at the rocky wall out there to the west. In
the meantime, he was not loath to spend a quiet hour or two with an
empty gaming hall at his back.

His eyes went incuriously over the familiar crowd to the little forest
of flag-foliaged masts that told where lay the ships in the bay below
the town. Bill could not name the nationality of them all; for the
hunting call had reached to the far corners of the earth, and
strange flags came fluttering across strange seas, with pirate-faced
adventurers on the decks below, chattering in strange tongues of
California gold. Bill could not name all the flags, but he could name
two of the bonds that bind all nations into one common humanity. He
could produce one of them, and he was each night gaining more of the
other; for, be they white men or brown, spoke they his language or
one he had never heard until they passed through the Golden Gate, they
would give good gold for very bad whisky.

Even the Digger Indians, squatting in the sun beside his door and
gazing stolidly at the town and the bay beyond, would sell their
souls--for which the gray-gowned padres prayed ineffectively in the
chapel at Dolores--their wives or their other, dearer possessions for
a very little bottle of the stuff that was fast undoing the civilizing
work of the Mission. The padres had come long before the hunting cry
was raised, and they had labored earnestly; but their prayers and
their preaching were like reeds beneath the tread of elephants, when
gold came down from the mountains, and whisky came in through the
Golden Gate.

Jack Allen, coming lazily down through the long, deserted room, edged
past Bill in the doorway.

"Hello," Bill greeted with a carefully casual manner, as if he had
been waiting for the meeting, but did not want Jack to suspect the
fact. "Up for all day? Where you headed for?"

"Breakfast--or dinner, whichever you want to call it. Then I'm going
to take a walk and get the kinks out of my legs. Say, old man, I'm
going to knock a board off the foot of that bunk, to-night, or else
sleep on the floor. Was wood scarce, Bill, when you built that bed?"

"Carpenter was a little feller," chuckled Bill, "and I guess he
measured it by himself. Charged a full length price, though, I
remember! I meant to tell you when you hired that room, Jack, that
you better take the axe to bed with you. Sure, knock a board off;
two boards, if you like. Take _all_ the boards off!" urged Bill, in
a burst of gen