Dade shrugged his shoulders and painstakingly smoothed the hair tassel
which dangled from the browband. The Spaniard had owned a fine eye for
effect when he chose jet black trappings for Surry, who was white to
his shining hoofs.

"All right; I'll put him in somewhere till after dinner. Then I'm
going to pull out again. I can't stand this hell-pot of a town--not
after the Picardo hacienda."

"I wonder," grinned Jack slyly, "if there isn't a senorita at Palo
Alto?"

He got no answer of any sort. Dade was combing with his fingers the
crinkled mane which fell to the very chest of his new horse, and if he
heard he made no betraying sign.

CHAPTER II

THE VIGILANTES

Bill Wilson came to the door of his saloon and stood with his hands
on his hips, looking out upon the heterogeneous assembly of virile
manhood that formed the bulk of San Francisco's population a year or
two after the first gold cry had been raised. Above his head flapped
the great cloth sign tacked quite across the rough building, heralding
to all who could read the words that this was BILL WILSON'S PLACE.
A flaunting bit of information it was, and quite superfluous; since
practically every man in San Francisco drifted towards it, soon or
late, as the place where the most whisky was drunk and the most gold
lost and won, with the most beautiful women to smile or frown upon the
lucky, in all the town.

The trade wind knew that Bill Wilson's place needed no sign save its
presence there, and was loosening a corner in the hope of carrying it
quite away as a trophy. Bill glanced up, promised the resisting cloth
an extra nail or two, and let his thoughts and his eyes wander
again to the sweeping tide of humanity that flowed up and down the
straggling street of sand and threatened to engulf the store which men
spoke of simply as "Smith's."

A shipload of supplies had lately been carted there, and miners
were feverishly buying bacon, beans, "self-rising" flour, matches,
tea--everything within the limits of their gold dust and their
carrying capacity--which they needed for hurried trips to the hills
where was hidden the gold they dreamed of night and day.

To Bill that tide meant so much business; and he was not the man to
grudge his friend Smith a share of it. When the fog crept in through
the Golden Gate--a gate which might never be closed against it--the
tide of business would set towards his place, just as surely as the
ocean tide would clamor