" except in the most blatant cases, such as when a quarrel over a girl escalated into killing. In any case, the villainies of the lines of mining camps and cattle towns, while robust, never equaled those of the big cities, and the vast majority of such facilities Jess had experience of were owned, or at least run, by women, and staffed by girls who had more or less freely chosen the life. And flagrant nudity was seldom if ever a feature of them: madams and working girls alike understood that a little discretion went a long way and was likely to be even more tempting to the customers than putting everything on display might be. The principle was much the same as that of the can-can, where it was more the tease than the actuality that mattered.

What mattered more, Jess was a product of his own time and place—not a brutalized, exploited, half-enslaved sailor with little to look forward to in life but far-too-widely-spaced orgies of drink and women, but a free man of pride whose former profession had been worth as much in a month as a sailor would see in a year or more, and beyond that a cattleman and a Southerner—and to him it was self-evident that there were certain things one should never expect a woman, any woman, to do. In his experience, no female—not even the ones in the parlor houses—ever allowed her bare body, from neck to knees, to be seen by any male except her partner of the moment. Nude paintings and statuary were one thing: probably no one but the artist had ever seen his model in her altogethers. But for a woman, no matter how far down the scale of virtue and respectability, to appear in public without at least wearing her corset and a wrapper was degrading to her and embarrassing to any decent man. Slim perhaps would never know just how close his friend had come to making a sincere and determined effort to wreck the place—but Jess knew, which was why he'd asked to be "gotten out of here."

They were now back in Jackson Square, whose narrow streets and alleys were lined with two- to four-storey brick buildings dating from the '50's and '60's, some with the traditional cast-iron shutters, which at the time had been prime commercial real estate and had housed merchants, banks, and foreign consulates. A year or so ago it had begun to decline in prestige as the center of commerce moved south and west toward Market Street and the ferry depot, and now, though technically it was located in the northeast part of the Barbary Coast, it was beginning to transform into a warehouse district. These buildings were closed at this hour, and after the riotous hilarity on Jackson the neighborhood seemed to almost echo with silence.

Slim was tempted to ask if Jess was satisfied now, but bit his tongue before he could. A moment later his friend's low drawl came out of the shadows beside him: "Sorry, Slim. You was right, like usual. That wasn't no place for us."

"I'm glad we can agree on that," Slim told him, with a faint shudder. Flint wisely said nothing, leaving them to work it out between them.

A block down from Jackson they came back onto Washington Street. "Here we are," said Flint. "Two more blocks inland and we'll find the stable."

"Hey, wait," said Jess suddenly. "Slim, look, over there. I ain't seein' things, am I?"

Slim followed the Texan's pointing finger to a building just one door up from the corner. Superficially it seemed more or less identical to its neighbors, except for a large sign that stretched across the façade between the first- and second-floor windows.

SEE THE LIGHT WITH ESSIE BRIGHT
Barbary Coast Helping Hand Mission

"Not unless I am too," Slim replied slowly, half unbelieving. "I remember when you came home, after that trouble with Roney Bishop, you said she'd told you that the Lord was calling her on to California—but I never thought of her ending up here."

"I reckon it kinda makes sense," Jess mused, "with all them goin's-on back yonder, and then Chinatown a little ways inland… but I never did either. Look, there's a light on—you reckon she's awake?"

"Who's Essie Bright?" Flint wanted to know.

"You'll see," Slim replied, an eager light in his eyes as he followed Jess's rapid strides across the deserted street.

The building's double-width door was protected by a pair of outer iron shutters that probably latched on the inside; a gas lamp hung over it, and to the right of it was a bell-pull, bright yellow for easy visibility, with on the wall next to that a sign in several languages including what appeared to be Chinese: Ring bell for aid. Open 24 hours. Jess took it at its word. Somewhere away inside the three men could hear a bell ringing. Almost instantly a second-floor window went up, and a man's voice challenged: "Avast there! This is no Coast groggery—be off with ye! I've a shotgun and I'll rake ye from stem to stern."

Jess stepped back, tilting his head to get a look at the speaker. The window he stood in was lighted, but he'd swung one of the iron fire shutters half across it, and all that could be seen was something that did look remarkably like a shotgun's barrels, poking out from behind the sheet of metal and bearing with a sort of careless accuracy on the pavement a foot or two in front of the three men. "Is this here Miss Essie Bright's place?" he demanded.

"It is," came the reply, "and what affair is that of yours?"

"Tell her Jess Harper's here, and Slim Sherman. She knows us," Jess called back.

There was a moment's silence as the unseen speaker pondered over that. "Well enough," he said, rather grudgingly, and the shutter pulled to with a thump, although there was no way any of them could have reached the open window without one standing on another's shoulders.

They waited, perhaps five minutes. Then suddenly there was a sound from within of bolts being thrown back, and the iron shutters on the door swung open on warm yellow light and two figures, one in skirts and the other in trousers. "Jess?" came a breathless female voice. "Jess?"

"Right here, Miss Essie." The Texan moved forward, and as the gaslight fell on his face there was a wordless cry of delight and the woman hurled herself into his arms. Jess spun her around one full circle, then passed her on to the waiting Slim, who lifted her off her feet for a quick kiss, then set her down as gently as if she were made of glass.

Essie Bright was perhaps in her early forties now, but still sparkling and full of energy, with red-gold hair dressed up off her nape and held with shell barrettes. She wore a crisp fawn-colored dress, and there was a small golden cross at her throat. "Whatever are you doing in San Francisco?" she demanded. "Come in, come in! Would you like some coffee? Something to eat?"

"Coffee will do, thanks, Miss Essie," Slim assured her. "This is Flint McCullough, an old friend of mine—Flint, Miss Essie Bright."

"Ma'am," said Flint, doffing his hat.

She extended her hand for a welcoming shake. "It's a pleasure to meet any friend of Slim's. Come along, all of you, the kitchen's downstairs…"

She led them through a small vestibule, across a large, plain, utilitarian room, with benches and a few chairs, and up front a two-foot-high platform or stage, with a starkly plain wooden cross, a good four feet tall, fastened to the wall behind it, and cupboards built underneath. The windows were high-set and covered with heavy-gauge chicken wire to foil missiles. Most of the gaslights had been shut off for the night, though two or three of them were still burning. Behind them the man who'd been with her—presumably the one who'd challenged them from the upper floor—closed the shutters and the door, set the locks and bolts and latches with a series of emphatic thumps, then followed with a peculiar rhythm to his steps that drew a backward glance from Slim. It took a moment, but as the man passed under one of the lit lamps he saw the sailorly dress, much like what the working seamen on the waterfront had worn, except for the lack of a pea-jacket; the traditional short-billed North Sea cap cocked jauntily at an angle above a weathered face with a clean-shaven upper lip and short gray beard; and the wooden peg leg that protruded from under the right leg of his trousers. By the stiff, rolling way he walked, it probably extended past the knee.

Essie opened a door at the rear corner of the room and they descended a stairway to a high-ceilinged kitchen with a great brick-and-masonry hearth and chimney at the back, huge boilers waist-high to a man ranged along the former, a line of small square tables about a dozen feet in front of it, and beyond them many trestle tables set with mismatched chairs, benches, and stools. It took Slim a minute to realize why it all looked familiar. He'd been going on three years old when the terrible potato blight struck Ireland, not quite eight when it ended, but his mother had been subscribing to Graham's Magazine at the time—that was before Frank Leslie's or Gleason's Pictorial—and as a child he'd seen some of the cuts in the old back issues, of the soup kitchens that had been established by the Quakers and others in an attempt to relieve some of the suffering. The room might have been lifted wholesale from one of those cuts, except perhaps that it was spotlessly clean and the walls hung with cheerful prints of bucolic and religious scenes.

In the corner near the hearth a gargantuan coffeepot sat warming on a small stove, with tin cups dangling from hooks on the wall nearby. Essie poured out coffee for herself, for each of her guests, and for the peglegged sailorman. "This is Clancy," she said, "whom I couldn't do without. Clancy, these are my dear friends, Jess Harper and Slim Sherman, and either of them has access to me at any hour, day or night."

"They give me their names, mum," said Clancy, and shook hands somewhat grudgingly. "I'd not have put the shotgun on ye had I known the true cut of your jibs," he added, in what was apparently a backhanded attempt at apology.

"We've seen something of the neighborhood," Slim told him. "Your caution's understandable."

"You might as well go back to your room, Clancy," Essie added. "We've got catching up to do, and I'm completely safe."

"Aye, aye, mum," Clancy responded, and thumped off toward the stairs.

When the sound of his peg on the treads had faded into silence, Essie shook her head and sighed. "I know how lucky I am to have him here," she said, "but sometimes I wonder if he's a little too protective. We've been here nearly a year and no one's offered us any harm yet."

"How'd you come to be here?" Slim asked. "Jess told us you planned to go on to California, but—not just preaching? A regular mission? How did you manage it? A building like this can't come cheap."

"Oh, I don't own it," Essie assured him. "It belongs to a Methodist lady, a well-to-do widow. She rents it to me for a dollar a year, and pays the gas too. She's already made provision in her will for it to come to me, so I don't have to worry about some relative turning me out on the street."

They sat down at one of the long tables and she continued, "As for the mission… I hadn't planned that myself. I just let God lead me where He wanted me to go. I was just coming over the Henness Pass Road up in the Sierra when I saw it—a vision of a harbor with many ships. I'd seen pictures of San Francisco Bay and knew it at once. So I decided that God wanted me to go straight on to here, not stop to preach as I'd been doing. I wasn't sure exactly what He intended me to do when I got here, but I knew He'd give me another sign when I needed it."

San Francisco, despite its rather wild early history, had never been completely godless. Quite apart from the old Mission Dolores, which had been the cause of its original founding, there were thirty-seven churches in 1852, and more had been established in the two decades since. And then there were the street preachers, who arrived as early as 1849 and found theirs a harrowing and thankless job. The common citizens—not the upright, devout ones who went to church—were prone to regard a sermon as something to be heckled and, if possible, broken up with brickbats. If she'd ever consciously thought of the city as a goal, Essie would probably have seen herself in a similar role, counting on her gender to confer at least some degree of immunity from such harassment.

She found a city directory and wrote down a list of all the churches, then went from one to the next, introducing herself and explaining why she was there. A few of the clergy were dubious or unwelcoming, but most, recognizing how indispensable women were to all sorts of charitable efforts, were willing to help. When she asked where the Word was most needed, all of them agreed: the Barbary Coast and Chinatown.

Essie knew she had to work quickly; she didn't have much money left after her cross-country journey. She rented a small storefront and offered services, as she had in Laramie, and in between times called on the more prominent members of the local helping organizations, assembling a kind of supporting cast of women, and some men, who were willing to provide backing. Her great triumph came when she acquired permission to locate in the Battery Street building. Once she had that, contributions came in to furnish it, equip the kitchen, and distribute broadsides, in several languages, along the waterfront and for a dozen blocks inland. The Helping Hand Mission had opened its doors officially only a little less than a year ago.

Occasionally Essie could persuade a proper minister to come by, and he would lead the service and offer Communion; otherwise she read from the Bible and led the service herself. People who sought refuge here attended grace before meals, morning hymns, frequent Bible readings. Primarily, however, she saw her job as obeying the commandment to "Love one another." She fed the hungry, three times a day, even if all she had to offer was porridge for breakfast, soup for dinner and supper, bread three times a day and meat once a week. She clothed the naked, if they were willing to wear inexpensive workmen's clothes. She nursed the sick and helped the occasional unwed mother who timidly ventured in. It didn't do any good, she had come to feel, to preach God's Word, if faith wasn't supported with action. First minister to the body, then the ears of the spirit would be open to the Word. If the congregation was ill, hurt, hungry, mistreated, the Word was empty. "It wasn't what I'd imagined I'd do, when I first set out," she admitted. "But as I went from church to church, I realized that it was exactly what I was needed to do. All the other churches are—not to speak ill of them, but it's the truth—sectarian. I'm not; I just talk about things like love and charity and faith. Many people are put off by theology and by rantings about how right a particular church is and how wrong all the others are. Here they don't get that. I minister to their bodies first, see to their fleshly needs and then help them think about their souls.

"I had expected that when I got to California, I'd just keep on as I'd been doing all along, preaching, maybe someday finding some town where they wouldn't care that their preacher was a woman," she concluded. "But as I saw all the things that needed to be done here, I came to understand that that was just what God had led me to so I'd have a way to get across-country without having to pay very much for it—and, maybe, so I'd get a chance to see more of people, to come to understand all the different ways they need and perceive God. I saw that He'd wanted me here, doing what I'm doing now, from the very start."

Jess had been listening with his expressive eyebrows kinked in the way that said he couldn't quite figure out what he was hearing. "Ain't you lookin' to convert nobody?" he asked. "This here's a Christian mission, come down to it."

"That's my goal, but I can't force them," Essie told him. "Many of them have been more or less coerced all their lives—by parents, employers, police, what have you—and I try to give them some freedom. Of course I want them to use that freedom to embrace Jesus, but that has to be their choice. I can put it out, but they have to catch it—when I preached in Laramie, you remember, I never tried to force people to accept God, just to explain to them why they should, and how much happier they'd be if they did. God can do wonderful things for you, in your life, but He's a gentleman. He won't force Himself on you; you have to open your heart. If people aren't safe, fed, and protected, they can't look beyond those needs to God, so they don't do that. Faith without works is empty—the Bible itself tells us so. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. James, 2:26. Restore a man's or woman's spirit and they become a light in the world for good. Their souls shine through because they know God loves them and we love them. They learn of their Heavenly Father's love, and learn that they are valuable children of God."

Jess thought about that for a moment, then asked, "Do you reckon folks have got to believe in somethin' bigger'n they are?"

"Yes, but first we have to believe in ourselves. If you think you're nothing, worthless, then how can something bigger sustain you without crushing what little spirit you have?"

Jess pondered this notion. It had a familiar feel to it. When he'd first come to Sherman Ranch, he hadn't had a lot of spirit left. Oh, he'd put up a good front, with his fast gun and ferocious temper. But up until that fateful day he met Andy and Jonesy and Slim, his main motivating factor—apart from finding and killing Frank Bannister some day—had always been just surviving, in the face of what seemed a never-ending string of troubles. And he'd gotten so used to being treated like either a no-good saddle tramp or a dangerous killer that he'd half started to believe it himself. No, I reckon I didn't feel like I had a lot of value, he thought, not even to myself. Slim, and his odd little family, had changed that. They had taught him that there were other ways of being, other ways to earn respect, to make a place for himself in the world. That the family he so desperately wanted and needed—so desperately that he'd hardly dared admit it to himself—didn't have to be blood. That it was possible for people you'd never met in your life to care about you, to want you around, to trust and accept you... to love you. And, through all that, that you were valuable. Maybe not to God; he wasn't quite sure of that yet. But to the people who'd made you theirs, even if they weren't yours.

And it had changed him. In his behavior, his actions, the way he looked at others... at himself. The way others looked at him—why else had he ended up wearing a badge or riding shotgun for the line so many times?

"You know the Scripture says, Judge not lest ye be judged?"Essie was going on. "I think what that means is that you must accept each person for whatever he is. It's easy to be wrong when you don't know why a person behaves as he does. You have to listen—to be willing to listen—and to accept that people aren't perfect; that the first and most important priority in most lives is simply to live, to survive. I try to be forceful, but not doctrinaire. Rant puts most people off. Our way of doing things—the Western, Protestant way—isn't the only way. I happen to think it's the best way, but that's because it's the one I'm used to."

Jess nodded thoughtfully, recalling one of his father's favorite maxims: Respect the beliefs of others—they may not make sense to you, but they do to the people who go by them. "And Clancy?" Slim prompted.

"Clancy," she said with a little sigh. "He's what you'd call an old sea dog, I guess. He was serving as an able-seaman on a topsail schooner in '64 when he took a fall off the topgallant yard. I truly think God must have turned him as he fell; if he'd landed on his head, or even his back… but he hit the deck with his leg folded under him, and smashed it so badly that they had to take it off halfway up the thigh. It amazes me that he survived. This was the next port the vessel made, and of course a man with only one foot—and knee—is no good climbing up ratlines or dealing with sails, so here they left him, to make out as best he could. He spent the next few years either along the docks, watching the ships and yearning to go to sea again, or drowning his sorrow in bad whiskey; the crimps left him alone, because he wasn't worth anything to a captain. He started loitering around here as we were beginning to set the place up; he seemed curious—I suppose it wasn't like anything he'd seen in a waterfront district before. I knew he was watching, but I understood that this was my first test—that I had to let him come to me, not go after him with a net. And after a while he did.

"He was in dreadful condition, naturally; losing his livelihood, the only profession he'd ever known, he'd also lost his self-respect, and he was living on next to nothing—free lunches at the saloons, and whatever he could earn at odd jobs and little handicrafts, like carving bits of ivory he picked up Lord only knows where. And he drank. I had my work cut out for me, making him understand that it wasn't so much about having to change; it was about wanting to change. He backslid a few times, the first month or two. But after a while he finally seemed to take hold, to understand that he really was wanted—and needed. He's… well, he calls himself First Officer here now, and that's a pretty good description. Many of the people I help stay on, temporarily or long-term; there's always work to do, here in the kitchen, nursing the sick, sewing, cleaning up, going around to pick up contributions of food. We have dormitories upstairs, men and boys on the second floor, women and girls and a nursery on the third. But so many of them are at loose ends, bewildered… they need someone to, not so much give orders, as show them where they're needed, where they can help most. Clancy seems to have discovered a gift for that. He's a natural organizer. He knows just how to keep the place 'ship shape and Bristol fashion,' as he says."

"What do you hope to accomplish, exactly?" Slim asked. "Even if, as you say, nobody's given you any trouble, I can't see you persuading the businessmen of the Barbary Coast to close up shop."

"I've given a lot of thought to evil," Essie admitted. "I think everyone who preaches the Word does it; you can't really help wondering why a loving God, a good God, an all-powerful God, would permit it to exist. And I've come to believe that, maybe, it's a little like day and night. If we didn't have night, would we appreciate the warmth and light of the sun? If we were never hungry or cold, would we know how good it is to be fed and warm? If there were no evil, how would we know good when we found it? I don't believe that anyone is irredeemably lost; if I did, there'd be no reason for me to do what I do. But I do think that, often, people lose their way in trying to get by in the world—the way Clancy did. Eventually some of them—not all, but enough—begin to understand, in a vague way, that there's something missing in their lives. That's when they need a welcoming place that they can come to, a place where they can feel secure and have some time to examine their situations and decide where they might prefer to go. Men who drink too much, or who are addicted to morphine or opium… women who think that because they've lost their virtue they've lost everything… children with no one to care for them or about them, or who know adults only as people that want to exploit them… those are the ones I try to help. And I have to be close to where they are when the urge comes on them to seek that help. When cattle need water, it has to be within the distance they're willing to walk, doesn't it? I'm the water, and the people I help are the cattle."

Slim nodded. "I think I get what you mean. So you're not trying to stop everything that goes on around here; you just want to be where folks can find you when they get tired of being a part of it."

"That's about right," Essie agreed. "At least, it's a start, although there's so much else I want to do… the shanghaiing, for instance. Clancy and I talked about it almost all one night. San Francisco is where it began, so it's right that the fight to end it should start here. The industry would collapse in a week if captains could get men to sign on willingly—not drugged or drunk or beaten half to death as so many are now. But to do that they'd have to be willing to offer better pay, proper food, humane treatment. And the only way they'll do that is if the seamen themselves demand it in a body. Certainly we have to stop the custom of boardinghouse runners going out to the ships and taking the men ashore by force or lies, and we have to provide safe, honest places where they can stay while they're on shore. But I think what's most needed is for the sailors to organize and form a union, as the miners did in Nevada. The custom spread from there, and now union miners make three to six dollars a day, depending on where they are. It's still hard, dangerous work, but at $78 to $156 a month, it's a good living income, enough to support a family, put something aside, even buy life insurance so that their wives and children will have something if they're killed on the job. Many sailors have attempted to follow their example since back in the '60's, but they face formidable adversaries, and they're literally out of their depth on land. They need advocates ashore who understand how the law works and aren't out to fleece them; there's a regular contingent of bar-hopping lawyers who make a thing of snaring unhappy crewmen, convincing them to bring suit against shipowners for the harsh treatment they've received, and if the courts do issue a judgment in their favor, which is by no means guaranteed, pocketing the award, which always manages to coincide exactly with the amount of the legal fee."

She hesitated a moment, then went on. "And then there are the—the bordellos. It's been said that there's not a woman in them who would be in that business if she could make a living any other way. A couple of years before the war broke out, a man named William Sanger did a survey of two thousand prostitutes serving time at Blackwell's Island in New York, and found that nearly a quarter of them had worked in the sewing trades and almost half had been servants making five dollars a month or less—although most of those were probably live-ins who got their food and lodging provided. Many told him they were destitute when they turned to the trade, and had no other way to earn enough to support themselves. The majority probably come from working-class families with few attractive economic alternatives. Horace Greeley, twenty years ago, estimated that six hundred a year, or just over $11.50 a week, was the minimum wage necessary to support an urban working-class family of four or five at marginal level, but setting aside the fact that most of them are a lot larger than that, families all over the country are trying to live on less than ten, and that's why a lot of girls prostitute themselves—to relieve the burden on their households and be self-supporting. If they look for honest work, they have trouble getting more than eight. And many prostitutes have children to support, as well as themselves; they usually can't keep the children in their place of business, so they have to board them somewhere, and that adds to their expenses. They need to be trained for something that pays better than seamstressing or laundressing or factory labor, they need to be guaranteed a living wage—at least as much as a man would get—and they need to be helped to find clean, inexpensive lodgings and honest, useful work. The usual rates for the first vary from twelve to sixty dollars a month, depending on the grade of the place and how many of your meals you eat in. If a woman was paid ten dollars a week—and fifteen is considered a comfortable but modest salary, even for a man—and lived in a boarding situation where she got her room and food for fifteen a month, well, work it out yourself: she'd have twenty-five to save or spend. It would be more if she had children, but they wouldn't eat as much as adults, and they could all sleep in one bed if they had to, leaving a second for her. Or she could go in with another woman or two to rent a house; a furnished one averages around six-thirty per room per month, unfurnished a little under two—though they'd need to get a loan to buy furniture in that case.

"A lot of the problem is that in cities everything costs so much. That's not only why working men's daughters go to rack and ruin, it's why their wives and children have to work too, just to keep everyone fed and clothed and a roof over their heads. Half again Mr. Greeley's figure—nine hundred dollars a year, or about seventeen a week—ought to be more than adequate in a smaller community, where the rents are lower and a family can have a garden and keep chickens and a pig. So we have to encourage these women to find places for themselves in such communities—which means honest work. There are many jobs that pay well enough for a woman to live on virtuously. Think of telegraphy, or typesetting for books and magazines and newspapers—jobs tailor-made for people with small, dexterous fingers. Andrew Carnegie's cousin has been running a training school for female telegraphers in the Pittsburgh freight depot for over twenty years, and as early as 1835 there was a report abroad—erroneous, as it turned out—that girl typesetters were being trained to replace striking males in Philadelphia; by the '50's they were seeking the work in droves for its eight to ten dollars a week, and some editors actually preferred them, because the men in that profession tended to be drinkers.

"Or dry-goods salesclerking. Any store that sells bolt goods needs at least one person to do that, and men don't like the job because it seems—sissified, womanish. Women are much more interested in clothes than most men are, they know fabric because they do most of the sewing, and most cloth is bought by female customers anyway, so why shouldn't they have female clerks to help them make their selections? In some department stores a clerk can bring in over $900 a year, and in a bookstore she can get $600. A bank teller can make that too, a clerk in a bank or insurance company as much as $1500. There's engraving on wood, coloring prints and photographs, tailoring, bookkeeping, watch and jewelry repair, proofreading—dozens of jobs, if only employers would look beyond gender in filling them. Many companies now are hiring women to go on the road as agents selling directly to the customer, mostly household goods of a kind that women are best suited to explain and demonstrate to other women—patent wire clotheslines, parlor organs, matches, sewing and washing machines, wringers, stationery, farm machinery, new kinds of kerosene lamps with patent chimneys or no chimneys, and always books. Of course," she added, "many of the women I'm talking about are illiterate or nearly so, but they could be taught to read and write and do basic arithmetic, perhaps in some kind of night class or Sunday school—the very first Sunday schools, you know, were established for just that purpose—and as they learned, they could become monitors and teach the newcomers."

"It sounds like a big job," Flint mused.

"Oh, I know it is," Essie agreed. "It requires making people aware of the need for equal pay for equal work, living wages, good affordable housing—especially in cities—and an abandonment of outdated notions about what women can or should do. It probably needs laws, at least at the state and Territorial level, if not the Federal, and maybe test cases in court to establish precedents." She sighed, almost happily. "It's going to take years—maybe a lifetime, maybe more. But just to make the start—" She paused, shifted tracks of thought. "Of course I'd like to eventually reach out to the Chinese too; there's so much misery in their part of town. The girls in the…" she flushed a bit— "the parlor houses and the cribs; the Methodists, you know, are trying to help them, but it's very hard. The white girls who go into that line tend to do it of their own free will, even here in San Francisco, however misguided that will may be, but the Chinese ones are much more likely to be virtual slaves. Many are sold by their own parents, some as young as two years old, some even younger; the lucky ones become household servants—drudges is a better word— or merchants' concubines, and the unlucky ones, of course, become the objects of men's lusts. Others are kidnapped off the streets in China, or tricked aboard America-bound ships, sometimes after being sold to 'paper' husbands or parents so they can be brought in under pretense of being wives and daughters; the immigration officials know that small girls in China are often married to older men, so they don't make any trouble about letting those in. And others again are admitted in return for a bribe or 'donation'—or imported like animals, in big padded crates. Once here they're smuggled in and sold or auctioned off to brothel owners—many of them stripped naked and put on display in St. Louis Alley, between Stockton and Dupont Streets, which has been a notorious slave market since the '60's. They're virtually prisoners, never even let out for a bit of fresh air and exercise except under heavy guard two or three times a week, like dogs on a leash; they're whipped and branded and tortured for the least infraction of the rules. Even the concubines who are purchased for one man's exclusive use last only till he tires of them; then they go back to the brothel they came from, or go into business on their own. A girl of fourteen—can you believe that?—is considered to be the very best age for prostitution; she—entertains—dozens of men a night, at as little as twenty-five cents each, and she's not likely to live more than five or six years, unless some young Chinese man who patronizes her decides to buy out her contract, which is quite legal and which many of them are now beginning to do. When she's outlived her allure and usefulness to the business, she's killed or left to die in a 'hospital' where she's placed in a small, windowless cell—the Chronicle described them a couple of years ago—and left there with just a cup of water, another of boiled rice, and a little metal oil lamp. The people in charge know just how long the oil should last, and at the end of that time they unbar the door; usually the girl is dead, by starvation or suicide, but if not, she is before they leave. They come for a corpse and they never go away without it, the Chronicle said. Nobody much cares; they're only 'the heathen Chinee,' not real people to the white community. Few of them can speak more than a dozen words of English, they know nothing whatsoever of our laws and court procedures, many have been filled with horror stories about what will be done to them if they do go for help—by us and by their masters if they're retaken; and they've been brought up in a culture that basically tells them they're worthless—no woman, except a wife, has any real status in China, and sons, not daughters, are what matter in a family. And then, apart from all that, they'd have to circle down to California Street and come up to us from the other direction. No Chinese man—let alone a young woman—would dare try to pass through the area east of Portsmouth Square and north of Clay Street. It would mean establishing a branch facility somewhere closer to the source, if you will."

Slim frowned. "I thought Lincoln freed the slaves."

"He did, but don't forget, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to states in rebellion—which California wasn't—and slavery as it's practiced in Chinatown is often more like contract indenture, which isn't covered by the Thirteenth Amendment. The girls who aren't sold by their own kin or kidnapped off the streets in their native land or duped by some smooth-talking recruiter may want to come over, just as the men do, but they can't pay the passage, so they sign a paper saying that they agree to serve for a stated term, which is likely to be very close to that six years I mentioned, or even more by the time you factor in make-up time for being ill or otherwise indisposed. Under the existing laws of California, such a contract might conceivably be held a valid instrument, assuming it was ever brought before a court—which it isn't, because, first, the girls don't know they have any right to challenge it, and second, they've been brought up in a deferential, hierarchical society; to them, it's a matter of honor, an obligation on them, to pay off what they owe. As for the ones who aren't covered under the contract system, the servants are mostly out of sight in their owners' homes, and if anyone does ask, they're simply described as paid help, or apprentices, or members of some poor branch of the family who've been left orphans and taken in; and the others… they don't live long enough or have the opportunities to seek help, and they don't leave any kind of paper trail, like the contract girls." She took a deep breath. "But I've talked enough about myself. How did you happen to be in the city, and how did you end up outside my door?"

It was fully an hour later that the three men bade her good night and walked out onto Battery Street. As they waited and listened to make sure she'd secured the door behind them, Flint said quietly, "That's quite some lady."

"She sure is," Slim agreed.

"Yeah," said Jess meagerly, but there was a note under the single word that Slim knew.

I won't push him, the rancher told himself firmly as they continued their interrupted way back to the stable to get their horses. I think I know what he wants to do, and I know he'll do it as honestly as he can.

---

7. Into Thin Air

Thursday, January 4

There was a note in Room 427's box when Slim and Jess came down the next morning, written on pale blue paper in a spidery Spencerian hand and addressed to "Matthew Sherman." Slim read it through and gave a soft half-snort, half-chuckle. "I'd almost forgotten he'd said that," he murmured.

"Who said what?" Jess asked.

Slim grinned at his friend. "The Emperor Norton. Remember when we met him, he said he wanted to know more about what he called 'my part in the Imperial economy'? He's invited me to come up to his suite for—he calls it lunch—and talk about ranching."

Jess's brows drew together. "You goin'?"

"Have to. When an Emperor invites you to do something, it's a command. You want to come?"

"He ain't askin' for both of us, is he?"

"No," Slim admitted, "he's not."

"Reckon he would if he wanted me," Jess pointed out. "You go on. I oughtta go back to the tailor's and see how he's comin' with my new duds. Maybe he can point me to somebody that'll know how to make a pair of special boots—boots like we wear on the range. And there's a play on at Morosco's Union Hall—taken off one of them Sir Walter Scott books you like… Amy-somethin'... thought maybe I'd stop by there and pick up a couple of tickets…"

"All right," Slim agreed. "You do that, and I'll do a little prospecting at Bancroft's, and meet you at our room around—say four o'clock? We can decide then where to go for supper."

**SR - L - WT**

A somewhat wizened Chinese, wearing a vivid blue silk jacket with a little stand-up collar and an allover pattern of large gold-thread medallions, opened the door to Norton's suite, looked up at Slim's towering height with something that was perhaps as close as an Oriental could come to loss of composure, and asked, "Yes, please?"

"My name's S—Matthew Sherman," Slim told him. "His Majesty invited me to join him for lunch."

"Ah, yes!" the manservant (for such Slim presumed him to be) responded at once, a smile breaking over his face. "Huángdi [Chinese for emperor] has said to expect you. Please to come in."

The suite's parlor was larger than the one Slim and Jess had, and decorated in imported mahogany, walnut, and fruitwood furniture, with blue brocade draperies over large-patterned lace curtains at the windows. An ornate walnut desk was set where daylight from one of those windows would fall naturally on the writing surface, and behind it in a parlor chair with a purple plush seat (which Slim thought very well suited to his office) was Norton, writing rapidly on a sheet of thick, creamy vellum paper. He was dressed informally in a lightweight black alpaca suit, the frock coat buttoned high up on his chest, and a dark necktie with a chess-knight stickpin in it. He looked up as his servant ushered Slim in, and smiled. "Mr. Sherman! I am most pleased to see that you have accepted my invitation."

"I could hardly do less, Your Majesty," Slim replied, sweeping off his curl-brimmed brown Stetson and inclining in a brief bow, as he'd seen Major Adams do. He was wearing his new best outfit—the one he'd gotten from the tailor on Kearny Street: knee-length black gabardine coat, white frilled shirt with a good paper collar, a deep green tie and a red silk waistcoat, and dark gray broadcloth trousers with a darker stripe. He'd been surprised at how quickly his clothes were ready, but the tailor had explained that his customers tended to place orders to be ready for Thanksgiving or Christmas, then for Easter. So the first month or so after the holiday season was a slow period for him, and he'd had time to concentrate on Slim's order alone. It helped that "made-to-measure" employed a basic pre-cut form that was customized to the wearer in a single fitting, rather than requiring several as "bespoke" did.

"Please pardon me," Norton said, "I must finish this proclamation before the wording goes quite out of my head. Ah How, bring coffee for Mr. Sherman, and then go down to the lobby and tell them to send our lunch up as soon as it is ready."

The Chinese bowed, showed Slim to another purple plush chair, left the room briefly and came back with a four-piece silver coffee service on a tray and two sets of flowered cups and plates. While he poured for the guest, Norton continued writing briskly, added a florid signature and blotted the paper, then tucked it under a large, faceted crystal paperweight and came over to settle in the one chair that didn't match the rest of the set—a comfortable Lincoln rocker upholstered in crimson damask.

"May I ask, Sire, what your proclamation is about?" Slim inquired.

"Certainly," Norton replied. "You may recall reading, yesterday, that the Mormon leader, Brigham Young, has been arrested for bigamy, on the principle that he has twenty-five wives." Slim did remember that; it had appeared in the Morning Call. "I am directing that the charge against him be dismissed without delay. It is an ordainment of his faith that a man may take more than one wife. Certainly I know of no commandment out of the ten that forbids polygamy, and we know that many Biblical figures had more than one wife. Who is mere man to say that one must not obey the dictates of one's religion? Does not our Constitution guarantee freedom to worship as one is led?"

"Of course it does, my lord," Slim agreed. "I've met some Mormons, here and there. Some are good people, some aren't, but that's true of anyone, no matter what church they go to—if any."

"How very true!" Norton exclaimed. "I see that you and I will get along splendidly, Mr. Sherman." He took a sip of his coffee, then sat forward, rubbing his palms together. "Now, then. I have never travelled to Wyoming. Tell me something about it."

**SR - L - WT**

Johnny Madrid had about made up his mind that Argentina wasn't in his future. He'd have to take ship around the Horn just to get there, an expensive proposition when he had only a finite stake to get started on wherever he finally ended up, and in any case, being a Hispanic country, he'd probably also have to pay out all sorts of bribes. No, he thought, he'd be better to go north. He could take a coasting schooner upcoast to the Columbia rivermouth or maybe Puget Sound, him and Barranca both, and then make his way by steamer or saddle to Idaho—or maybe only as far as eastern Oregon or Washington, where ranching was beginning to take hold, and from which it wouldn't be hard to drive trail herds to the mineral camps farther eastward.

With that in mind, he'd taken a ride down to the waterfront to inquire about the cost of passage, and having gotten several quotes was on his way up Market Street, figuring to drop Barranca at McFarland's before going back to the Niantic. It was midafternoon, and while most middle- and upper-class women were occupied with making or receiving "calls" at this hour, there was still plenty of traffic both in the red-cobblestone-paved streets and on the sidewalks that flanked them. He considered with mild amusement the coincidence of himself and Jess Harper being here at the same time. Neither of them had said exactly why he was in town, though Jess had been willing enough to explain how he'd tracked Johnny down.

Being on horseback, Johnny could see a good deal farther than a pedestrian could, and that was perhaps what saved him. The man was moving along Market in the same direction as himself, his back to the young rider, but the shape and color of the hat, the height, the stride, the ramrod erectness with which he held himself, were enough to catch Johnny's eye—and then he passed by a window and the glass reflected his profile just for a moment. Murdoch!

Johnny reacted without even thinking about it, swinging Barranca sharp left and down Annie Street, turning left again at Mission and right at New Montgomery, pushing the horse to a fast trot, weaving deftly in and out of the traffic with a range man's trained skill. He made another left at Howard Street and a right at Second, then hammered down two long blocks to Harrison and swung back toward the bayfront. At Beale he turned right again and kept going straight, skirting Butchertown and following the shoreline to McCovey Cove. Here, eight full blocks from Market and well out of sight of anyone following it, he felt safe in pausing near the north end of the Long Bridge. He swung down and dropped onto his heels beside the palomino's forefeet, huffing out a breath and listening to the racing of his heart. Murdoch. He was in town.

Does he know I'm here, or did he just take a flyer? And if he does know, what do I do now? Did he dare take a chance on going back to the Niantic? It didn't matter so much about his personal baggage, his extra clothes and toilet articles and such, but except for about a hundred dollars walking-around money, all his cash was in the hotel safe; he couldn't leave it there.

The question was, did Murdoch know where he was staying? If he'd somehow come across Barranca—and of course he'd have recognized the horse right off, even if he didn't see the saddle, as Jess had—it would have been easy enough for him to find out that Johnny was at the Niantic, exactly as Jess had done. But, on reflection, that probably wasn't what had happened. Having seen how easy it had been for Jess to run him down, Johnny had left orders at the stable that no further questions about him were to be answered. Not that that would have stopped the old man, of course; it might have slowed him down some, but he probably had a good bit of money on him, enough to spread around at places where he thought Johnny might have been. He might even have gotten the police interested. Would he have gone so far as to claim that Johnny had stolen something from him before leaving Lancer—money, his horse?

No, Johnny decided after a moment— no, he wouldn't do that. Not the old man. He's too upright. But he still could have the police on the lookout for me…

Of course there's not a lot of them, and it's a big town to spot one man in, with everything else they've got to do.

All the same… He lifted his head and looked off across the bridge. He could get a bed at Four- or Five-Mile House, even if it was in a stall, and something to eat and drink, and have time to think.

**SR - L - WT**

"It's been a great pleasure to have you here, Mr. Sherman," said Norton. "I've learned more about the cattle business in these few hours we've spent together than in any comparable period before."

"I'm glad I was able to provide you the kind of information you wanted, Sire," Slim told him.

"I feel that I am obliged to you," Norton went on, "and I propose to remedy that. You and Mr. Harper must be my guests at the theater tomorrow. The lovely Lotta Crabtree has returned to the scene of her first great triumphs. She and her company are engaged to present all her most popular plays at Ralston's California Theater. I'm certain you will enjoy her performance."

Slim hesitated. "We've talked about going to a show while we're here… in fact, Jess was planning to get us tickets to Amy Robsart for tonight…"

"That settles it, then," declared Norton briskly. "I shall send Ah How with a note to inform the management of our intention to attend."

**SR - L - WT**

"Did I mention," asked Slim, "that those new clothes of yours look pretty sharp?"

"Think so?" Jess gave him rather an odd look out of the corner of one eye. Unlike Slim's, his coat was a good off-the-rack sack, if smartly cut, which had been slightly tailored to his lean, wiry form, nipped in at the waist just a bit more than was common for the type. It was dark blue alpaca—almost black in some lights—with a Confederate-gray collar and shiny gold buttons ($14.50 plus tailoring), teamed with a full-back vest of embroidered white silk with a high notch collar (three dollars plus tailoring) and a pearl-buttoned linen shirt (just under five dollars). He'd found a new hatband, too, for dressy occasions—solid silver; $15.50, it had cost—and a pair of spurs with black-steel shanks and heelbands, the latter embellished with the four pips of a card deck in silver. Teamed with his good gray woollen trousers, it made him look about as dressed up as most range men ever got. "Wisht I had them new boots, though. Even polished up, these look like I've had 'em a spell."

"Well, you have," Slim observed, "and they are polished, and in any case, once you sit down they'll be under the table. Nobody's likely to pay attention to them; they'll be more interested in their cards and the pot."

