CHAPTER XXV
RETRIEVING A BIRTHRIGHT
Benito Windham stole from his dwelling, closing the door softly after him so Alice, his wife, might not wake. A faint rose dawn colored the Contra Costa ridge. From a few of the huts and larger buildings which sprinkled San Francisco's hills and hollows so haphazardly, curls of blue white wood smoke rose into the windless air. Here and there some belated roisterer staggered toward his habitation. But otherwise all was still, quicscent. San Francisco slept.
It was the morning of December 24, 1849--the first Christmas eve following the gold rush. Windham, who had lain awake since midnight, pondered upon this and other things. Events had succeeded each other with such riotous activity of late that life seemed more like a dream than a reality. His turbulent months at the mines, his high preliminary hopes of fortune, their gradual waning to a slow despair; the advent of James Burthen and his daughter; then love, his partner's murder and the girl's abduction; his pursuit and illness. Alice's rescue and their marriage; his return to find the claim covered with snow; finally a clerical post in San Francisco.
A sudden distaste for the feverish, riotous town assailed him--a longing for the peace and beauty of those broad paternal acres he had lost upon the gaming table wrenched his heart.
He pictured Alice in the old rose patio, where his American father had wooed his Spanish mother.
Involuntarily his steps turned eastward. At Sacramento and Leidesdorff streets he left solid ground to tread a four-foot board above the water, to the theoretical line of Sansome street; thence south upon a similar foothold to the solid ground of Bush street, where an immense sand-*hill with a hollow in its middle, like a crater, struck across the path. Some called this depression Thieves Hollow, for in it deserting sailors, ticket-of-leave men from Botany Bay prison colony and all manner of human riff-raff consorted for nefarious intrigue.
Benito, mounting the slope, looked down at a welter of tents, shacks, deck houses and galleys of wrecked ships. He had expected their occupants to be asleep, for they were nighthawks who reversed man's usual order in the prosecution of nocturnal and ill-favored trades. He was astonished to note a general activity. At the portholes of dwellings retrieved from the wreck of the sea, unkempt bearded faces stared; smoke leaped from a dozen rickety, unstable chimneys, and in the open several groups of men and women plied frying pans and coffee pots over driftwood fires.
Benito observed them with a covert interest. A black-browed man with a shaggy beard and something leonine about him, seemed the master of the chief of this godless band. He moved among them, giving orders, and with two companions finally ascended to the top. Benito, concealing himself behind a scrub oak, watched them, animatedly conversing, as they descended and picked their way inland toward the Square. So swift their movements and so low their tones he could not make out the tenor of their discourse. He caught the words, "like tow," but that was all. Musingly, he went on.
Up the broad and muddy path to Market street, thence west again to Third, he made his way. Now south to Mission and once more west, a favored route for caballeros. Benito had never traveled it before afoot. But his horse had succumbed to the rigors of that frantic ride in pursuit of Alice and McTurpin several months ago. Mounts were a luxury now.
He skirted the edge of a lagoon that stretched from Sixth to Eighth streets and on the ascent beyond observed a tiny box-like habitation, brightly painted, ringed with flowers and crowned with an imposing flagpole from which floated the Star-Spangled Banner. It was a note of gay melody struck athwart the discordant monotony of soiled tent houses, tumble-down huts and oblong, flat-roofed buildings stretching their disorderly array along the road. Coming closer he saw the name, "Pipesville," printed on the door, and knew that this must be the "summer home," as it was called, of San Francisco's beloved minstrel, Stephen Massett, otherwise "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville," singer, player, essayist and creator of those wondrous one-man concerts dear to all the countryside.
"Jeems" himself appeared in the doorway to wave a greeting and Benito went on oddly cheered by the encounter. In front of the Mansion House, adjoining Mission Dolores, stood Bob Ridley, talking with his partner.
"You look warm, son," he remarked paternally to Windham, "let me mix you up a milk punch and you'll feel more like yourself. Where's your boss and whither are ye bound?"
"Died," Benito answered. "Going to my--to the ranch."
"Thought so," Ridley said. "I hear there's no one on it. Why not steal a march on that tin-horn gambler and scallawag. Rally up some friends and take possession. That's nine points of the law, my boy, and a half-dozen straight-shooting Americans is nine hundred more, now that Geary's alcalde and that weak-kneed psalm-singing Leavenworth's resigned under fire."
"You're sure--there's no one at the place?" Benito questioned.
"Pretty sure. But what's it matter? Everybody knows it's yours by rights. Wait," he cried, excitedly. "I'll get horses. Stuart and I will go along. We'll pick up six or seven bully boys along the way. Is it a go?"
"A go!" exclaimed Benito, his eyes ashine. "You--you're too good, Bob Ridley." He pressed the other's hand. "My wife," he mused, "among the roses in the patio! The old home, Dear God! Let it come true!"
An hour later ten men galloped through the gate of the Windham rancho. No one offered them resistance. It had the look of a place long abandoned. Dead leaves and litter everywhere. All of the animals had been driven off--sold, no doubt. The hacienda had been ransacked of its valuables. It was almost bare of furniture. The rose court, neglected, unkempt, brought back a surge of memories. A chimney had fallen; broken adobe bricks lay scattered on the grass.
But to Benito it spelled home. For him and for Alice. This should be his Christmas gift. Old Antonio, his former major-domo, lingered still in San Francisco. He would send him out this very day to set the place in order. Tomorrow he and Alice would ride--his brow clouded. He should have to borrow two horses. No matter. Tomorrow they would ride--
A startled exclamation from Bob Ridley roused him from his rhapsody.
"Benito, come here! Look! What the devil is that?"
From their eminence the town of San Francisco was plainly visible; tall, thin shafts of smoke rising straight and black from many chimneys; the blue bay shimmering in the morning sunshine; the curious fretwork shadows of that great flotilla of deserted ships. But there was something more; something startlingly unnatural; a great pillar of black vapor--beneath it a livid red thing that leaped and grew.
"Good God! The town's afire!" cried Benito.
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