Part 12

"We--we must go," I stammered, "it's getting very late." The Bostonian looked at his watch. "Not three o'clock yet." He leaned back comfortably. "You ought to be interested in this. Your grandfather was a forty-niner."

I looked at him searchingly. I ought to be interested! I, who cherished every memory of pioneer days! I, who had bitten my lips a dozen times that afternoon, and was glorying in the tact and strength of mind which had avoided this period of our history!

The miner, apparently aware of my presence for the first time, sent me a piercing glance from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. "So your grandfather--"

"He wasn't exactly a forty-niner," I acknowledged. "He arrived outside the Heads the night of December thirty-first but there was a heavy fog and the vessel didn't get inside until the next morning."

"Hard luck," sympathized the old man, "coming near to being a forty-niner and missing it."

"But it's practically the same thing," persisted the Bostonian. "Only a few hours."

"The same thing!" scornfully repeated the miner. "There's as much difference as between Christmas and Fourth of July. A forty-niner's a forty-niner, and a man that came in fifty--well, he might as well have come in sixty or seventy, or even in the twentieth century. It's the forty-niner that counts in this community." He drew himself up proudly. Then plunging his hand deep into his pocket, drew out a nugget.

"Picked that up off my first claim," he explained, "but the dirt didn't pan out so well. I've carried it in my pocket all these years, just for the sentiment of the thing, I suppose. Many a time I was tempted to throw it on a table in the El Dorado, but I hung on to it."

"The El Dorado?" questioned the Easterner.

"Yes, one of the big gambling places here on the Plaza. Everybody took a chance in those days, even some of the preachers. You met all your friends there, and heard the best music and the latest news."

"Did they gamble with nuggets?" my companion led the old man on.

"Well, I guess they did! and gold dust in piles. The few children in town used to pan out the dirt of the Plaza in front of the Temples of Chance every morning after the places were swept out. The Californians put up parts of their ranchos, too, sometimes."

"How high did the stakes run?" Evidently this descendant of the Pilgrims had not lost all the sporting blood of his earlier English ancestors.

"Often as high as five hundred or a thousand dollars. The largest stake I ever saw change hands was forty-five thousand. Many a miner went back to the placers in the spring without a dollar in his pockets. But everybody was doing it and you could almost count the nationalities in the crowd around the table by the kinds of coins in the stacks. There were French francs, English crowns, East Indian rupees, Spanish pesos and United States dollars. The dress was as different as the money. We miners wore red and blue shirts, slouch hats and wide belts to carry our dust. The Californians were gorgeous in coats trimmed in gold lace, short pantaloons and high deer-skin boots, and the Chinese ran a close second in their colored brocaded silks. You knew the professional gamblers by their long black coats and white linen--real gentlemen, many of 'em and the most honest in the country.

"Ever see a picture of the Plaza in forty-nine," he asked abruptly.

"Never."

The miner drew a square on the gravel path with his stick. "The El Dorado was here, the Veranda here and the Bella Union here," he said, punching holes on the three corners of Kearny and Washington. "They were the finest and they had the best locations in town. The El Dorado paid forty thousand dollars a year for a tent and twenty-five thousand a month for a building on the same site later." The end of his stick deepened the hole on the southeast corner.

My eyes wandered from the plan to the real location. "Why, there is the name 'Veranda' over there now," I exclaimed as the black letters on a white awning caught my eye.

"Yes, it is pretty near the old site, but it's a poor substitute for its predecessor," he added scornfully. "There was great style in those days --fine bars, lots of glass and mirrors and pictures worth thousands of dollars. The doors were always open from eleven in the morning 'til daylight the next morning, and a steady stream of people were pouring in and out all the time. Everybody was there. There weren't no special inducement to stay home nights, when your residence was a bunk on the wall of a shanty and the fellers over you and under you and across the room weren't even acquaintances. I got a pretty good room after awhile in the Parker House"--he drew a small oblong south of the El Dorado-- "for a hundred dollars a week, but I didn't stay long."

"I should think not--at that price."

"Oh, it wasn't the price. One of my friends paid two hundred and fifty. But you see it got pretty warm at the Parker House, that Christmas eve, and so we all moved. They cleared away the hot ashes of the hotel and built the Jenny Lind Theatre on the spot. That was the first big fire. We had them right along after that, every few weeks. Six big ones in eighteen months, with lots' of little ones in between."

"Then the last fire wasn't a new experience for you," the Bostonian suggested.

"Lord, no! Rebuilding was a habit with us early San Franciscans. We didn't begin to feel sorry for a man 'til he'd lost everything he owned three times. The Jenny Lind Theatre went down six times and the seventh building was sold for the City Hall. It stood right there"--he pointed to the handsome new Hall of Justice--"until it went up in the last fire."

"You are sure it wasn't the earthquake that finished it?" inquired the skeptic.

"Certainly not," I flared. "The Relief Committee met there that morning to lay their plans while the fires were raging south of Market Street."

He acknowledged defeat by changing the subject. "Was the old Spanish Custom House here?" he asked, pointing to the western side of the diagram.

"Yes," assented the miner, and he traced an oblong on the northern end, "and just behind it, on Washington Street, was Sam Brannan's house. He was the Mormon leader, you know, and brought a shipload of his followers to establish a settlement in forty-six. He published our first newspaper, the 'California Star,' in his house."

"Was it where that little green Chinese building with the bracketed columns and turned-up eaves is?" I interposed.