"Huh?" said Jess. "What makes you figure—"

"I don't figure," said Slim, "I know. You want to help Miss Essie, and that means money, and money means poker."

Jess greeted this with a long minute's silence, then: "You ain't tellin' me not to?"

"Would it do any good if I did?" Slim retorted. "Jess, you're grown up, even if sometimes you don't act that way, and what you do with your money is your business. In fact, I wish you good luck. Make sure you've got your key; I'll probably be long asleep by the time you come up to the room."

Jess said nothing for a moment, and then a warm note came into his voice as his eyes crinkled up and his lopsided smile appeared. "Thanks, hardcase," he said quietly. "I'll try not to be noisy about it."

They had eaten, this time, at Maye's Oyster House, feasting on oyster loaf and Hangtown Fry, before going to Morosco's for the play, and now were just back at their room. Jess slipped out into the passage and headed down the stairs to the lobby.

Among the assorted peculiarities of San Francisco was the way it distributed its resorts. The sailors, of course, found most of their recreation—as well as lodging and outfitting—on the Barbary Coast. Saloons were broadcast everywhere about the city, some of them simply neighborhood hangouts where cribbage, whist, poker, pool, and other modest games were available, others centers of the social life of various professions or subdivisions of classes, and others again patronized by both tourists and residents. Some had gambling, some didn't; those that did might offer dice, roulette, even that favorite of '49, faro, but as a general thing the games were informal ones, privately arranged by groups of men, some meeting regularly for the purpose, others gathering by chance.

Like almost any first-class hotel, the Occidental offered a high-end bar and gaming room at which gentlemen could gather; there were no girls or house dealers here, no wheels or cages or faro banks, just whatever a group might agree on as the evening's diversion. It had something of the air of a rich men's club, which in fact it was: ormolu, cloisonné, and marquetry, looped and fringed crimson curtains, French clocks, Flemish paintings under protective glass panels, marble statuary depicting classic characters adjusting wreaths, trailing long vestments, and touching lyres with upraised eyes. The bar was, of course, a Brunswick-Balke-Callander, Circassian walnut, with the handles of the beer pumps made of Wedgwood china. The tables were topped with green felt and equipped with carved trays for the chips, racks for the glasses, and drawers for the cards, and the deep armchairs that surrounded them were upholstered in tufted red brocade.

Five minutes after he'd left Slim, Jess paused a moment in the curtain-framed doorway, straightened his new jacket and tugged his vest down, took a deep steadying breath, and crossed the room to the bar, where he ordered a beer. He leaned against the counter and nursed it, letting his eyes roam slowly about the place, pausing at each occupied table to study the game going on there and form an estimate of the potential of the players, using the skills Dixie had taught him almost a dozen years before. For a moment he wondered whatever had become of his old mentor, then shoved the thought away. This was business—and if ever he'd needed a clear head and all his faculties about him, this would be the night. People of the kind who gathered in this type of bar might be playing for recreation rather than for a living, and they'd be unlikely to cheat—they were, after all, "gentlemen"—but they'd be rock-bottom serious about it, and they could afford to play for high stakes. In smaller towns poker players were usually content to limit themselves to bets of two bits up to a dollar, and when Jess himself played a payday game at the Stockmen's Palace, he generally made it nickel-ante. Even ten or twenty dollars was considered serious poker in most range towns, cow country or mineral country—the kind of poker that was played by men of substance, professional men and business owners. But in boom towns and the larger cities—Denver, Santa Fe, Albuquerque—the games were the central attraction, with chips often going for $25 to $1000 each; $10,000 frequently changed hands in ten minutes, and businessmen would publicly win or lose a thousand at a clip with the greatest nonchalance. Jess could remember, when he'd first visited Denver with Dixie in '61, one Sunday morning watching the probate judge of the county lose thirty city lots in less than ten minutes at cards, and afterward seeing the county sheriff pawning his revolver for twenty dollars to bet at faro; seeing a thousand ounces of gold dust, worth $16,000, once laid on a table as a bet, and a drunken miner risking $20,000 on the turn of a single card; following the progress of a well-known gambler as he won $89,000 in three days at faro, and not long afterwards lost $100,000 in the same resort in a similar amount of time.

He'd have to play it very cool, or he'd be dead before he started. Not dead literally, of course, but dead broke.

One thing in his favor: several of these games didn't seem to be bothering with chips. He zeroed in on those, and after a while sauntered casually over to one of them. There were six men seated around it—with himself it would be seven; Jess wasn't superstitious in the ordinary way—poker was a game of skill and mathematics, not luck—but on the other hand... "'Evenin', gents," he said, his voice deep and smooth. "Got room for another?"

"Sit down," came the immediate invitation from a portly middle-aged man wearing a dark-gray broadcloth suit and a "fruit-basket" vest, white brocade with fancy designs in colored silk. "A visitor in town, aren't you, sir? I've seen you about the hotel the last several days."

"That's right," Jess agreed, pulling out a chair. "Jess Harper, foreman of Sherman Ranch, Wyomin' Territory, here on vacation for a spell." It wasn't a lie: Slim himself had called him so, and Slim should certainly know who his own foreman was. He wasn't sure how much comfortably-fixed San Franciscans might know about the cattle business, but if they were at all familiar with it, they'd be aware that about the maximum wage for a foreman was $150 to $200 a month, plus found. It probably wouldn't seem like much to men of their caliber, but that might be a good thing; maybe they'd figure he could be taken easily. We'll just see about that, he thought, suddenly quite calm. "Table stakes?"

**SR - L - WT**

San Francisco's red-light district—including most of its bordellos, from cribs to elegant parlor houses—had been more or less confined, since the late '50's, to an area bounded roughly by Broadway on the north, the Bay on the east, Powell on the west, and Commercial (actually a sort of three-block alley that ran midway through the blocks between Clay and Sacramento, with Dupont as its westward end and Sansome as its eastward) on the south, with a southwestward dip toward Norton Street. It thus encompassed Chinatown (which, although well supplied with vice itself, was at the same time the home of many quite conventional commercial and retail establishments) and enclosed portions of several main thoroughfares—Pacific, Kearny, Sacramento, Clay, California, Jackson, Washington, Montgomery, Stockton, and Dupont Streets—and any number of alleys and short passageways, including Belden, Bacon, and Berry Places and Hinckley, Pinckley, and Virginia alleys, in all of which there were many blocks containing nothing but saloons and houses of prostitution. The cribs that served a black clientele were located mostly on Hinckley and Pinckley and on Broadway between Dupont and Stockton, along with many dens filled with Spanish and Mexican women, while French ones predominated in Bacon and Belden and on Commercial Street. The bordellos sometimes had gambling and sometimes didn't, but if not, almost always there would be a saloon somewhere nearby that could supply it.

In contrast with the waterfront dives, the cowyards (the city's name for what was elsewhere called a "volume brothel"), and the Chinatown cribs, the parlor houses vied with each other for the uptown clientele. A visit to one of the better establishments would cost between ten and twenty dollars, plus tips—champagne extra. (It would have been more in many big cowtowns—Jess Harper, aged sixteen, had been "initiated" in a "fifty-dollar house" in Denver—but here the number of women in the trade helped hold the price down.) The inhabitants of these swankier houses supplied themselves with extensive wardrobes of the latest fashions, which they displayed to advantage, by way of advertisement, during Saturday promenades and Sunday-night theater parties. They and their madams had accounts in the best shops. Many of the houses sent out for their food, but the most lavish kept resident chefs, and accessory services, which went for inflated prices, could bring in more money than the ostensible business of the place. Marriages into good and even wealthy families were by no means unknown: enduring affairs often existed between prominent courtesans and representatives of some of the richest and most powerful families in the city, and a fair number of women who started their careers in that line were to end up, as the century drew to a close, as respectable matrons, many in positions of wealth and social esteem. Political bosses and big-time gamblers also found such alliances—formalized and otherwise—attractive.

The Red Rose stood at the very edge of the district, on the corner of Powell and Clay Streets, an area that was considered a less dangerous, more genteel area of the Barbary Coast and was home to several high-toned gambling establishments and a dozen or so sporting houses that catered to the city's gentry, the latter chiefly unspectacular on the outside but close to opulent on the in-. Like most of the city's parlor houses, it had once been a private residence—a three-storey brick mansion with public rooms filled with rep and damask upholstery, crystal chandeliers, crimson damask wall coverings, mirrors, gilded chairs, Brussels and Turkish carpets, Oriental rugs, silver doorknobs, grand pianos, carved white-marble fireplaces, mahogany and black-walnut woodwork and furniture rubbed to a reflective gloss, and copies of famous paintings and statuary. The street-level bay windows were shielded with embroidered lace curtains and velvet and damask drapes, and the girls' rooms were done up like the bedrooms of rich women, which they were. There was a parlor to the left of the front door, and a bar and game room to the right for those patrons who preferred to work up to their evening's summit by some leisurely drinking and gambling. The bar and games were managed by John Carroll Cullen; there was faro, chuck-a-luck, roulette, and craps, and a card room where poker and blackjack were played around the clock. None of the games were rigged. Unlike the proprietors of the Barbary Coast dens, Cullen relied on unlucky repeat customers and house percentages—and the notorious profit margin of the whiskey sold at the bar. The rest of the business was under the supervision of his wife, Belle, who let it be known that her father was a clergyman in Baltimore and that she herself had been baptized Arabella, but who now offered to the discerning patron the handsomest and most skillful girls, at the highest prices, of any such resort in the city. The bedroom they shared, at the third-floor front, featured an elaborate Prudent Mallard bed with graceful carving, an armoire occupying most of one wall, a marble-topped duchesse dressing table of rosewood, and several small quilted chairs.

Belle was sitting at the dressing table, touching up her face, when Cullen came out of the bathroom. He paused a moment to watch her. They'd been together seven years now, ever since she was nineteen. He was twenty years older and had never expected to tie himself permanently to any woman. He was a professional riverboat gambler when they met, a player of faro, blackjack, and poker—a very gifted gambler, with a natural ability to calculate the odds and remember the play, and an uncanny skill at conjuring the wide, irregular, or slightly nicked card, so swiftly and invisibly that it was done before his victims knew it. He had an encyclopedic fund of jokes and a fine practical understanding of both men and women, could drink prodigiously without visible effect, and always knew just when to leave town. He exercised his profession, which was also his passion, in short, intense stints, and spent the rest of his time in barbershops and saloons, cockpits and shooting galleries, theaters and hotels and gambling halls. He believed, not in religion or equality or progress, but in skill, luck, fate, pleasure, and loyalty. He had often lost everything he had, but always he began again from nothing, methodically, uncomplainingly, with perfect confidence in his ability—an inspiring sight to those who knew him. He was invariably generous with money because it was slightly unreal to him; waiters, washerwomen, cripples, shoeshine boys, and any friend who needed to be helped through a rough time, could count on him to supply them with funds.

Belle was the next-to-youngest, and the only girl, in a family of five children, cherished and protected by her brothers, but not so much by her father, who cast her out after her cousin got her pregnant. Most girls in her situation would have immediately "gone straight to the devil," convinced that by losing their chastity they had lost the only thing worthwhile in life, but Belle was made of sterner and more practical stuff, and what was more she had skills: she could play the banjo, mandolin, guitar, and piano (all rather well), and her older brother, during his holidays from college, had taught her billiards, which by the mid-'50's had become an acceptable amusement for ladies and gentlemen to enjoy together. She also had keen business sense, which had been developed in her childhood by a doting grandfather who was a successful merchant. With the help of the sympathetic family cook, she smuggled her cue and her three portable instruments out of the house. After taking refuge in a convent until she was delivered (the baby died), she set out with these four tools to "make her fortune."

She got as far as Frederick (later to be popularly associated with Barbara Frietchie's faceoff with Stonewall Jackson) and there joined a tent show—not the kind that offered family-type dramatic presentations, but one that combined elements of a circus and a medicine show, though it usually stayed in place longer than the latter. It performed in a large tent, as the name implied, with a ticket booth, a piano, flaring lights out front, and a curtain with a painted street-scene on it and reflector-lamp footlights. Each show opened with a bally about the remedies about to be dispensed, followed by a singer, a weightlifter in fake leopardskin trunks (who proved the veracity of his grunting and straining, and by implication of the doctor and his nostrums, by challenging some man in the audience to come up and try to lift the weights), and a "magician" (really mostly a sleight-of-hand artist) who pulled a long fluttering string of silk handkerchiefs out of the back of a gentleman's watch, turned a red silk kerchief into a billiard ball, mixed a cake in a spectator's hat and stirred it over a lighted candle only to pull out a bunch of flowers and return the lid undamaged, and demonstrated mind-reading, vase and ball tricks, the flying glass of water, the Chinese rings, the Cabinet of Proteus whose ingenious mirrors could make the person inside vanish in a twinkling, and the aerial suspension trick in which he passed a metal hoop completely around his assistant's body as she apparently floated on her back in mid-air. At last came an intermission, and the magician became the doctor and began selling. After this—the pitch was usually that "the supply was getting low" and they "had to keep some for the folks who hadn't been able to get there tonight"—the show resumed, with a male/female team doing songs, dances, jokes, and acrobatic feats, and perhaps a second intermission for the selling of some other product, such as a miracle soap, whose virtues were demonstrated by the pitchman's wiping the black axle grease off a wagon wheel rolled onstage by one of his assistants, airily swishing the filthy cloth up and down in a bucket of cold water, rubbing it with his soap, and holding it up spotless—because the "grease" had actually been soft black tar soap. This was followed by a one-act play with a suitably flamboyant finale, and the show closed for the night. If business was bad, the pitchman would give a testimonial night, hiring a few glib loafers to extol the virtues of his nostrums, or run the usually effective popular-lady contest, offering 100 ballots with each bottle of medicine sold, and a prize, such as a cheap and gaudy silverplate tea service, going to the winner.

Belle doubled as magician's assistant and piano player, and played billiards on the side in the towns they passed through, and by the time they reached Evansville, Indiana, she had a stake of $100. That was plenty to book cabin passage on a river steamer, which only cost about a penny a mile going downstream because the craft didn't have to fight the current. When the boat stopped at Vicksburg to take on wood and supplies, she went exploring. Outside a high-class gaming house she met Cullen, who was just about to go in for a game of faro. He found her attractive and asked if she'd care to sit beside him. She saw no harm in it, and did. He broke the bank. "You brought me luck," he said, handing her $2000 in cash, and followed up with an invitation to supper. Over the meal he learned that she was on her way south. He bought a ticket on her boat, and they kept company, quite innocently, till Natchez—where he broke the bank again. In New Orleans it happened a third time. Meanwhile he'd had a chance to see her in action at the billiard table; impressed and delighted by her proficiency at the game, he staked her to a faro bank and taught her how to deal it. For a couple of years they travelled together, Cullen relieving men of their money at the poker table and Belle doing the same at billiards and faro, except when she was providing music in theaters and saloons. She found him gentle, intelligent, companionable; she felt safe with him. She learned that he liked children, was always ready to amuse them with a joke, a card trick, a story, to listen to their prattle.

Before a year was up they'd realized they were in love and gotten married; by the end of the second they'd had a son, whom Cullen handled with an easy skill that suggested experience, and amassed a considerable fortune, which they took to San Francisco. He gambled, and she established a small and very select bordello where she provided liquor, dancing, bawdy shows, and eight very expensive, amiable, and attractive women, but much of the fame she enjoyed was founded on her deftness with a billiard cue, and she came to be recognized as the unofficial champion of the Bay Area. Her girls were delighted with the baby; they played with him and had lively discussions about swaddling and weaning and the proper time to introduce solid foods.

After five years in the city Belle and Cullen had worked up to owning its finest house, to which came the best men of the city, bankers, merchants, ship owners, real-estate developers, judges, the mayor, the Supervisors, the collector of the port. Belle threw lavish parties for them, with champagne flowing like water, and kept the business's books, and thanks to her grandfather's teachings chose good investments for herself and Cullen—boarding houses, a laundry, shares in a shipyard and a wharf, jewelry, and deeds to land that she had bought cheap and was holding until the city grew up to them. Their son, who was too old now to live in a bordello (even a good one), was boarded at a home down the Peninsula, but they saw him regularly, and were making almost enough on the side not to have to keep the house up any more; they did it mostly because they both enjoyed living off the kind of "decent" folk who had scorned them in the past. When Rafferty approached Cullen with his plan, it had seemed to have the potential to be the very pinnacle of their efforts up to now. They could go to Europe with their son, live comfortably for the rest of their lives, and find places in respectable society. It would be a secret but very satisfying "kick in the bustle," as Belle said, to everyone who'd ever wronged them.

He drank in the sight of her—blonde hair piled high and pinned, with strands of pearls wound through it; opalescent silk dinner gown with low-cut bodice; the tinted French gloves, ornamented with small gold studs and finished off with gold-mounted tassels, that had come into style as the decade opened (this particular pair was in pearl-gray); and a set of clear-green emerald jewelry—earrings, a necklace of pear-shaped stones to match, and a delicate Grecian bandeau of three golden hoops, each encrusted with more of the same. She smiled at him in the mirror. "Ready?"

"I don't look like much, next to you," he replied.

Belle turned around on the stool to face him. "You're dressed for what you have to do tonight, just like me," she reminded him. He was wearing an old black sweater, dark corduroy breeches, and a pair of the "croquet sandals" (not yet called "sneakers") that had been introduced in '68, with a rubber sole, canvas upper, and lace-up front. They would enable him to move quietly on the pavings, and give him some purchase on surfaces that were more often than not damp, if not downright wet, in case a quick getaway was needed.

He crossed the purple-flowered Aubusson carpet and pushed the gold broché draperies aside for a look at the weather. In the aura of the gaslight on the corner the air seemed populated by cruising ghosts. "We got lucky," he said. Tule fog tended to confine itself mostly to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, but on occasion, reversing the usual course of the city's fogs, it drifted on out the Carquinez Strait into the Bay, and sometimes through the Golden Gate, where it blanketed even the approaches to the strait. It was a thick ground fog that formed any time between November 1 and March 31, but typically occurred after a heavy rain (which, in the current instance, there hadn't been), when the winds were calm and the air cooled rapidly as night approached. The visibility within it was generally less than 600 feet, and in spots could get as low as ten or less. When it was cold enough, light drizzle often accompanied it, and sometimes froze on hard-surfaced streets.

"You did," she agreed. "Nobody's likely to see you take him, not with the weather like this. Who are you taking with you?"

"The Brill boys," he said, "and Dunstable and Hughes sent one each of their own. With Barbier it should be more than enough to do the job. Have you got things all ready for him?"

"All set up," she assured him. "The room we use for the merchandise." Most crimp joints were much closer to the waterfront than this, but when you dealt in drugged men, it wasn't really necessary to have them near their ultimate destination. You simply tossed them in a closed carriage, drove to the docks, loaded them into a boat, and took them out to the waiting ship—but, of course, you needed a place to keep them until the carriage could be brought around, and to get their shore clothes off and their valuables assessed. Not that Belle and Cullen bothered much with that end of the business any more, but it was a nice little sideline during those times when reformist sentiment made the trade slow. On the other hand, their establishment was one of those where shipmasters liked to spin their yarns and relieve those urges common to men who'd been long separated from their loved ones at home, and as such its owners got the first word of it if any captain was having trouble filling out his crew. "You know," she went on, "the city's not going to take this lying down. The police will be looking high and low for him as soon as the word breaks. And we're near enough to the Coast to be just the kind of place they might decide to investigate."

"That's where having the President of the Board of Commissioners on our side helps," he pointed out. "Rafferty's piped in to the police chief's office and the sheriff's too. If either of them seems to be moving in our direction, he'll insert a coded advertisement in the classified columns of the Call."

She regarded him thoughtfully. "Are you really planning to take him out?"

He lifted an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you're going soft on me, Belle."

"Of course not," she replied. "I just wondered."

"I'd rather not have to," he admitted. "But the man's too jittery. Even on New Year's I could see it. Nobody's really likely to suspect he's connected to what we're doing, but people like him don't always think about that. It won't take much to send him running to the Mayor or the law to admit he's complicit and throw himself on their mercy. We can't afford that, not with a caper this big on the table. Besides," he added, with a sly grin, "it'll make our share just that much bigger."

"Speaking of which," she said. "You know you can't trust Rafferty. But can you trust Hughes and Dunstable?"

He grinned briefly. "Of course not. But mutual benefit's a powerful thing."

The three of them had met again, last night, at a chop house just off the waterfront, to finalize plans. Hughes had asked about the ransom—how they'd collect it and where. He'd been dubious about possessing even a quarter, let alone a third, of three-quarters of a million dollars in cash; he thought it might attract undue attention. "You're right," Cullen had agreed. "That's why we're going to specify that the payout be made in those new bearer bonds the Treasury's been issuing to finance Reconstruction. They're not registered, there's no record of who bought them, and they belong to whoever has physical possession of them. And they can be issued in very large amounts, sometimes tens of millions of dollars. Of course we wouldn't want that; it would be just as suspicious as a big pile of cash. I'm thinking $2500—that would be a hundred of them for each of us."

"How will we have them sent?" Dunstable asked.

"We'll specify that they be left at a designated site on Maintop Island," said Cullen, naming the second largest of the land masses of the Farallon chain. It nearly rubbed elbows with Southeast Farallon, on which a government lighthouse had been located since 1855, but the two were separated by a narrow but impassable gorge, so anyone wanting to go from one to the other would have to sail around by the shoreline. "I've already been out there and marked the place; it's almost due northwest of the light, and even if anyone did see the ransom boat coming in, they'd have a good mile to sail to reach it. No one will connect my visit with the ransom, and after it's left, we let it sit there, just in case someone's watching. As soon as we get a good sea fog, which will keep the light staff occupied and blind, I'll go out and get it. We can bear on the light and use a compass, and that will get us there."

"Why will you go out?" Dunstable demanded. "Why not one of us?"

"Because, Dunstable, I don't trust you," Cullen replied calmly. "And you don't trust me, or you wouldn't have asked that."

"But how do we know you'll come back with it?" Hughes asked. "You'll already be in a boat. You could go anywhere."

"Because," said Cullen in the same unruffled tone, "you'll know who I am. All you'd have to do would be leak some information to the police. They'd blanket the coast from Baja to Vancouver Island with telegrams in a day. I'd never get away—and no one would think it strange that in your business you'd have learned of my involvement in the plot; your own connection would go unsuspected."

"And if they did catch you," Hughes grumbled, "we'd be out our share."

"We can cross that bridge when we come to it," said Cullen. "There are ways around everything, if a man uses his head."

The little gilt French mantel clock, decorated with gold cherubim, abruptly whirred and began to chime. Belle and Cullen both paused to look at it. "Eight o'clock," said Belle. "You'd better get moving, and so had I. At least you haven't very far to go—only three blocks. Good luck."

**SR - L - WT**

Only a block from the southern fringe of Chinatown, at the corner of Dupont and California, stood the First Congregational Church, where the California Academy of Sciences held its meetings. The Academy had been established in 1853, only three years after California joined the Union, and quickly become one of the foremost scientific institutions in the country—certainly the premiere one of the West Coast. It also had a forward-thinking approach to the involvement of women in science, and had passed a resolution in its first year of existence that the members "highly approve of the aid of females in every department of natural science, and invite their cooperation." This policy led to several women being hired into professional positions as botanists, entomologists, and other occupations at a time when opportunities for women in the sciences were limited, and often restricted to menial cataloging and calculation work. The Academy was currently in the early stages of planning for a museum to acquaint the public with the results of its learned researches into natural history.

The fog had thickened by the time the Emperor Norton emerged from the building, muffling sound and severely restricting vision; he could see perhaps fifty feet in either direction. Though he was only two blocks south of the unofficial border of the Barbary Coast, none of its racket and hilarity reached him. In such weather he'd be fortunate to spot a cab coming in time to hail it, so he decided he might as well walk back to the Occidental; it was only two blocks east to Montgomery, then three down to Sutter. He turned left and set off toward Kearny, which was the next cross-street, his stick tapping briskly against the slick pavement.

A shape loomed out of the murk as he approached the gaslight on the corner; by the shape of the helmet and the wink of buttons on the dark coat he saw that it was a policeman. The officer in turn recognized the Emperor's distinctive plumed hat and paused to lift his nightstick to the bill of his helmet in a salute. "Good evening to you, Your Majesty," he said, in a rather hoarse, strangled voice.

"Good evening, Officer," Norton responded, and turned slightly as the man moved past him. "Dreadful weather."

"It is that, sir."

Norton tilted his head thoughtfully, wondering why the voice seemed vaguely familiar. "Officer!"

The other stopped at once. "Yes, sir?"

"It seems that this fog has given you a very bad throat," Norton observed. "When you go home, you should take a cup of hot lemon-juice and honey—with perhaps a drop or two of whiskey in it."

"Thank you, sir, I'll remember that," said the cop, and then he glanced over Norton's left shoulder at the mouth of the alley before which he stood. Immediately something knocked the Emperor's hat off, and a heavy sack was flung over his head and pulled sharply down, effectively blindfolding him and also muffling any attempt he might make to shout for help. He tried to raise his cane to strike at his assailants, but someone leaned heavily into his side, almost jostling him off his feet, and a hand caught hold of his wrist and twisted sharply, wrenching the stick from his grip. He struggled and protested, but the attackers were larger and heavier than himself and handily kept their advantage. Then John Carroll Cullen stepped deftly in and brought a blackjack down against the knot of nerves at the top of his spine. Norton's knees gave way and he slumped to the sidewalk.

Cullen whistled sharply, and from around the corner on Kearny came a response, followed by the jingle of harness and the clop of hooves. "Hold him," the gambler ordered. "Keep him upright. Get that sack off him in case someone comes along. Tiny, get his hat and cane, I'll need them to prove we have him. Good job, Barbier," he added to the cop. "You set him up just right."

The officer was staring at Norton through eyes that glittered with malice. "I wish you'd let me—" he began.

Cullen turned on one heel and drew a light Navy sixgun from his belt. "Keep off. He's not for you."

"Who'd ever know?" Barbier protested. "We both know you're not likely to let him go even if you get your money. And he owes me. I got a black mark on my record for arresting him that'll never go away."

"That may be," Cullen replied coolly, "but I'm in charge of this job and I say you leave him alone." A closed brougham drew up at the curbside, and he spoke to the three men now supporting the unconscious Norton. "Get him in, and be quick about it."

They moved to obey, and Cullen continued, "I suppose you want your money."

"Money?" Barbier echoed. "I didn't do this for money. I can make more in a week on the Chinatown beat than you'll ever give me. I did it for my own satisfaction."

Cullen nodded thoughtfully, glanced back to make sure his minions had Norton bundled into the brougham, and then said mildly, "In that case, you won't mind too much if I copper my bets." And before Barbier realized what was happening, he had levelled his sixgun and fired two shots into the officer's chest.

As the dying man slumped to the sidewalk, Cullen swung himself quickly through the door of the brougham, snapping to the man on the box, "Move!" The driver clucked to the horses and the carriage pulled quickly away from the curb as Cullen drew the door shut after him. In minutes the street was deserted again.

**SR - L - WT**

Friday, January 5

The news broke first in the Morning Call, in screaming 216-point type: EMPEROR NORTON ABDUCTED! The story beneath the head told of the Emperor's regular attendance at the Academy's meeting the evening before, of the delivery of his hat and cane to Police Headquarters, his "chamberlain"'s report that he had never returned home, the discovery of a murdered policeman on California Street at what was presumed to have been the scene of the kidnapping, and the demand made by Norton's captors—a ransom in the incredible amount of $750,000. The other papers in the city followed suit, each citing, as the Call had, an "anonymous communication" that had been left under their office doors sometime during the night. Even the evening sheets put out extra editions.

Slim and Jess were late coming down for breakfast, Jess having not gotten back to their room till past three A.M. "Well?" Slim asked him as they dressed. "How'd you do?"

"Done okay," growled Jess, badly in need of caffeine. Slim hid a smile and decided to wait for details. But in the lobby and the dining room they found the place buzzing with the news of the kidnap. It was almost enough to knock any other thought out of their minds. Slim could barely believe that anyone would have the gall—or even the imagination—to demand such a huge price for any kidnap victim, and Jess had trouble getting his mind around how much three-quarters of a million was. "You figure they'll pay?" he asked. "It'd have to be the city government, don't you reckon? What Major Adams said, Norton don't have no kin to cough up."

"The government or the citizens, I guess," Slim confirmed. "The paper's offices are just a few blocks up Montgomery. I wonder if they post bulletins, like the Gazette back home would do?"

Jess levelled a shuttered look at him. "Reckon it won't do no hurt to go and see," he observed.

They ate quickly and headed up Montgomery to No. 523, to which the Call had moved after spending the war years at 612 Commercial. A restless crowd, primarily of men and boys but with not a few women present, had already gathered before the building, churning about and carrying on at least a dozen conversations at once. As Slim had hoped, there was a large corkboard mounted outside the door, and tacked to it, with a sheet of protective glass over it, was that morning's edition. They had scarcely been waiting fifteen minutes when a couple of newspaper employees emerged, demounted the glass, and posted a single large sheet, somewhat like a wanted poster in general size and configuration, under the paper itself. They returned the glass to its previous position and vanished inside again. The crowd, which had been waiting impatiently for a look, surged forward, and Slim and Jess, at the back of it, couldn't see a thing, but presently a man's loud voice was heard: "The Chief of Police says Barbier was probably killed because he saw the Emperor being taken and tried to stop it!"

"That makes sense," Slim murmured.

The unseen reader up front continued: "'Ironically, it was Officer Barbier who, in 1867, arrested the Emperor on a charge of vagrancy, which was later altered to lunacy. When, upon the outrage of the Emperor's subjects being made plain to those in authority, Police Chief Patrick Crowley was compelled to release him from custody and issue a public apology, Barbier was made the department's scapegoat and severely reprimanded. He had been in line for a promotion to sergeant but was moved to the bottom of the list. It seems that in death he has redeemed his error.'"

"You don't look like you quite believe that," Slim observed, noting the tilt of Jess's eyebrows.

"I do?" Jess considered the idea. "I dunno. Maybe I don't. Believe it, I mean."

"Why not?" Slim asked.

Jess frowned, shook his head. "Dunno. Just don't feel right, somehow. Don't seem like that cop'd have a lot of good feelin's towards Norton if he got dropped down the promotion list on account of him—does it? So why'd he step in?"

"It was pretty foggy last night," Slim pointed out. "Maybe he just heard or saw a struggle taking place but didn't realize who was involved."

"He would've," said Jess, "if Norton was wearin' that feathered hat of his."

"I hadn't thought of that," Slim admitted. "What are you saying, you think he was in on it?"

Jess shrugged. "Ain't sure. Just gives me an itch somehow. But it ain't none of our business. Ain't our town." And then, shrewdly: "Ain't no need of you bein' out of humor, Slim. What happened wasn't no doin' of yours."

Slim gave him a stunned look. "How'd you know—?"

"Same way you knew I was fixin' to play poker to get Miss Essie some workin' money, I reckon," the Texan replied. "Now am I right?"

The rancher sighed. "You're right, and I knew it before you ever said it. It wasn't my doing. There was no way I could've known it would happen, and probably no way I could've stopped it. It's just—" He shrugged helplessly. "I know the man's a brick or two shy of a load, but—but I like him. He's just so pleasant, and interested, and well-mannered—just what an Emperor of the United States ought to be, if we had such a thing. More democratic than a lot of politicians." A pause, then: "I hadn't had the chance to tell you this, but he wanted us to go to the theater with him tonight, as his guests. Lotta Crabtree's opening at Ralston's California."

Jess looked startled. "Theater? With him? Me too?"

"Yes, you too. He specifically said 'you and Mr. Harper.' And I think we should go. I think if we don't, it would be like refusing a gift."

The Texan thought that over for a minute. "You reckon they'll let us in if he ain't there to give our bona fides?"

"We won't know till we ask, will we? If they don't, we can afford to buy the tickets anyway."

The crowd of news-seekers continued its vigil throughout the day, changing composition as people wandered off out of boredom or to get something to eat, then later returned out of curiosity or were replaced by new ones. Around two P.M. the Mayor's office issued a statement—more of a broadside—that confirmed the story, declared that the city and county government was bringing all resources to bear on the effort to learn Norton's whereabouts, and implored all citizens to cooperate with police, to refrain from any actions that might divert the attention of law enforcement from its task, to remain calm and to go about their day-to-day business in a normal fashion, "as His Imperial Majesty would doubtless wish." This was shortly followed by another bulletin stating that Billy Ralston had pledged $1500 toward the ransom. Once that became known, others came thick and fast: $5000 from cattle kings Miller and Lux, $500 from Edward Martin of the Hibernia Bank, $3500 from Darius Ogden Mills, $600 from Dr. C. M. Hitchcock, whose unconventional daughter Lillie was the darling of the Fire Department and a constant source of news. Even the notoriously miserly James Lick had offered $1000. Before the day was out, almost $59,000 of the demanded sum had already been promised by various members of the city's wealthiest class, and more such offers were expected on Saturday, although the money itself might not be available till the banks opened Monday. And by Sunday morning every firehouse, every church, every saloon, had set out a barrel with a slot cut in the head, and a sign tacked to it on paper, canvas, or old sheeting: For the Emperor Norton Ransom Fund!

Lotta Crabtree's opening performance—Heart's Ease, which was to be a mainstay of her troupe throughout the decade—was set to raise its curtain at eight o'clock, so Slim and Jess returned to the hotel to eat and change clothes around six. Part of San Francisco's charm came from its extreme remoteness and the hothouse atmosphere that resulted from the collected energies of the many gifted, adventurous people who settled there. Living there was like living on the edge of the universe, albeit with abundant creature comforts. From the first days of the Rush, the city's physical and spiritual isolation had created a hunger for both culture and news. Art flourished there: in 1871 the San Francisco Art Association had been organized by some two dozen practicing artists, and one of the oldest photography firms in town, Bradley & Rulofson, had started business in the first days of the Gold Rush and within a few years mounted a gallery that included most of the celebrities and visiting royalty who had ever set foot there. It was a great theater town, where innovation, risk, and strong characters drove the scene, and as early as 1852 the Bateman girls, Kate and Ellen, only eleven and nine years old, presented Hamlet and The Mother's Trust, "fairy star" Sue Robinson sang, danced, and recited, Alexina Baker played Juliet at the Jenny Lind and found a diamond ring in one of the bouquets tossed to her, Junius Brutus Booth and his sons Edwin and Junius Jr. competed with torrential rains that closed the theaters and left them without a penny for their trouble, and the Chapman family met with great acclaim; Caroline Chapman, singer and dancer, was the rage of the town. Tiny Elisa Biscaccianti, called "the American Thrush" and "the Columbus of the Musical Pacific," raised her silvery voice in song and took the city by storm; over the winter fifty-dollar gold slugs rained onto the American Theater's stage in tribute to Kate Hayes, the blue-eyed Irish Linnet, who gave a triumphant series of concerts. The next year Matilda Heron appeared and won plaudits for her role of Camille and her natural style, and Charles Kean and Edwin Forrest visited, as did the latter's ex-wife, Catherine Sinclair, who became manager of the Metropolitan Theater, establishing it as a serious musical house and also presenting melodramas, burlesques, and romances starring the famous actors of the day. In May Lola Montez arrived and enthralled the boys with her Spider Dance at the Bella Union and the American—and earned $16,000 a week thereby. Julia Dean lived for a time in the city and in Salt Lake and was accorded a brilliant reception; she gave a benefit performance of Madeleine, the Belle of Faubourg for the Mechanics' Institute library in 1854, and contributed over $1000 to its coffers. The same year Ole Bull, the famous Norwegian violinist, came to visit.

Concerts combining classical and popular music had drawn their audiences from the early '50's, and the city reigned as the principal producer of minstrel troupes for the world market. By 1856, even European actors and famous Shakespearean performers from the East were drawn to California. Edwin Booth returned to play Hamlet, James Murdoch triumphed in The School for Scandal, the Amazing Ravels blended gymnastics, ballet, and pantomime with straight theatrics, Bryant's and Christy's minstrel troupes performed. The English actress Laura Keene was warmly applauded and for a time managed the American Theater; the Marsh Juvenile Comedians—thirty of them aged five to fifteen—successfully trod the boards in the middle and late '50's, and Adah Isaacs Menken, in the summer of 1863, packed them into the Washington Street Opera House in her signature part, the title role of Mazeppa. (Legend had it that her leading man, Junius B. Booth, quite forgot his lines when she vaulted to the back of a California mustang in flesh-colored tights with her hair falling down her back.) The 1864 law against Sunday theatrical performances had been repealed at the beginning of the decade, and this had given the theater something of a boost. Now audiences could see John McCullough, Lawrence Barrett, and William Henry Sedley-Smith at the California Theater (which had been managed by the first two from 1867-70), James O'Neill, Modjeska, Edwin Booth, or Under the Gaslight at Maguire's—Tom Maguire, the Irish immigrant who had been the city's beloved impresario for twenty years, bringing Menken, Kean, Forrest, and many others to its stage and sponsoring opera at Maguire's Opera House and the Academy of Music, even though it was never a success financially. They even had a theatrical newspaper of their own, Figaro, which had been launched in 1865 and provided a guide to all the popular entertainments in town.

Audiences of that day believed in a long night of entertainment punctuated with variety—Shakespeare, comedies, singing and dancing, minstrelsy, hand-painted panoramas that slowly unrolled to present pictures of history or travel. The town provided them, and offered a number of theaters, some with seating for several thousand, lush drapery, gilt domes and columns, and thick carpets. Union Hall, built in 1864, stood on Howard between Third and Fourth Streets. The second Metropolitan Theater (the first had been built in 1853 and burned flat four years later) had been built in 1861 on Montgomery Street between Washington and Jackson; it was three storeys high, with storefronts at grade and a rather severe classical façade above, topped with a projecting pediment. Half a block from the Old Poodle Dog Restaurant was the California Theater, where all the best actors appeared—Booth in Hamlet and Richelieu, Joe Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle, Lotta Crabtree, and the beautiful ex-Union spy Pauline Cushman in The Gypsy Queen; a smaller one, the Alhambra (later the Bush Street) at 325 Bush, stood within two blocks of it. The Mechanics' Institute Pavilion on Union Square, constructed in 1864 at a cost of $22,000, could accommodate as many as 15,000 persons, 8000 seated and the rest standing; it was used for the greatest performances, like the grand four-day extravaganza of the Great Musical Festival of 1870, held to benefit the San Francisco Mercantile Library and featuring 1200 vocalists, an orchestra of 200, and the celebrated solo violinist Camilla Urso, and in the same year, when the city went mad over roller-skating, a rink had been set up there. There were amateur theatricals too, like the plays presented at Turnverein Hall, on Bush Street, by the Fire-Fly Social & Dramatic Club; there was a certain new vogue for a form of burlesque variously known as leg shows or sensation dramas, which had begun to gain popularity at the legitimate theaters just before the war (and spread from there to the saloon variety halls, like the Bella Union, which had presented The Female Forty Thieves in 1862); and places like Gilbert's Melodeon, a two-storey building at Clay and Kearny, offered a rougher sort of theater—more girls and bawdy songs, with little attempt at art. But it was the California that was the favorite of the city's elite. Opened on January 18, 1869—fittingly with a presentation of Bulwer-Lytton's Money—it was still fresh and beautiful, with its marble mosaic floors, great mirrors in the lobby, ornate gilt-and-plush dress boxes, and a stage more spacious than any other in the country. Its elaborate construction, advanced equipment, and generally plush ambience seemed to befit the emerging society in America's most extravagantly new metropolis. In its first year alone it was sold out for 300 performances.

