The Lure of San Francisco Part 6

"Yes, it was poorly fortified, and the Californians had known for some time that Mexico was losing its hold, so the event was not unexpected.

But there was no flag to pull down for the receiver of customs, realizing that resistance was useless, had packed the Mexican flag in a trunk with his official papers for safe keeping, so without opposition General Montgomery marched with seventy men accompanied by fife and drum from the waterfront to the Plaza, and raised the Stars and Stripes on the vacant flag pole. Thus the country came into the possession of the Americans and our historic pilgrimage is at an end," I concluded, rising.

But my companion seemed loath to leave the place. We sauntered by dark-eyed Italian girls lolling on the benches, s.h.a.ggy bearded old sailors, whose scarred faces told of fierce battles with the elements, and stopped to examine the plaster casts presented for our inspection by a weary-eyed street vender. At a distance, a laughing gypsy girl in a white waist and much beruffled red plaid skirt was enticing the crowd to cross her hand with silver that she might tell their fortunes.

"What need have we for gypsies?" he demanded pulling me down on a bench.

"I'll, read your palm."

"Can you tell fortunes?" I questioned as I drew off my glove.

"I can tell yours," he declared straightening out my fingers in his big strong hand, and examining the lines.

"He's a tall dark man, wearing gla.s.ses--"

Instinctively I looked up into the uncovered brown eyes, then dropped mine in confusion as I met his laughing gaze.

"Only when he reads," added the Bostonian, holding on to my fingers, as I tried to withdraw my hand.

An angry voice broke the silence and we sprang to our feet to see an old man shaking his fist in the face of a young Irish policeman.

"You let me alone!" he shouted. "You let me alone!"

For a moment the officer hesitated. Then he seized the old man by the collar. "Come along quietly! There ain't no use making a howl. There's a vagrancy law in this city and I'll show you it ain't to be sniffed at.

I've been watching you ever since I've been on this beat and you ain't done nothing but sit around this Plaza."

"And ain't I a right to sit 'round this Plaza?" The man pulled himself free and again defied the officer of the law with a clenched fist.

"Didn't I help make it? When you were playing with a rattle in your crib over in Dublin, I was a-stringing up a man to the eaves of the old Custom House over there on the corner. And now you try to arrest me--me a Vigilante of '51--" His fury choked him, and with a quick turn of the hand, the officer again had him by the collar. But the old man wrenched himself loose.

"You keep your hands off me." He raised his angry voice in warning. Then drawing a bundle of papers from his pocket he thrust them into the officer's face. "Look at that--and that--and that--biggest business blocks in San Francisco. If I choose to wear a loose s.h.i.+rt and sit 'round the Plaza it isn't any business of yours. In the good old days of forty-nine--"

I touched the Bostonian on the arm. "Let's go to the Exposition," I suggested. "We've seen everything here."

"There's no need to hurry! We've all the afternoon before us." He edged a little closer to the old man, about whom a crowd was gathering.

"In the good old days of forty-nine," rang out again and I glanced nervously at my companion. "We didn't have any dipper-dapper policemen making mistakes." He snapped his fingers in the officer's face. "We had good red-s.h.i.+rted miners who knew their business."

The policeman moved uneasily and handed back the papers. "I guess they're all right," he acknowledged. "The law doesn't seem to touch you."

"Touch me! Well, I guess not!" The officer moved off and the old man returned to his bench. Before I realized my companion's intention, we were seated beside the miner. He was still muttering maledictions on the head of the Irish policeman.

"The scoundrel!" He dug his stick into the gravel path. "Had the nerve to arrest me! Me, who strung up Jenkins in the first Vigilante Committee, and Casey and Cora in the second."

"You must have come here in early days," remarked the Bostonian.

"Early days," echoed the miner, "well, I guess I did. I'm a forty-niner." He straightened himself proudly and looked to see the effect of his words.

"I think we had better go." Again I touched the Antiquary's arm but he gave no heed to my signal.

"There must have been some stirring times here in the days of the gold rush."

"You bet there were," agreed the forty-niner, "and the entire history of San Francisco was made around this Plaza. Here were built the first hotel, the first school-house, the first bank; within a stone's throw the first Protestant sermon was preached, the first newspaper was printed and the first post office was opened. It was through the Plaza that Sam Brannan ran with a bottle of yellow dust in one hand, waving his hat with the other and shouting, 'Gold! gold! from the American River!' It was here that the big gambling houses sprang up, where fortunes were made and lost in a night, and here the first Vigilance Committee met and executed justice." The old man paused for breath.

I was on the edge of the bench ready for flight. All my good work of the last two days was rapidly being undermined. I heard again the skeptic's contemptuous tone of yesterday. "It's either before the fire" or "in the good old days of forty-nine."

"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 s.h.a.ggy 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 s.h.i.+rts, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton. "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 subst.i.tute for its predecessor," he added scornfully. "There was great style in those days --fine bars, lots of gla.s.s 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.