Early in the century, the American theater had been a very democratic art, but in the '40's—just in time for California's rise to prominence—a line had begun to be drawn between "respectable" fare for pacified bourgeois audiences—an upper-class, "serious" theater—and unrespectable, or "popular," entertainment aimed at the middle and lower levels of society, especially artisans, laborers, and a group of men that styled themselves "sports" or "the sporting fraternity," and came from many classes. This audience enjoyed variety acts, spectacular melodramas (including apocalyptic ones like Medina's adaptation of The Last Days of Pompeii, anti-Catholic ones like J. S. Jones's The Carpenter of Rouen, James Hackett's Yankee plays, Rip Van Winkle, Nick of the Woods, Chanfrau's Mose, Frank Mayo's Davy Crockett, and others with working-class heroes), and American but rarely English stars, along with animal acts, ballet dancers, Irish plays, rowdy blackface minstrelsy, and later musical travesties, local-color farces, and burlesques of popular plays and stars. In the next decade audiences began to be segregated according to price and location of theater. Common folks patronized concert saloons, variety theaters, 10-20-30 theaters, and dime museums, as well as circuses and (later on) Wild West shows, while "legitimate" theater, targeted at the middle and upper classes, was made exclusionary through the building of smaller venues and the raising of prices. Every large city, San Francisco among them, had a whole block of "popular" theaters that catered to what had formerly been called "the democracy," charging ten-, twenty-, and thirty-cent admissions, where the "serious" theaters charged fifteen to twenty-five cents for a seat in the "amphitheater" (as the "cheap seats" in the gallery were sometimes called), twice that for the second and third tiers in the middling "pit" or "family circle," twice that again for dress circle and parquette, and a dollar-fifty for reserved box seats; six bits—seventy-five cents—for the gallery was considered high. These comparatively costly houses played Shakespeare and Sheridan, classic opera and symphony, and hosted well-known English and American players like Forrest and Booth and later Sir Henry Irving. The "popular" ones leaned on spectacles, comedies, moral plays, melodramas, musicals, dioramas, and "living tableaux." At the same time, Shakespeare was a great drawing-card among all classes—in many cities a quarter of the plays performed in any one season were his, and he was the meat and potatoes of every repertory company, with Richard III, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet being given somewhere on any given night of the year. Even in the West he was beloved, for his plays, like Italian opera, featured duels, murders, poisonings, and assassinations that spoke directly to the Western audience's own experience of violence—Indian massacres, vigilante floggings and lynchings, gunfights—and were popular there from the first. There were also plays of real artistic merit that had long runs because they contained elements that appealed to a mass audience—The Gladiator and others written especially for Forrest being typical—or featured such stars as Forrest, E. H. Sothern, and later Bernhardt, Duse, and James O'Neill; but these weren't "popular" drama on the order of The Octoroon or Rip Van Winkle.

Yet California was still "the West," and it still had a different temper and different tastes than the established East, which was why Ralston's house could offer both serious and popular fare and still pack them in. The advertising sheet by the entrance not only mentioned tonight's performance, but carried a small overlay to remind playgoers that Miss Crabtree would also present, during her visit, two of her other great triumphs, Uncle Tom's Cabin and Little Nell and the Marchioness, the latter being an adaptation from The Old Curiosity Shop made especially for her by John Brougham, in which she had triumphed during her 1869 visit to the city.

Slim had been prepared to pay the admission charge himself, but when he and Jess reached the box-office wicket and he explained that they'd been intending to attend as the Emperor's guests, the ticket-seller quickly sent an usher in search of the manager, who assured them that His Majesty's wishes would be honored, and had them escorted to balcony seats, as Norton would have been. When eight o'clock came and the curtain didn't rise, a faint murmuring coursed through the audience. Lotta Crabtree was, after all, "the San Francisco Favorite;" could she have been so overcome by the news of another municipal legend's fate that she was unable to go on?

Then the curtains rustled and Miss Crabtree herself stepped out onto the apron. She was petite in form, with tousled red hair. The murmuring died away as the theatergoers waited respectfully to see what she had to say. When she spoke, it was in a shaken, tight-throated, but determinedly steady voice. "I have no doubt," she began, "that you have all heard of the dreadful fate that has overtaken the Emperor Norton. As you know, His Majesty is a great lover of the stage, and my company and I, having discussed the question, are convinced that he would wish us, in this time of crisis, to follow the motto of all players—The show must go on! And so we will present our series as originally scheduled."

A wave of applause—not boisterous, but plainly approving—greeted this announcement, but Lotta wasn't finished. She raised her hands for silence, and when she got it, continued: "As a loyal daughter of the Golden State, I consider it my obligation to help my adopted city restore one of its most beloved citizens to his proper place. And therefore, I wish to announce that tonight's performance will be given as a benefit for his ransom."

This time the applause was louder and lasted longer. The actress let it die off, and finished: "But before we begin, I hope you will all join me in a moment of silent prayer for his safety, and for the quick resolution of this terrible situation." As she bowed her head, a great rustling filled the auditorium, men and women rising from their seats as one.

Heart's Ease was the story of a child (played, of course, by Lotta) taken to California and then abandoned by her English father. Her story was replete with revolvers, buried gold, melodrama, dancing, and banjo playing, but at last she was reconciled with her father, returned to England, and married a proper gentleman. Even Jess was impressed by the actress's professionalism: although she'd obviously been deeply affected by news of Norton's abduction, she gave her lines without a hitch and even succeeded in being convincing in the most boisterous of her scenes. At the end, the audience gave her a standing ovation, as much for that and for the promised benefit money as because she was a long-time favorite throughout the state.

"It's almost too bad we've only got five more days in town," Slim observed as they walked back toward the Occidental. "I wouldn't mind staying long enough to see her in Little Nell; I've always enjoyed Dickens."

"Reckon you wouldn't mind stayin' long enough to know Norton's gonna be okay, neither," said Jess shrewdly.

The rancher sighed, reminded again of the current crisis. "No," he admitted, "I guess I wouldn't."

---

8. Offers of Help

Saturday, January 6

Murdoch Lancer was frustrated and restless. He couldn't blame Isaiah Lees for having to put John's case on the back burner, even though the man had had barely two days to pursue it; Lees was, after all, a member of the Police Department, a city employee, and when a citizen of San Francisco was in possible peril, he had to focus on that. But knowing that he'd possibly come so close to finding his runaway son, knowing that it was the Norton kidnap that had put a barrier in his path, got his fighting Highland blood up and made it even harder for him to sit still in his room than it had been when he first arrived…

**SR - L - WT**

Slim and Jess had spent much of the morning and the first half of the afternoon on a ride down to the Mission District. As recently as the '50's, Sixth Street two or three blocks south of Mission had been, as Bancroft put it, "far out in the wilderness," and admirably suited to the building of Christian Russ's mansion, whose gardens were thrown open as a public resort on each ethnic group's appropriate holidays—the Fourth of July for the Americans, St. Patrick's Day for the Irish, Bastille Day for the French, and first of all May Day for the Germans, Russ's own countrymen. There was a dance pavilion with a tent over it, and performers who entertained anyone capable of paying the small admission price. In 1866 it had acquired a rival, when Woodward's Gardens were opened on the former estate of Robert Woodward, proprietor of the What Cheer House, which by that point had a thousand rooms and was selling three times as many meals a day, besides offering public baths in the basement, a free lending library and a museum (the first of either in the city), and a successful formula of temperance, cleanliness, and low prices. Woodward, like Russ, had made a comfortable fortune during the Gold Rush, and when he established an estate for himself by the Mission plank road, a four-acre parcel bounded along its other three sides by 13th, 15th, and Valencia Streets, he moved to it, for his own amusement and that of his friends, the various exhibits that had been features of the What Cheer: his collection of mineral specimens, Indian artifacts, assorted reptiles pickled in jars of alcohol, and the great assortment of souvenirs and knickknacks picked up for him in foreign ports by the sailors who patronized the place, including seashells and over 700 stuffed birds from all over the world.

At first he opened his private grounds only for the benefits held by the Sanitary Commission, but throngs of people kept coming out, especially on Sundays, to peer through the gates and try to get a look at the flowers and aviaries, fountains and marble statuary, until one day (urged, it was said, by his daughter) he decided to simply move his family out to his Oak Knoll farm in Napa Valley and "let the public have the run of the grounds." They quickly became a beloved wonderland, one of the city's most popular attractions. They were serviced by Henry Casebolt's dime-a-trip horse-drawn balloon cars—Casebolt's own invention, which had the great advantage of not needing a turntable to reverse direction at the end of their run; drivers merely removed the coupling pin and moved the horse to the other end—which followed Pacific Avenue between Fillmore and Van Ness, and the main gate was topped by carved wooden grizzly bears holding flagpoles, a matched set of statues of the goddess California, and a large bust of George Washington to the right. Woodward's former home had been converted to a museum, its entrance framed by gigantic mastodon tusks some ten millennia old, its halls and chambers stocked with stuffed bears, birds, and fish, fossils, and mineral specimens, including crystals, volcanic stones, precious and semiprecious gems, and a ninety-seven-pound gold nugget—reputedly the largest ever found—from the Sierra Butte mine. Next to it, at the head of a grand stairway leading up the terraces, stood the Near Eastern-style conservatory, overflowing with exotic trees, ferns, and flowers, and the art gallery, which displayed sixty-six fine Victorian genre paintings, plus a hundred copies of European "old masters" painted on commission by local artist Virgil Williams, and copies of famous sculptures and busts, including the Naples bronze of Dante, Hiram Powers' bust of California, Ives's Rebecca at the Well, and a piece called Indian Girl at the Grave of Her Lover.

Nearby, the rotary boat whirled around its circular track on the edge of a pond as the children on board laughed and screamed with delight and young folks snatched water lilies off the surface for their mothers or girlfriends. Behind the pond stretched gravel paths that passed gardens, fountains, streams, two small lakes (one inhabited by various species of waterfowl, the other by seals and sea lions), hillocks, even man-made grottos and caverns. Many of the trees and shrubs had been imported from Europe, and each one wore a name tag. Tame animals such as ostriches, goats, and Chinese and Japanese deer wandered freely through the grounds, and nearly a hundred others filled the separate "Zoological Department" on the other side of 14th Street, including bears (both grizzly and black) you could feed peanuts to, camels, zebras, buffalo, deer, llamas, kangaroos, mountain lions, jaguars, and foxes, with an aviary hard by. Near this zoo stood an amphitheater where up to 5000 spectators at a time could watch spectacles like the Delhi fire-eaters, Siberian reindeer, Japanese acrobats, dancing bears, Roman chariot races, Jaguarine the swordswoman, a Frenchman who wrestled a bear, clog dancers, comedians, minstrel shows, a rope-skipping dancer, even Major Burke and his rifle review. A band played from a platform decorated with blue streamers, bright banners, and hanging baskets of roses. There was a roller-skating rink, boating facilities, a concert stage, a dance hall, a theater, a pair of white goats that pulled a carriage, a water park complete with boats and a fast-moving flume ride, multiple restaurants, and Herman the Great, who was shot out of a cannon, not to mention balloon ascensions on Sundays, and Tom Baldwin's parachute falls from those balloons. Like its founder's What Cheer House, it was "temperance," which meant teetotal.

Exploring it had been a pleasant day's diversion for the two men, although the coming of the cooler weather had curtailed most of the outdoor attractions, and they'd decided fairly early that they'd seen all they could. In any case, Slim was curious to check out the day's papers for news about the Norton situation. The hotel had thoughtfully made free copies of all the city sheets available in the lobby—seven or eight of them altogether, all fiercely competitive, which hadn't stopped every editor from dipping his pen in vitriol to condemn the Emperor's still unknown abductors and urge the police to greater efforts in their attempts to solve the case. Several of the editorials held an undercurrent of vigilantism.

On a more positive note, Lotta Crabtree had contributed almost $900 from last night's benefit to the ransom fund, and other theaters around the city had resolved to hold similar ones, some of them tonight, others on Monday, since all were dark Sunday. The police were being propelled into a state of unusual diligence by the indignant attention given Norton's abduction by the newspapers and the public in general. Several of the south-of-Market military units had offered their services to help in blanketing San Francisco with search parties. "Not a bad idea," Slim allowed. "There are a lot more of them than there are of the regular law officers, and they probably know the city equally as well."

"They're sure noisy enough," said Jess. "That day I went up to the Twin Peaks, comin' back it was practice night for some of 'em, and you could hear 'em up in their halls for blocks." He threw his gunbelt around his hips and settled the buckle into place. "I'll be headin' on down to Miss Essie's," he added. "Be back for supper, 'less she makes me stay."

"Be careful," Slim cautioned. "I still don't know how much you won, but whatever it is, I'd guess there'd be plenty of people in that part of town who'd be happy to relieve you of your burden."

"That might be," Jess admitted, "but tell the truth, hardcase—do I look like a man with a bootful of big bills?"

"No," said Slim with a smile, "you don't. Be sure to say hello from me while you're there."

**SR - L - WT**

After claiming his poker winnings, which he'd stowed in the hotel safe after the game ended, Jess surreptitiously slipped the packet inside his undershirt and started up Montgomery Street at a brisk but casual pace. Three blocks up, at No. 420, on the corner of California, was the Parrott Building, the modest two-storey brick structure housing the main office of Wells Fargo Express & Banking, a company with which, working as he did at a stage stop, he was naturally familiar. In less than twenty minutes he'd exchanged his bulky cash for a bank draft, which he tucked away in the hidden pocket in the top of his boot, and was on his way to the Helping Hand Mission.

Clancy, who seemed to be the official doorkeeper, recognized him and let him in. Despite their high-set position, he found that on a bright day the windows let enough light into the front meeting room that the gaslights weren't needed. On the platform up front a group of singers was assembling for practice as a young man handed out hymnals from the cupboards. A boy showed Jess to Miss Essie's tiny office, which opened off a passage next to the stairs. She welcomed him with her usual dazzling smile, asked after Slim and McCullough, and then said, "It's not that I'm not always happy to see an old friend, but I didn't expect you to come by again. After all, you said you only had ten days' vacation here—I'm sure there are so many things you want to do…" She let the thought hang, giving him an opening.

Jess struggled to find the right words to express himself. As a Southerner, and therefore taught from earliest boyhood to have respect for women, it bothered him to think that when he was enjoying himself with a pretty girl—a girl who had seemed willing enough to encourage the match-up, as most of his partners over the years had been—he might actually be in some way exploiting her. Essie's description of the situation of the Chinese girls, and their pidgin-English come-ons from their cribs, had also left him feeling troubled. In his circles, women for rent weren't so forward about it. They were always in evidence on the streets of mining camps, somewhat less so in cowtowns—walking, a-horseback, in carriages, smiling, winking, flirting—but they didn't say what they were; a man knew. And they didn't call out their price or sit half-naked in windows. You knew in what part of town they could be found, and if you wanted one you went there. Or you looked for a red lamp or a pane of red glass. Inside you might find the "girls" wearing nothing but corsets and drawers, stockings and high-heeled slippers and fancy wrappers, but at least they weren't bare-naked or nearly; that came after you got to their rooms. They had, in short, their own kind of modesty, professional though it was.

The women who lived in "good houses"—the lavish parlor houses and fancy brothels—considered themselves the cream of the crop, and scorned those who worked in (or out of) saloons, dance halls, and theaters. Somewhere in the middle stood the "ordinary" brothels, which were sometimes nearly as high in quality as the "good" places. Near the bottom of the scale were the girls who operated independently, without the backing of madams or the luxury of parlor houses; these ultimately tended, in the majority of Western towns, to live in segregated districts where their little cabins or "cribs"—small dwellings with a tiny front parlor, a bedroom, and a kitchen in the rear—were illuminated by red lamps and curtains and where, in lieu of street numbers, their names were posted in the windows or glass doorfronts or above the doors. Even lower were the inhabitants of the "hog ranches," operating along the trails where muleskinners, teamsters, and stage drivers stopped briefly to take their pleasure, or just off military reservations.

Probably many prostitutes were the daughters of prostitutes; already tainted by the maternal business, and seeing its example before them every day, they saw no reason to seek higher for an occupation. Others were mentally deficient and easily led astray, or had been seduced and "ruined" by some cad, perhaps left with a bastard child to support. Undoubtedly many, as Essie had implied two nights ago, simply had no other skills or means of support. Some perhaps had a difficulty with self-esteem—they were fat, or too tall, or skinny, or cross-eyed, or pockmarked, or otherwise failed of meeting the prevailing standards of beauty, or perhaps stuttered and were thought stupid for not always being able to get their words out—and so gladly gave in to any male who seemed at all interested, and then were left in the lurch afterward. Some had begun as domestics in bordellos and were attracted by the nice clothes and "easy living" of the women they served. Some were simply mercenaries who realized that by charging whatever the traffic would bear, they would glean a better income than any "respectable" female occupation could offer them. Some were probably former Indian captives or victims of rape; many people subscribed to a sick logic that insisted forcible sex degraded a woman so that she was no longer worthy of the respect due one still chaste, and once she had been abused, she became sexually available for any man who wanted her. Others had merely gotten the name through unfortunate circumstances.

Yet some were of a different cloth. These were the lively, hot-blooded, unconventional farm girls who lured ardent swains into haylofts, the mentally superior individuals who got off the beam of decency and developed shrewdness in the alluring back alleys of sin, the girls bored and frustrated by the restrictions society put on them, the ones who wanted to see more of the world or have a wider choice of men, the ones who couldn't see themselves slaving away as housewives for forty or fifty years, and the ones who (horror of horrors) actually enjoyed having sex. And then—very often included in this category, as were the best of the outright professionals—there was the saloon or dance-hall girl, who as a general rule might have somewhat elastic morals, but wasn't a prostitute and bitterly resented being treated like one or getting the name, to avoid which she would often reject unwanted advances to the point of beating. She was seldom a virgin, and generally snubbed by the "better element;" she often took lovers freely and lived with them openly; but she took pride in picking or rejecting her partners as she pleased, and although she might accept entertainment, meals, and "pretties" from them, or gifts for her children if she had any, she never charged for the service itself. In Texas there was a special term for this type: "wheeligo girl," meaning an attractive female who wasn't necessarily a prostitute but certainly liked to have a good time. Except in some of the very cheapest joints, her job wasn't to provide paid sex, but to brighten the evenings of lonely men starved for female companionship, to entertain them, please them, sing for them, dance with them, talk to them, perhaps flirt with them a bit, and induce them to remain in her bar, buying liquor and patronizing the games—the former, particularly, being how the place made the lion's share of its profits: whiskey sold to the customer for a minimum thirty-two times its wholesale price and often twice that. A major part of her income came from commissions on the drinks and "drinks"—ersatz champagne, generally, for herself—that she persuaded passing gallants to buy. In most such places the proprieties were strictly observed, as much because Western men tended to revere all women as because the women or the saloonkeeper wanted it that way. Anyone who disregarded them usually found himself in trouble. In San Francisco, things seemed to be looked at differently: though he'd seen nothing to confirm the guess, Jess wouldn't have been at all surprised had he seen the customers in the Comique make a rush on those bare-bosomed dancers.

The saloon hostesses and dance girls were often refugees from some mill or farm, lonely stage station, or other depressed or humdrum environments, lured by posters and handbills advertising high wages "paid promptly in gold every week," easy work, and fine clothing. A large share were widows or needy women of good morals, forced to earn a living in an era that offered few means for women to do so; some had been left heavily in debt at their helpmeets' deaths. Others had husbands who were missing or worthless. They had to wear "short" (which usually meant mid-shin or knee-length) skirts, but this troubled them only at first. Most were considered "good" girls by the men they danced and talked with; some received lavish gifts, like silver-heeled dancing shoes, from admirers, or acted as devoted nurses during lethal epidemics, and it wasn't unknown for them to be "adopted" and celebrated in song by some cow outfit; sentimental nicknames, often incorporating words like "Queen" or "Rose," were frequently bestowed upon them. Though the "respectable" ladies considered them "fallen," they wouldn't be caught dead associating with an actual prostitute. These were the ones Jess personally preferred: they tended to be somewhat more discerning about their partners, since paid sex wasn't their primary line, and you had to work a little to get them—almost a kind of courtship.

Essie was still waiting patiently for him to explain his errand. "You was sayin' last time," he began slowly, "that there was things you want to do, like helpin' the sailors, and them Chinese girls, and— well, what I'm tryin' to say is… the ones that give out for money—is it really as bad as you made it sound? I know you bein' a lady and all, it's gotta be hard for you to understand that a girl might want to be in that line…"

She seemed surprised at first, then looked at him with compassion. "Maybe you've forgotten," she said gently, "that I came all across the country in a wagon, stopping at towns of all sizes to preach the Word. And that I was once in the business of purveying… entertainment… myself. I do know what it's like in most places between the Sierra and the Missouri. And you're right. There are almost as many reasons for a girl to do that as there are girls who do it. In every city there are some who look as if they could be taking tea with the Queen; they're often the best ones, though you can't tell it by looking at them. Even here in San Francisco, some came to the city originally to look for work or otherwise better their fortunes, and were forced into prostitution by economic reality. Some began in the dance halls on the Barbary Coast and found life in a bordello easier and better paying than in those dreadful dives—which it probably is, if they can survive long enough to make the change. And of course there are those who've become harlots simply because they followed the line of least resistance, or surrendered to their natural inclinations, or were betrayed and abandoned, or fell in love—or thought they did—with a man who got what he wanted from them and then set them to work earning money for him. But in San Francisco—I suppose because the bigger the town, the more demand there is—even many of the ones in the best houses are small-town girls brought in by procurers, men who operate throughout the state and up and down the Pacific Coast. The villages and towns on the eastern shore of the Bay and in San Mateo County seem to be the source for a great number, maybe because they live so close by and hear so much about the exciting, glamorous life here. Some of them are sold to the brothel keepers for cash, but more often the man is paid a small percentage of their earnings, and so over time builds up a regular and very substantial income."

Jess never doubted that she was telling the truth as she knew it—he suspected she was no more fond of untruth than Slim was. And having had a broad experience of the slightly seamy side of small-town life, he knew quite well that for all their righteous middle-class-dominated morality, such places were no better than anywhere else that humans gathered. Illegitimacy there invariably was; every community large enough to call itself a town had at least one or two women of easy virtue, often earning some of their living by taking in washing, but also, as the occasion warranted, "taking in men," making themselves available to initiate a boy or comfort a married man whose wife—in the absence of most kinds of reliable birth control—had no way to guarantee herself freedom from pregnancy except by denying him her bed and accepting the fact that he would go elsewhere to ease what she had been taught were irresistible animal urges. Most towns and all farming districts also had warm-blooded girls who enticed suitors, and sometimes travelling men, into haylofts—at least until they found themselves pregnant; and said travelling men were often able to seduce the weaker-willed of the sex, too. Yet the concept of pimps and procurers was totally foreign to Jess, because most of his career had been passed on the range or in small cowtowns, where a stranger would be noticed, remarked upon, remembered, and probably hauled in for questioning by the local law if he began showing an unhealthy interest in the young girls of the community. He found he didn't like it at all. A woman's body was—or should be—her own; whether she gave it to a man, for good or not, should be her decision. Anything else was just slavery.

"If you could do all them things you talked about," he ventured, "for that kind of girl, and the sailors and all… reckon it'd take a whole lot of money, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," Essie agreed with a sigh, "I'm afraid it would. We'd need to try to influence legislation, start training programs, work on organizing some kind of sailors' union, and try to get some test cases before the courts about the slave trade and the contract system. It wouldn't come cheap."

It occurred to him that he admired her as he could recall admiring few women he'd met. She was strong and smart and knew how to get things done—kind of like Slim, now that he thought on it. She had great executive abilities. She could probably have run the whole Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., if she'd been asked to. Yet her fine sensibilities were evident in everything she did. She didn't need a husband to make her whole; she was whole. And something—call it God—had given her a great capacity for love, and since it didn't go to one person—or even to the limited circle of a family—it could light the world. It would be something, to help her do that. Maybe the greatest thing a man would ever accomplish.

"But if you had a stake," he went on, "you could bank it, and let it earn interest, and that'd help."

"Of course. But we're like any church, we run on a shoestring. All I can do is raise funds wherever I can, hope for perhaps a legacy here and there, and trust in the Lord to provide."

Jess's mouth pulled briefly tight. "Seems to me old Ben Franklin had somethin' to say about him helpin' them that helps themselves. Or is that in the Bible?"

"A lot of people think so," Essie admitted, "but I only know of one verse that comes close. 'The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.' That's Proverbs 13:4."

"Then maybe this here'll be enough to give you that start," he said, reached down into his boot-top for the envelope the bank had given him, and handed it across her desk. "That's for you. To put away against them things you want to do."

She looked at it with an expression of part bewilderment, part consternation, then slowly picked it up, broke the seal, and pulled out the slip of paper inside. She stared unbelievingly at the numbers written on it. "Jess, this is for more than eight thousand dollars!"

"Yes, ma'am. You might say it's a gift from some gents that spend time in the Occidental bar and think they know how to play poker. But they didn't learn from the feller that taught me."

"Oh, Jess…" Essie's voice was barely a whisper. "You didn't have to do this… my mission isn't to Laramie any more, it's here in San Francisco. You don't owe me anything."

"Beg pardon, ma'am, but I don't see it that way," Jess told her firmly. "You recollect when you and Roney come to Sherman Ranch and I ended up goin' off to town with you? That was the first big test of what I'd found there—the first time I left. And if Roney hadn't—well, you know—and made me kill him, I'd'a' kept right on goin', like as not, 'cause I was plumb sure they—Slim mostly—didn't want me no more. When I went back to take that old piano of yours, I was expectin' that they'd say, 'Well, Jess, that's real generous of you—now don't let the door hit you on the way out.' But they didn't. They forgive me what I'd had to do, welcomed me back, treated me just the same as before—maybe even better." A momentary pause, as he wondered for the umpteenth time at the marvel that had changed his life, the home he had discovered without ever knowing—or at least admitting to himself—that he was searching for it. "The way I look at it, if it'd been just Roney, odds are I'd never gone back. But you was there too, and—well, I got that second chance. I kept testin' 'em, near onto a year, and they kept on givin' me chances, and at last I come around to seein' what I got with 'em, which I'd'a' maybe never done if wasn't for you. And that means more to me than anythin' since my blood family was alive. I do owe you, Miss Essie—more'n I can ever pay. Money ain't rightly enough to settle that debt—but it's all I got." He met her eyes, his own dark and intense with emotion. "Ma'am… please. I need you to take this. I can't ever feel right otherwise."

She gazed at his somber face a moment, and then her eyes filled with tears. "Jess… what can I say, except—except 'thank you,' and 'God bless you'?" She stood up then, and as he scrambled reflexively to his feet she came around the desk and hugged him with all her strength. He stood a moment unsure of himself, and then his arms went around her in automatic response, and they stood locked together for a long fifty heartbeats.

"The very least I can do," she said at length, with something of her usual practicality, "is offer you some coffee. Let's go down to the kitchen."

**SR - L - WT**

The choir was breaking up as they returned to the main room, Essie on Jess's arm, almost glowing with happiness and excitement. As they stepped out of the stairwell, Jess suddenly halted, his face darkening. "Now what's he doin' here?" he wondered.

On a bench near the door, facing the little stage platform and its cross, was Johnny Madrid, his hat on the floor in front of him, his hands knotted together almost as if in prayer and held down between his knees like a man who didn't want anyone to suspect he might in fact be praying. Jess frowned, not in anger but in thought, as he saw the look on the younger gunfighter's face. Like a man lost in the woods and not sure which way was home. Or a man presented with two choices neither of which he really wanted to take. It was a sensation with which he was well familiar.

"Do you know him?" Essie asked curiously. "I don't. I've never seen him here before."

"You wouldn't. He ain't from these parts." Jess hesitated, pondering. Maybe it was the aftereffect of having just contributed four digits to Essie's program for making San Francisco a better place, maybe the residual memory of a time when he'd been equally as lost as Madrid looked, even if at the time he hadn't realized it, but he suddenly felt that he should try to do something to help Johnny get past whatever trouble he was in. The question was, would Madrid accept the offer? Gunfighters by nature were a self-sufficient breed and not much inclined to bare their souls to others.

Maybe, though… with the right kind of lubrication…

Clancy came pegging down the side aisle with a box in his arms and paused when he saw the two of them together and the direction of their attention. "Aye," he answered the unspoken question, "he's a new one. Hove to at the door whilst they were singin' 'Fairest Lord Jesus.' Didn't say what he wanted, just sat down."

"Reckon you know this part of town fair to middlin', right, Clancy?" Jess guessed.

"Aye, to my sorrow," the old seaman growled. "What of it?"

"If a man wasn't lookin' to go all the way back to the middle of town, is there someplace around that he could get a good meal?" Jess proceeded. "Someplace he wouldn't get drugged or slugged. And a bottle or two—wine for choice." Wine, he remembered, had always been Madrid's preferred beverage.

"There's many a respectable barroom in San Francisco, on the waterfront and elsewhere," Clancy retorted, with a note of indignant pride. "What you want is one of the places the shipmasters go; they've neither need nor desire to rub elbows with common fo'c's'le hands, and they've money enough to pay for good accommodations. An old captain of mine took me to one, about three or four years ago—I was a bit under the weather at the time, and he insisted I should put a full cargo in my stomach at least once while he was in port. It's called the Home Port, on Halleck Street just south of Sacramento, two blocks back from Drumm Street." He explained how to find it. "It won't look like much on the outside, but the fare is captain's-tableworthy and the drinkables the same."

"You're not going to get him drunk, are you, Jess? He may really need some help," Essie pointed out.

"I got a notion the kind of help he needs is a kind I'm better set to give him than you," said Jess, "and I won't get him drunk if I can manage it, just feed him enough of it to get a talkin' load on. But I figure if there's food goes with it, he won't be as likely to guess what I'm after. A man don't feel his liquor as much on a full belly."

He saw that she knew the truth of that. Clancy eyed him with cautious interest. "You know the lad, I'm guessin'."

"Yeah, from a long ways back," said Jess. "He calls me compadre viejo, if you know any Spanish." He walked slowly across the front of the room, into Madrid's field of vision, and stopped as if noticing the other for the first time. After a moment's pause, he made his way down the side aisle to the bench where Madrid sat. "Hey there," he said. "Kinda figured church was off your range."

"So's San Francisco," Madrid replied, "and I'd have said the same of you. What brings you here?"

Jess shrugged casually. "Lady who runs the place is kind of an old friend. Stopped by to talk over old times while I'm in town." He waited, not at all convinced Madrid would rise to the bait and not sure what to do if he didn't.

"Old times," Madrid murmured. "Huh. Sometimes they're not as old as a man figures on." A pause, then: "So what now?"

"Noticed you sittin' here," Jess replied, "and it come to me that, bein' as how this is the Barbary Coast, and it'll be startin' to get dark directly, two men together with guns might have a better chance of makin' it out safe than one man with a gun, or even two by themselves. Maybe we could stop and have somethin' to eat, too, once we're clear."

"I've got a horse," Madrid noted.

"I don't, but you could lead him," Jess suggested.

The other considered the idea for a minute, then nodded. "Might as well," he agreed then, and pushed to his feet.

Neither of them noticed the thoughtful, measuring look directed at their retreating backs by Clancy. He didn't know cattlemen, but a man who had sailed the seven seas for most of his life certainly developed a feel for competence, and these two had it.

---

9. A Room and a Bottle

Although the waterfront extended east as far as the water's edge itself, the Barbary Coast was generally considered to be bounded on the east by Battery Street, putting the mission on the district's perimeter, and the most riotous section was to the north, along Broadway and Pacific Avenue under the slope of Telegraph Hill. Knowing what Madrid's services were generally worth, Jess figured he must be staying somewhere down toward Montgomery or Market, and he steered the two of them south along Battery, a good block from the egress of Commercial, until the narrow alley-like mouth of Halleck opened up on their left. Just in from it, the sign Clancy had described thrust out over the pavement. "That looks like a good place to put on the feed bag," Jess noted, "and we're at least a block out of the waterfront. Suit you? Looks kinda like the one you ate at th'other night."

"Does at that, don't it?" Madrid agreed. "Sure, this'll do. You want to get us a table while I tie up?"

That was what Jess had hoped he'd suggest. "Okay. And I'll order a bottle of wine, too."

"Wine? You?" The younger man looked at him quizzically. "Thought you were a whiskey man."

Jess shrugged. "Couldn't get much of it in Texas durin' the war—not the good stuff, at least. But plenty of wine come up from Mexico, and Texans made their own, and I found out it wasn't so bad. Better some ways; your head stays clear longer."

"That's true," said Madrid. "Be in in just a minute."

Jess had briefly considered the What Cheer House, which was only half a block down and one and a half over—his eye for terrain and landmarks was just as functional in a city environment as on the range—but he had remembered in time that it was a temperance house, and as he'd suggested to Miss Essie, he had more than a notion that Madrid might need to be loosened up. Why he felt it incumbent on him to be the man who did the loosening, he wasn't sure, unless it was simply, as he'd said, "for old times' sake."

Inside as well as out, the Home Port bore a powerful resemblance to the Collins & Wheeland Grill, with a bar down one side and tables and booths taking up the rest. But there was a distinctly different feel about it, which was evident the moment Jess stepped over the threshold. The furnishings, while solid and well-made, were unpretentious, the tables undraped, and the decorative scheme dominated by objects that suggested either the sea or distant lands. There were also no women in evidence, either as customers or as staff, and the men sitting at the tables were mostly garbed either in city suits—those, he guessed, would be shipowners, not captains, or perhaps owners of goods to be shipped—or in single- or double-breasted, gilt-buttoned navy-blue coats and soft, short-billed caps.

A waiter came up to greet him, looking a bit uncertainly at his Stetson and range dress and the gun at his side. "I got a friend outside, tyin' up his horse," Jess told him before he could say anything. "We got some medicine to make—business talk. You got any place we can be private?"

"We have alcoves in the back and rooms upstairs," the other replied. "The shipmasters often need to confer with their owners, or with shippers' representatives."

"Them bein' the fellers in suits, I reckon," said Jess. "We'll take a room. And can you send up a bottle of red wine? The good stuff."

"We stock three kinds of claret," the waiter told him— "St. Julien, Pontet Canet, and Chateau LaRose. A dollar and a quarter, two dollars, and two and a half a quart."

Jess thumbed a half-eagle out of his vest. "That's for a bottle of that last one, and another if I ask for it, but only if, savvy? Tell whoever waits on us I'll give him the high sign if I need it."

The sight of the gold coin apparently eased any misgivings the staffer might have; he smiled and nodded as he took it. "I'll stay here to bring your friend up, sir. Just go to the corner behind the bar and climb the stairs you find there."

**SR - L - WT**

The food was everything Clancy had implied it would be. Jess and Madrid started out with a fried-oyster appetizer and old-fashioned Navy-bean soup, then moved on to sugar-cured ham with mashed potatoes, buttered beets, and baked beans, plus a basket of bread, and ice cream and cake. Jess began plying Madrid with wine while they were still waiting for their order, and as he'd hoped, the younger man seemed somehow to almost have been waiting for the excuse to let down his guard and relax. A few cautious overtures got him talking, and after that Jess let him run, guiding the course of the conversation as he might have a poker game, taking small sips of his own wine as he did.

They started out, as range men will, by trading stories of the kinds of subjects that intrigue such men—of ghosts, lost mines, horse thieves, and the ancient Southwestern Indians known as the Anasazi whose stone-built towns could still be stumbled across in remote places ranging from back-country Colorado south. Johnny told about the haunted waterhole between Devils River and the Pecos. The ghost of a pale woman with a baby in her arms walked around it at midnight. He'd seen her. Jess countered with the story of a woman from Richmond whose nephew he'd known: "At half-past three one mornin' she woke up and saw her runaway daughter standin' by the door with a baby in her arms, but when she moved it was all gone. Later they found out it was the very same hour—allowin' for the time difference—that the girl died in Santa Fe, and she sent for the child and raised it herself. They must'a' been thinkin' mighty hard about each other just then, her and the daughter."

"Don't doubt it," said Johnny. "I remember once I saw one of those Shakespeare plays—Hamlet, it was called—and there's a line in it, right toward the start, that goes, There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." He went on to tell about a time when he was running cattle on the Taos Reservation and was alone in camp, and he came down sick so bad that he couldn't even catch a horse to go for help. Then old Wolf Killer, the Pueblo governor, and Anselmo Sandoval, the medicine man, showed up and took hold. "I don't know how they knew I needed help, but I looked up and there they were. There's specialists among them, just like with white doctors. Wolf Killer sent clear to Acoma Pueblo, near two hundred miles, for a man who knew the right song and had the proper medicine. He sang, and sweated me, and doped me, and in three days I was well."

"Had somethin' kinda like happen to me one time," said Jess. "There's folks'll tell you Indian medicine's all superstition, but don't you believe it. Three, four years ago it was, I was livin' with a band of Blackfeet—never mind why just now, it's a long story—and there was a ruction and I got wounded, here—" he laid his right hand across his left shoulder, close to the base of his neck— "still got the scar to show for it, too. The man who was guestin' me in his lodge, his wives done everythin' they knew, but I come down with a fever all the same, so they sent for the medicine man. He said a bad spirit had got hold of me, and he started in singin' and drummin' and such. I was pretty far out of it, didn't even rightly know he was there, but they told me later it took three days for him to break the fever—everybody else'd just about give up on me, but not Hears Twice, no sir. He kept at it, tryin' one song and herb and dance after another, and after them three days I opened my eyes, and from there on it wasn't but two or three more I was on my feet again, a little bit rocky, but almost as strong as if the fever'd never been. I don't know what he done exactly, but whatever it was, it worked. I pondered on it some, and I got a notion maybe them Indian healers—some of 'em, anyhow—got ways and powers that white ones ain't even thought about yet. I reckon maybe he plumb willed that fever outta me. I know sure it wasn't no doin' of mine."

"That's somethin'," Johnny allowed. He thoughtfully turned the turquoise-bead bracelet that circled his wrist. "Sandoval gave me this, said as long as I wore it I'd never again get into a place where I needed help and there was nobody around to give it. I've come close a couple times, but always somebody's found me before my string could run out."

Like me, maybe, Jess thought, only I got a notion it ain't that kind of string you're near the end of. "Ain't heard nothin' about you in quite some spell," he mused. How long had it been, now? Why, come to think, it must be near as long as he'd been at Sherman Ranch. Even when he'd gone to Tumavaca and passed through the border towns, there'd been no gossip of Johnny Madrid—except the negative kind, the ain't-seen-him-ain't-heard-of-him kind.

"Could say the same of you," Madrid retorted, but not angrily.

"Maybe you been out of touch," Jess hinted.

"Maybe you have."

Jess shook his head. "Not me. We get plenty of gossip where I been." Thanks mostly to Mose, that was, and sometimes the passengers. Laramie and Sherman Ranch were, after all, on the direct communication line that led from the Border through Denver to the Montana mineral camps, and Johnny Madrid had always done most of his work around the Border—Texas, New and Old Mexico, Arizona.

Madrid looked at him keenly. "Which is?"

Jess knew perfectly well that he'd have had every right to resent such a personal question, and maybe if he'd still been in his old line he might have. But being around Slim, changing his ways, going legitimate, having a family again, had mellowed him some. "Wyomin' Territory."

"Workin'?"

"Yeah, workin'," said Jess, and grinned to himself.

"What's funny about workin'?" the other demanded.

"Nothin'," said Jess, "just... us. You and me skirmishin' around each other like a couple of dogs over a bone. Only there ain't no bone." He looked the younger man over critically. Madrid had always been a bit of a dandy; supposedly he had Mexican blood—and from what Jess had heard, years back, it was the truth—which might account for it. Calzoneras buttoned their full length with silver conchas passed through embroidered slits, a speckled calico shirt, the string of Indian turquoise around his wrist—and that American-style hat with the hard-twist jaw cord run through a silver starburst slide with another turquoise set in it. His face was fuller than Jess's, more square in outline, his hair nearly as dark but straight as a die and with a browner cast to it, his eyes a somewhat lighter shade of blue but his skin olive-brown in tint. They were similar in build, though Jess was leaner and more wiry and Madrid was an inch or so the shorter, and maybe an inch or two broader in the shoulders. And, of course, there was the air, the wariness, the alertness that probably neither would ever lose as long as he lived... and yet... there was something different about Madrid now. He was still heeled, still dressed the same, still kept his back to the wall and his eyes in motion, checking out the room in quick sweeps, then returning his attention to Jess. Nothing odd about any of that. What then? He'd put on some height and weight, broadened some in the shoulders, though bein' as he'd likely been no more than fourteen when they'd first met, that wasn't surprising. He was clean, but then, like Jess, he'd always had the habit of keeping himself proper, or as much as he could given the trail and the work. He was a costly gun to hire, Jess remembered, maybe more than Jess himself had been.

"Somethin's different about you," said Madrid suddenly.

"You reckon? I was just thinkin' the same about you."

"Yeah," Madrid agreed. "You're not as lean as I remember you."

That was it, Jess realized. They'd both put on weight, gotten... how to put it?... sleeker, more solid and muscular. "Yeah, reckon I ain't." That had been Jonesy's good cooking; he'd more or less taken one look at the Texan and pegged him for fifteen pounds underweight, and made it his business to remedy the situation. Done it, too, though Jess had slipped back a couple times when he'd been ill, and then, of course, he and Slim had been left batchin' for themselves and he'd probably lost a bit more, but even Slim's cooking, dubious though it was (or so Jess insisted), was at least plentiful. "Nor you ain't neither."

Madrid almost smiled. "That's Maria Elena's good food."

"Mine's Jonesy's," said Jess without thinking.

And this time it was Madrid who chuckled. "Sounds like you got a story, compadre."

"Same back at you," Jess retorted, pleased with himself; his tactic seemed to be working.

"Flip you," Madrid offered.

Jess thumbed a silver dollar out of his vest pocket and snapped it into mid-air. "Call it."

"Heads."

Jess lifted his hand off his wrist and grinned. "So tell me."

For the first time the younger man hesitated; he looked uncertain—and what was more, unhappy. Jess knew better than to push. Madrid would talk when he was ready; one thing that was known about him was that if he agreed to do something, he always did it—his word, like Jess's, was sacred to him. To fill in the time while his counterpart got his thoughts organized, Jess thought back to their first meeting. It hadn't been auspicious. New Mexico Territory, it had been, not far from the Border, '62, before Jess went back to Texas and got himself conscripted into the Confederate Army; he'd been riding with Dixie Howard and Hal Owen then. They'd all four been hired as enforcers by a cattleman who was having trouble with rustlers; Jess had been seventeen, Madrid claiming sixteen, which Jess hadn't believed for a minute, though he'd been smart enough not to say so. He'd been, not to put too fine a point on it, a kid—well, so had Jess, but Jess at least had a year or so of Dixie's training to his credit; a skinny kid with a hard bitterness about him not unlike the hate that fuelled Jess, the cold resolve to kill Frank Bannister. He'd been prickly as a porcupine, sullen and quiet, radiating "keep-away" and "leave me alone" and "not looking for friends," and Jess had had his doubts about their working together, but when you were asked to defend a man's cattle against stock thieves and didn't have a clue how many men you might be dealing with, how well organized they might be or how far they'd be willing to go, you needed a partner to watch your back. And, much to his surprise, they'd gotten along fairly well. Not friends, but working associates; not like him and Slim, not even like him and his two trail-partners (who'd been assigned to team up in another part of the spread), but well enough to tolerate each other and do the job. Jess had gotten three of the rustlers, Johnny two, and that had broken the gang.

In the beginning, he hadn't warmed to Madrid. That was partly himself, he knew: his losses had still been fresh, barely two years, and while he yearned desperately for human comradeship to fill the gaping hole in his life, he'd also been terrified of bonding with anyone ever again, for fear they too would be taken from him and he'd be left alone once more, bleeding away inside with grief and loneliness. So he'd been standoffish with just about everyone except Dixie and Hal, especially after that business up north. But Madrid himself had had his contribution to make. He wasn't braggy or pushy or quarrelsome, the way a lot of young guns were—which in itself was enough to mark him out. He had a coldness about him, a hard brittle outer layer that glittered and flashed even more than Jess's, and Jess, who'd been trained in reading people, had felt that death rode with him. Not that it didn't ride with Jess too, but with Madrid there was something... it was like, at fourteen, he'd suddenly accelerated himself to twenty, or maybe thirty. Hard as nails, suspicious and aloof, as if he expected nothing from anyone—not fairness, or respect, or love.

Not till long afterward had Jess heard the stories about seven dead men—or was it eight?—in Matamoros, and a cantina that burned to the ground, and two bodies found inside, a doctor and a cavalry officer from Brownsville (Confederate Cavalry, that would have been). Madrid had never claimed those men, but it was known he'd been in the town around that time, had been asking questions about some of them, and about a woman, a Mexican woman, a two-dollar free-lancer who'd been beaten to death—near to death—in that same cantina, by that same officer, with those same men standing by and watching... for a man like Jess, who'd been trained to see patterns, it was enough. The authorities in Matamoros hadn't made much fuss, and if the Confederate government of Texas would have liked to know who shot one of its company commanders and left his body in a burning building, it had other things on its mind too, more urgent things, like recruitment and Yankees and shore defenses. It had been a month or so after this that Madrid had turned up in New Mexico and he and Jess had wound up on the same side. Fourteen, Jess remembered thinking, when he heard the story, and seven or eight men on his record already...

That was something. Not something he'd have wanted on his, and not something he could have put there at so young an age, but worthy of note, all the same. A lot of men never lived long enough to rack up seven—eight?—kills. Madrid had done it right at the outset. Jess hadn't exactly liked the kid, but he respected the skill and courage it took to do that. Those men hadn't been killed in public stand-up fights, they'd just disappeared, only to be found later, each shot neatly through the heart. Very private, Jess figured. Johnny hadn't wanted interruptions, and he hadn't cared about blackening his victims' reputations or magnifying his own; just about taking care of business.

At the time, of course, Jess hadn't known about that part of Madrid's past. At the time, he hadn't believed the kid was old enough to have a past—except for those eyes, hard and cold as blue glass.

Jess had a name for ruthlessness when he was working, but he'd never been quite like young Johnny Madrid—at least, he hoped he hadn't. Johnny had been working something off, just like Jess had. And he was good. He was very, very good. Maybe because he didn't care.

Jess had thought he didn't care—hadn't Dixie spoken of "that lump of ice you call your heart"? But he'd wanted to live, at least long enough to face Frank Bannister and take him down. He had a notion Johnny Madrid had nothing like that to keep him going. He was just a young killing machine. A few years later they'd crossed trails briefly down in Arizona, and by that time, maybe because he'd gained a name, Madrid had been easier in his smile and his charm.

Johnny was still lost in reverie, and after considering the situation carefully, Jess decided maybe he needed his pump primed just a bit. Casually, he observed, "I heard some stories about you, after we parted. Matamoros?"

Johnny didn't take offense, exactly, but his eyes sharpened. "How'd that come about?"

Jess shrugged. "I was back in Texas—after the war, that was. I'd been in some trouble in Laredo, a feller helped me out and didn't stay around to be thanked, so I went lookin' for him to settle what I owed him. Heard he might'a' gone to Brownsville, so I headed there, and natural-like asked some questions over the river too. They still talk about you there."

"Never heard I was wanted down that way," Johnny observed.

"You ain't. There was a war on back then, you maybe recollect. Everybody in town was too busy makin' money to stir up trouble for a Mexican kid that took out Anglos, them not even bein' citizens of the place. Don't seem like nobody ever made no complaints, reckon they figure why rock the boat?"

Johnny played restlessly with his glass, silent, pondering, Jess figured. Then: "What'd you come from, Harper? How'd you grow up?"

Thought we was gonna talk about you first, not me, Jess thought, but he'd learned a good deal from Slim, and decided to go along. "I was born in the Panhandle, on a big ranch called Wind Vane. My pa was the foreman there, worked shares. We never had much money, reckon on account there was nine of us young'uns first to last, though the two oldest was gone off before the three youngest was ever born." Silence, then: "Two days after I turned fifteen, the Bannister gang hit the place. Shot my pa, set the house afire, burned my two youngest brothers and my baby sister. Me and my sister Francie and brother Johnny was all that lived, on the whole place. So I went huntin'. Met up with Dixie Howard—you remember him—and he taught me. Never had no thought in my mind, back then, but I'd kill Frank Bannister some day."

"But you had a home, one place that was yours," said Johnny. "You had a ma and a pa—right? And brothers and sisters?"

"Five brothers, three sisters, and Ma till I was almost fourteen; she took the influenza then, and died. And, yeah, we had a home—the ranch owner threw it in as part of the package. Only rock-lined sod, four rooms, but it was a pretty fair house, all the same; kept us warm and dry better'n fifteen years."

Johnny said nothing for a time. "I never knew my pa," he began at last. "Mama told me his name was Lancer and he was a big rancher in California. Said he threw us out when I was two. Never said why. I didn't find out till years later that it was her that made the choice. She got tired of him and ran off with a gambler, took me along, don't exactly know why. I remember a stepfather, at least that was what Mama said he was... never cared for him nor him for me, he used to whomp me somethin' awful. Before I was ten he was gone.

"Mama was... well, she was Mexican, and when she was young she was pretty, like a lot of the Mexican girls are. I'm not sure just how old she was when she married my pa—I'm not sure she even knew, but I don't guess she was over eighteen. That'd be about ten years younger'n what he was at the time.

"I grew up hatin', Harper. Hatin' my pa for turnin' me and Mama out. Hatin' my stepfather for as long as he was around. Hatin' the men who came to our house. Hatin' the way we moved from town to town, sometimes in Mexico, sometimes not. Hatin' the dirty little back streets we lived on, the one-room 'dobes we called home. Hatin' bein' raggedy-ass and hungry, hatin' how the other mothers wouldn't let their kids play with me, how the other boys called me names and threw stones—and sometimes worse—at me. Hatin' Mama some too, I guess, though it's taken me till recent to realize it."

Jess did his best to hide a shudder, although Johnny was deep in memories now and didn't see it. He'd ridden through such neighborhoods as the younger man described: every town in the Southwest had them, often bordering on one of the roads in, always on the outskirts. He'd never lingered long, not even to look for romance, not even when he was the next thing to broke; they made his skin crawl. Dobetown, they were often called, or Mextown, or Chilitown. They were the domain of the lowest laboring class of Mexicans (the ones who owned small businesses—and some did: cantinas, small restaurants, shops—lived near or over their premises): janitors, stablehands, ditch-diggers, blacksmiths' and wagonwrights' helpers, cutters and haulers of firewood, and other unskilled and semi-skilled day laborers; laundresses, cooks, waitresses, domestics... and the women, often young widows, who rented themselves out, like Madrid's mother: he hadn't said the words right out, but he'd given hints enough, for an experienced man. Shabby adobe huts and brush jacales, dirt floors, the minimum of crude furniture, goats and pigs and burros wandering freely about, ragged dirty-faced children... with bare feet. It was an accepted truism in cow country—perhaps especially in the Panhandle—that no self-respecting person went barefoot; even Indians didn't do it.

Jess didn't hold the Mexicans' poverty against them, exactly; some were lazy and shiftless, it was true, but so were some Anglos (including, he was sorry to admit, some of his own Harper kin, from what his pa had said of them), and most were probably doing the best they could, given poor English, a minimum of marketable skills, and a culture that had spent two or three hundred years crushing the initiative out of them. But still, he could never feel comfortable in the midst of it. He had grown up thinking of his family as "poor," at least in money; but they'd had board floors in their house, a stove to cook on, some pieces of decent furniture, meat on the table at every meal (it might be game, or pork, but it was meat—they didn't live on beans and tortillas like Dobetown people), and while his clothes were sometimes hand-me-downs, they'd been clean and kept in repair. And he'd never gone without boots in his life. It began to dawn on him that Johnny Madrid had had a lot more reason to be angry and resentful than any of the Harpers had; next to him, they'd been downright bloated plutocrats. Why, even the vaquero families on Wind Vane had been better off. And yet, with Johnny, it wasn't the words so much, or even the tone. It was more like a sense of, This is who I am—take it or leave it.

Dad-gum, he thought, and I figured I had it rough, losin' my home and my family to the Bannisters like I done... but at least I had 'em first. I had folks—two of 'em for fourteen years—that cared about me, took care of me, taught me right from wrong... had a stout roof over my head, good walls to keep the weather out, plenty to eat... decent clothes to dress in, and Ma made sure we all learned to read, knew some of the Bible, and took baths Saturday night, even if we never went to school or church... I had—what was it Slim called it one time?—"that good solid foundation." And none of the women in my family ever had... callers. Not like that.

Prostitution was a choice, or so he'd always reckoned it: a woman decided to rent her body, or not. From his own experience, Jess had come to the conclusion that there were two basic kinds of women who did so. Some—the ones he personally preferred—were the kind who liked doing what they did, and because of that, they usually ended up in the very best brothels, or working in a saloon or dance hall and making themselves available on the side, for pay or not. Then there were the others, the ones such as Essie had talked about. The ones who were coerced into it, or saw few if any choices, or were betrayed or misused or—though he still found this hard to believe—actually slaves.

Yet Jess had never really been able to understand why a woman would take that route unless she wanted to, or had lost her virtue in some very widely-known way and was still living in the town where it had happened; he understood, instinctively, that it wasn't the process itself that drew condemnation—it was people getting to know about it. It wasn't hard to conceal your past: save your money till you had enough to get on a stage or a train or a riverboat, lose yourself a while in the nearest big town, maybe change your name or buy an inexpensive wedding ring or both, then move on to someplace where you weren't known, claim to be a widow—there were thousands of them, since young husbands were constantly dying of illness or accident... who would guess the truth, as long as you behaved like a lady? On the frontier, especially, there was work for anyone who wanted it, man or woman. Even a Mexican woman had some choices. Any decent-sized town would have a few people of means—doctors, lawyers, banker, undertaker, retired ranchers, sometimes wives and children of cattlemen who maintained houses in town during the school year so their kids could get an education—who could use household help; if she came with a young son attached, so much the better—he could run errands, fetch and carry, haul wood and water, shine boots and silverware, all kinds of simple chores. Maybe it wouldn't pay much, or have much status, but often it included lodging or at least a meal or two a day, and it gave the woman the protection of the household she worked for, as well as legitimacy, respectability of a kind, the prospect of being courted by a decent man. Why hadn't Madrid's mother found herself such a town, such a household? Nobody paid much attention to Mexicans; once she was away from the last place she'd been known, odds were her past would never have caught up with her. Even if she hadn't cared much about herself, why hadn't she wanted to give her son a better life?

Madrid was still telling his story. "Shot my first man when I was ten. One of Mama's... friends, he was, the sheriff. Guess he figured his badge and Mama bein' Mexican was all the excuse he needed to beat on us when he came visitin'... till I decided to put a stop to it. Should'a' killed him, maybe, but I didn't. Put a double load of buckshot in both his knees, though. Never heard a man scream like he did, lyin' there in the doorway.

"'Course we had to clear out of town, quicker'n scat. Not that it was hard to do, we didn't have much to pack," he added with bitter amusement. "And I learned somethin' that day. I learned that hittin' back helped ease the hate. Made it bearable. So after that, if anybody got rough with Mama or with me... I saw to it they wouldn't again. Didn't have a gun then, and my hands were too small to use one anyhow, but a knife... you know what they say about Mexicans, don't you, that we all know how to use knives? I sure learned, real quick."

Jess listened to the flat, dispassionate recital with a kind of horror. He'd killed his own first man when he was—what had it been, twelve, thirteen?—but it had been a Comanche, and he'd been cowboying for Wind Vane at the time; it had been a question of protecting the stock that belonged to the brand. Not till after he joined up with Dixie had he shot a man at near range, when he could see the whites of the other fellow's eyes. And even then, it had been a road-agent—two, actually—who'd tried to hold up the stagecoach he was guarding, so it had been in the line of duty; that had been when he and Dixie were in Colorado, in the early months of the war. Not till he was going on seventeen and—more or less by accident—happened on one of Bannister's boys in Piños Altos had he shot a man in a stand-up fight, gone looking for him and called him. He'd been hunting meat for his family's table by the time he was eight or nine, and wrangling horses at ten; he'd bought his first sixgun at twelve, out of his cowboy wages. But at the time he'd looked on guns as almost more tools than weapons, meant to be used to get food and to defend his life and his employer's property. It had never really occurred to him, till after the Bannisters, that he might actually want to kill someone, as opposed to being forced to do it.

And yet... he could see, coming from a background such as Johnny described, seeing violence used against his mother—the only family he had—and knowing the taste of it himself, resenting the Anglo who had fathered and supposedly rejected him and those who "visited" his home... he could see how that would twist a growing boy's soul.

It explained a lot.

"I heard there was a woman, a Mexican woman, beaten near to death in Matamoros, not long before we met," he said. "Was that...?"

"Yeah. And I settled the score for her."

How was that so different from what I wanted to do? Jess asked himself. A man killed his only kin, and others stood by and let it happen. Texas law couldn't touch 'em 'cause it happened in Mexico, and Mexican law didn't care—Matamoros crammed like it was, everybody coinin' money hand over fist from the Confed'rate cotton trade, and Juarez and the French busy fightin' over the whole country, neither with the time to be thinkin' about enforcin' any law there was, what was one free-lance woman more or less? The life she'd been livin', probably early thirties by then, she'd'a' been goin' downhill fast; nobody'd care except maybe a priest or another of her own kind...

And her son.

He wondered that—given that it had been an Anglo who'd killed Johnny's mother, and another that he'd blamed for having cast her and himself out penniless into the world—wondered that Johnny had even been able to tolerate working with him. Jess himself, atypically for Texans, had no color prejudice to speak of at all. White, black, red, brown—to him people were people, and he judged them on their individual merits, or lack of same, according to what he personally knew of their character and actions. Yanks and ex-Rebs the same. It was, perhaps, the main reason he'd been able to get along as well with the young Madrid as he had. But he knew many folks weren't that high-minded.

"I figured all along," Johnny went on, "that one day I'd find my pa and settle with him too, 'cause if he hadn't thrown us out like I thought he had, maybe it wouldn't have happened like that. But I remembered what Mama said about him, a big rancher, rich. The kind of man who'd have bodyguards, maybe. So I figured I had to make myself the best. And I did.

"And yet—" a wistful note sounded in his voice— "time went on, and I began to wonder if there wasn't somethin' more, somethin' better, maybe. I made my name, and it got me respect; I liked the feel of that, I'd never had it comin' up. I worked for men with money, saw what their lives were like, saw them, sometimes, with their families. Wondered what it would be like, to have a place that was mine, people that cared about me... acceptance. Never really expected it might happen, but a man can dream.

"And then I got on the wrong side of a revolution in Coahuila and was about to go in front of a firin' squad, and this Anglo showed up—a Pinkerton, I found out—and bribed me out and got me away, across the Rio. Told me he was workin' for my pa. Told me I was needed. Told me the old man would pay me a thousand dollars for an hour of my time.

"Even a man as good as me doesn't get paid that much for an hour. It'd been eight years since Mama was killed. Maybe I'd gotten enough distance on it all not to hate my pa as much as I used to—I don't know. Maybe I just figured I owed him for sendin' the man who got me out of that spot. Maybe I was curious. So I said okay."

Jess felt a shudder go down his back. His own loss had been eight years old too, when he'd met up with Wolf Sleeping's fleeing band of Blackfeet and ended up helping them get safely to Canada—and almost being adopted into the tribe. Almost—almost—forgetting what his duty was to his dead.

"Ended up in a town called Morro Coyo, in the San Joaquin Valley," Johnny went on. "My pa's name was Lancer, just like Mama'd said—Murdoch Lancer. And, yeah, he owned a big ranch. Hundred thousand acres, big hacienda, thousands of cattle, dozens of vaqueros. Thing of it was, somebody else wanted it too, fellow name of Pardee, and he had a pack of gunhands to help him—'land pirates' is what Murdoch called 'em. They'd already killed Murdoch's foreman and shot him down—he was usin' a cane to get around. That's why he needed me, to help save his place.

"And I found out I had a brother—well, a half-brother, named Scott. 'Bout three years older than me. It's a long story, but he'd been brought up by his grandpa, his mama's father, in Boston. The Pinkertons had been talkin' to him too.

"Found out I had a sister too, kinda. Teresa O'Brien—her pa had been Murdoch's foreman, the one that was killed; she'd been brought up on the place. She was the one told me the truth about Mama—had it from her pa, he'd been there at the time, back before she was born. If it'd been Murdoch, I might'a' not believed, but I figured, what call would Teresa have to lie to me?

"So we stayed, me and Scott, and we beat Pardee and his guns, and Murdoch made us both equal partners with him. That was a year and a half ago. Been there ever since."

"Well, it's a small world," Jess murmured. "I always did hear California was a place where a man could start over, and you've sure proved that. Done even better than me, look at it one way."

Johnny had been brooding, as if he had more to say but wasn't sure whether he should. "What d'you mean?" he asked, looking up quickly.

"Mean you ain't the only man that found himself a family and give up the gun trade," Jess told him. "Difference is yours is blood and mine ain't." And he explained about Morgan and Carlin, about Slim and Andy and Jonesy and the ranch, about the fight at Baxter Ridge, and about his "gunfighter's gun" tucked away in the secret hidey-hole in the Shermans' chimneystack.

Johnny listened to the story without a word, but his face showed his increasing awe. "Dios y todos los santos," he whispered at last. "Who'd have believed it? Two like us, each findin' a new way..."

"Yeah, and just about the same time, if I'm guessin' right," Jess agreed. "What's the odds?"

The younger man's expression morphed, then, back to a resigned sadness. "Yeah, what's the odds? What's the odds either one of us could make it work?" He stared into Jess's eyes. "Are you... happy there, Harper? Is it good for you? Does it feel like it's right?"

"It's good," said Jess quietly. "It's the best I've had since the Panhandle. Better some ways. I ain't sayin' it's easy. Sometimes somethin' comes up, out of my past, y'know; I reckon I won't ever be able to put up my gun for good. And Slim... he's loosened up plenty since we met, but he can still be mighty prickly about right and wrong, and about gettin' work done on time and right the first time, and about play comin' afterward. There's things we just don't see the same way and never will—we can't, 'cause of comin' from such different beginnings. But... seems like the longer we stay together, the more alike we get, the more we find things in each other that... I ain't got the schoolin' t'explain it, I just know that... that I found my home. Slim and Andy are my brothers and Jonesy's my uncle, and Sherman Ranch is the place I belong, and all I want is to stay there, with them, for as long as I'm let to live. I've left more'n once, and always it's like to ripped the heart out of me. I know now that I won't, can't, be doin' that again. Slim, he can talk Sioux; he says they got a word that fits what we got—hunka. Says it means 'chosen' or 'kin-by-choice.' I'd'a' never reckoned such a thing could be, but I know now how wrong I was. I know I knew I was wrong even from the start. Somethin' inside of me tried to tell me, only I wouldn't listen... took me a long time to see it, but I do now."

"It wasn't... somethin' you were expectin', was it? You didn't go out lookin' for it," said Johnny.

"No," Jess admitted, with a soft snort of amusement, "no, I gotta say, it was the last thing I ever expected. The first two times Slim and me met up... shoot, friends is the last thing anybody'd have said we could be, let alone anythin' more'n that." He described their faceoffs by the lake in the ranchhouse. "I was all set to move on after we settled up with Morgan and Carlin, and then he offered me a job..." His voice trailed off in a gentle remembering smile. "Took me into his house, give me a bunk under his roof, a place at his table... his friendship. Saved my life, more'n once. Lookin' back, I see he never treated me like just a hired hand, even though that's what I was—still am. And you know how we was talkin' a while back about ghosts and Indian medicine men and such? I ain't told Slim this, but when I was just about to leave the Blackfeet, the man who'd been guestin' me told me about a dream he'd had, about a white man who'd been chosen to be my brother. I didn't exactly believe it, till I met Slim and saw how he matched Wolf's description, and even then I was scared to accept it. Tried not t'even think about it, kept tellin' myself all kinds of reasons I better not stay. But no more. I know, deeper down inside of me than I've ever known anything, that I can always trust him, always count on him to be there when I need him. I know he'll never give up on me, no matter how hard I make it on him—and I ain't been an easy friend to have. I know he believes in me, trusts me, knows there's more to me than I can see. Almost right from the start, he's give me more chances than I deserved... and I've wanted to take 'em. It's like, somehow, even before Wolf had his dream, I always knew he was somewhere in the world, waitin' for me to turn up. And Andy... there was somethin' between me and him from the start. I looked at him, it was like I saw my brother Johnny again. I wanted to stay, only I never dared to think they'd let me..."

"Why did they, do you reckon?" Johnny asked, his tone betraying only simple, honest curiosity. "Like you said, you're not kin, not like Murdoch and Scott and me."

What's the odds either one of us could make it work? he had asked. As if, maybe, he wasn't sure he'd managed to do that yet.

Jess was very seldom in doubt about the best thing to do in any given situation. He couldn't afford to be: for a man in his (former) profession—many of the habits of which he still hadn't completely overcome—even a split second's hesitation was likely to prove fatal. Yet he hesitated now, because he wasn't comfortable expressing his thoughts and feelings on a deep level, or "speechifying," as he called any sustained amount of talk. He knew he lacked schooling, which to his mind meant he wasn't "smart"—not like Slim. On the other hand, he saw much of himself in Johnny, and he knew how good the life was that he had found at Sherman Ranch—better by far than he had ever expected, or even (sometimes still) thought he deserved. He wanted Johnny to have something as good as he had found; he felt Johnny deserved his help in getting it, out of recognition for their team-up all those years ago.

He and Slim had had any number of heart-to-heart talks since he'd come to live at the ranch, mostly on the porch after supper. But most of the talking—Jess remembered particularly the night after he came home from his last Bannister hunt with Trim Stuart—had been on Slim's part, as the older and better-educated rancher helped his often incoherent friend to understand his own feelings and reactions, to examine his options calmly and try to see their possible consequences. This time, Jess realized, the boot would be on the other foot. This time it was Johnny who needed help doing those things—and there was nobody here to provide it except Jess.

He searched a moment for the right words, and then decided to just let them come naturally. "I done asked myself that same question, more times'n I can count, this last year and a half. I ain't used to thinkin' on things like that—nor to thinkin' at all, if you listen to Slim sometimes—but I reckon I come to an answer; it maybe ain't the right one, but it'll do for me. It's 'cause family ain't always blood. It's the folks in your life that want you in theirs—the ones that accept you for just who you are, that care about you because of what you are, not in spite of it. The ones that see the good in you—what's already there and what you can have if you try; who know you've made mistakes same's we all do, but don't let that set 'em against you. That care about you not 'cause of what they can make of you, but 'cause of who you are and who you got it in you to become, of your own will and choice, and'll give you the time you need to find out who that is. The ones that love you no matter what. Think on it: ain't that why folks fall in love and get married? And when they do that, they make a family. It ain't always easy, most of all at the start when you're tryin' to get used to each other, workin' out the rules you figure to live by. But it's there. It happens way too often for a man not to admit to it. Not the way it done me, but enough the other way that if you ponder on it, you see it can happen, and you come to see, maybe, you've had a second chance handed to you. I reckon it was Andy started it for us; he knew, somehow, even if he didn't know he knew, that Sherman Ranch was the place I'd been aimin' for all them years. Took the rest of us a spell to understand it—like it says somewheres in the Bible, 'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklin's...'" He waited again, to see if the younger man would react to the concepts he'd thrown out.

"'The folks in your life that want you in theirs,'" Madrid whispered. "Yeah. I guess I thought I'd found that..."

It was getting plainer all the time, what was eating on the man; maybe the wine was working, maybe it was the awareness of their old partnership, maybe the silence and solitude. "How'd you come to be here—in San Francisco, I mean—if you got this new home?" Jess asked. "Your pa send you to look after some business, maybe? Like Slim's done me, time to time?"

The other snorted, shook his head. "No. It wasn't even altogether his doin'. It was... just me, I guess."

Close... he's gettin' close. Jess knew, from his own experience, that Madrid would never be able to get past whatever it was if he didn't nerve himself up to say it out loud. And it seemed he could only be pushed so far before he'd balk, like a donkey with a pack too big for it. He needed to be sneaked up on obliquely... "Johnny?" Jess scarcely noticed that he'd called the younger man by his first name.

"Yeah?"

"You answer me somethin'?"

"Like what?"

"Lot of folks," Jess told him, "they hear about my reputation, and they expect me to be a... a stone killer. I ain't, but they can't believe that. Comin' up the way you done, how'd you manage not to be one?"

Johnny looked surprised for a moment, then thoughtful. "I guess it goes back to when I was around eight years old. We'd just come to San Antonio and Mama got sick, real awful sick. Nobody knew us, but somebody told the priest that headed up one of the churches there about the spot we were in, and he had us taken in at the convent. The nuns there were good ladies; they were kind to us, took good care of Mama, got me decent clothes to wear, fed me better'n I could ever remember. And the priest—Father Dennis O'Leary, his name was, an Irishman—he kinda took me under his wing." A faint smile: "Took me a while to trust him... hadn't had much call to think well of grown men... guess the only reason I did at last was that I'd never known a priest to be mean or cruel to me, or Mama to ever speak ill of 'em. She raised me Catholic; she didn't go to confession—maybe she thought she'd done too much for even God to forgive—but she said the Rosary, and went to Sunday Mass whenever there was one to go to, and took me along, even if we were too shabby to sit anywhere but way in the back.

"Father Dennis was a good man... about the best I'd known up to then. He taught me better English and to read and write and figure some; nine months' time I was as good at it as any Anglo third-grader, he said, and that got me curious enough that later on, when I had the money and the time to spare, I sweated the rest out for myself. He told me about men who'd started out poor and made good lives for themselves, even gotten to be famous—George Peabody, Bayard Taylor, Captain Eads, James Watt, Josiah Mason, Palissy the Potter, Mozart, Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Jacquard, Michael Faraday, Horace Greeley, Ezra Cornell, Richter the novelist. And he taught me I didn't have to let what I'd been decide what I'd become. I didn't exactly understand what he meant, bein' so young, but I never forgot, and I thought about it a lot, afterward." He snorted softly. "I think he was kinda half hopin' Mama would die so he could keep me with him, take me away from the life I'd had, bring me up to be a good man. But she was a peon, and tougher than he figured on. It took her all that winter and into the spring, but she lived and got well. And even if it was the Church, she didn't feel... right... stayin' in a town where she owed that kind of debt. So as soon as she was strong enough to travel, we moved on." A sigh. "Ever since then I've had a special kind of regard for the Church, and for priests and nuns. I don't go to confession any more than Mama did, and Mass only when Teresa drags me, but I stop in at the church in Morro Coyo whenever I'm in town, say a prayer or two, put some money in the poorbox, light candles for my mama and Scott's and for Teresa's pa...

"And I guess, too, that it was partly growin' up that way that made me the kind of gun I was. Bein' so poor, never really gettin' used to havin' money, and bein' looked down on and knocked around and all, it was sorta natural I'd have a... sympathy... for the underdogs, the lost causes. Yeah, I know what my rep is, and I know what yours is, and I got a notion each of 'em is at least as much wrong as it's right. Things get twisted around, passin' from mouth to mouth the way they do. I won't be insulted, I won't be wronged, I won't be laid a hand on... but I don't do those things to other people either. And I won't let anyone do 'em to somebody else, if I can help it. Been there myself... you know?"

"So... you was like me," Jess guessed. "You didn't just hire on with the high bidder. You went where you reckoned you'd be on the right side."

"Even if sometimes it didn't pay too good," Johnny agreed. "I could always hold up the next big auger for money enough to make up for it. Anyhow, like I said, money doesn't mean too much to me. There's one thing to be said for growin' up without it: you learn to make do."

"Yeah," Jess murmured. He wondered, privately, if he'd somehow been picking up on some of that, back in New Mexico; if that was why they'd gotten along even as well as they had. Maybe Dixie had taught him keener perception than either of them had realized.

Or maybe, somehow, one person orphaned (or half-orphaned) by violence could sense another. Maybe you put out something, like a scent, that others like you recognized because they had it themselves.

Johnny was still rambling on, almost randomly, as if he wasn't aware of doing it. "I told you how hittin' back made things easier to bear. By the time we met, I knew—anyway, I thought—that I'd found my way. I saw that I was good at somethin' and that I could use it to get the kind of money and respect I'd never had growin' up. And I liked the thought of that. So all I wanted was to be Johnny Madrid, good at my job. I never figured that... that a man might get two chances in one lifetime."

Jess nodded. "I know the feelin'. I'd come to thinkin' I'd likely die before I was thirty, or if I was plumb lucky, live long enough to kill Bannister. And I reckon if I'd managed to do the one 'fore th'other happened, I wouldn't'a' much cared. Seemed like once I lost my kin, I didn't have nothin' left to stand on in this world." It occurred to him that he'd never told anyone about that, except maybe Wolf, and not even him all the way. He wondered, for a moment, why it was that he could say something like this to Johnny but not to Slim. Maybe just because they'd both been in the trade… maybe because their back trails were so alike, he knew that Johnny would understand how he'd felt, as Slim—much as Jess trusted him—never could. "Miss Essie'd talk about miracles, I reckon, and God puttin' his hand out to me. Look at it one way, it was a miracle, 'cause ain't a miracle somethin' that by all reason shouldn't never happen?"

"I just wish," said Johnny, his voice scarcely audible, "that I was as sure of where I belonged as you are."

If Jess had been a cat or dog his ears would have swivelled straight forward on his head. It wasn't just the words or the tone; it was the whole feel of them. It was so familiar it made him ache. He knew now what he'd been picking up on ever since they'd started to talk; it was the same thing he'd felt himself, something over a year ago, when he'd left Sherman Ranch after he killed the Hamry kid.

"You ain't in this town just casual," he said, not asking. "You're runnin'."

Johnny let out a sigh that would have done credit to an elephant. "Reckon I am. I've had my differences with Scott and Murdoch right from the start; comin' up the way I did, I figure it was bound to happen. But all the same, there was somethin' between me and Scott, especially, that let us make it up each time. Seemed like both of us, somehow, had made up our minds that if we were brothers we had to learn to get along, or else we'd be makin' Cain and Abel look like amateurs..."

"But this time…" Jess ventured, "this time, one of you said somethin' th'other couldn't let lay?"

"No!" Johnny's head came up sharply, his eyes diamond-bright. "No, it wasn't Scott. It was Murdoch. I swear I can't tell you what it was about, but the night after Christmas we had a fight, me and him."

"And he told you to pack your gear and drift?" Jess prodded gently.

The younger man shook his head, slow like a funeral bell tolling. "He didn't have to. I knew. It was time. So I waited till everybody was in bed, then slipped back in and got what I wanted to take with me, and took out."

Yeah, Jess thought, just like me. Slim'd never tell me to go—I know that now—and Johnny's pa wouldn't tell him. But he figured he had to. He thought for a minute, then inquired: "You was sayin' it was just you and your ma? I mean, as far as you can remember?"

"Yeah... I think, lookin' back, maybe she lost a couple'a babies, but I'm not sure... at that age, to a boy, it doesn't mean much, you know?"

Jess nodded. His recollections of the two pregnancies that had followed his own birth—he'd been three and seven when Johnny and Billy arrived—were imperfect at best, but he did recall clearly being ten and twelve, when Davy and Julie were preparing to make their appearance, and he thought he'd pretty much ignored the signs. "And—not meanin' no disrespect—from what you said of her, I got a notion she didn't set you the best kind of example of what a family's about?" he pursued.

Johnny examined that idea for a moment. "No, I guess she didn't. I guess she did the best she knew..." With a faint smile: "Murdoch told me that when he met her, she was dancin' in a cantina in Matamoros—funny, in a way, that a big part of her life started there, and in the end she came back to it. She was about as far from his blonde, Boston-bred first wife as anything you could think of... maybe that was why he took to her, 'cause havin' her around wouldn't be always remindin' him of the one he'd lost, of Scott's mama... She never told him about any kin she had, and she sure never introduced me to any of 'em."

"So," Jess pursued, "till you met up with your pa and your brother, you never had a family—not a real one. Not like me." He waited to see if the other would take offense, though he didn't think Johnny would.

And he didn't. "I guess that's true," he said softly. "You had a pa, a good ma, big brothers and sisters to help you, little ones to look after... even Scott had his grandpa, aunts and uncles and cousins... I never did. I guess... I guess I just never had the chance to learn how to get along in a real family, like he did, or you." He looked up, his eyes asking for belief. "I tried, Jess. I really tried. I just—lots of times, most of the time maybe, I just didn't know what to do."

And Jess, who had lost his birth family so tragically, who had several times feared that he was about to lose everything he had found at Sherman Ranch, suddenly realized that, as good as he was at hiding it, Johnny was being torn apart inside at the thought of leaving Lancer. That he didn't really want to go—that was why he'd gone no farther than San Francisco; he just didn't know what else to do. Yes, Jess understood. He'd been there, in Vernal, only a little more than a year ago.

"Think you're th'only one ever felt like that?" he asked evenly. "'Cause if you do, you're way wrong."

"You think so? How can you know?" There was no indignation in the tone, just hollow despair.

"'Cause I been there," said Jess. "Think on it. I got two strikes on you, like they say in baseball. I had my family for fifteen years, and it was a good one, sound and hard-workin' even if we did think of ourselves as bein' poor, which mostly means, lookin' back at it, that we didn't have much cash money—but then even in the '50's, after Texas wasn't a Republic no more, a lot of folks was in that same boat... and we loved each other.

"But it ain't always easy, and you shouldn't think you're the only man that don't find it so. I come out of a big family, like I told you, way bigger'n what you got—nine of us plus Ma and Pa—and I can tell you somethin' about families. Mine pulled together, always. It was Harpers against the world, as far back as I can recollect. We had to be, 'cause we was about all we had that we could depend on bein' there... the crew changed and shifted every season, except for some Mexican families, their men was the permanent backbone of it. And yet... even as much as we stood together and trusted each other, there was bumps in the road. My brothers and me, we argued and tussled and rassled and blacked each other's eyes and teased our sisters half to distraction. We got jealous, we had rivalries... but through it all we stuck together. I got a notion ain't nobody can annoy you and get under your skin quite like the ones you care most about, the ones you live with, 'cause they know you better'n anybody else does, know just where you're easiest to get at."

He paused a moment, his eyes dark and distant. "But I can tell you this: I always knew what a great thing it was to have a good family, even if—like you—I never got to meet none of my kin, not from either side, 'cept my one uncle, Cam Cooper, Ma's brother. I was alone a long lot of years, after the Bannisters, and I never stopped missin' all that—missin' it and dreamin' of it and longin' to have it back again, even with all them bumps—more'n I can tell you, more'n I knew myself, for a long time. I reckon that ache went so deep in me that I almost didn't realize it was there—does that make sense? Like you know your heart's workin', or your lungs or your stomach, but you don't notice 'em, or think about 'em much. There's a place in the Bible, I think, where it says man ain't meant to be alone. I spent ten years tryin' to tell myself that rule didn't hold for me, but the day Slim invited me to stay I knew I'd been lyin' to myself. And that ain't a good habit for a man in our line to get into. 'Cause if he does, one day he'll let himself get pushed into somethin' he can't handle, and get dead."

He held Johnny's gaze. "Slim and me, we've had to learn to pull together even more'n before, since Andy and Jonesy went off to St. Louis. We still disagree about things, we still argue, times we even come to hittin'... but most the time, when we fight, it's more like kids fightin', like me and my brothers back in the Panhandle, than like a, well, a serious fight like a barroom brawl. If you'd had brothers when you was a sprout, you'd know what I mean. When kids fight, it don't mean near the same as it does with grown folks. Kids fight almost casual-like, maybe 'cause they ain't quite grown into bein' civilized yet. Grown folks don't fight but when they're drove to it by strong feelin's, and even then they feel wrong about it, guilty, 'cause they've learned they ain't supposed to; they're supposed to be Christians, turn the other cheek and all that. Kids ain't; they're closer to what Indians are, I reckon, about half savages still. Plus they got so much energy, so much eagerness, that to them fightin' can be near as much fun as teamwork. The anger don't scarcely outlast the fight. That's how it mostly is with us. We can square off over whose turn it is to do the dishes or boil out the laundry—shoot, we've done it, out in the yard—but in half an hour we've forgotten it; times we can't even throw the first punch—or keep a straight face. I reckon I could count on one hand the times the anger, or the disappointment, or the feelin' of bein' betrayed has lasted, and likely I'd have a finger or two left over."

He saw the slow understanding dawning in the younger man's eyes. "You got to give the other feller a chance, Johnny, same's I had to learn to do with Slim. It takes time to get feelin' right with new things, new places, new ways of livin', to get used to 'em—like when you break a bronc to saddle. You been alone a long spell, same as me, and you're still gettin' to know this family of yours and them you; you're all tryin' to work out where you gotta step light and where it's best not to step at all... and like you said, you ain't got the background your brother does, or me, that experience, that knowledge of what a family's s'posed to feel like, how it works; so you start off at a disadvantage. You was sayin' you got this big ranch, big hacienda; you got a lot more space than me and Slim—when one of us gets mad at th'other one, he's got to ride out and find some range work to do, or go into Laramie for a few hours and give himself time to cool off. You can find a place to be by yourself, a room, a shed, somethin', where you're away from everybody and can think and give them time to do the same. You all need to come to an agreement that you'll do that when you start feelin' closed in or like you don't belong or ain't appreciated. Findin' Slim and them... it was the savin' of me, I know that, and your family could be the savin' of you, if you let 'em." A pause, and then, solemnly: "When a man finds the place he's meant for... most of all if he knows it's where he's meant for—he's got to stay. He's got to do whatever he can, to make sure of it. He don't get that kind of chance twice."

"That's the worst of it," Johnny replied, his voice small and tight. "I know it."

Jess was silent a minute, then said carefully, "What do you reckon on doin', then? If you don't go back?"

"Kinda had it settled in my mind I was gonna go north," Johnny told him. "They say eastern Oregon's good cow country. It gets cold there in winter, and snowy, I hear... but a man can always buy a warm coat." Another sigh. "Trouble is, I think maybe I waited too long. Murdoch's here in town—lookin' for me, I figure; I know for certain he didn't have any business planned that'd bring him. I saw him down on Market Street yesterday. And bein' a hardheaded Scot, he won't give up till he finds me. That's why I was at your friend's mission today—I was lookin' for a place I could sleep. Spent last night at the Five-Mile House, out on the San José pike… I can't go back to the hotel I was stayin' at, in case he's been there or got somebody watchin' it. But I got all my stake money in the safe there, and I can't leave it." He grinned ruefully. "Guess I've gotten soft, livin' at Lancer. Don't want to go back to bein' just a driftin' gun for hire. Want a place of my own, or partways, like what you've got... like what I had."

"Like what you still got," Jess told him gently. "Can't you see that's why you and your brother come to that... agreement you talked about, like Slim and me? Can't you see that's why your pa's here? 'Cause he wants you back. Wants you with him just as much as you want to be there. He's doin' the same thing Slim done when I took off to Utah, 'bout a year ago. Five hundred miles he followed me, took a hand in a quarrel that wasn't his, all so's he could make me see I hadn't had no reason to run. So's I'd understand I had folks that cared about me, that I wasn't alone no more. Like you ain't alone." He sat forward, his eyes intense. "Johnny... you got to go back, don't you know that? Don't you know how it's rippin' you up inside to give all that up? Just like it's done me when I've tried it."

There was a long silence. Jess knew he'd come to the end of whatever eloquence he possessed; if everything he'd said hadn't been enough to make Johnny see that he really did understand the younger gun's situation, that only by making things right with his pa and, if he had to, even humbling himself, could he put an end to the pain that was slowly consuming him as it had threatened to consume Jess... then he didn't know what more he could do. And somehow it was important to him, especially after everything he'd learned of Johnny's past, that he see the thing through and not give up till it was settled.

"Maybe..." Johnny began, and Jess looked up sharply. Say it, boy. Say it. You know it's true, say it.

"Maybe," Johnny went on, "maybe this partner of yours is catchin'. He must be real convincin'. And so are you."

Jess barely dared breathe. "You'll go?"

"Guess I have to," said Johnny. "Trouble is, if I go back to my hotel and Murdoch hasn't found it yet—how do I find him to let him know? There's sure no percentage tryin' to find out where he is this time of night. Not even sure how I'd go about learnin' where he's stayin'."

"You reckon your brother knows, back at Lancer? Or this Teresa you talked about?" Jess suggested.

Johnny looked startled. "I didn't think of that. Sure. He'd have had to let 'em know he'd gotten this far, in case somethin' came up they needed advice on—maybe he's been other places too, tryin' to pick up my trail."

"Well," said Jess, "there you are, then. Telegraph 'em. Say you've thought on it and you wanta come home. Make it sound like you're askin' if they think you'll be welcome. They'll get in touch with him, tell him they've heard from you, and like as not the two of you'll be on the same ferry to Oakland before you know it."

And Johnny smiled, and this time it went all the way to his eyes. "You're pretty smart, Harper."

"No, I ain't," Jess retorted, but his mouth curved up at the corner as he spoke. "Just picked up a few things from Slim—and him from me, though he'd deny it to his last breath."

"Tell me somethin' about him," Johnny requested. "What's he like?"

"Slim?" Jess had to stop and think for a minute or two. How would he describe Slim? The man had been like the other half of himself for so long, he hardly ever thought much about what else Slim was. "Well... he's big, bigger'n me. Got a good head of height on me, maybe twenty pounds, and yet... I ride him some about the weight he's puttin' on, but the fact is he's so tall and straight, on him it looks right. Big broad shoulders, fit to take the world onto... before I came, Jonesy told me, he used to act like it was up to him to do just that. A smile that could light a mine shaft, blue eyes like the sky at noontime, kind of sandy-blond hair. Better schooled than I am—he got through the grades, back in Illinois where he was born, and his ma was a reader, she saw to it he had good books. Cooler headed, too: I can go off like a skyrocket, I get that from my pa, but Slim takes a lot of pushin' before he blows. Good all-around man: good shot, good roper, good at smithwork, good rider—when he was younger he had some Cheyenne friends that taught him how to hang onto the side of his horse, I've seen him do it with the critter goin' at a flat-out dead run. Good with his fists, too; reckon he's the only man I've met could fight me to a standstill without havin' to have me coshed from behind to level the odds. Good cattleman, good head for business; always wantin' to improve the place, to build on what his pa started. Works everybody hard, but himself harder; don't never ask a man to do nothin' he ain't willin' to do himself. Kind of stiff-necked about right and wrong; used to be he saw everythin' either black or white, though I got a notion he's comin' to understand that there's gray in the world too..."

"How old is he?" Johnny asked.

Jess figured mentally. "Shoot. Twenty-nine day before yesterday. I should'a' got him somethin'."

"Was he in the war?"

Jess hadn't been expecting that. "Yeah. Union cavalry. He was even on General Sherman's staff for a spell... claims they ain't related..."

"My brother was with Sheridan."

"Cavalry too?"

"Uh-huh."

"He take to range life?"

Johnny chuckled. "He was pretty much of a dude when I first met him. Bowler hat, hundred-dollar suit. Still turns up his hatbrim, like General Custer, and wears gloves when he's workin'..."

---

10. Rescue Gone Wrong

The Red Rose:

"We need to talk, Cullen."

John Carroll Cullen gazed mildly at the man in the dark-gray derby who'd just accosted him in the gaming room. "What are you doing here, Rafferty? Weren't you the one who was so anxious not to be seen in my company at the Cliff House?"

"Don't be obtuse," snapped Rafferty. "No one would think anything of my being here. There are plenty of men with a lot more money than I have who are patrons of yours."

"That's true," drawled Cullen. "All right, you're here, I'm here—talk." As Rafferty hesitated: "No one's going to pay any attention. They're too busy concentrating on their games—or on what's waiting for them across the hall."

Rafferty bit air. "I know I was only supposed to communicate with you through the personals in the Call," he began, "but I was afraid you might not read my message in time—in your business you have to be up till dawn... Did you see the report about the military companies offering to help search for Norton?"

"You mean the city's accepted the offer?" Cullen was surprised; he hadn't expected the notoriously corrupt San Francisco government to be willing to have civilians stirring around in its business.

"It had to," said Rafferty grimly. "Every politician in town knows that if he isn't seen to be doing everything he can to crack this thing, he'll be out on his ear next election. I'm beginning to wonder why I ever thought it would work. I should have known— And what's worse, the Chief of Police and the Sheriff had a meeting this afternoon. They've about decided to do a sweep through the whole Barbary Coast, from Mason Street to the Bay. Muster every cop and every deputy on the roster, and hit every place in between. They know this is the likeliest place for the plot to have originated."

"When?" asked Cullen.

"They need daylight, of course," Rafferty replied. "Trying to do that kind of thing at night, when the dives are full of sailors and the sailors are full of drink, would be asking for a massacre, apart from all the opportunities there'd be to take out individual officers. They're planning to start about noon. They'll set up a perimeter on the west side of Mason, using the buildings between there and here to prevent anyone from catching sight of them before they're ready to move—though that's not too likely; if the Coast ever sleeps at all, it's between dawn and noon. They'll flow around Chinatown—they know the Chinese are too smart to be involved—but they'll search every foot of the red-light district and the Coast itself."

"Noon," murmured Cullen thoughtfully. "If they pull in every man they've got, that's about a hundred and thirty. One every nine feet or so, twenty-six to a block. Even a rat couldn't slip through a net that tight."

"That's what I thought," the other agreed. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Move him," Cullen replied simply. "If we get him out of the building around dawn, and take him somewhere west of Mason or north of Vallejo, they'll never see him—or us. They can search this place to their little hearts' content and find nothing. Then, once they've satisfied themselves that he's not on the Coast, we'll bring him back and take up where we left off." He smiled reassuringly at Rafferty. "See? There was no need for you to panic. Now, get a drink, and then go tell Belle I said to let you have your choice, free of charge. Maybe that will relax you."

He watched thoughtfully as Rafferty drifted off toward the bar, then looked around and signalled to a hatchet-faced man in fine blue-black serge and a lavender paisley cravat who had been idly watching over one of the faro banks. When the man joined him, he said quietly, "You see the man in the dark-gray derby over at the bar?"

"I see him," Chayne Hyatt agreed.

"He'll be going across the hall in a few minutes. He never stays more than a couple of hours. When he leaves, follow him. He'll probably head for home—he lives up on Clay Street, just off Taylor. Make sure he doesn't get there. And make it look like a robbery."

**SR - L - WT**

Well-fed, warm, and comfortably relaxed from the wine, Jess and Johnny were swapping stories of what they'd been up to in the years since their last encounter when there was a knock at the door and Jess's original waiter put his head in. "Gentlemen? There's someone to see you—he said you'd know him. A one-legged sailorman named Clancy."

"Clancy?" Jess sat up straight. "What time's it?" he added, to Johnny's confusion.

"Almost one in the morning," the staffer replied. "You know, sir, we do close at two..."

Jess wasn't listening. "Why'd Clancy not be keepin' the door at Miss Essie's place, this time of night?" he wondered. "Somethin' ain't right. Fetch him in."

The waiter vanished, and a few minutes later the rhythmic thump of Clancy's peg leg could be heard on the stairs. By the time he entered the room, Jess was on his feet. "What's goin' on?" he demanded. "There some kind of trouble at the mission?"

"If it were only that," Clancy replied, "I'd not need your help. You've heard what happened to the Emperor Norton?"

"Yeah, I heard," Jess agreed. "What's it got to do with me—or you?"

Clancy explained. He'd had a sense from the beginning that the Barbary Coast was somehow tied in to the kidnapping; he knew the district well, and the kinds of people who made their living there, and knew they would stop at little or nothing if they saw an opportunity to make an illicit dollar from it. And after spending most of the last eight years as a habitué of that part of the city, he had made a great many contacts there. He had begun spreading the word among them as soon as the news broke, and had heard back less than an hour ago, only a little over forty-eight hours after the abduction. It was a rumor, but it came from someone he trusted. "There are no real secrets on the Coast," he said. "Sooner or later, no matter how close-mouthed a person may be, the word will filter out, someone will hear something—or buy it: there are always those willing to sell information for cash. They're holding him at the Red Rose. It's the most elegant parlor house on the Barbary Coast—almost off the Coast altogether, on Powell."

"Okay," said Jess slowly, "why tell us? Why not go to the police?"

Clancy snorted. "Ye don't know our police very well, do ye? They're not an above board lot. And if they were, why would they believe me? In any case, there's more to the tale as it was told to me. The Rose is owned by a gambler named Cullen and his wife, and they're a clever pair and ruthless enough—they've been crimpers for years, though not on a regular basis, only when a particular need for money comes up—but the man who sent me the word believes there's someone else behind them, someone high up in the city government, someone, it might be, who'd be in a place to let them know if there's any chance they've been found out by the law."

It was Johnny who made the connection, sitting forward quickly. "Have they been?"

"That I can't say for certain, but another mate of mine says there's been a parcel of coming and going around Police Headquarters since dark fell. And what I'm afraid of is that, if the police do know where to look, Cullen might be likely to deep-six the Emperor before he can be found out. It strikes me this is no time to be a tide-waiter. The red-light district's quietest between about dawn and two bells of the forenoon watch—that's nine in the morning to you landsmen. If they do plan to move him, that would be the safest hour for it."

The two former gunfighters traded looks. "Like I told Slim, it ain't our town," Jess observed.

"Maybe not," said Johnny, "but neither one of us ever made a habit of standin' by when somebody was facin' heavy odds."

Jess pulled out his watch. "Ten after one," he said. "Sun'll be risin' around half past seven. That'd make first light about a quarter to." The waiter was still hovering in the doorway. "You," Jess snapped at him, "coffee, and two cups, and don't let the grass grow under your feet!"

The man gulped and vanished. "Shouldn't'a' drunk so dang much of that wine," Jess grumbled. "We'll need a couple hours at least to flush it out of us. Wisht we could get Slim in on this, he can wake up with the larks and go right to work..."

**SR - L - WT**

Sunday, January 7

With only one horse between the three of them, and no cabs or horsecars available at this hour, it was clear at once that they'd have to go on foot. Johnny paid one of the waiters a dollar to take Barranca to the nearest stable, which happened to be the one where Jess and his friends had left theirs during their tours of Chinatown and the waterfront. Clancy sketched a map of the way they'd have to go—six blocks along California Street and two up Powell. "Can you make it?" Johnny asked him, eyeing the peg leg.

"I can walk farther than many a man with two legs of meat," Clancy retorted. "Not so fast, but farther. It's only when it comes to clambering about in a ship's rigging, or dealing with slippery decks, that I'm out of my depth."

They set out about four A.M., which gave even range men like Jess and Johnny, unaccustomed to walking in their high-heeled boots, time enough to make it without ending up exhausted. It was between half and three-quarters of a mile to the corner of Powell and Clay. Half a block short of the Powell intersection, Clancy led them up one of the narrow lanes or alleys that cut through many San Francisco blocks, this one called Joice Street; it took them to Clay and there stopped. From its opening they could see the bulk of the Red Rose looming against the sky, a three-storey brick mansion that looked entirely respectable to the casual eye, with bay windows on either side of the front door, heavily shielded with curtains. Light still filtered dimly out between them, but there were only a few horses and vehicles tied outside.

"No good tryin' to bust in," Jess said softly. "Ain't but the three of us, no tellin' who or how many we might run into, and we don't know where they'd be keepin' Norton. If Clancy's friend called it right and they're fixin' to move him, they'll have to fetch him out sometime. We can make our move then."

Johnny nodded. "Sounds like a plan. And, hey, they won't move him out in public, like you and me walkin' down the street. They must be figurin' to put him in somethin', a cab maybe, a closed carriage—"

Jess shot him a surprised look. "Didn't think of that, but you're right. Not a cab, though. Driver'd see Norton, recognize him likely. Somethin' else, somethin' Cullen or one of his men can drive. Maybe it's here already. Let's find it."

In this part of the city the north-south faces of the blocks were slightly shorter than the east-west ones, and where central alleys like Joice Street didn't provide service lanes to the rear yards or doors of the buildings, narrow access drives between them had to serve. The threesome moved quietly, casually, out onto Clay Street and along the sidewalk, counting on the drawn curtains downstairs and the nature of the activity probably going on upstairs to protect them from being seen. Sure enough, there was an access drive intervening between the Red Rose and the next building up the block from it. Something light moved in the shadows back there, and the clink of horseshoe iron against paving reached their ears.

"Hold it," Jess whispered. "Go on up a ways and wait for me. I'm gonna check this out." He drew his Colt, squeezing the trigger as he eared the hammer back to prevent a telltale click, and made his way light-footedly up the drive. He was perhaps twenty feet from the corner of the building when he almost ran into a pair of horses standing in harness. "Whoa, boys, easy," he murmured, giving them a moment to get his scent and then moving on to examine what they were hitched to, not that he hadn't already guessed. He had seen a good many of these vehicles both in San Francisco and elsewhere: enclosed or partly-enclosed spring wagons, drawn usually by a single horse in heavily populated areas, often two in residential neighborhoods and the suburbs, and with business advertisements painted in large letters on the sides. They made morning and afternoon deliveries of bread, milk, groceries, vegetables, ice, and similar commodities to the eateries and residential sections. By midafternoon many had finished their rounds, leaving more room on the streets for the carriage trade—which was perhaps a contributing factor to the custom of afternoon, rather than morning, calls by ladies.

This particular one was a two-horse ice wagon, with a setback driver's seat shaded by an extension of the roof, roll-down curtains at the sides for use in rainy weather, and a large oval medallion on the side on which was a color reproduction of Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, the boatmen shoving floes of ice out of the way with their oars. The front wheels were probably around three feet high—small enough that when the vehicle turned they could slide under the body, which allowed for sharp cornering—and the rear ones close to five. A spring scale hung from a steel rod on the rear doorframe, and the back was equipped with the characteristic large handles and long step. Wonder how they got hold of it? Jess asked himself. Ain't exactly the kind of thing a man can hire, like he can a hack horse or a carriage. The horses, two freckled grays, were hitched to a pole that extended several feet out ahead of them; except for their color, they weren't unlike the stage horses Jess knew—three-quarter light blood, about 1100 pounds each. The double rear doors of the wagon were closed, their surfaces almost on a line with the back corner of the house, where a lacy wooden service porch sheltered what was probably the kitchen door. The windows here were dark: parlor-house girls got their sleep in the mornings and didn't eat breakfast till late morning or early afternoon.

After making sure of the ground, Jess slipped back the way he'd come and rejoined his waiting partners, describing what he'd seen. "The wagon don't look to be locked," he said. "If one of us was to get in it and wait, he'd be set to surprise whoever fetches Norton out. Then another one could be on top, where he could cover 'em. Clancy, you can't work a wagon brake with your leg missin'. Best place for you'd be inside. Odds are, they'll push Norton up first, then maybe one or two'll climb in after. When they do that, whoever's with you grabs him, pulls him in, passes him on back to you; your job's to get him down on the floor and hold him there while we deal with his guards, so's he don't get hit by a stray slug. Soon as they're forced back, man inside pulls the doors shut and holds 'em, man on top slips over the shade roof onto the seat and whips the horses up."

Jess's plan, such as it was, was fairly basic. Get Norton away from his guards and safely on board, then take off. Out of the drive, then turn north fast, too fast to be followed by men on foot; by the time Cullen and his outfit could get horses somewhere, their quarry would be lost to sight in the grid of streets, maybe not impossible to find, but hard. Even if they were seen, Jess had never been in the Red Rose, they wouldn't know him, wouldn't know where he might go; he couldn't speak for Johnny, of course, but given how focused the younger gun had been on his own problems lately, odds were he hadn't been too interested in the sporting life. After a while swing either east toward the bayfront and follow the shoreline down to the center of town, or west and south till they could find their way to Market Street, and then take that up to Montgomery and the Occidental. Get Norton back home, then—

Then what? Clancy didn't seem to think much of the police—

"Clancy?"

"Aye, lad."

"You said these San Francisco cops was crooked?"

"That they are," the old man agreed. "Everybody knows they take bribes—from the brothel keepers, the crimpers, the casinos and Chinese gambling parlors too; gambling's supposed to be illegal in California, but nobody's enforced that law since it was written."

Jess thought about that, and about what Clancy had said before, that maybe somebody high up was involved in this plot. "How 'bout the county sheriff? Could his boys be trusted?"

Clancy considered. "This being a consolidated city-county, they don't have much to do in the way of keeping the law. Mostly they operate the jail, provide guards at the courthouse and City Hall, and summon jurors for trial duty, though the sheriff's often blamed if a jury fails to convict. It's but little likely they've any part in the Emperor's kidnap. And there's this: sheriff's an elected office. A police officer, once he's in, is in for as long as he cares to stay. The sheriff has to steer a course that keeps the voters happy. All the politicians work hard not to offend the Emperor; he's too well loved, it could lose them votes."

"So," Jess concluded, "if we was to tell him where Norton was—"

"Aye, and maybe have a reporter or two in the room as well, just to keep him honest," Clancy agreed.

"Okay," Jess agreed, "we'll figure on that. Slim can help, once we get back to the Occidental. How many do you reckon we'll have to deal with?"

The seaman pondered for a moment. "Cullen has a good two dozen in the gaming room, bartenders, housemen, croupiers and such, cashier, maybe a lookout or two. But they'll all have had a long night and be tired. And I'm thinking he'll not have let many of his crew know he's any hand in this deal; there'd be too great a chance one might let something slip."

Jess nodded. "The more folks that know a secret, the quicker it stops bein' one. So?"

"I'd give odds it won't be above two or three," Clancy proceeded. "Cullen himself, most likely; he'll want to keep a weather eye on his investment. He keeps two bouncers—the Brill brothers, Levon and Daniel—and they'd be the ones I'd guess he'll have with him. They're as nasty a pair of brutes as ever beat a poor sailing man senseless, but quick thinkers they're not—or gunmen either. Armed they'll be—revolvers, knives, brass knuckles, blackjacks or slung shots—but they won't be expecting to use any of it, and they won't shoot except as a last resort; Cullen will have given orders not to risk harming the Emperor, at least till the ransom's paid. As for himself, that's another tack altogether. He's a gambler by trade, and I dare say you lads have met some of that breed in your voyagings."

"More than a few," Johnny murmured. "How will we know him if we see him?"

"The Brills are hefty lads the both—over six feet, sixteen stone or better. Cullen, he'd be no more than five nine or ten, and better dressed, of course, if he's just come off duty in the casino."

"Three's probably about right," Madrid guessed. "They sure won't be figurin' on any trouble from Norton, and they think their scheme's a secret, so they won't expect us either. All we have to decide now is, which of us takes inside and which takes topside?"

"I've driven stage for the Overland a time or two, since I've been with Slim," Jess told him. "I'll take the roof. I reckon they'll have to light a lamp when they get ready to come out—them buildings on th'other side of the block'll keep the sun off this driveway for two or three hours after it's up. When I see a light go on in the kitchen, I'll tap three times, and you'll know to be ready."

"Let's get set," Johnny proposed.

The wagon's doors, as Jess had expected, weren't secured, except for a swinging bar about two feet long with a hook on the end, to keep them from falling open if the cargo inside shifted and fell against them. Johnny clambered in first, gave Clancy a hand up, and settled down about halfway back along the length of the interior compartment while Jess returned the hook to its previous position, then went around to the front of the wagon, unfastened the team's reins from the brake handle and retied them in a slip-knot arrangement that he could quickly pull loose, boosted himself up onto the seat and from there swarmed quickly onto the roof. He lay down on his belly, his sixgun within easy reach of his hand, and waited. Inside the wagon, Johnny heard the gentle creak of the roof above him as his cohort got settled, and reached down to flip back the bell of his right trouser leg. Tucked neatly into his boot top was a long, thin-bladed knife, the kind that could serve equally for fighting or throwing. He drew it out, balanced it in his hand, and settled into a position he knew he could maintain, if he had to, for a couple of hours, yet one that wouldn't cramp his muscles against the possibility of having to move fast.

The faintest hint of gray was beginning to show past the roofs of the buildings on the far side of the block when a tiny light—a match, perhaps—suddenly became visible through the kitchen window. A moment later it blossomed into a faint, steady glow, as of a low-turned lamp. Jess tapped on the roof in the agreed-upon signal, then wrapped his hand around the butt of his Colt and waited, his eyes fixed on the door that gave out onto the little porch. It swung in, a sudden oblong of dimness against the solid side of the house. A man stepped out, moving softly down the steps; as he got clear of the porch roof Jess could see that he was built much like himself, not tall but wiry, and moved with an easy unstudied grace. Cullen, he thought.

The gambler paused at the back of the wagon, perhaps to make sure that the hook was still in place, then continued past it, toward the end of the drive. Jess lay quite still, listening to the scuff of his boot soles against the flags. Checkin' to see if anybody's watchin', I reckon, he thought, smiling grimly to himself. There was a moment or two of silence, then the sound of Cullen's steps returning, and a low whistle. A bulkier figure appeared in the doorway, followed by a second that pushed ahead of it a slighter one, the latter stumbling uncertainly as if blindfolded. Jess waited until all three had descended the steps and were within four feet or so of the end of the wagon, raised up on his elbows and carefully, silently gathered his legs under him. He could make out Cullen's hat—it looked like a Fedora—as the gambler reached up to unfasten the hook and pull the door open, then stepped back; the second of the big men growled something Jess couldn't catch, and pushed his captive toward the vehicle. Now, Johnny! Jess thought.

All he heard was a faint whistle of disturbed air, a soft thud as of a blow, a choking gasp, and the big man stumbled and swayed before folding slowly to his knees and then falling sideways to the ground. As he did, Johnny swung out of the opening, hanging on to the doorframe by one hand and squeezing off two fast shots from his sixgun with the other. The other big man, quite naturally, backed away to concentrate on getting a weapon into action, and Johnny holstered his gun, reached out, hollered "Tomarlos, amigo [take them, friend]!", fisted his free hand in the front of the prisoner's clothes, and yanked. Jess meanwhile stood up on the roof, feet widely braced, and fired three times as fast as he could cock the hammer. It all happened much faster than it could be described; the wagon lurched under Jess's feet as Norton's weight came on, there was a thump and a scuffle from within and the doors suddenly banged shut. Jess ducked as a bullet whined past his ear—sheer luck: as Dixie had taught him, the man who is above his enemy always has the advantage when gunfire is being exchanged—and slithered back off the roof into the seat, pulled the knot out of the reins and kicked the brake off, and slashed the horses into action with a catamount yell just to guarantee they'd get going. Already jittery from the shots, they did, in a great terrified surge. There was shouting back in the alley, a shot, a quick banging sound as one door flew back, two more shots in response just as the wagon hit the bottom of the drive and Jess braced his feet and hauled the team to the right by main force. Then they were away, thundering north along Powell at a full-out run.

The streets were still lit only faintly by the growing dawn light and the gas lamps spaced along each block. With a gunfighter's ingrained need to get a good handle on his surroundings—particularly on strategic things like sources of light—Jess had already observed that these were staggered so that there was one about every two hundred feet, left or right, except at corners, where there were always two, diagonally set, to help crossing pedestrians see if anything was coming toward them out of the dark. Using these as his guide, he swung the wagon right onto Union Street, right again on Stockton, left onto Green and right onto Montgomery, skirted the foot of Telegraph Hill, took Vallejo to Sansome, then made a right back onto Union and bore straight for the waterfront. The team's shoes struck sparks from the cobblestones and the wagon swayed to and fro, fishtailing as it negotiated the corners.

On the smooth, frictionless city paving, horses could haul heavier loads in proportion to their own weight than could those hitched to stagecoaches or covered wagons, which might encounter rough ground, sudden arroyos or ravines, or mud. This Jess had figured on, but what hadn't entered into his calculations was the fact that the ice wagon, though it weighed a good 1200 pounds of itself, didn't have its normal load to provide a counterbalance as it swung around corners and went racketing and swaying down straightaways. He had just begun to make out the wink of the rising sun against the bay waters when the wagon lurched again, farther this time, and his trained sense of balance felt it begin to slew and tip. There was no time even to shout a warning to his companions inside, only to let go of the reins so he wouldn't be dragged and to tuck and roll reflexively to protect his head and neck.

It was possible that he was unconscious for a minute or two; more likely he was only stunned and winded. He pushed himself slowly into a sitting position, blinking in the pale light, distantly aware of the diminishing clatter of the team's hooves. Gradually he began to get a sense of his situation. Directly ahead of him was the bay, fringed with a series of piers and wharves; to his left an intersection, and inward from that, filling in a long narrow block between two north-south streets, a great dark bulk of a building, two storeys at least, perhaps three; to his right another intersection and another long block, this one apparently lined with several smaller buildings. About ten feet to his rear was the ice wagon, tipped over on its side, one top wheel spinning lazily, the other a confusion of shattered spokes and felloes. As he watched, the door on the lower side fell open, and a figure in a dark jacket and belled trousers crawled out, reached up to grasp the edge of the other door, drew itself erect and looked around. "Jess? ¿Eres tu [is that you]?"

Jess wasn't quite sure where Johnny was looking, but he waved an arm anyway. "Over here," he called.

It must have been enough; he heard the jingling music of Johnny's spurs and the click of his boot heels against the pavement, and then the younger man was crouching down beside him. "You okay? Anything broken?"

"No," Jess told him, "no—I busted a leg once, I know—how it feels—I'm just shook up some, is all—gi'me a hand up—" Then his weight came onto his left leg and he gasped in pain. "Reckon—I ain't as okay as I figured—"

"What's wrong?" Johnny demanded.

"Knee… twisted it… maybe a sprain… must'a' landed bad…" As the first shock passed and his breathing began to even out again, Jess added, "How 'bout you fellers, you hurt?"

"No," said Johnny, "bein' inside we had the wagon panels to block our fall. And it happened so fast, we didn't have enough warning to stiffen up, so we were pretty limp when we got tossed around. Bruises, that's all—we'll be sore tomorrow, but we're not as bad off as you. What happened, anyway?"

"Dunno," Jess admitted. "One minute I was whippin' 'em on, the next I was flyin' through the air."

"Okay," said Johnny, "lean on me, let's get over to the wagon…"

Clancy crawled awkwardly out of the wreck as they approached it, got up with some difficulty and reached down to offer a hand to their passenger. It was Norton, sure enough; even in that uncertain light, Jess knew the uniform, somewhat rumpled now, with a tear in one sleeve and an epaulet gone. "Lean back here," Johnny told him, "and let yourself down, slow and easy… that's right." He moved forward along the wagon's length, and Jess heard him say something uncomplimentary in Spanish. "There it is. Kingpin must've busted or popped out. The tongue pulled out of the yoke. Team's probably still hitched to it."

"They won't quit runnin' till they get back to the ice company stables," said Jess ruefully. "Where are we?"

Johnny looked around, located a lamppost, and walked over to peer up at the street signs mounted on it. "Corner of Union and Battery," he said. "That must be East Street," and he nodded toward the paved way that ran along the inland ends of the wharves, about 250 feet away.

His knee ached in the stabbing non-continuous fashion of sprains, but Jess had his breath back now, and he found he could think fairly clearly. He looked north, frowning, at the long building that reached along Battery Street from the intersection. In the increasing light he could see that it had what looked like a store—possibly more than one—at grade, and above that two more levels, the upper of which was distinguished by six-over-six sash windows spaced no more than a couple of feet from one another. An exterior stairway, roofed over as such things frequently were, led up from the front corner of the structure to a door about halfway along the depth of the top floor. No, he realized, not a door—where a door was. It was a blank open space, like the back entrance of the Red Rose just before Cullen emerged.

"Help me up," he ordered as Johnny rejoined him. "There's somethin' about that buildin' yonder…"

They moved slowly closer to it, then along its depth toward the Battery Street side, which, because it faced east, got the best cast of light. Jess could hear the click of Clancy's peg leg on the paving behind them. As he got around to where he could look up at the third-storey frontage of the structure, he saw what had been bothering him. The third-floor windows—here as on the side they were six-over-six sashes, closely spaced, as if to provide plenty of natural light—were missing all or part of several of their panes, and the brick siding bore black smeary stains. A signboard dangled from a supporting arm by one corner, swaying in the light dawn breeze. The building itself must have been close to four hundred yards from end to end. Away off across the water came the sound of Reveille being blown on Alcatraz, a couple of miles out on the Bay, and nearer, inland, the bells at St. Francis of Assisi, on Vallejo Street, were ringing for early Mass.

"I've got our bearings now," said Clancy suddenly. "Up on the top floor, that's a ropewalk, a place for the making of hempen line for sailing craft. They've a way of catching fire, because of all the hemp dust flying about; it catches easily and burns something fierce. This one did, about two weeks ago. With the Bay right here, they were able to run a hose to it and quench the flames, but nothing in the place can be brought back on line till the insurance money comes through, and so long as it doesn't, no one's got any cause to go in."

"If that's true, it may be just what we need," Johnny observed. "We'd better get out of sight before this part of town wakes up. It may not be the Barbary Coast, but it's near enough that Cullen might have some eyes and ears around. And we need to wrap up that knee, Jess, and get a compress on it, before it puffs up like a toad in the rain."

"It's Sunday," Clancy reminded him, "and there's no resorts hereabouts—it's all sail-lofts and chandleries and such. Though about the knee you're dead on course, lad. That ropewalk's not a place where anyone's likely to get a sight of us, being up above the street as it is, and it'll keep us out of the weather and out of view."

"I'll see if the stairway's sound," Johnny offered.

He was back in ten minutes to report that if they were careful to go one or two at a time, he thought it would hold their weight—"We're not any of us real heavy," he pointed out. They sent Norton up first, then Clancy; both made it without mishap.

Jess glanced back toward the intersection. "We leave that wagon there, it'll be like a mile-high sign. We got to get rid of it." He looked around, his eyes settling on the nearby bay. "Johnny—you reckon you could shove it off into the water? Leave the doors open, it'll fill up and sink out of sight in no time."

"Can try," said Johnny. He got Jess settled on the bottom step, looked around, found a length of lumber that must have fallen off the roof, and, using it as a lever, got the wreck right-side-up, though it still canted to one side where the crash had broken the front wheel. The other three moved freely enough once he got it in motion. It took some heaving and grunting, but with inertia overcome, it rolled slowly as he directed it. Presently it reached the lip of the slip that separated two of the piers, dipped as the remaining front wheel edged over, and then began to angle slowly down toward the water. There was a groan of stressed wood, a muffled crunching as the running gear passed over the edge, then a splash and a bubbling sound as water began flowing in through the doors. Johnny stood watching it, catching his breath, then came back to rejoin Jess. "Okay, compadre viejo, let's see if we can get you upstairs…"

**SR - L - WT**

The Red Rose:

Belle came hurrying down the back stairs to the kitchen as Cullen entered from the porch, her pale pink silk wrapper, flounced with Chantilly lace, hanging open over a soft cotton chemise, a seven-shot Standard .22 revolver in her hand. "What happened?" she demanded. "Is it the police?"

Cullen looked back through the open door. "The police are the last people it is," he said. "The police carry knives on lower Pacific, but not this far inland—and they don't throw them. Besides, the police would have called on us to surrender."

"What about Norton?" Belle pursued.

"Whoever they are, they got him," her husband replied. "They were waiting for us, one—maybe two—inside the wagon and another on top; I never got a clear look at them, but the one inside killed Daniel, put a knife through his heart at ten paces just like a sideshow exhibit. Then they started shooting, and while we were trying to figure out what was going on they took off."

"But if it wasn't the police," said Belle slowly, "who was it?"

Cullen looked grim. "I know who I think it was," he said. "Hughes, or Dunstable, or both of them—or more likely some of their boys. Double-crossing wharf rats…" He thought quickly. "If Rafferty was right, that search sweep will start in about five hours. That's still time enough to have a little… talk… with our so-called partners."

"We'll need to dispose of Daniel's body," Belle pointed out. "If they make a serious search, and it's in the building, they'll find it, and that will lead to questions."

---

11. Under Cover

The ropewalk's roof was partly destroyed, but there was enough of it left that, using some of the debri from the fire, Johnny was able to improvise a kind of tent shelter in one corner. The second storey was occupied by various shippers' offices; Clancy went foraging among them and came back with some lengths of curtain fabric, which Johnny soaked in the conveniently located third-storey washroom. "Sorry it's not hot," he said when he came back, "but I hear the Indians favor cold water for sprains; it doesn't make the blood flow to the injury. Got a knife, Jess? I left mine in somebody back there, one of those Brills, I figure."

"Top of my right boot," Jess told him.

Johnny had to slit the leg of the Texan's jeans, but once that was done he quickly got the injury wrapped, and Jess found that this eased the pain considerably. Norton and Clancy watched the process without comment, and then, suddenly, the Emperor said, "I know now where we've met. Mr. Harper, isn't it? Mr. Sherman's foreman, from Wyoming?"

"That's me, uh—Your Majesty," Jess agreed, a bit cautiously. "This here's Johnny Madrid—we worked together once, a few years back—and Clancy."

"Johnny Lancer," Johnny corrected him firmly.

"I am indebted to all three of you," Norton said quietly. "I overheard enough of what my captors had to say to know that they proposed to hold me against a huge ransom from my subjects. Has it been paid?"

"No, sir," Johnny assured him. "They're still collectin' it. Last I heard, they had a good sixty thousand, maybe seventy, either pledged or in hand, not countin' what's been contributed at the churches and fire stations and saloons—they haven't started figurin' that up yet."

Norton sighed. "I'm gratified to hear it—not only that my people think so highly of me, but that they've not yet been deprived of their hard-earned money by this treasonous plot. What are we to do now? Did anyone know you intended to rescue me?"

Jess shook his head. "Wasn't time to share what we knew, not even with Slim—my boss," he added as a reminder. "Had to move fast before you ended up someplace we'd never find."

"What's our next tack, lad?" Clancy inquired. "We're safe enough here for the moment, but Cullen won't sit still for this."

It occurred to Jess to wonder just how he'd been made leader of this expedition, and then he pushed the thought away as being irrelevant to the situation. "Miss Essie said somethin' about pickin' up food and such that folks offer to give to the mission," he said thoughtfully. "That means you got some kind of buckboard, maybe?"

"Aye, a one-horse spring wagon. Nine hundred pounds tonnage, she carries."

"That's what we'll need, I reckon," the Texan decided. "I sure can't walk on this knee, and ridin' won't be easy either—the stirrup leather and the horse's movements'll put too much pressure on it. You'll have to put a couple of bedticks in the bottom, rig up a tarp cover to keep us out of sight, and come back and get us. Once we can get to the Occidental we should be okay."

"I can do that," the seaman agreed. "But it'll be best if I don't come till after dark. There's no business done in this part of town on Sundays, but we're not far from North Beach where the Genoese fishermen live, and sometimes their children come down to these docks for a little casual pan-fishing."

"Any chance of findin' some food somewhere, to keep us till you can come for us?" Johnny asked.

Clancy thought for a moment. "There used to be an all-you-can-eat place just down Battery, twenty-five cents a man. The people who work along this stretch of the waterfront go there. If it's still in business, it'll be shut for the day, but we might be able to force the back door." With a glance at Norton: "Beggin' Your Majesty's indulgence, of course."

"We must be practical," Norton replied. "Mr. Harper can hardly be expected to thrive without nourishment, injured as he is, and if he eats, so should the rest of us. I shall issue an Imperial pardon as soon as I am restored."

"Come along, lad," Clancy told Johnny, "two can carry more than one."

The eatery was still where he remembered it, and the lock on the back door wasn't designed for heavy security. Johnny pried it open, and they found a small ham, some day-old bread, sweet potatoes, canned corn and tomatoes, parts of a couple of pies, apricot and blackberry. Johnny left two dollars on the counter, and they made their way back to the ropewalk. There was plenty of scrap wood lying about, and Clancy found a dinted metal bucket in which they could safely make a small fire. They cut the ham into chunks with Jess's knife and roasted them over the fire on long splinters of wood while the potatoes baked in the ashes and the corn and tomatoes stewed together in a small pot "borrowed" from the café. There was no possibility of coffee, but the washroom had sinks where they could fill cups. By the time the sun was an hour or so up, they had made a good meal for themselves and even Jess was feeling better. As they ate, they queried Norton about his experiences, but he knew very little that might be of use to the police; after he was snatched, he'd regained consciousness in a windowless room—almost more like a well-shaft, from his description of it—whose floor was lined with mattresses, and there he'd been kept until just recently, provided with food and blankets and a bucket for convenience, but seeing only one of his captors, or perhaps two, big men roughly dressed who brought him his meals. "That would be the Brills," Clancy decided, "and from what you've said of it, sir, you were in one of the basement rooms the crimpers keep. They'll maneuver a man into standing on a trapdoor, ply him with liquor till he can hardly stand, then pull a lever and drop him down below. The mattress keeps him from being injured by the fall, which would lower his selling price. Then, while he's out, they strip him of all that's of value, and take him to whoever's paid for him."

"I did hear a sound of music and laughter, distantly, from above me, I thought," Norton observed.

The seaman nodded. "Belle Cullen's parlor, I'd venture. It's always been said there's a trapdoor there, and another in the gaming room." He pushed erect with a grunt. "I'd best be shoving off. Miss Essie will be busy with the Sunday service yet a while, but she'll be wanting me to help with dinner presently. Watch for me around two bells of the first watch—eleven tonight, that would be."

"You take care," Jess warned. "Like you said, Cullen won't be lettin' all that money slip through his fingers without at least tryin' to find out who just skunked him."

**SR - L - WT**

The Red Rose:

By the time the police began knocking on the door, Cullen had satisfied himself that neither Hughes nor Dunstable knew anything about Norton's whereabouts; he'd expected them to deny any complicity in the morning's events, of course, but a gambler has to be able to read the nuances of human expression, body language, tone of voice, and other tells, and he was convinced that their protestations of innocence were real. He let the officers in and gave them freedom to search the place, meanwhile sending a swamper out in search of a newspaper—"and any extras you find."

The police, finding that the object of their quest wasn't on the premises, moved on to their next target. The swamper came back, with only the Morning Call, and insisted that no extras were out. Cullen quickly scanned through the paper but found no mention of any restoration of Norton to his hotel suite. "All right," he said at length. "It wasn't the police, we settled that. If it was anyone else trying to do the cops' job for them, and they'd made it back downtown, the city'd be awash in the news of it by now—every paper in town would have put out an extra."

"Meaning what?" asked Hughes.

"Meaning one of two things," Cullen replied. "Either we're dealing with some free-lance rescuers, or somebody's trying to muscle in on our action. If it was the first, they'd have sent the cops here first thing—long before noon. That suggests that something happened to prevent them from completing their plan, whatever it was, and they're holed up somewhere. If it was the second, I'm the only one they can connect to Norton, so I'd be the one they'd approach to demand a share of the ransom. They haven't. What reason would they have to wait? So they probably don't exist, and we're back to the first possibility: free-lancers. Maybe one of them was hit when the shooting started, or maybe they're waiting till they can make a dramatic entrance. Either way, they're somewhere in this town, and probably not too far from here—that's the advantage of having a city built on a small peninsula." He looked levelly at his fellow plotters. "Get out of here and start spreading the word. I'll pay a thousand dollars to whoever can point me to that ice wagon or the men who drove it—preferably with Norton…"

**SR - L - WT**

The Occidental Hotel and the Coast:

Slim was getting worried. Not so much because Jess had never come back to the hotel for supper; there were any number of diversions that might have attracted his attention. One thing he was quite sure of was that Jess hadn't gone into any of the Barbary Coast dives and gotten himself shanghaied. After the way the Texan had reacted to the show at the Comique, he'd want to stay as far away from those scandalous resorts as he could.

But even when he got his feet tangled in the legs of a poker table somewhere, Jess didn't stay out past breakfast. In fact, a good rousing game would give him an even better appetite than usual. It was now almost eighteen hours since he'd left to deliver his winnings to Miss Essie. Had he ever even gotten there? Slim remembered his own warning about "people in that part of town who'd be happy to relieve you of your burden."

He strapped on his Colt and headed for the mission. The informal Sunday service was just finishing up when he got there. Essie assured him that Jess had indeed delivered the money, which relieved his mind on that score but did nothing to tell him what had become of his missing friend. "Did he say where he was going when he left? When did he leave?"

Essie thought back. "It must have been right around six," she decided. "We'd had rather a long talk, back in my office. When we came out, there was a man sitting in the main room—someone Jess recognized. He didn't mention a name, but he asked Clancy and me about a good, respectable place to go, somewhere nearby, to get what he called 'a good meal without getting drugged or slugged.' Then he went over and spoke to the man, and they left together."

"To get that meal, probably," Slim mused. "Where'd you send him?"

She told him, and described the second man. Slim frowned thoughtfully. "That sounds like someone we saw out by Cliff House, our first day here," he recalled, and thought of Jess's rather peculiar behavior at the time. Drat. I should have realized he wasn't telling me everything. He recognized the fellow, or at least he thought he did, and when he saw him again, in a decent light, he knew he'd been right.

"You'll let me know once you find him, won't you?" Essie asked.

"Count on it," he promised, and left.

It didn't occur to him to wonder why he hadn't seen Clancy about—or to stop and think that a man with a peg leg may not be a fast walker…

**SR - L - WT**

He found the Home Port easily enough, but it wasn't open on Sundays. Frustrated and at loose ends, he began to wonder whether Jess might have returned to the hotel in his absence. He set off in that direction, stopping at a newsagent's to pick up that morning's edition of the Call. There was no mention of anyone fitting Jess's description or answering to his name, but Slim did notice the report of another murder. It was front-page news, since the victim had been Patrick Sarsfield Rafferty, the President of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors. His body had been discovered early that morning, a couple of blocks from his home on Clay Street; he'd been shot at close range and relieved of his valuables, and police sources described it as a robbery. The piece concluded with a brief biography—the victim had been forty-five, the son of a successful construction contractor from New York City who had brought his family out to California during the Rush, re-established himself and thrived mightily, leaving each of his sons an inheritance of $50,000, which Patrick had built into an even more considerable fortune by stock-market speculation before he was forty—and a rundown of personal connections: "Mr. Rafferty is survived by his wife, the former Charlotte MacAuliffe; two sons, Robert Emmett and Martin Archer, and a daughter, Mary Emily; two older brothers, Hugh O'Neill Rafferty and Owen Roe O'Neill Rafferty; sisters-in-law, nieces, and nephews..." He was described as "an agent and investor," and there was a list of the organizations he had belonged to and a capsule review of his political career.

Back at the Occidental, Slim went upstairs to see if Jess was in their suite; he wasn't. The desk clerk said he hadn't seen him.

Slim wasn't much of a drinker, but at this point he felt that he needed some solace while he tried to decide what to do next. He went into the hotel bar and ordered whiskey. He was leaning against the counter, staring at it, when a hand fell on his shoulder. "Slim?"

It wasn't Jess's voice, but it was one he knew. "Major."

Adams squinted at him thoughtfully. "Saw you from over at my table," he said. "You look like a man with trouble on his mind, son."

Slim sighed. "I guess I am," he agreed, and sketched the situation.

Adams listened without comment, then said, "A man with a burden like that shouldn't drink alone. Come on over and join us. I don't know what good we can do, but at least you'll have somebody besides John Barleycorn for company."

Slim didn't feel up to objecting. He allowed himself to be shepherded over to a table in the corner, where he found not only Bill Hawks and Charlie Wooster but a third man, a stranger to him—tall, rawboned, with wavy gray hair, rather stern features, and very direct eyes. "Oh," said Adams, "I forgot, you two ain't met, have you? Murdoch, Slim Sherman, one of the boys I told you about. Slim, this is Murdoch Lancer. We ran into each other in Matamoros during the trouble with Mexico—I'd been left there with my company as part of the occupation after Taylor moved on to Camargo and Monterrey, and he'd been on a ship out of New York that got diverted to deliver some military supplies."

"Mr. Lancer," Slim acknowledged politely, shaking hands.

"You two ought to find some common ground," Adams went on, "both bein' cattlemen. Murdoch's got a spread down in the San Joaquin Valley, and Murdoch, Slim runs a small ranch just outside of Laramie."

"A very small ranch," Slim quickly supplied, remembering Norton. "Most of the time my friend Jess and I are the only hands we need, even operating a change station for the Overland on the side."

"You're a longer way from home than I am," Lancer observed.

"I guess we are," Slim admitted, "but it wasn't exactly our idea. The stage company decided we needed a break—and a reward; it paid our expenses for travel and a ten-day vacation. We're supposed to head back in three days—that's if I can find Jess; he went up to Battery Street yesterday to see a friend of ours and hasn't been back since."

"Then you've been here a week," the older man calculated. "And since we both seem to be looking for someone we're missing—"

"You too?" asked Slim, surprised.

"My son—one of my sons. We… had some trouble right after Christmas, and he took off. I managed to trace him as far as the Oakland ferry, I know he got on it, but that's as much as I've been able to uncover. Maybe you've seen him, if you've been around the city seeing the sights. He's twenty-three, about five-ten, straight dark-brown hair, olive skin, blue eyes. He'd be riding a light palomino gelding, and probably wearing a Mexican suit, bolero jacket and calzoneras."

"I can't exactly speak for the horse," said Slim slowly, "but there was a man who answered that description at our friend's place, yesterday around six, she told me. Jess knew him; he went over and talked to him. I think he may have been half expecting to run into him—there was a man out on the beach below Cliff House on New Year's evening, Jess and I were out there having a look at the Pacific… I didn't get a good look at him, it was starting to get dark, but he did have a palomino, and I remember calzoneras too… our friend told me that Jess and this man went off together to have dinner—and some wine, Jess specifically asked where he could get it. I went to the restaurant, but it was closed."

Lancer's eyes took on a spark. "Then he's here still. I thought he'd just stopped over briefly, to get his bearings and decide where he wanted to go next. And you say your friend knew him?"

"Jess knows a lot of people," Slim hedged. "He… used to do gun work for a living. A man can meet all kinds in that line."

"Including my son, who did likewise," said Lancer, to Slim's surprise. What would a San Joaquin Valley cattleman's son have been doin' in Jess's old line? he wondered, but hesitated to ask. "I had a police detective on the case—Captain Lees, he came well recommended—but when the news broke about the Emperor Norton, he had to give his attention to that. I know there's not much chance of coming across John by chance in a city this size, but I couldn't just sit in my hotel doing nothing. Inactivity doesn't suit me."

"Doesn't suit me either," sighed Slim, "but like you, I've got no idea where to start looking. How'd you end up here, if you don't mind my asking?"

Murdoch shrugged. "I was just walking the streets, hoping, and I ran into Seth Adams here. He invited me to have a drink, and how could I say no?"

Slim picked up his glass. "Misery loves company, they say. Maybe the Home Port will be open tomorrow…"

**SR - L - WT**

The waterfront:

An early feature of San Francisco's ethnic mix had been Italians, who would be rare elsewhere in the country till the great Eastern and Southern European influx of the 1880's and onward; like so many other ethnicities, they had begun to arrive in mid-decade, drawn by the possibility of making it in the mines. Even in 1851, city audiences were mesmerized by Italian divas singing Verdi, the wharfside pots and small sidewalk cafés of the Italian neighborhood were drawing the attention of Anglo-Saxons, and a Genoese named Giuseppe Bazzuro had opened a restaurant at Davis and Pacific, specializing in pastas and stews, including a succulent fish stew of his own invention, called cioppino, that was a sort of Italian mutation of bouillabaisse. The first pasta factory in the city opened four years later. Like the Chinese, who came overwhelmingly from Canton Province on the South China Sea—and from only some two dozen of its ninety-odd districts, at that—the majority of these early Italian immigrants were natives of a fairly small region of their homeland—Genoese first, from the capital city of Liguria province along the northwestern coast, then Luccans from Tuscany in the west-central region, and other Ligurians and Tuscans. Like the Chinese, too, they saw themselves not as settlers but as sojourners, and isolated themselves, preferring to maintain a strong national and cultural identity rather than assimilate into the greater whole. Apart from ethnicity and religion, the chief difference between the Italians and the Chinese was that many more of the former brought sweethearts and wives, or sent for them, than was common among the latter, so that their communities were much more family-oriented than Chinatown was.

They also maintained fierce intra-community rivalries that divided those from certain cities and regions into specific social clubs and occupations. The rural Ligurians became truck farmers, establishing hundreds of small farms in Horner's Addition (later Noé Valley), in the Hayes Valley area north of Market Street and west of Van Ness Avenue, in the area between 21st, Randall, and Dolores Streets and Grand View Avenue, and in the southeastern part of the city, near where the Hunters Point commercial shipyard had been established in 1870, and spreading, now, down the peninsula toward Santa Clara, where fertile soil and warm sunshine offered a perfect environment for peaches, pears, and plums. Tuscans from Lucca and Florence operated boardinghouses, stables, and retail fruit and vegetable stands. The Sicilians and the Genoese (with the notable exception of Domenico Ghirardelli, who had been making the finest chocolate in the West since 1852) manned the colorful fleet of sixteen-foot fishing feluccas, with their red lateen sails, that had been common on the bay for over twenty years. These put out late each night from the sheltered Telegraph Hill wharves extending out from Green, Union, Filbert, and Vallejo Streets, making for Point Bonita in search of crab, salmon, herring, mackerel, sardines, flounder, sturgeon, and sea-perch, returning before daybreak to unload their catch and split the profits. Some Dalmatians worked alongside them, and for a time the Chinese, also expert fishermen, had offered them rather stiff competition, but in 1860 a tax was levied on all fishing activities by the Orientals, and in 1880 they would be forbidden to engage in that trade at all. Other Italians both caught the fish and sold it: J. Sposito, Gabriele Cuneo, I. Trapaui, A. Inguglia, A. Silvestri, and A. Paladini offered fresh fish, E. Antoni and Philip Seibel fresh, smoked, and salted, and Bertin & Lepari oysters from the beds in the Bay, while Paladini, since the '60's, had had a sideline in the tiny bay shrimp. They sold their catch largely from stands in the San Francisco, Clay Street, and Washington markets.

As the light strengthened, Jess, Johnny, and Norton were able to make out the shapes of the feluccas moored to the nearby piers, each pointed at both ends, each with its mast and yard lowered and the sails neatly wrapped around the latter. At hourly intervals they could hear St. Francis's bells ringing, calling the faithful to worship. It must have been sometime between ten and eleven that a sound of shrill young voices could be heard approaching down Union Street, and a trio of dark-haired boys, around ten or twelve years old, came into sight, each with a pole over his shoulder and a bait can swinging from his hand. "Like Clancy said," Jess observed, "Sunday fishermen. Keep down, everybody. Ain't likely they'll look this way, but if they spot us they'll be curious and remember, and maybe talk. This is their part of town; they likely know about the fire here."

The barking of a dog became audible, and a fourth boy, smaller than the rest and without a pole, came racing after the trio with a tri-colored mongrel dancing and jumping around him. "Tagalong," said Johnny with a chuckle. "What do you bet one of the big ones is his brother?"

"No bet," Jess retorted, remembering his own Johnny, his three-years-younger brother, who'd tagged after him in a very similar way, years ago in the Panhandle.

"Tenere lontano dall'acqua, Vincenzo," cried one of the big boys. "Non cadere dal molo. Uno squalo potrebbe mordere. [Keep away from the water. Don't fall off the pier. A shark might bite you.] Rimanere tra via anteriore e la batteria. [Stay between Front Street and Battery.] Mi capisci [Do you understand me]?"

"Va bene [okay], Enrico," the tagalong replied cheerfully. "Cesare ed io daranno la caccia al tesoro mentre si pesca [Caesar and I will hunt for treasure while you fish]."

The big boys laughed. "Non vi è alcun tesoro sulle lungomare, ragazzo sciocco [There is no treasure on the waterfront, foolish boy]," said one of Enrico's companions.

"Scommetto che troverò un po', tutti uguali [I bet I will find some, all the same]," Vincenzo retorted stoutly, and he and the dog began contentedly quartering around the intersection while the older ones crossed East Street, walked out on one of the piers, and sat down to bait their hooks.

"Lucky that's paved," Johnny murmured, "or he might find the tracks where I shoved the wagon into the water."

"Ain't nobody gonna find it now, 'less we get in touch with whoever it belongs to and tell 'em where it is," Jess replied.

"Wonder how Cullen got hold of it," said Johnny.

"I was thinkin' that same thing earlier," Jess admitted. "Maybe he sent one of them Brills to break into the yard and make off with it. There might be a watchman there, to try and get the horses out if the stable catches fire, but he wouldn't be movin' around much, I reckon; ice ain't the kind of thing folks're likely to try and steal."

Johnny nodded thoughtfully. "Just find out where he spends his time, hit him behind the ear with a sap, and you'd have all the time you'd need," he guessed.

"Keep an eye, will ya?" Jess requested. "Knee's startin' to get to me, I'm gonna try and doze for a while."

"Sure."

**SR - L - WT**

In a closely-packed city like San Francisco, it didn't take long for Cullen's offer to begin oozing across Broadway, into the working-class neighborhoods just under Telegraph Hill, and around the latter's flanks to North Beach. It was on Vallejo Street that Alfredo Carelli picked it up, foregathering around six o'clock with a half-dozen other Italian bachelors at a little taverna where wine and homeland street foods—piadas, pasta bowls, chopped salads—were available seven days a week, though not, of course, till after Mass on Sunday. Most of the patrons didn't arrive till several hours after that: in Italian communities, Sunday dinner—Italian wedding soup, chicken soup with white beans, faro, and escarole, chicken cacciatore or Parmesan, beef-and-porcini stew, baked crepes cacciatore with Parmesan cheese sauce, Tuscan roast pork with potatoes, parsnips, and fennel or with a side of tortiera di finocchi e patate (fennel layered with potatoes and breadcrumbs), lasagna, northern-Italian ragùs flavored with meat and aromatic herbs, spaghetti and meatballs, osso buco (traditionally with risotto alla Milanese, which also complemented other meat dishes), or Alfredo's own sister-in-law's traditional preference, braciole (a thin piece of meat stuffed with a variety of grated cheeses, prosciutto, eggs, breadcrumbs and herbs, rolled, tied, browned, and at last simmered in a rich-tasting, slow-cooked sauce made with meatballs and sausages), all invariably accompanied by a large loaf of crusty bread to wipe up the sauce and juices on the plate, a lettuce and tomato salad dressed with olive oil and vinegar alongside, coffee and wonderful Italian pastries—was traditionally served at two and lingered over with much laughter and talk.

Alfredo's part of town was dominated by fishermen, among them both his older, married brothers; he boarded with the elder one's family. But any community, especially one that strives for an insular self-sufficiency, requires men of varied skills to keep it running properly, and so Alfredo, as a boy, had learned the wagonwright's trade, which, when he was of an age to look for paying work, had enabled him to find a position helping to maintain and repair the ice wagons at a yard on Larkin, below the California Street Hill. It was respectable and satisfying work, and il capo, Signor Gregory, was a decent man, but Alfredo wanted to be his own master, as his brothers were—to have his own boat and go out with the fishing fleet each night. To this end he saved his money, but he knew, realistically, that it could take years for him to collect the amount he would need, even at $2.45 a day, a good wage for a skilled working man. The mention of a thousand American dollars caught his attention at once, along with that of an ice wagon. By its description, it was one of Signor Gregory's. But how would one find a single ice wagon, especially when it would be all but indistinguishable from the rest of the fleet?

It wasn't till he strolled home at last, well after dark, that he found his brother's wife scolding away to herself over the state of his young nephew Vincenzo's pockets. "Le cose che ragazzo eccitata [The things that boy picks up]!" she lamented, confiding in Alfredo because his brothers had already headed down to the waterfront to get their boats ready to sail. "Look, Alfredo! Look how he has torn his pocket with this—this—what is this?" She held it out for his examination.

"An axle nut, off a wagon hub," Alfredo replied carelessly, and then he looked again. "Wait—let me have it, Imelda."

She shrugged and handed it over. "It means nothing to me," she said, and continued searching through the boy's pockets.

Alfredo turned the object thoughtfully in his hand, examining it closely. Spring wagons for business deliveries were made not by the businesses themselves, but on contract by various wagon companies, most of them locally based, in Oakland or Emeryville or down the Peninsula, and since much of this kind of work was still done by hand, the parts had a tendency to be distinctive in appearance. And Alfredo, working closely as he did with the undercarriages and running gear of Signor Gregory's fleet, was very familiar with the quirks of the parts they included. This nut looked very much like one of their own. And if a wagon lost an axle nut, it would almost certainly lose a wheel. Perhaps Vincenzo had discovered the missing wagon, wrecked, but hadn't realized what it meant; he was, after all, only six. Perhaps he had simply picked the nut up as a plaything.

In the morning, before I go to work, I will ask him where he found it, Alfredo told himself.

**SR - L - WT**

The ropewalk:

The fishing fleet had set sail a good two hours before Clancy returned on Sunday night—but not with the mission's wagon. "It's the horse," he explained. "He's under the weather—coughing."

Jess looked grim. Horses were very susceptible to coughs, runny noses, and the common cold, which was likely to become epidemic in a stable—though Miss Essie probably owned only the one animal, which would reduce the likelihood of that—and could lead to pneumonia, which in turn could develop into the crippling or fatal glanders. "He won't be in no state to work for days, maybe, if he lives," he said.

Clancy nodded gloomily. "And well I know it. I've left him cared for while I'm gone—there's a lad who helps me with loading the wagon. I'm sorry, lads. I've brought you some food, even a bucket of coffee, and blankets. It's the best I could do."

"Not your fault," Jess told him. "It'll make a big difference, seein' we won't be able to venture out once the folks that work here show up in the mornin'."

After he'd left, Johnny said, "You should'a' sent him to get your partner. He could'a' rented a wagon and come after us."

"I know," Jess agreed. "Slim's likely callin' himself nine kinds of a fool for ever hirin' me on, now I been missin' since yesterday afternoon. But Clancy's done a lot for us, things he wasn't obliged to, and I don't want to make him feel like we're ungrateful."

"You need that knee looked after," Johnny observed.

Jess shrugged. "I been worse. Ain't like I got a bullet in me. It'll hurt more tomorrow, second day always does, but maybe if I rest it good, Monday or Tuesday night we can start walkin' outta here. Start right after them fishermen leave, by daylight we could make it to the Occidental, if we take it slow."

"We'll have to circle all the way around the Coast and the red-light district," Johnny warned. "That'll make it a longer trip."

"All the same," said Jess.

The younger gun shook his head in frustration. "Mierda! You're more hardheaded than Murdoch. Your name's English—sure you don't have a Scot in the woodpile somewhere?"

"Irish, Pa always said."

"Irish. That's worse. Of all the partners for me to pick up—"

**SR - L - WT**

Monday, January 8

The Occidental:

By the time he woke up to a second morning with no sign of Jess, Slim was absolutely convinced that something was very wrong. But at least now—perhaps because of his exchange with Murdoch Lancer, perhaps because he'd had time to sleep on it, perhaps both—he had some idea of where to go next. He ate breakfast, then went to McFarland's to pick up his saddle and black hack and make his way back to the Home Port.

It took some doing, but he finally found the waiter who had served Jess on Saturday night. The man recognized the descriptions he gave and agreed that both Jess and John Lancer had been at the restaurant, and had remained till past closing time. Slim pounced. "Past it? Why past it? Were they drunk?"

The waiter seemed briefly confused. "No, sir, our patrons don't get drunk. We serve a select clientele here—ships' captains, fleet owners, shippers' representatives. Your friend—Mr. Harper?—did say they'd both drunk too much wine, but…"

"Too much for what?" Slim pressed. "When did they go? Why did they stay so late?"

Again the man hesitated. Bullying didn't sit well with Slim, but neither did evasive behavior. His left arm flashed out and his fist clenched in the waiter's shirt, just under his throat, and twisted the fabric sharply, while his right hand dropped to the handle of his Colt. "You'd better start giving me some straight talk, friend, or you'll be sorry very fast," he said quietly—no bluster, just sheer physical presence and eyes gone cold with fury.

"Please," the waiter gasped, "I… I can't. I have a family. If—if the word got back—"

"That's if," Slim pointed out. "This is is. 'If' has conditions attached to it, and 'is' doesn't. There's only you and me here, and I don't care who's connected to whatever happened—I just want to know where my friend went."

His tactic might not have worked had the man been a native of any Western town, but San Franciscans weren't used to range men with guns on their hips. "Let go," the waiter pleaded. "I'll tell you."

**SR - L - WT**

That wasn't exactly true, Slim thought as he went out to get his horse. I do care—but I'm not going to tell this Cullen who gave me my information. I won't have to. If Jess is still alive, if he's found Norton… he'll do all the telling necessary.

He knew now where the two missing men had gone, and why. He reasoned that if they'd met with complete success in what they'd meant to do, Jess would have returned to the Occidental long since (where John Lancer would have gone he had no idea), and of course the whole city would have been buzzing with news of the rescue. But he couldn't believe that, even in this unfamiliar environment, two experienced young gunfighters—at least one of whom very definitely still had what it took, even though he often protested that he "wasn't smart"—would have been easily overcome. Not at an hour when most people—even in the red-light district—would be asleep, and not when the man they'd gone to rescue was so physically unprepossessing that one or two men, possibly three, would have been all that was needed to keep watch over him. There might well have been some kind of disturbance, however, and someone might have seen or heard something.

I'm losing count of how many times I've gone after him… but he's done the same for me. He dragged himself home, wounded as he was, to help me against Branton and Malone, even when it was General Sherman he was helping to save. He went into Laramie after Ed Caulder with me. He stopped Ed Farrell from killing me. And I can't do less for him, above all when he's in an environment he doesn't know or understand.

What he needs—what we both need—is someone who does know and understand it.

It's time to go to the police. But not just any police. Not if that fella was right to be afraid of the word getting out.

No. Mr. Lancer mentioned Captain Lees. So did the paper—he's been put in charge of the Norton case. So with Jess having declared himself into the game, his being missing is right up Lees's alley.

He may be out running down leads, but he'll have to come back to his office eventually, and I'll camp on his door till he does!

**SR - L - WT**

Since 1852 City Hall had been housed at the southeast corner of Kearny and Washington Streets, facing Portsmouth Square, in an imposing three-storey building of brick faced with fine yellow-toned Australian sandstone, topped by a cupola and faced with four applied pilasters and a classical pediment, originally built two years earlier as Tom Maguire's Jenny Lind Theatre. The old four-storey El Dorado, next door (and exactly the same height), had been bought in 1855 and converted to a hall of records. Slim found his way to the Police Department and asked where Captain Lees could be found. "He's out of his office just now," said the desk sergeant. "I don't know when he'll be back. What's your business with him… sir?" The hesitation was very brief, but Slim heard it, and he read what it meant.

"I'll tell that to Captain Lees and nobody else," he replied evenly. "Where can I wait?"

The sergeant studied him for a moment. Slim had prudently taken off his gunbelt and left it in his saddlebag before he entered the building, but perhaps the cop noticed the worn spot on the leg of his jeans where the holster had polished it over the years, or perhaps there was something in his eyes and the set of his lips that showed this was a man who'd take no nonsense from underlings. He pointed to a nearby hallway. "Just go straight down there. The Captain's office is on your left; you'll see his name on it."

"Thank you," said Slim with the faintest hint of irony, and turned on his heel.

**SR - L - WT**

He found a plain wooden bench from which he could watch Lees's door and settled down to wait. He wasn't sure how much time passed; he knew better than to keep checking—it wouldn't make the time go any faster, and Slim was by nature much more patient than his hot-tempered Texan friend. In any case he found himself much calmer now, with the serenity that comes when a man has decided on a definite plan of action.

Eventually he heard the sergeant's voice again, its tone much more deferential than the one he'd inspired, and another responding to it. The exchange continued for a minute or two, followed by a brief silence, and then a man appeared at the end of the hallway and started up it. He was, Slim guessed, around forty, a rather average-looking man wearing ordinary business dress—a pale-gray tweed suit, a flat, broad bow tie of the currently stylish model, a plain white broadcloth shirt—with a mustache and goatee and dark hair beginning to retreat noticeably from his forehead. When he went up to the door marked with Lees's name and pulled a key ring out of his vest pocket, Slim stood up. "Captain Lees?"

The man turned, not as if he was surprised to be accosted. "I'm Isaiah Lees. And you, sir?" He looked Slim over, not with the rather supercilious air of the desk sergeant, but with an evident interest; he probably didn't see men in range dress very often.

"Matthew Sherman, known as Slim." The rancher held out his hand and Lees immediately accepted it; he had a good firm grip, and the gaze that went with the handshake was direct, piercing. "I may have some information that's connected to the Norton matter—and I may also need your help."

Lees didn't hesitate. "Come right in," he said.

In the office he directed Slim to a chair facing his desk, then circled it to sit down himself. "I'm not a man to beat about the bush, Mr. Sherman," he said, "and as I suspect you can imagine, there's a lot of pressure on me to discover the Emperor's whereabouts. I've little time for anything that's not directly germane to the case. But I also admit that you don't strike me as the usual kind of informant we get here. Where are you from, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Laramie, in the Wyoming Territory. I own a small cattle ranch outside of town about twelve miles. You can check up on me if you want to; Sheriff Mort Corey is a friend, and so is General Taylor Roberts, the Territorial Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Or you can contact the Overland Stage office in Denver—I run a relay service for them on the side."

Lees's face didn't change, but Slim sensed he was favorably impressed. "Go on, Mr. Sherman. What's the information you mentioned?"

"You'll have to bear with me," Slim told him. "This may seem a little complicated at first, but I promise, you'll see the connection if you'll give me time. I'm here on vacation with a friend of mine, my—my foreman; his name's Jess Harper. He left our hotel Saturday afternoon to go visit someone we both know, a lady by the name of Essie Bright—you may be familiar with her Helping Hand Mission on Battery Street. He never came back. I went to the mission yesterday…"

He went on to explain how Jess had left the mission with a man who had been, at the time, a stranger to Slim, how he'd been directed to the Home Port, how Slim himself had visited it yesterday and found it closed, how he had met Murdoch Lancer and learned that Jess's companion was almost certainly his son, and how he had questioned the waiter earlier. He repeated what the man had told him. "I didn't recognize the name he mentioned—Cullen—but I suspect you might, Captain."

"I do," Lees agreed. "John Carroll Cullen is a very well-known gambler, and, as this man Clancy said, the co-owner of one of the more notorious—and I must say one of the most expensive—parlor houses in the city. And as for Murdoch Lancer, he was quite correct when he said he'd enlisted my help to find his son. I was willing to do my best for him, but then this Norton case came up…"

Slim nodded. "I understand that, and so does he. But it begins to look now as if you and I are following different trails to get to the same barbecue. I know Jess. He's tough and a lot smarter than he thinks he is, and I suspect young Lancer is another of the same kind. I can't explain why I feel this way, but since Jess came into my life I've learned to listen to my instincts, and I have… a sense… that they may have gotten Norton out of there; only something kept them from getting him back to the Occidental."

"That something could well have been the Bay, or the Pacific Ocean," Lees observed evenly.

Slim took a deep steadying breath. "That's occurred to me. But you don't know Jess. Isn't it more than you had? Worth looking into?"

"More than I had, definitely," Lees agreed. "A man in my situation can't hope to succeed without making the acquaintance of several denizens of the Coast, the waterfront, and the various working-class neighborhoods, among them members of the underclass who are willing to sell information for cash. If I happen to be after one of the inhabitants of the district, or even if I think such an inhabitant may be connected to my current case, I make the fact known to certain prominent members of the ruling class there, men who didn't mind giving up one of their own in exchange for cash or favors. My chief source—you'll understand if I don't mention his name—has his fingers on the pulse of the city's criminal activities, both on the Coast and outside it, and there's little he doesn't know, or can't find out through his extensive contacts, including the whereabouts of wanted men. Yet even he's been unable to point me with any degree of certainty to the information I need. All he could find was a whispered hint or two that someone in the red-light district was connected to the kidnap. If that someone was Cullen, it goes a long way toward explaining the lack of specific word. Cullen is powerful, ruthless, and well-connected—honest enough in a business sense, but not a man anyone would want to chance crossing."

He thought for a minute. "Technically, this is hearsay. We already did a sweep through the red-light district and the Barbary Coast on Sunday—it took us all day and into the night, the Department and the sheriff's deputies working together—and we found nothing that would point us to the Emperor's whereabouts. It was, not to put too fine a point on the thing, rather a resounding flop, and I doubt I can get a warrant on the strength of what you've told me. But we know when your friend left the Home Port, and we know he didn't have a horse. We can therefore calculate at what time he must have reached the Rose. We also know that my officers found no sign of any prisoners there—Norton or anyone else—when they searched the place. But that doesn't mean Cullen might not have known of our plans in advance, and decided to get Norton out of there before we could, as the seaman Clancy said. Just now as I came in, I took a rather puzzling report from Sergeant Codd. It seems that one of our local ice companies reported a wagon missing from its lot, along with a team of horses. The horses were found outside the gate this morning, in harness and strapped to the wagon pole. No sign of the wagon itself. I was inclined to dismiss the matter as being unconnected to my case, but now I begin to wonder. If Cullen did have the Emperor, and if he decided to move him, he would have wanted some kind of closed vehicle to do it in. An ice wagon would suit; no one would think twice about seeing it in almost any neighborhood in the city. Now suppose that your Mr. Harper and his friends reached the Rose in time to foil Cullen's plan, and, not having horses on which to flee, they commandeered the wagon. That might have occasioned a certain amount of commotion."

"Commotion," said Slim, with a hint of a smile, "is something Jess is… a bit notorious… for causing."

Lees nodded. "And if there was such a commotion," he went on, "it would have taken place between, let's say, about five and ten A.M. on Sunday. We should be able to find out about it. The Rose is on the very edge of the district; the 'respectable' part of town literally takes up just across the street."

"Let's go," said Slim at once.

**SR - L - WT**

Lees commandeered a horse from the department stables and the two of them rode up to Powell Street, where the detective discreetly pointed out the Red Rose. Slim had seen its like before; almost any reasonably prosperous cowtown would have at least one really good sporting house. They ignored it and began knocking on doors on the other side of Powell. It took a while, but eventually they ran down a housemaid who had some information to provide. She explained that Sunday breakfast wasn't till eight o'clock, but that still meant she had to get up at six to make the kitchen fire. While she had been doing that, she had heard several loud bangs from out in the street. The kitchen was at the back of the basement, as was common in San Francisco townhouses (like the ones in Brooklyn, Slim reflected out of his wartime visit to that city), and she had hurried to the dining room, which looked out on Powell, to see what was happening. She had been just in time to see a dark-colored enclosed spring wagon, drawn by a pair of light-colored horses, lunge out of the narrow driveway next to the Red Rose and go careening north up Powell. She had noticed the driver because of his hat; she described it as having a wide, curling brim—"Like your own, sir," she told Slim.

"Your friend?" Lees guessed.

"Either him, or young Lancer," Slim agreed. "And very possibly that ice wagon you mentioned. Cullen wouldn't have been so noisy about what he was doing, if he planned to move his—package—before your people could get here. But Jess wouldn't have had any reason not to; what the young lady heard was very probably shots, as Cullen and whoever was with him reacted to losing their prisoner."

"I think so too," said the detective, and they thanked the girl politely and started up the street.

**SR - L - WT**

Over the next couple of hours, Slim and Lees, through painstaking detective work, were able to trace the fugitive ice wagon's course as far as the corner of Green and Sansome, but after that they hit a dead end—not literally, but in the sense of not being able to find any further witnesses. "They could have gone on up Sansome to North Beach," Lees observed, "but somehow I doubt it. They obviously understood that Cullen wouldn't waste time trying to find them, and they'd want to get to something approximating safety—ideally the Occidental, where some control could be exercised over who entered and left, and where Mr. Harper would expect to find you. They followed a zigzag course to make it harder for pursuit, but in the end they'd have been planning to head downtown, and from here the quickest way to do that is by way of the waterfront, along East Street."

"Except that they didn't get to the Occidental," Slim pointed out.

"No, they didn't. On the other hand, with the way Mr. Harper was driving, and given that Cullen apparently had no horses up, it would have been—as they'd have hoped—difficult for him to find them, regardless of what happened after they passed this point. And obviously something did, or that ice-wagon team wouldn't have come home without its wagon."

"You think they're somewhere in the waterfront district?" Slim guessed.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Lees agreed. "Technically the commercial waterfront only runs as far north as Broadway, but even up this far there are piers for fishing boats and pleasure craft, and probably dozens of places where three men could hide if they had reason. At least we've narrowed down the possibilities."

"But if they got this far," said Slim, "why would they hide? Is one of them hurt? If so, why hasn't the other been looking for help? Jess would come to me, even if he had to do it Indian-style, keeping to cover and taking his time—and if he's injured but able to talk, he'd tell young Lancer how to find me."

"I admit, I'm stumped," Lees replied. "But I have witnesses now. I can go to the Mayor and try to organize a sweep through the waterfront. We'll need to wait till it's light, though. They certainly know that Cullen will be looking for them, and in the dark one of them may take us for enemies and shoot before he realizes his error."

"I can see that, I guess," said Slim rather unhappily. "But you'll let me know? I want to be in on this—and you may need me. Jess will listen to me unless he's out of it entirely—I even managed to get through to him once when he was half lost in fever."

"I know where to find you," Lees agreed.

**SR - L - WT**

The Red Rose:

"Somebody to see you, Mr. Cullen," said Chayne Hyatt. "Says it's about the reward."

"Send him in," the gambler ordered immediately.

His hired gun vanished briefly, then reappeared with a good-looking, well-muscled man of about twenty-five, dressed in the style of a laborer, with dark, lively eyes and a great mop of curly black hair. "Signor Cullen?"

"That's right." Cullen nodded to Hyatt, who quietly withdrew, closing the door of the gambler's office behind him. "I'm told you have some word for me?"

"I hear it said you look for an ice wagon, tu non [do you not]? One with una foto [a picture] of Giorgio Washingtoni on the side?"

"Go on," Cullen prompted.

"I am Alfredo Carelli, Signor. I am a wagonwright for the company that owns such ice wagons. My brother's little boy, yesterday he is down by the waterfront, and he finds this." The man produced an axle nut from his pocket. "When I see it, I think, that is like the ones we have on our wagons. Then, this morning, I go to work, I hear that a team of our horses has been found waiting outside the gate, wearing their harness and carrying their pole between them. Now I think, maybe they have been hitched to the wagon from which this nut has come."

"That sounds very possible," Cullen agreed. "I see you're an intelligent man, Signor Carelli. Do you know where your nephew found this nut?"

"Si, this morning at colazione [breakfast] I ask him, and he says. He remembers well; his dog found it and led him to it." Carelli paused. "It is said you will pay money to the man who gives you this notizia [report, word, piece of news]."

"It is said, and truly," Cullen replied. "A moment." He turned his chair and leaned down to work the combination dial of his safe. Carelli remained where he was, waiting politely until the door opened and the gambler had taken out the money. He counted it out onto the desk, slowly, letting his visitor see each individual note. "Ten one-hundred-dollar bills. A thousand dollars, as promised. Now, where did your nephew find the nut?"

Carelli told him.

**SR - L - WT**

"From what I know now," Cullen said, after the Italian had collected his reward and left, "it sounds like the people we're looking for had some kind of accident down near the waterfront, around Union Street, between Front and Sansome. The wagon was wrecked, the team ran away, and they were stranded."

"They could have walked out of there by now," Belle observed. "They've had almost thirty-six hours."

"But they haven't done that," Cullen replied, "because if they had, they'd have returned Norton to his hotel, and not only would we have seen or heard some report of it, we'd probably have had half the San Francisco Police Department beating the door down by now."

"You think, maybe, one of them's hurt?" asked Hyatt.

"That would go a long way toward explaining it," Cullen agreed, "though not why the other one hasn't tried to find help for him. Still, people usually have good reasons for what they do, and it doesn't really matter in any case; what matters is that they may still be somewhere around there."

"Union Street," said Belle thoughtfully. "Wasn't there a fire near there, a week or two ago? One of those ropewalks."

Cullen considered the possibility, leafing through his memory for any recollection of news stories reporting such an incident. "That's right. Two weeks, or nearly. They saved the building, but it had to be evacuated till they get the insurance money and can renovate the inside."

"Maybe the boys we want are holed up there," Hyatt suggested.

"Maybe they are," said Cullen. "It's more than we had, at least. All right. I'm going to take Levon and go down and get Hughes and Dunstable and about a dozen men. We'll find a wagon somewhere to carry us up to Union Street. What I want you to do, Chayne, is get your horse and ride on ahead. Check out the ground, see if you can find any sign that they're there. We'll go to that intersection first; if you're not there, we'll look for a note from you. And be careful. Don't let them know you're in the neighborhood. We don't want them to make a run for it before we can take them."

The gunman nodded. "I'll be careful, Mr. Cullen. What are you planning to do with 'em, if we can find 'em?"

Cullen's mouth compressed. "I'm not giving up on three-quarters of a million. If we find them, we make sure to secure Norton again. As for the other two, one of them killed Daniel, and Levon's anxious to have a word with them."

"If you kill them," Belle pointed out, "that will make Norton a witness. I understand that we have to keep him alive till we get the ransom, but what happens afterwards?"

"The same thing that's going to happen to his two friends," her husband replied. "Dead men tell no tales, and neither does the Pacific—or the unpredictable currents that can wash a body halfway to Monterey between midnight and morning."

---

12. In the Nick of Time

The waterfront:

The afternoon had been cloudy, with a chill breeze swirling in from the ocean and a high temperature not above the low fifties. Out over the ocean, somewhere, a cold front or low-pressure system was approaching, the winds ahead of it driving the coastal marine layer and low clouds onshore. It would be a foggy night.

Tattered streamers obscured the sinking sun, rapidly turning the sky from yellowish to gray. Sunset came a little after five o'clock, and in less than an hour thereafter full night had descended on San Francisco. In the interim the temperature had dropped by several degrees. Fog-laden wind rushed in from the sea, some of it catching on the Twin Peaks, the rest flowing around them, between Laurel Heights and Lower Pacific Heights to the north, past Lone Mountain on the south, then on between Russian and Telegraph Hills and the California Street Hill, blanketing the lower ground along the bayfront in smothering layers of damp cotton-wool. Gaslights became ghostly smears, house lights mere blurs vaguely seen through fog-shrouded windows; the bay was invisible, and out on the water foghorns throbbed and bellowed, moaned and bleated their warnings to any ship incautious enough to be on the move. The waterfront was deserted; all the shops and offices had closed by six, and the fishermen wouldn't arrive till nine or past—if they decided to dare the weather. "What about it, Jess?" Johnny asked. "You up to walkin' out of here? Or you want to wait till Clancy comes back? That probably won't be till nearly midnight. We could still send him to get your partner—"

"I ain't askin' no one-legged man to walk better'n half a mile, least of all at that hour," Jess snapped. The knee, as he'd anticipated, had been hurting him more today than when he'd first injured it, and though the pain had begun to fade into the secondary category now, it was still enough to make him short-tempered. "All this trash wood around, you oughtta be able to find somethin' I can use for a crutch."

"All right," said Johnny, "but I'm gonna take a look around first." He pondered possibilities. He knew desperate men, knew how they thought; he'd been a desperate man himself more than once. If anyone was watching this place, what they'd be most likely to watch was one or both of the two third-storey doors and the exterior stairways leading down from them—though the one on the north end of the building, overlooking Greenwich Street, was broken halfway down and therefore probably not worth the attention. He tilted his head, eyeing the partially destroyed roof, then set to work improvising a means to reach one of the holes in it. As a ropewalk, the place naturally contained a good many fragments of hempen line. It wasn't difficult to tie several of them together, weight one end, and throw it several times till it caught firmly on something up above.

Jess watched him, biting his lip occasionally as his knee twinged with unusual intensity. He'd dozed much of the day, trying to get away from the pain, though he'd also been awake enough several times to notice Norton and Johnny talking together, the younger gun apparently questioning the old man about his career as Emperor. At one point Norton had mentioned a proclamation he'd issued a couple of years ago, "that a bridge be constructed from Oakland Point to Yerba Buena, from thence to the mountain range of Sausalito, and from thence to the Farallones." "That'd be a lot of bridge," Johnny had said. "Who'd want to go all that way out?"

"Oh, sightseers… beachcombers… birds'-egg collectors… picnic parties… there have been any number of shipwrecks on those islands too," Norton replied, "so perhaps treasure-hunters as well."

"They haven't started buildin' it yet," Johnny observed carefully.

"I don't doubt there are many technical barriers to such a project," said Norton serenely, "and of course funds must be appropriated too. But I have faith in the Legislature. The time will come."

Livin' in his own private little world, Jess had thought uneasily, and drifted off again soon afterward.

Johnny had gotten the upper end of the rope seated to his satisfaction now, and began swarming up it. Reaching the edge of the hole, he got his elbows over it and braced, and slowly, carefully levered his weight up till he could swing a leg onto what remained of the roof. He eased his body up and over, and lay flat and still, trying to look like a beam. He had one big advantage: his eyes were used to the darkness—as Jess had pointed out yesterday, when they were cooking their improvised meal, even with the bucket to contain the flames it would be better not to keep them going after sundown.

The fog, of course, made it difficult to see, but that was a thing that worked two ways: it could conceal him as easily as it could a watcher. Along East Street it was thinner, but just inland, piling up against the western flank of Telegraph Hill, it built higher and higher, closing in across the summit like a blanket. This made for patchy conditions around the intersection, against which the single lamppost on the corner contended valiantly. About a block to the north, at Sansome and Lombard Streets, Johnny could just make out the bulk of the Adams & Company warehouse, built in 1853. He wasn't sure what it was that drew his attention to the block of buildings on the other side of Union Street. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make out details, then cannily looked alongside where he'd thought he saw something. There—movement. Too big for an animal. Just the right size for a man, though, he told himself.

Quickly he eased himself over the lip of the hole and slid down his rope. Jess looked up at the thump of his boots against the floor. "Trouble?" he asked.

"I think so," Johnny agreed. "There's somethin', or somebody, behind the building on the other side of Union. Maybe watchin' the place."

"One of Cullen's, you reckon?"

"Don't see what reason anybody else'd have to be here this time of night, least of all in this kind of weather," Johnny replied grimly. "If it is… that means he's a scout, most likely, come ahead of whoever plans to hit the place and take us out."

They looked at each other with perfect mutual understanding. "Now we send for Slim," Jess declared.

"One man? Cullen could have a dozen or more," said Johnny.

"Slim's got friends at the Occidental," Jess told him. "A retired Army officer, name of Adams—he's a wagonmaster now—and his scout, and a couple of other fellers that work for him that I ain't met. With Slim and you, that'll be six. Not much, but if you can come up and take 'em by surprise from behind…"

Neither one bothered to question the assumption that it would have to be Johnny who went to get help. He thought rapidly. "We could do that if the fog holds—it'll muffle any sounds we make. Wonder if that fella's got a horse anywhere around? It's better than a mile from here to the Red Rose… I think I'll take a look. Let me have your knife again, Jess?"

"Right. But if you're gonna take him down quiet-like, better leave me your gun and rig. In case they get here sooner'n you think they will."

"Yeah," Johnny breathed, and began unbuckling his gunbelt. "Here." He tossed it across to the Texan, who deftly snapped it out of mid-air. "And I better leave these too," he added, kneeling to unfasten the straps of his spurs. They were the California style, which was almost identical to the Mexican version, having come up from Mexico with the first Spanish settlers of the province: tapered heelbands, half-drop shanks, blued metal with engraving and coin-silver inlay, triple chains and pear-shaped danglers on each, deep-cut sixteen-point rowels. "Take care of those, amigo mio," he said as he dropped them into Jess's lap and reached down for the other man's boot knife, "they cost me fifty good American dollars."

Five minutes later he had vanished through the hole in the roof again.

**SR - L - WT**

Johnny worked his way along the length of the building to the Greenwich Street side, where he cautiously tested several lengths of the rain gutter until he found one that seemed solidly fixed. He took hold of it, swung down at full arms' length, and dropped, hitting the ground three storeys down with knees deeply flexed to take the shock, and rolling sideways as he struck. He waited, holding his breath and listening. The bulk of the building, plus the fog, had apparently absorbed the sound of his impact. Good, he thought. Now, this ladrón seems to have a good notion of where we are. He's watchin' the stair on the other side. We didn't hear a horse, but he could've wrapped its hooves in sacking and come up quiet. He'd want to leave it someplace he could get to it in a hurry, but not someplace we'd hear it shufflin' around the way horses do. Maybe down on Green Street, or Vallejo.

He looked westward, toward the steep flank of Telegraph Hill. Only its western slopes were habitable; on the east, the side facing him, it fell away so sharply that there were no streets leading up, just foot trails and a few wooden stairways. Even the latter were a potentially treacherous climb on a foggy night, there being no street lights on them and the steps being wet and slippery. No way I can get up that, not tonight, anyhow, he decided. But I can stick close to the west side of the building and move south down Sansome till I get near the Union Street crossing, then wriggle through like una serpiente [a snake] and take shelter one block up from where he's set himself. Once I get to Vallejo, I can start lookin' for the horse.

His plan set in his mind, he began moving toward the building's northwest corner.

**SR - L - WT**

Before he dropped off his rented horse, Slim decided it would be only right for him to locate Murdoch Lancer and let him know that there was a good chance his son was with Jess and involved in some kind of attempt to rescue the Emperor. He stopped at the Occidental, went up to the two adjoining rooms Adams and his men had rented, and found Flint getting ready for supper. They joined Adams, Hawks, and Wooster in the bar, where they were enjoying a pre-prandial drink, and Slim asked where Lancer was staying. Adams directed him to the Brooklyn, at Bush and Sansome, one block up and one over from the Occidental and one of the many moderately-priced "family and businessmen's" hotels that specialized in accommodations for out-of-town visitors. "Why'd you ask?" he wanted to know.

"I think I've got a line on where his son is," Slim explained. "I figured he'd like to know."

"He probably would," Adams agreed. "Murdoch's a hard man, but I get the notion he thinks the world of that boy. Bring him back here with you. I want to know what you've found out."

**SR - L - WT**

"Where's Slim Sherman?"

The Occidental desk clerk looked up through the heavy iron grille that was intended to protect him from robbers, and started at the blazing pale-blue eyes that met his own. The young man leaning against the other side of the counter had a scraped cheek and a rip in the sleeve of his dark bobtailed jacket, but he didn't seem to be armed, only intensely focused. "I don't know of a 'Slim' Sherman," the clerk said slowly, "but there's a Mr. Matthew Sherman staying with us, in 427."

"That's him, I guess. Is he in?" the other demanded.

"Actually, I saw him go in the dining room with another gentleman, about half an hour ago…"

The stranger didn't give him time to finish; he pushed off, looked around to get his bearings, and lunged in the direction of the velvet-draperied opening through which a few white-clad tables were just visible.

**SR - L - WT**

Johnny paused just inside the dining-room archway, sweeping the room with his eyes. What had Jess said? …a good head of height on me, maybe twenty pounds, and yet... I ride him some about the weight he's puttin' on, but the fact is he's so tall and straight, on him it looks right. Big broad shoulders, fit to take the world onto... A smile that could light a mine shaft, blue eyes like the sky at noontime, kind of sandy-blond hair…

A tall, straight, broad-shouldered man, blue eyes and sandy-blond hair… yes—there. Johnny didn't even stop to notice who else was sitting at the table, though Sherman, if it was him, was bent forward over the surface of it as if in earnest conversation.

**SR - L - WT**

"Slim Sherman? Are you Jess's partner?"

Slim looked up sharply just as Murdoch, on the other side of the table, shot to his feet. "John!"

The dark-haired young man glanced quickly that way. "Murdoch. Might've known you'd be around… let me talk to Slim first, this is vida y muerte [life and death], okay?"

"I'm Slim," the rancher agreed. "And you're John Lancer, I got your description at the Home Port. Where's Jess? What's happened to him?"

Young Lancer braced his palms against the tabletop. "He's got a sprained knee, but that's not the big trouble. He's holed up in a burned-out ropewalk up on Battery Street, just under Telegraph Hill, him and the Emperor Norton. And somebody's lookin' for them, somebody who knows where they are, or's got a pretty good idea—he had a scout watchin' the place—"

"'Had'?" Slim repeated.

"Yeah, till the cabrón caught me tryin' to take his horse. Good luck Jess lent me his boot knife…"

"Can you take me there?" Slim demanded.

**SR - L - WT**

Jess had gotten the color of his partner's eyes right, Johnny reflected, but he hadn't mentioned that they could bore into a man like the barrels of a loaded shotgun. Nor had he said anything to suggest how tall and menacing Slim Sherman could look when he was sufficiently aroused. "Yeah. You'll need a horse…"

"I've got one out in front. Let me run up to my room and get my gun, I try not to make a habit of wearing it in here, people get nervous—"

"Hold on a minute." A big man in a pale gray suit and a Paisley-print waistcoat stood up from directly across the table. "Take your time, son, and think. This man you killed—one of Cullen's?"

"How'd you know?" Johnny asked.

"'Cause Slim here's just been bringin' us up to date on what he thinks you and his friend Jess have been up to. And since you just mentioned the Emperor Norton, I'm guessin' he had it right."

"Yeah," Johnny agreed. "One of Cullen's, at least I'm pretty sure he was. I figure he was sent to keep an eye, make sure we didn't slip away before his boss could bring up help."

The other glanced quickly at the remaining occupants of the table—a redheaded, freckled man of about Slim's age, a rawboned one with a surprisingly young-looking face under a head of wavy gray hair, and a short, stoutish, bearded one with a hooked nose. "Got any idea how many he'll have?"

Johnny shook his head. "Didn't exactly have time to ask, you know? I thought maybe a dozen, but I can't swear to it." He remembered something else Jess had said: Slim's got friends at the Occidental. A retired Army officer, name of Adams—he's a wagonmaster now—and his scout, and a couple of other fellers that work for him that I ain't met… "Are you Adams?"

"That's right. Major Seth Adams, U.S. Army, Retired."

"Jess said—if you'd come, you and your men—maybe we could catch 'em from behind…"

Adams nodded once, briskly. "Charlie, go up to the room, get our guns." The bearded man scrambled out of his chair and made for the archway. "McCullough, see if you can find a wagon somewhere." That sent the redhead off in pursuit. "Bill—"

The gray-haired man interrupted. "I think I've got an idea, Major—a way we can get some really overwhelming numbers on our side."

"Will it take long?" Adams asked.

"Not if I can borrow Slim's horse," said the man addressed as Bill.

"Take him," Slim agreed at once, and Bill was gone.

"John." It was Murdoch's voice. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah—I'm fine, just a little out of breath." Johnny suddenly realized what must have inspired the question. "This?" He pushed his thumb up the rip in his sleeve. "Just tore my jacket, that's all. Murdoch—I know we've got things to get straight, but I promised Jess I'd bring help—"

"Of course you did," said Murdoch, "and you will. Including me."

**SR - L - WT**

The ropewalk:

Jess hadn't wasted any time once Johnny was gone. He had more than a notion that he was going to be badly outnumbered, and he doubted he could count on Norton for help—not that kind, anyway. But when he mentioned the need of some sort of barricade or breastwork, the old man proved surprisingly inventive. Jess's knee kept him from moving around much, but Norton managed to assemble an elementary sort of barrier at the center back of the room, near the washroom door, then helped Jess get settled behind it with his own sixgun and Johnny's. "They'll come up the stairs on the Union Street side, I reckon," Jess guessed, "bein' as th'other ain't fit for climbin'. They won't be much better off in the dark than we are, maybe less. And they ain't got no way to know we'll be expectin' 'em; they'll be countin' on takin' us by surprise. If I can take down two or three of 'em before they savvy how wrong they are…"

"Yes, I see," Norton agreed. "You must do all you can to reduce the odds against us. How can I help?"

"You can't," Jess told him. "Not any more'n what you've done. Better leave the fightin' to them that's earned their livin' that way. I want you to get into the washroom and stay low—the lead's likely to be flyin' around pretty free. If you get yourself shot, it'll kinda defeat the purpose of gettin' you out of Cullen's place."

The old man considered that for a moment. "You're right, of course. You are a true patriot, Mr. Harper, and if we survive, you will not find me ungrateful. I shall do as you say."

Jess chuckled. "Some might take issue with the patriot part of that. But just stay in there till I call to you, or till Johnny comes back."

"Do you believe he will get here in time? With help?"

"I reckon he'll do the best that's in him," Jess replied. "That's his way. Johnny Madrid, good at his job," he quoted.

**SR - L - WT**

East Street:

Ragged coils and streamers of mist shrouded the water's edge, drifting on an icy, fog-wet wind. John Carroll Cullen watched as his company clambered out of the wagon parked near the seaward end of Vallejo Street. Deiniol Hughes stood beside him, looking sour. "I still don't see why we need so many against three men," he said.

"Two," Cullen replied— "Norton's no fighter."

"Then why couldn't you and Levon and Hyatt take care of it? It was you they got away from," Hughes pointed out, as Dunstable came over to join them.

"I'm already on the hook for Barbier, and for ordering Rafferty's death," said Cullen. "I'm not taking any more raps alone. If you boys want a share of the proceeds, you'd better be willing to do some of the work and take some of the risks."

The wagon driver, who had gone ahead after setting the brake, suddenly appeared out of the foggy gloom. "No sign of Hyatt, Mr. Cullen," he reported.

"Did he leave any messages?" the gambler demanded.

"Not that I found," said the other, with a shake of his head.

"Maybe they tried to slip out and he followed them," Dunstable suggested.

"No," said Cullen, "from where he was he could have just shot them off the stair, or at least driven them back inside. He probably got cold feet, thinking about how much San Francisco thinks of Norton. I'll take care of him later."

"I don't like it," Hughes grumbled.

"I don't much care what you don't like," Cullen shot back. "We're going in—now."

**SR - L - WT**

The ropewalk:

Jess had settled himself in as comfortable a position as his knee would allow, Johnny's sixgun within easy reach and his own lying on the barricade in front of him. He was so keyed up that he scarcely felt the pain of his injury any more. And, as he had often found before this, the possibility of imminent action seemed to sharpen his senses. In the ordinary way of things, given the muffling effect of the fog, he might not have caught the faint creak somewhere on the stairs, but this time he did. They're here, he thought. Dad-gum, I hope you don't take much longer, Johnny. He wrapped his hand around the familiar gun butt and drew the hammer back.

The faint click of the latch on the door captured his attention. He had thought of trying to block it somehow, but that would only serve to let Cullen know that they were expecting him; given the likely advantage of numbers he'd have, Jess's best chance would be to draw him in, make him think they weren't ready for him, then take him by surprise and try to eliminate as many of his company as possible before it had time to adjust to the situation and regroup. Or else just try to drive them back from the door, which was the only way they could conveniently get into the ropewalk. The Texan braced his wrist with his other hand, his arm at full extension, the gunsights trained on the door. It opened slowly onto a gray-white vista of fog, which parted like a theater curtain as a figure filled the opening. He let the man get just over the threshold and squeezed the trigger. The shot echoed in the room like a charge of dynamite going off, and the invader staggered and fell to the floor. Immediately a shaft of light speared out toward Jess's position, almost blinding him. Dang, he realized, squinting, they got bullseye lanterns—didn't think of that…

He hesitated just a split instant, then began shooting at wherever he saw a light.

**SR - L - WT**

East Street:

Even over the clatter of racing hooves and the rumble of iron-shod wheels against the paving, Slim could hear the thunder of gunfire up ahead. "Don't hold 'em back, Charlie!" he shouted.

Wooster, holding the reins of the team, nodded wordlessly and slashed at the horses with the lines; the wagon's wheels skidded on the fog-damp paving, scattering sparks. Standing just behind him, hanging onto the back of the seat, Adams looked back and waved his arm in a circling motion. "Swing out!" he bellowed. "Surround the building!"

"On our way, Major!" came Bill Hawks's shouted reply.

The wagon swung sharp left onto Green Street, right onto Sansome and right again onto Union. Charlie jammed his right foot against the brake and braced his left on the dash, hauling in on the reins, and the horses sat back against their breeching as the vehicle fishtailed to a stop. Slim piled out of his saddle and Adams, Murdoch, Johnny and Flint scrambled out of the bed, and all of them raced toward the building, seeing the flashes of light through the windows on the third floor. The shooting had ceased—had they taken Jess out so quickly?

Only Murdoch could equal Slim in length of leg, and he didn't have a friend in trouble up there. The rancher charged up the creaking stairs, nearly tripped over a body just inside the doorway, kicked it aside and stepped into bedlam. The room was full of crisscrossing lightbeams that skipped hither and yon in no discernible pattern, and dark silhouettes of men, but Slim caught sight of a big form near the center back of the room, its back to him, a pale blur of a face visible just past the shoulder, a hand swinging—

Slim fired, not at the man—he might hit Jess—but at the floor directly to his left. The bullet gouged splinters out of the planking, some of them spearing into the fellow's ankle. It caught his attention and he dropped his victim, turned and charged. Slim knew that when a man was mad and coming at you, you had to get him right through the heart or brain or on a big bone to stop him, and there was no time for careful aim—whoever this fellow was, he was faster than his size would suggest. The rancher ducked, and the big man went right over his back, hitting the floor with a resounding crash.

Adams came in right behind him and was almost blindsided by a man with a gun on his left, as one of the bullseye beams, shifting to focus on Slim and his opponent, caught the wagonmaster in the face and dazzled him for a vital instant. Johnny, following close, yelled a warning, and Adams spun and fired, more by feel than anything else; his attacker grunted and hit the floor in the sprawling way of a man mortally wounded. Next behind him came Flint; a bright flicker was briefly visible as he hurled his knife at the nearest shadowy figure on the right.

Slim saw the gleam of light on a blade as the big man lurched to his feet. He backed up fast, shooting a quick glance over his shoulder to orient himself, hoping that the fellow was so blind with fury that he wouldn't realize what his foe was doing. He didn't. At the right moment, Slim ducked again, sliding the knife's blow across his shoulder, feeling a brief sting as the blade cut through his clothing and nicked the skin underneath, and the big man hit a front window and went through it in a crashing shower of glass. His yell of terror was cut off as he hit the paving three storeys down.

By now the ropewalk was a chaotic scene, with men rushing this way and that, men falling, muzzle flashes, circling beams of bullseye lanterns, powder smoke filling the air, the sound of gunshots, shouts and curses and cries from the wounded. Several of the enemy, confused by the rescuers' sudden advent, tried to make for the exits, which meant those of the windows that were already broken, where they could cling to sills or decorative banding till they could choose a place to drop. Their precipitous defection was greeted by shouts from below—the Irish Brigade's cry when they served in the French army and defeated the English at Fontenoy: "Faugh-a-ballagh! Clear the way! Erin go bragh!"

Murdoch, Charlie, Bill Hawks, and half a dozen other men had made it through the door now, firing warning shots toward the roof and moving forward, crowding the enemy back. Slim fought his way through the ruck, to Jess lying in a heap at the foot of his barricade, and found a dropped bullseye, snatching it up and playing it over the Texan's limp form. Jess was pale—perhaps with shock, or pain, or both—and his face was ribboned with blood. The rancher slid an arm under his shoulders and cautiously lifted him, and Jess stirred, opened his eyes, blinked a few times in confusion, and grinned weakly. "Hey, hardcase…" he said faintly, "reckon Johnny found you all right."

"Yeah, he did," Slim agreed. "What did that fella do, pistol-whip you?"

"Brass knucks," Jess told him. "Think he must'a' been one'a them Brills—the one Johnny didn't get—heard him say somethin' about his brother—"

"Easy, take it easy," Slim cautioned. "We'll get you back to the hotel, I'll send for a doctor—"

"No… 's okay…" Jess insisted. "Kicked'im a couple times… threw his aim off… ain't so bad as I look. Tell Johnny—Norton—in the washroom—not to come… till… one of us calls him—"

"I'll tell him," Slim promised. "You rest."

"'kay…" Jess murmured. And with that he lost consciousness and slumped, burying his face in the front of Slim's jacket.

**SR - L - WT**

Downtown:

As the cavalcade of wagons rumbled down California Street and turned into Montgomery, with Joshua Norton standing on the seat of the leading one in the gaslamp glow, the word went racing along ahead of them: "It's the Emperor! The Emperor's back! They found the Emperor!"

The lead wagon swung in before the Occidental and was engulfed in a shouting crowd of eager San Franciscans. Hotel employees—both doormen, several bellboys—hurried out to offer Norton a hand down while Jess, cradled stretcher-fashion in a blanket, was quickly and quietly unloaded from the rear and hurried around to the side entrance by Slim and Murdoch. The people who couldn't get close enough to the door to see the Emperor returning home soon realized that the following wagons were full of grim-looking men in brass-buttoned green jackets, carrying rifles, with a banner fixed above the driver's seat of the first, embroidered with clusters of green shamrocks around the golden harp of Tara, and gold letters reading Erin Go Bragh, "Ireland Forever." They were keeping guard over a dozen or so battered, groaning men, and the obvious connection was made in seconds. "They took the Emperor! Get 'em! Take 'em!"

Rifles were cocked and leveled, and the crowd gave back. "We're after takin' 'em to the jail at City Hall," shouted a tall man with officer's epaulets on his jacket, the lilt of Ireland in his voice doing nothing to temper its resolute tone, "and we'll run down the man who stands in our way!"

Sullenly the crowd fell away, its cries fading into an ominous silence. The wagons pulled out into the trafficway, and a river of people followed.

Captain Isaiah Lees and a detachment of police officers, reinforced by a dozen sheriff's deputies, were waiting on the City Hall steps, summoned by Johnny, who had taken Slim's horse and galloped on ahead once it was established that both Jess and Norton were alive. The wagonload of prisoners backed deftly around and the guard of green-clad men shoved their prisoners into the waiting hands of law and order. But already the word was racing with lightning speed through San Francisco's streets. Within minutes the original crowd of onlookers had begun to swell in size. Soon angry mobs milled around Portsmouth Square, demanding that the Emperor's abductors be hanged without delay. "Kill 'em! Lynch 'em!" they shouted.

Inside the building, Sheriff P. J. White consulted with Captain Lees, and an hour later formed a flying wedge of deputies and rushed the prisoners into a line of carriages. Heavily armed men on horseback surrounded the vehicles. "Clear the street!" Sheriff White ordered. "Back off or we'll fire!"

There was a tense silence, and then slowly a lane opened in the crowd. The lead carriage driver aimed his team at it, lashed them with his whip and took off at breakneck speed, north up Kearny toward the Broadway Jail; the others followed. The crowd flowed after them, more slowly, but growling ominously.

By the time they reached the jail, the vehicles had vanished into the walled yard behind it. But at Brenham Place, behind Portsmouth Square Plaza, above the noise of an aroused city rose the slow, grim tolling of the bell in the Monumental Fire Company's building. It had been the tocsin of the Vigilantes in 1851, and the Second Committee in '56. It still was…

**SR - L - WT**

Tuesday, January 9

Dr. Harthouse, who came recommended by the hotel management, had turned out to be young, brisk, and very competent, a graduate only five years ago of the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific on Mission Street near Third, the first medical school on the West Coast, founded in 1858. After he'd checked Jess's temperature and pulse and determined that he wasn't concussed, he said, "I'm going to give you a mild sedative, Mr. Harper. It won't knock you out—I want you to be able to understand what's said to you—but it will relax you and dull the pain a bit."

It wasn't laudanum, which Jess feared and hated, but some kind of powder stirred up in a glass of water. It tasted bitter, but with Slim's reassuring hand on his shoulder he gulped it down, and found that it performed as advertised, taking the edge off the pain and letting the doctor clean the cuts left on his face by Brill's brass knucks, stitch them up neatly and tape gauze over them to absorb seepage, without the muscles tensing or jumping. "There," Harthouse said at length, "that should do it. They're shallow, I don't expect they'll scar," and he set to work on the knee. "Rest first and foremost," he said, "and application of ice for fifteen to twenty minutes every hour; that should help decrease the swelling and pain. A hot vinegar bath for the joint once a day. The rest of the time, elevate it as much as you can, even when you're lying down, and keep this rubber bandage around it. It's a new thing, but I've had considerable success with it; it keeps the knee from moving too much while it heals, but also supports it so that you can move about if you want to."

"He'll want to," Slim said, a resigned note in his voice. "I've never seen a worse patient in my life—not even my kid brother."

"I'll send a cane tomorrow," Harthouse promised. "If his pain worsens or he develops a fever, send for me right away. But modern theory holds that it's no longer necessary for a sprain to be kept totally immobile for ten days. The important thing is to limit the movement of the joint and protect it until it improves. A sprain is bad while it lasts, but it will heal itself. All we can do is alleviate the symptoms somewhat. If you use the ice faithfully, the pain and swelling should diminish in two or three days, enough at least that you can walk with assistance."

Jess managed to stay awake long enough to hear all this, then lay back, drifted off to sleep, and slept the clock around. While he slept, next morning, Murdoch Lancer and Seth Adams took over, sending for Sheriff White and reporters from each of the city's principal newspapers, and letting Johnny tell the story of what he and Jess had learned of Norton's whereabouts and what they'd done about it. With the press conspicuously on the scene, both men agreed, there was little chance that the surviving members of the kidnap plot would be able to bribe their way out of the charges.

Now, with his bandage rewrapped and a hot meal under his belt, Jess was listening as Slim gave him the bad news. "I wish I didn't have to tell you this, but it wouldn't be right to keep it from you. Clancy's dead. Some of the militia boys found his body behind a bollard on East Street. It looked as if he was bringing more food for you and one of Cullen's people caught him and killed him. Probably it was that scout, the one they called Hyatt."

He saw the mask of painful guilt settle into place, and his heart ached for his friend. He had come to understand that Jess very seldom felt shame for anything he did, but if he thought he had failed someone who depended on him, or for whom he had assumed responsibility—that was different. "There should'a' been a way I could'a' saved him," the Texan said in a subdued voice.

"There wasn't," Slim insisted, but gently. "You couldn't have known that Cullen would have figured out where you were so quickly—I guess we'll never know how he did it. And remember, it was Clancy who recruited you—not the other way around. He knew where Norton was being kept; you never would have gotten involved in it if he hadn't told you."

"It don't help much," Jess replied. "Maybe Johnny was right, maybe we should'a' sent him after you soon as I was hurt."

"Maybe," Slim allowed. "But 'maybe' is a lot like 'if'—it's conditional. And aren't you the one who always says a man can't live his life on 'what-if'?"

"Ain't talkin' about livin' my life on it," said Jess. "Just…" He trailed off into incoherence, sighed, then asked, "Does Miss Essie know?"

"Yes—I took him back to her myself. And the Call's started a drive for some of the ransom money—maybe what was contributed at a couple of the churches—to be used for a funeral and a marker. Essie said she thought he'd like a stone with a picture of a topsail schooner on it, and the words In Safe Harbor."

Jess considered that. "Yeah, I reckon he would."

Anything else he might have thought of saying was postponed by a knock on the door of their suite's parlor. "Stay still, I'll get it," Slim told him. Jess could hear his long strides crossing the other room, the sound of the door opening, then: "Captain Lees. Come in."

"Mr. Sherman. How is Mr. Harper?"

"Awake, alert, and fed," Slim replied. "The knee's a bother, but the doctor fixed it up well—better than I'd really hoped. What brings you by?"

"I thought you might both appreciate a bit of an update on the case," Lees said. "It took us till now to straighten out who exactly we had in custody."

"Come this way," Slim invited, and led him back to the bedroom, where he introduced his friend. "Jess, this is Isaiah Lees, captain of detectives. We were working together on trying to find you, before Johnny brought me the word of where you were."

"Captain," said Jess politely. "Am I in trouble?"

Lees smiled faintly. "Hardly. I don't think the citizens of San Francisco would stand for such a thing. You may not have seen the papers yet. I've asked the management to make sure you get copies. You and Mr. Lancer are the heroes of the day."

Jess shrugged. "Reckon 'most anybody in town would'a' done the same, if they'd had the information we did."

"All the same, you ought to know just what you accomplished," Lees told him. "No casualties to speak of on our side, except for yourself; just a couple of flesh wounds. The other didn't fare half so well. The final tally is five dead, including Cullen and his bouncer, Levon Brill, whose brother Mr. Lancer tells us he killed in the process of the rescue. And one other, also credited to Mr. Lancer—Cullen's, ah, chief of security, a gunman from up in Idaho by the name of Chayne Hyatt; Mr. Lancer dumped his body behind some garbage barrels on Vallejo Street, he told us where to find it. Thirteen under arrest, including two rather notorious figures from the Barbary Coast—Deiniol Hughes and Carson Dunstable, both owners of well-known saloon-boardinghouses, much on the order of Shanghai Kelly's place. Several more or less the worse for wear, but none in danger of immediate death."

"Slim told me that place we rescued Norton out of belonged to Cullen and his wife," Jess mentioned. "Was she in on this?"

Slim wondered why such a possibility would occur to his chivalrous friend, but decided now wasn't the time to ask. Lees looked glum. "Very probably, but I can't pin anything on her. Nobody we've got in custody can say whether she was in on the scheme, or if they could they're not talking."

They were interrupted by another knock at the parlor door. Slim excused himself and was back a minute later with a tall, lean, gray-haired man in range dress. "Here's somebody else you haven't properly met, Jess. Johnny's father, Murdoch Lancer. Murdoch, Jess Harper."

The two shook hands. "How's Johnny?" Jess asked.

"Tired, like yourself. I left him at our hotel. He'll be by to see you tomorrow," Murdoch promised. "I wanted to have a chance to talk to you before that—if you're up to it."

"I reckon I am," said Jess cautiously.

"Do you mind if I say something first, Murdoch?" Slim ventured. "It's not about Jess exactly, but it's something I have an idea he'd want you to know, if he could figure out how to say it."

Lancer eyed him with something that wasn't exactly unease. "Go on."

"You didn't tell me very much about your son, or why he left your ranch," Slim began. "And I think I can understand that; I was a stranger, an outsider, whose only real connection to you or to him was that he and my friend knew each other. But Jess and I have had a long talk, bringing each other up to date, and he's told me something of what he learned from Johnny. I've had some experience, this last year and a half, dealing with—quick-tempered gun-hawks. There's a certain... diplomacy you have to develop."

"Blast it, Sherman," Murdoch protested, "anyone would think I had no tact!"

Jess quickly slipped a hand over his mouth, smothering a snort of laughter. Go to it, hard-rock, hethought.

Quietly and solemnly, as if Murdoch hadn't spoken, Slim went on. "And I've learned, too, that with younger brothers—and probably sons too, especially grown-up sons—there comes a point where you can't rule by fiat any longer. Maybe you never really can. You have to grant them respect for the people they are. Especially when you... can't really share in what they've experienced, growing up. By what Jess tells me, I'm amazed the three of you, you and your sons, have made it work even this long. And yet... you may not think so, but you and Johnny are a lot alike—more so than you and Scott. You've both had to struggle to escape poverty, to build something—a ranch, a reputation; you've both lived rough... maybe that's why, when you go at it, it hurts both of you so badly, because it's almost like fighting yourselves. And that, I think, is why he left. But it's also why he couldn't bring himself to go very far." He paused. "A very dear friend of mine told me once that Jess and I couldn't step outside our skins and see how we are with each other. But he could look at us together and see how we're different and how we're alike. I think I have something of the same advantage over you."

Murdoch pondered this while the other three waited, giving him time to integrate it. Then he said, "Do you mind if Harper and I have a few minutes alone?"

Slim looked at Jess, raising his eyebrows in inquiry. "Go 'head," the Texan told him. "Thanks for comin' by, Captain Lees. Good to've met you."

**SR - L - WT**

Out in the hallway, Lees quietly told Slim about last night's demonstration outside City Hall. "The crowd's dispersed from around the jail now," he said, "but we're sure the place is being watched; with Telegraph Hill on one side and Russian on the other, it wouldn't be hard to do. By the way, how did you happen to have one of the Irish military companies helping you? When we received the prisoners at City Hall, we realized from the uniforms that we were dealing with men from the Hibernia Greens."

"Bill Hawks's idea," Slim explained. "He'd noticed—very much as Jess had—that some of the outfits between First and Second have practice on Monday nights, and he remembered that they'd all volunteered to help search the city for Norton. He went down and recruited some of them—the wonder was that every man jack of them didn't insist on coming—and they threw a cordon around the building. We figured it was better not to take a chance on anyone getting away."

"None of them did, by what I found out in questioning the survivors," Lees agreed. "Several are falling over themselves ready to turn state's evidence. I just hope we can keep them alive long enough—"

Before Slim could ask what he meant by this, he heard someone call to him from just down the passage. "Mr. Sherman! I'm glad I caught you. A word?"

He turned, recognizing the hotel's assistant manager. "Yes—is there a problem?"

The man smiled. "Not in the least. In fact, the hotel is honored to have one of the Emperor's rescuers—and his friend—as our guests. We understand that your bill is only paid through tomorrow, but Dr. Harthouse has told us that Mr. Harper will require time to recover. So, in recognition of his and your part in the rescue, this suite will remain yours for as long as you need it."

Slim hesitated an instant. "Thank you. That's the last thing I expected."

"And I also have a message from His Majesty," the manager went on. "He wants to be informed as soon as Mr. Harper is able to walk. He intends to knight him."

Knight him?! thought Slim. Aloud he said only, "Johnny too, I hope."

"Mr. Lancer, and his father, have already been informed," the other assured him. "Major Adams was good enough to tell us where they're staying."

"That's good, then. From what Jess told me, they both played an equal part in what happened… which reminds me, is the Emperor hurt?"

"We sent for a doctor as soon as he was back in his suite. There's nothing wrong with him that won't be cured by a hot bath—which he's had—and a couple of days of rest and good food. His chamberlain is keeping a very jealous watch over him, I can assure you." Then: "I must get back—so much to do in connection with running a hotel of this size. I just wanted to be sure I caught you before you decided to go out somewhere."

"Thank you again," said Slim, and shook hands.

**SR - L - WT**

"Johnny's told me something about the long talk he had with you," Murdoch was saying. "I know the two of you are a lot alike, and I could see that he respects you—and, in his way, trusts you, which is something that doesn't come easily to him, given the life he's lived."

"Don't come easy to me neither, Mr. Lancer," Jess observed.

"I understand that. Partly for that very reason, knowing that you'd gone through something a lot like he had, he could relate better to what you told him, I think, than to anything I might have tried to say to him. He and his brother—and my foster daughter, Teresa O'Brien—are all I have in the world that really means anything to me. I would do anything—anything—to keep them in my life and make sure they stay happy and safe. So I guess what I'm trying to say—" he coughed and looked down at his boots, embarrassed at his own vulnerability, which was something Jess could relate to, having experienced it more than once in connection with Slim and Andy and Jonesy— "is that I owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude for making him see the truth. If there's ever anything you, or Sherman, need that I can supply, all you have to do is ask and it's yours. And if you should someday find yourselves in the San Joaquin Valley, you have a home at Lancer for as long as you want it."

"Obliged," said Jess, and shook hands on it.

"No," Murdoch said quietly, "we are obliged to you."

---

13. A City's Anger and an Emperor's Thanks

Broadway Jail:

Norton's return had occurred around nine o'clock, when there were still a good many people on the streets, and within a couple of hours after that the news had been all over town. Since everyone already knew that the Emperor had been the victim of abduction, mobs had begun to form in various places by midnight, and soon afterward the county jail was surrounded by a restless crowd of several thousand men who swarmed and howled before its walls and clogged the nearby streets. Only lack of a leader prevented them from storming the building, which was guarded by the city's entire hundred-man police force and all the sheriff's deputies, plus two troops of hastily-summoned state militia. Nothing like it had been seen since the shooting of James King of William in '55.

About dawn the crowd began to disperse, and gradually the streets cleared and the defending forces began to relax. A little after noon, a handsome closed carriage rolled up to the front of the building, and a woman in mulberry alpaca and a hooded dark velvet cloak descended from it. The jail had no grade entrance, the lowering of Broadway since it was built having stranded its front door eight feet above the sidewalk; only a dogleg flight of open wooden steps up to a railed hanging veranda. The woman picked up her skirts and climbed them without haste.

It took every ounce of eloquence Belle Cullen could summon, but she managed, at last, to obtain permission to talk to Hughes and Dunstable in one of the small consultation rooms kept for prisoners and their lawyers. "I don't know how long they'll let me stay," she said. "A deputy came to the house and told me John Carroll was dead. Is it true?"

Her husband's fellow conspirators traded glances and shrugs. "It's true," said Hughes. "He was killed when Harper's friends caught us in the ropewalk. He almost got one of 'em—I saw it happen, I'd turned my lantern and had the fellow pinned in the beam…"

"So what happened?" Belle demanded.

"Somebody behind him shouted, and he turned and fired—luck or instinct, I don't know, but he nailed Cullen with one shot. Later on, when they were loading us into the wagon, I heard someone call him 'Major Adams.' "

"Are you planning to get us out of here?" Dunstable added. "A mob almost got us already."

"You won't be here long," she said.

Fifteen minutes later she was out on Broadway, getting into her carriage. "Back to the Rose," she told her driver.

"Yes, ma'am." The man flicked the matched sorrels with his whip and they moved smoothly toward the Powell Street intersection.

No, not long, Belle thought, as the Monumental bell began to toll again. But if I get the chance, I'll see that this Adams pays for killing my husband.

**SR - L - WT**

By nightfall some 7000 men had presented themselves at the Monumental firehouse, offering to provide any service that might be required of them. The telegraph wires sizzled with messages as the news was transmitted to every corner of the state, and soon word was coming in from all over that armed assistance would be sent if requested. This news soon reached the jail, and the militiamen on duty, like their counterparts sixteen years ago, sent in their resignations, stacked their rifles, and marched out in a body; they hadn't signed on for hundred-to-one odds. Politicians at City Hall vehemently urged that the law be obeyed, even though nothing had yet been said against any of them by the prisoners, and a number of more respectable citizens deplored, with great sincerity, the "illegal usurpation of authority." There was, indeed, no official resurrection of the Committee of Vigilance. But everyone knew that the sentiment lay close under the surface.

**SR - L - WT**

Wednesday, January 10

Slim had been invited to join Johnny and Murdoch for supper after the younger man had had his promised visit with Jess. Taking advantage of the fact that his friend had company to keep his mind off his pain, he asked at the desk where he could find a telegraph office, and there sent off a message to Ben at the ranch:

JESS SUFFERED MINOR INJURY STOP=DOCTOR ADVISES HE NOT TRAVEL FOR SEVERAL DAYS STOP=HOPE YOU CAN STAY ON TILL WE COME BACK STOP=REPLY CARE OF OCCIDENTAL HOTEL, ROOM 427 STOP=SLIM

At almost the same moment, a crowd of some 2200 people was jamming into a lodge hall on Taylor Street, half a dozen blocks from the Broadway Jail. Twice as many couldn't get in and stood in the street outside. Before the meeting could even be called to order, someone marched up the aisle waving an eight-foot pole with a hangman's noose at the end of it. "Hang them!" the crowd roared. "Lynch Hughes! Lynch Dunstable!"

Calmer heads called vainly for sober consideration of the crime and a legitimate trial under the law. They were shouted down by the crowd, which was soon demanding not only the lives of Cullen's two most prominent fellow-conspirators but those of their underlings as well. Other speakers harangued the overflow outside, and their audience began suggesting that they take a detour on their way to the jail to clean out the entire Barbary Coast.

Soon the mob swarmed out Green and Vallejo Streets and down to Broadway, picking up more adherents as it went. In short order it had surrounded the jail and was beginning to hurl rocks and bricks. Sheriff White and Captain Lees, anticipating some such occurrence, had concentrated a hundred men at the building and in its yard, but with such a mass of impromptu vigilantes to contend with, they didn't dare charge out and try to disperse the crowd. They also saw that they were badly outnumbered, and could quite easily be besieged and starved out, if that was what the crowd decided to do. Then a battering ram was brought into play against the gate of the rear yard, and while the garrison rushed to secure it, someone placed a bundle of dynamite against the grade wall in front, under the steps, and blew a hole in it. In moments the mob swarmed in, shouting for blood, and rushed up the inside stairs. The defenders flailed their nightsticks desperately but were forced to give ground. One invader broke into the jailor's office and obtained the keys. Hughes, Dunstable, and their eleven surviving men were quickly dragged from their cells, bound and blindfolded, and thrown into waiting wagons which took off at full speed up Broadway, racing the six and a half blocks toward the waterfront while a rearguard detained the garrison. Inside five minutes the wagons were pulling up on the edge of the bay, and nooses were being rigged from the cross-trees of several docked ships.

Somewhat more than a mile away, coming out of the telegraph office on Kearny Street, Slim heard, distantly, the great shout of triumph and satisfaction as the struggling bodies of thirteen men were swung into eternity. He stopped, listening to the surf-like roar, wondering if a storm was brewing. It wasn't till the next morning, when he saw the story in the Call, that he realized what he'd heard.

**SR - L - WT**

"I've been thinkin' about something," Johnny Lancer said over supper. "Maybe I don't really have much right to do it—maybe I should leave it to Jess, but… well, Murdoch said you made him see some things yesterday that might make it easier for the two of us to get along from now on, and…"

"—And it feels as if you owe me?" Slim guessed. At the younger man's startled expression, he added, "Why do you think I was able to make him see those things? I've learned a lot, since Jess has been with me, about how men in your line—I should say your former line—look at things like honor and obligation."

"Like I said, maybe this is somethin' Jess should tell you," Johnny went on. "But he might not feel like you want to hear it—and I think you should. I'm not sure just how much you know about him… about what he used to do. You say you've learned a lot about the trade, so I reckon it's no surprise to you that he hired his gun out. But he was never for hire to kill a man. He never took money just for that. If somebody called him, or if it was part of the job he was bein' paid to do, like when we worked together—he didn't have a problem with that. But he never saw himself as a killer, even though he's killed his share. He was a warrior, a gunfighter. He didn't pick fights, except maybe when he found himself a Bannister."

"How are you sure?" Slim asked. "I don't say you're lying. I just ask—how do you know?"

The younger man smiled, a small, secret sort of smile. "'Cause I kind of kept track of him, after that time in New Mexico."

Instantly Slim was suspicious. "Why would you do that?"

"'Cause I was fourteen years old, a kid in a man's business and what's more a half-Mexican kid, tryin' to bluff my way into the job. And Jess… I knew he wasn't sure of me, but he treated me like a man, and a man who had value. He didn't seem to care about my bein' only half Americano—and him a Texan. It set me back on my heels, I can tell you. He took me for who I was tryin' to be, and that might have saved my life. After we parted, I figured I owed it to him to be ready to lend a hand, if he ever needed it."

"I'm sorry," Slim said. "I shouldn't have… it's just that so many times his past has come home to roost…"

"Yeah," Johnny agreed. "Nothin' for you to be ashamed of. It's good he's got somebody who cares enough about him to take thought for that kind of thing. I never did, till Murdoch and Scott. Anyway, what I was sayin'… I kept track of him, listened to what was said about him, built up a picture of just who he was. I know how gossip is, how it blows a man's rep out of shape; it did that to mine. That's how I could… I guess sort of feel where the truth was. And then, there are folks who see everything that goes on. Folks like my mama was, and I know who they are and where to find 'em. The folks who have to be sure, who have to be that much quicker on their feet just to survive. They listen and they know, and when they trust you, they share what they know. But you have to be one of 'em first."

Slim considered this, then said softly, "I'm glad you said that. I always hoped it was true, but—it's not the kind of thing you can easily ask a man. And yet, I think in a way I've always known it. My kid brother Andy was twelve when Jess first rode into our lives, and he latched onto him like—well, like another brother. I hoped that Andy wouldn't feel that way about a stone killer. I know how he reacted when he met Ed Caulder, who was one. And I've known for a long time that Jess didn't—doesn't—take pleasure in killing. And yet I also know, because he said so, that he felt he got cheated out of his due when someone else took Frank Bannister out before he could. He even admitted, once, that maybe the other Bannisters he killed… maybe those were killings in cold blood. I had a hard time making that fit with all the other things I knew about him." He thought for a moment before going on, "When I was first getting to know him, it seemed that he didn't put a lot of value on himself, the wild risks he'd take. But after a while I began to see that that wasn't the answer—not all of it, anyway. He's not comfortable talking about what he feels, and often he can't find the words, so he uses action to express it, even the most positive ones—loyalty, compassion, friendship, his sense of what's right and just … love."

"That's about the size of it, I guess," Johnny agreed. "If you can keep that in mind… there's a reason I call him compadre viejo, you know, and it's not just about what we did together in New Mexico."

"Thank you," said Slim.

**SR - L - WT**

From an editorial in the Morning Call, Thursday, January 11:

…Once again, as in the troublous days of 1851 and 1856, the citizens of San Francisco have made it clear that there is a point beyond which they will not be pushed…

We are reminded of the sermon given by the Reverend Timothy Dwight Hunt following the execution of the robber Jenkins twenty years ago, in which he observed that "actual incapacity, or gross corruption, on the part of rulers, may sometimes justify, and even require, a people to overthrow and change the administration, or, during the exigency of the times, to take the power into their own hands"—a sentiment not dissimilar to certain phrases found in the Declaration of Independence. "I believe," he continued, "that when notorious offenders go unpunished by the constituted authorities, and there is no time to be lost in a new election, and no hope of a better government if one be chosen, then I cannot censure a people, if having been long and needlessly outraged by a gang of ruffians, they rise in their sovereign majesty, and quietly, and by orderly procedure, seize upon, try, condemn, and execute one, even though they have to set aside the authority they dare not trust with the culprit. It is sometimes necessary to the existence of society thus to be its own lawgiver, judge, and executioner."

Whether the men seized by the mob would indeed have gone unpunished, none can say. Yet that a gang of ruffians was involved in the affair is indisputable, and all San Franciscans are aware that the Barbary Coast, from which these men were drawn, operates in open defiance of the law as it stands written—that indeed there is corruption, and that such corruption will protect its own by any means at hand. The law comes from the people, and in emergencies it must return to them. It is to be hoped that we shall never again need vigilance or safety committees, whether official or spontaneous, but that extreme necessity and passion occasioned the rise of this one is evident.

This newspaper does not condone mob action, yet there are situations in which it is better than any alternative. The city has no need to be put through a lengthy trial, least of all one which may implant doubts in certain minds… Though both the Committees put together hanged only eight men, as against the thirteen who were executed simultaneously yesterday, out of a concourse of thousands, how shall blame be assigned for the actual deaths?... If indeed wrong has been done, the perpetrators' consciences and their God will judge them. The thing is done, let it be ended…

**SR - L - WT**

Friday, January 12

Slim straightened Jess's good ribbon tie, evening the two sides of the bow, and tugged his friend's new embroidered white vest down. "There. That should do it. Now get your jacket and we'll go."

Jess didn't move. "Do I got to do this, Slim?"

The blond chuckled. "Sure you do. You're about to be publicly thanked." At sight of the tic that twitched his friend's cheek, he added, "You'd rather not? You should have thought of that before. If a man goes around doing noble deeds of rescue, he has to expect to be thanked. Besides, it's an Imperial command."

"That's what scares me," Jess confessed, and Slim suddenly realized that he was looking a little wild around the eyes. "He's loco, Slim."

He's thinking of Roney, Slim thought. Blast. Why didn't I see it? "Jess," he said quietly, "there's nothing for you to be afraid of. There are... different degrees of being loco. Some people get violent, like Roney. Some, like Norton, don't. He's perfectly rational, except for believing that he's the Emperor of the United States. You've seen how much the people in this city think of him. And you might have saved his life—since he's not a real emperor, Cullen and his friends could have decided to just kill him once they had their money, so he couldn't describe them later. Even if not, you saved the people of this city a pile of cash and took him out of a bad spot, and he knows that. He knows he owes you, Jess. He wants to do something to settle the score, just like anyone else might."

"You reckon?" Jess still looked worried, but he was thinking; Slim could see it.

"I don't 'reckon,' I know," Slim told him firmly. "Trust me, Jess. You do trust me, don't you?"

"Always," Jess whispered. "With my life, hardcase."

There was a light knock at the door, and Jess flinched. "You two comin'?" came Flint McCullough's voice through the panel. "It's ten till two. We'll be late. Murdoch just took Johnny down." The Lancers had been using the scout's room to get dressed for the ceremony.

"We'll be right along, Flint," Slim assured him. "Go on and wait for us." He crossed to the bed, gathered up Jess's jacket and helped him into it. He'd taken Jess's Stetson to be cleaned and blocked the day before, and fitted the new silver band around the crown; the blue of the Texan's tie almost exactly matched his eyes. Slim himself was wearing his new made-to-measure suit with a pale yellow vest and conservative blue tie that he'd brought from home.

"What do I do?" Jess asked, sounding bewildered and slightly desperate. "I ain't ever been knighted... what do I do, Slim?"

At least he's accepted the idea, Slim thought. "Take a deep breath, first," he replied, "and settle down. Nobody's gonna be surprised if you're a little nervous, just don't take to your heels, all right? Now, when we go into the ballroom, somebody'll likely be there to show us where to stand. Pretend you're back in the army and getting into formation for an inspection. Stand straight and still and wait. Then, when you're called, walk toward the Emperor—and make sure you stay even with Johnny—till you're about six paces from him. Stop, take off your hat, and bow from the waist. He'll probably have some kind of little speech to give. When he's ready to dub you, he'll put his hand on the hilt of his sword and draw it out. Then you move forward to within, say, three feet, go down on one knee and bow your head. He'll tap you on each shoulder with the flat of the blade—not hard, you'll hardly feel it—and that's all there is to it."

"Am I gonna have to say anythin'?" Jess asked. "I ain't good at speeches..."

"No. You don't even have to thank him. As he sees it, he's doing his duty as a conscientious sovereign." He quickly slapped Jess's hand away from his collar as it crept up nervously. "Leave that alone, it's fine."

"It's tight."

"It's supposed to be tight. Come on. You look great, Jess."

**SR - L - WT**

The audience for the dubbing was small. Murdoch Lancer, wearing a good pearl-buttoned shirt and a biscuit-colored waistcoat, a narrow green string tie and a brown corduroy jacket, looking both grim and proud; Miss Essie in a steel-gray cashmere dress with a bustle skirt and a ruche of lace at the neck, her gray felt hat finished off with a white feather, lavender kid gloves clutching a lace-edged, embroidered white handkerchief; Flint McCullough, dressed as he'd been for supper on the second—was it only ten days ago? So much had happened since. There were several reporters, and the hotel manager and his assistant. Slim got Jess properly positioned beside Johnny Lancer, who had found a ruffled white silk shirtwaist and a green velvet Mexican chaqueta for the occasion, with pearl studs descending the shirt's front and a gaily-colored scarf knotted under its collar. He patted his friend's tight shoulder reassuringly and crossed back to stand next to McCullough. "Where's the Major and the others?" he asked quietly.

"They had a ship to catch," Flint replied. "In all the excitement they almost forgot it, till just last night. They had to send their luggage ahead, then be at the dock no later than seven, so they could get aboard for an eight-thirty sailing. They said to give both of you their best wishes, and they'll write."

"Do you think they'll really retire?"

"Not for a minute," said Flint positively. "They'd go crazy inside three months. Most of all in a big Eastern city. Oh, they might do some sightseein', but I'd take any bet that when I get back to St. Joe there'll be a telegram waitin' for me, tellin' me when to expect 'em."

"Is that where you're headed? St. Joe?" Slim asked.

"That's where I'm headed," the scout agreed. "I'll go overland by the southern route, take it slow and easy, stop at the old stage stations that knew me when I was driving. It'll take me a couple of months, but I'll be there well before spring. I've worked for other wagonmasters since the war ended, but you know somethin', noisy as he is, I really think I want to stay with the Major for a while."

Somewhere backstage a door opened, and one of the waiters from the dining room announced: "His Imperial Majesty, Norton the First!"

Slim consciously braced to full attention, but his eyes were on Jess, waiting with Johnny at right angles to him and about ten feet away. The younger man had his poker face on, but his eyes were bright and alert—not with the calculating, shifting unease that meant he thought trouble was coming, but with the quickness of a curious unschooled mind suddenly encountering something that fascinated it. They all waited silently as the waiter stood aside and Norton came through the door in his best blue uniform and feathered hat, a cavalry saber swinging at his side. Ah How followed him, hands tucked into the deep sleeves of his blue brocaded tunic.

Norton paused at the edge of the platform, looking benignly over the small audience and then sideways to the two former gunslingers in their best clothes. He descended the three steps at the end of the stage and took up a position in front of it, at the center. "Ah How, if you will," he said.

The Chinese spoke in a ringing voice quite suited to an emperor's chamberlain. "Candidates will please to approach!"

Jess shot one quick look at Slim, who moved his head an inch or two in an encouraging nod. The Texan swallowed once visibly and limped slowly toward the stage, with Johnny shadowing him three feet to his right. At six paces, as Slim had advised, he stopped, removed his hat and bowed.

Norton extended his hand to Ah How, who removed from his sleeve a roll of thick, creamy vellum, such as Slim had seen the Emperor using to write his proclamation in support of Brigham Young. He passed it to Norton, who held it at arm's length and unrolled it. His voice rang out in the silence as he read:

"Whereas, the criminal element of the Barbary Coast did treasonously and with malice aforethought deprive us of our liberty and attempt to extort from our loyal subjects a ransom for our Imperial person; and,

"Whereas, two courageous young citizens of the Empire, to wit, Jesse Devlin Harper, of the Wyoming Territory, and John Vicente Lancer, of California, did unselfishly risk and imperil their own safety to rescue and preserve us;

"Therefore we, Norton the First, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, do hereby bestow on them the Knighthood of the Order of the Golden Gate;

"And do further proclaim that this day shall henceforward be observed throughout our dominions as Jess Harper and John Lancer Day."

He passed the scroll back to Ah How and prepared to draw his sword. Immediately Jess and Johnny started forward again, and as if they'd been rehearsing it for days, sank down before him, each on one knee, heads lowered; Jess the more awkwardly, cumbered by the rubber bandage still wrapped around the healing joint, but supported by the horn-handled cane Dr. Harthouse had provided.

The saber flashed in the light of the ballroom's chandeliers as Norton gently tapped each young man in turn, first on the left shoulder, then on the right. "I dub you Knights of the Order of the Golden Gate," he said, "and proclaim you nobles for life of the Empire. Rise, Sir Jess. Rise, Sir John." As they obeyed, Ah How produced from his sleeve two more rolls of paper and passed them to his master, who placed one in each man's hand. "Know all men by these presents," Norton declared, "that Sir Jess Harper and Sir John Lancer are hereby confirmed as nobility by Imperial decree… and by the act of Nature."

Jess glanced back over his shoulder at Slim, and received a nod of confirmation: It's okay—you can back off now.

He didn't see Norton wink. But Slim did.

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Note: I could never have written this fic without Tom Cole's A Short History of San Francisco, Robert O'Brien's delightful This Is San Francisco, Charles Caldwell Dobie's San Francisco's Chinatown, Daniel Bacon's Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail, Julia Cooley Altrocchi's The Spectacular San Franciscans, Doris Muscatine's Old San Francisco: The Biography of a City, Herbert Asbury's classic study The Barbary Coast, Rand Richards's Historic Walks in San Francisco and Historic San Francisco, James R. Smith's San Francisco's Lost Landmarks, Mapquest, Wikipedia, San Francisco Block by Block, and Shaping San Francisco's digital archive, a treasure house of historic photographs of the city from its earliest days. Thanks also to Tom Carey at the San Francisco History Center, who assured me that the Monumental Fire Company Building (and presumably its bell) still existed as late as 1880, long after the story would have happened, and to Bill Koenig, of Guardians of the City, who helped me find out about the other firehouses that would have existed at the time. All the buildings, hotels, and other businesses mentioned specifically in the story (except for the Red Rose and the Home Port Restaurant) really existed at the time; some still do. (The Niantic Hotel doesn't: it was replaced by an office building in 1872, some time after Johnny Lancer was there.)

The real Emperor Norton lived for 17 years (1863-80) in a six-by-nine-foot, fifty-cents-a-night room in "the Eureka Lodgings, a flophouse at 624 Commercial Street, between Montgomery and Kearny." But, as my regular readers know, I hold that history in Slim and Jess's Universe wasn't quite the same as in ours. In the classic TV series Broken Arrow (based on the Jimmy Stewart movie and Elliott Arnold novel of the same name), in a very early episode ("The Conspirators," No. 11, airdate 12/18/56), Indian Agent Tom Jeffords (played by John Lupton, who guest-starred twice on Laramie) visits San Francisco and there encounters the Emperor, who is shown living in a very decent hotel suite (probably supposedly donated free of charge by the management for the publicity value of the gesture). I decided to follow that lead, in part so I could introduce him into the story in a more seamless and timely fashion. Apart from this, all the information given about him is historically true, having been gleaned primarily from Peter Moylan's article in the online Encyclopedia of San Francisco (google it and you can read the original yourself) and Wikipedia.

The real Norton did in fact command that a hotelier—William Sharon, who gained ownership of the Palace after Billy Ralston's death—relinquish his property, which, of course, didn't happen. But Norton also felt that laws directed at the Chinese were discriminatory, and commanded in 1870 that their testimony be permitted in the courts. Three years later it was. As mentioned in the story, another of his proclamations, in 1869, directed "that a bridge be constructed from… Oakland Point to Yerba Buena, from thence to the mountain range of Sausalito, and from thence to the Farallones," while a third, of the same year, ordered the filling in of the shoals of Yerba Buena Island (where, many years later, Treasure Island would be created for the Golden Gate Exposition of 1939-40). He called upon other leaders of the world to join him in forming a "League of Nations" in which international disputes could be resolved peacefully. The city continued to observe Christmas according to his imperial commands even after his death. For over twenty years he "ruled," loved by most of his "subjects," and when he died (says Wikipedia), "members of the Pacific Club, a San Francisco businessman's association, established a funeral fund that provided for a handsome rosewood casket and arranged a suitably dignified farewell. Norton's funeral on Sunday, January 10, was solemn, mournful, and large. Paying their respects were members of '...all classes from capitalists to the pauper, the clergyman to the pickpocket, well-dressed ladies and those whose garb and bearing hinted of the social outcast.' Some accounts say as many as 10,000 people lined the streets, and that the funeral cortège was two miles (3 km) long. San Francisco's total population at the time was 230,000. Norton was buried in the Masonic Cemetery, at the expense of the City of San Francisco."

San Francisco's politics were a pretty dirty affair from the Days of '49, with political hacks, corruption, and special-interest favoritism dominating until the 1911 election of James Rolph, Jr., known as "Sunny Jim," who held office for 19 years thereafter. Elections were chaotic affairs, with constant charges and countercharges riddling the city air—a practice not much abated well into the 1970's. Ballot-box stuffing was featured in satirical illustrations in 1850, and as early as the fires of 1850-1, several of which were undoubtedly set, the courts were corrupt and the police force infested with graft. The Vigilante hangings of two "Sydney Ducks" named Whittaker and McKenzie in 1851 frightened corrupt judges and government officials, who began to do their duties with a rare diligence not seen until then. But this situation didn't last long: by '52 government officials developed a system of high salaries and expensive projects with political kickbacks that would drain the city's treasury to near bankruptcy, and by '55 the ballot-box stuffing was so notorious that one writer, looking back from the vantage point of the year 1882, declared that "honest voters… felt that it was but ill-spent time to cast a vote." Very early on the Democratic party split into two camps, the followers of U.S. Senator William Gwin and those of State Senator David Broderick. Their bitter rivalry caused such destruction within the party that it lost the 1855 state election, the only instance that decade in which it failed to win.

The most powerful man in town at this time was Broderick, who was born in Washington, D.C., but lived in New York from age three to twenty-six, and thus had plenty of opportunity to see a political machine in action; he was in fact a former ward heeler there. Moving to California at the start of the Rush, he was instrumental in the formation of a system of volunteer fire companies (which were the heart of the city's Democratic politics, much as they were in New York), became the foreman of Company Number One, showed considerable experience and conspicuous bravery in that capacity, went on to establish himself as an assayer and minter of Mother Lode gold, turned out coins that contained only 80% as much gold as they should have, and used that money to finance his political aspirations. He brought Tammany Hall passion and tactics to San Francisco, became its leading politician, and held tight control over it from 1851 until his death in 1859 (aged 39), with the help of a small cadre of blacklegs, former prizefighters, strong-arm types from Sydney Town, and barroom brawlers. His rule was described as "utterly vicious" and notorious for corruption. At that time certain local elective offices, notably sheriff, tax collector, and assessor, paid no set salary, but incumbents received all or part of the fees, a system that could be worth $50,000 a year. According to his biographer, Jeremiah Lynch, Broderick "would say to the most popular or the most desirable aspirant: 'This office is worth [so much annually]. Keep half and give me the other half, which I require to keep up our organization in the state. Without intelligent, systematic discipline, neither you nor I can win, and our opponents will conquer, unless I have money enough to pay the men whom I may find necessary. If you agree to that arrangement, I will have you nominated when the convention assembles, and then we will all pull together until after the election.'" If the man he approached declined to cooperate (and not many did, for even $25,000 in 1855 was equivalent to $653,485.82 today, and a figure few people ever saw; it would comfortably support a family for a decade), someone else was always willing to go along, and as the city was overwhelmingly Democratic, Broderick seldom had any trouble getting his people into office. By way of these back-room deals he accumulated a large amount of wealth which further strengthened his position as a powerful city boss. Many of the city's laboring men were Irish Catholics and Democrats, and they worshipped him because he had once been one of them; it was they who made him Senator. The bankers and merchants, auctioneers and newspapermen, and other rich and respectable men of the city hated him like poison, and one of his lieutenants, "Dutch Charley" Duane, narrowly escaped being hanged by the vigilantes in 1851 (he fled to Panama for safety).

By 1856 a gross political inefficiency had again turned the municipal government into an agency of corruption: Judge Ned McGowan, who had started out as a policeman in Philadelphia, had later turned to bank robbery, and T. Belcher Kay, appointed Warden of the Port by the Governor, was in fact an escapee from the worst of the Australian prison colonies at Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania); judges, lawyers, politicians, and officeholders, many of whom later formed the ironically named Law and Order faction, had obtained their positions only through the worst violations of the system, one ward inspector having elected his candidate by a third more votes than there were voters in the district. This was among the factors leading to the formation of the Second Committee, which remained in session for nearly three months, working to eliminate the general corruption that was again besetting the city, and succeeded in deporting some thirty of its worst culprits; but Broderick himself, though he had to hide out in the hills for a time during its heyday, remained untouched.

The Vigilantes' backing assured the election of people's reform candidates across the slate in the 1856 contest, which led to a reduction of government operating costs and taxes. They aided in seeking out candidates of higher caliber and saw to it that one respected person in each ward oversaw the election process. For the next several years the People's Party candidates continued to capture most of the municipal offices, and the city experienced (again) an interval of upright government so peaceful that it brought accolades where only a short time before there had been denunciation. Broderick himself was killed in a duel (and, despite his crookedness, became a popular martyr). But during the next ten years or so, partisan differences generated by the 1860 presidential contest, the crises leading to the Civil War and the problems that followed it, and the political machinations of the railroad crowd destroyed the Party and with it the era of good government. By the time Slim and Jess would have visited the city, San Francisco had descended into the political mire from which it had all too briefly emerged, just in time for the rise of one Christopher A. Buckley, the son of an Irish immigrant stonemason, who had arrived with his family in the city in 1862, at the age of sixteen, following his father there. As a young man, he worked as a conductor on the Omnibus Railway Company's North Beach and South Park line. He quickly started bartending through association with impresario Thomas Maguire, builder of the Jenny Lind theaters, at Maguire's Snug Saloon. By the mid-'70's he became a major force for the Democratic Party in San Francisco, influencing state affairs and counseling the President (Grant, who was probably a personally honest man but politically naïve, and given to ignoring the faults of the cronies he appointed to positions of power) on Federal patronage distribution. He was vilified as "what men call a crook" and routinely accused in the newspapers of corruption, bribery, and even felonious crime. He never held public office, but ruled the city's powerful Democratic apparatus in the late 19th century as a so-called "saloon boss," taking over where Broderick had left off and running the city like a giant, scenic protection racket, fattening on kickbacks, bribery, and the money anted up by the gamblers, pimps, and gangsters of its twin ulcers of depravity, Chinatown and the Barbary Coast. It was common knowledge that he took protection money from such notorious figures as "Little Pete," the king of Chinatown crime, so they could stay in business. Honest police officials (and there were always a few) were able to act independently of his criminal influence, but only if they had clear-cut and indisputable evidence; otherwise they risked political consequences. Yet Buckley—known as "Blind Chris" because he'd lost his eyesight around the age of thirty—was also known for charity work and other civic contributions.

In 1877, nationwide labor agitations, often supported by socialist ideology, took on in San Francisco a racist line focused on the Chinese. Brigadier General McComb called for citizens to take action, and a meeting of city businessmen and property owners was chaired by the widely respected William T. Coleman, who had been a prominent participant in the events of 1856. He was unanimously appointed chairman and architect of a third "committee of safety" to assist the civil and military authorities in protecting the lives and property of the citizens. When he petitioned the Secretary of War for the loan of several thousand weapons, they were made available within 24 hours. Within another day, more than 5000 men had organized in drill companies of 100; the number quickly mounted to 9500 volunteers, and the community raised $48,000 for the support of the Committee. Minor skirmishes took place between workingmen and the Chinese, resulting in the burning of several laundries and the murders of two men, but the first—and, as it turned out, only—real violence occurred on July 28, when incendiaries set fire to the lumberyards near the Pacific Mail docks, at which the City of Tokio [sic] lay moored with 138 Chinese migrants aboard. Several people were killed, many more wounded, fighting broke out in other areas, and alarms of fire sounded in several quarters of the city. But the Committee's prompt efforts at quelling the violence relieved the situation considerably within a few days, and it adjourned. Several of the city's bankers offered $100,000 to the municipal government to pay the salaries of an additional police force that would double the size of the existing one, with the stipulation that its members be chosen by the Safety Committee. (Whether the offer was accepted I've been unable to discover, but that it was made at all says something about the state of law enforcement at the time.)

Besides his many financial successes, William Ralston also got skinned in the Great Diamond Hoax that began late in 1871, when two prospectors named Philip Arnold and John Slack walked into his bank with a bag of uncut diamonds and several large rubies, claiming to have found a "great diamond field," the worth of which was eventually estimated at a minimum $50,000,000 ($1,016,969,465.13 in today's money). Not until November of 1872 was the fraud unmasked. His fortune finally crashed, and his Bank of California went bust, in 1875, after a decade of Comstock success; the next day he was found dead in San Francisco Bay under circumstances that remain mysterious. (Many of his assets, including the Palace Hotel and Ralston Hall, were acquired by his partner, William Sharon.)

Laura D. Fair (no relation to "silver king" James Graham Fair) was granted a new trial by the California State Supreme Court in February, 1872, and she was acquitted and freed that September. Lotta Crabtree, born in 1847 and brought to California as a small child, began performing for the '49ers at the age of six. By 1856 she was touring the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys; at 16 she headed East and became a wildly popular favorite in New York City—she might be called the Mary Pickford of her day, since she specialized in juvenile parts throughout her stage career—and by age 28 (some sources say 20) she was touring the nation with her own theatrical company, rather than using local stock ones. She later returned to the Golden State to great acclaim; the references I've discovered mention only visits in 1869 (when she appeared at Ralston's California, as she does here) and 1878, but I decided to give her another one as well.

Into the 1880's dramatic incidents continued to occur in San Francisco, to keep her people reminded that their city wasn't historically far from the frontier. On the evening of May 24, 1872, pretty, popular fifteen-year-old Emma Spohr, the daughter of a corporal stationed at Angel Island, was attending a gala farewell ball for Company H of the 12th Infantry, which was leaving for Nevada, and was shot and killed by First Sergeant Fritz Kimmel as she sat talking a little too merrily with another young soldier. In 1884 M. H. deYoung, co-founder of the Daily Dramatic Chronicle, was shot twice and severely wounded by Adolph B. Spreckels, but survived. (Spreckels was himself shot by an assistant bookkeeper named George Emerson, survived, went to trial for assault with intent to commit murder, pleaded temporary insanity, was acquitted, and went on to a career as a high-ranking official in several corporations.) Thomas Rodundo, nephew of the famous (or should that be infamous?) Joaquin Murieta, was captured at a Morton Street restaurant with two pistols in his belt. There were various "cutting affrays," a furor over cockfighting, a doorkeeper shot and wounded by an angry patron in the dress circle of the Alhambra Theater somewhere between 1868-74, and a wealthy young man very nearly poisoned by his actress mistress in the apartment he had bestowed upon her (she attempted to serve him arsenic in his pre-breakfast nip, but he detected it by a small sip).

The last time a San Francisco mob surged in front of the Broadway Jail and demanded a life was in 1886, 14 years after this story takes place. An 18-year-old art student, Aleck Goldenson, had shot and killed his next-door neighbor, 14-year-old Mamie Kelly, on a public street corner, and surrendered to authorities at City Hall. Two days later, a crowd of 4000 jammed into Metropolitan Hall, on Fifth Street just off Market; twice as many, it was said, couldn't get in and stood in the street and on the steps of the nearby Mint. Before the meeting could even be called to order, someone marched up the aisle waving an eight-foot pole with a hangman's noose at the end of it. "Hang him!" the crowd roared. "Lynch Goldenson!"

Calmer spirits, who had thought the meeting was intended to raise funds for the Kelly family, called vainly for sober consideration of the crime and a legitimate trial under the law. They were shouted down by the crowd, which was soon demanding not only Goldenson's life but those of 25 other prisoners who'd either been convicted of murder or were awaiting trial for it. Other speakers harangued the crowd outside, members of which began suggesting that they find Goldenson's lawyer and string him up too—and take a detour on their way to the jail to hang all the Chinese in Chinatown. A gang of hoodlums seriously plotted the demolition of the jail by means of dynamite bombs.

Soon the mob—estimated at two or three thousand—swarmed out Dupont and Kearny Streets to Broadway, where it promptly came to grips with deputy sheriffs and police. All around the jail stood deputies armed with Martini-Henry rifles (they threw a 485-grain, hollow-based bullet of soft lead, in two different calibers, .452 and .577, and were most effective at 300 yards and under), who had orders from Sheriff Peter Hopkins to shoot to kill, if necessary. The crowd hurled rocks and bricks; the officers responded with flying-wedge tactics and a great flailing of billies. But after three or four hours the crowd grew discouraged and retired with no shots having been fired. Goldenson was tried, and hanged officially just under two years later. This incident, obviously, I adapted for the purposes of this story.

However, the Second Vigilance Committee of 1856, incensed by the murder of newspaper editor James King of William, likewise stormed the very same jail and demanded the editor's killer and a crony of his, Charles Cora, a gambler who'd shot a U.S. Marshal. The Vigilantes claimed between 6000 and 8000 men in their ranks; with only thirty deputies—and presented moreover with a small brass cannon placed just across the street and pointed directly at his facility—Sheriff David Scannell had no alternative, though he was known and respected as a brave and honest man. He handed his prisoners over, and they were duly strung up. And the Martini-Henry, though it entered service in 1871, was used mostly by the British Army, or for big-game hunting by Brits in various parts of the Empire, for most of its history (production ended in 1889), so it's unlikely that the sheriff in the earliest days of '72 would have had any at his disposal. Therefore I've combined the two incidents to give the Emperor's kidnappers very short shrift indeed.

Readers trying to use maps (paper or online) to figure out where things are taking place should be aware that what I've called Dupont Street (because that was its name at the time) is now Grant Avenue; it wasn't renamed till after Ulysses S. Grant's death, and the Chinatown section of it not till after "the Fire" (as it's called in the local language) of 1906.

For those who weren't aware of the fact, James Stacy (who played Johnny Lancer) and Robert Fuller (who, of course, brought Jess Harper to life) were friends in the early days of their careers; according to James Stacy's Web Home, it was Robert who took Jim to an acting class taught by Richard Boone of Have Gun, Will Travel, an experience which convinced Jim that he wanted to be, not a pro football player, but an actor.

Flint McCullough's connection with the Jamison Stage Line is canonically revealed in Wagon Train's third-season opener, "The Stagecoach Story;" since Adams specifically states that the journey by way of it passes through "Tucson… and Apache Pass," I've assumed that it was this universe's equivalent of the Butterfield Overland Mail, and given it the same route. Readers who have already seen "Around the Horn" may guess that the character Belle (played by Angela Greene), who arranges the shanghaiing of Adams, Hawks, and Wooster, is in fact Belle Cullen, getting her revenge. (Lees didn't think to tell them to stay away from the Red Rose…)