mpestuous
fury. Quaint, haphazard buildings made their appearance, strange
architectural mushrooms grown almost over night, clapboarded squares
with paper or muslin partitions for inner walls. Under some the tides
washed at their full and small craft discharged cargoes at their back
doors. Ships came from Boston, Bremen, Sitka, Chile, Mexico, the
Sandwich Islands, bringing all manner of necessities and luxuries.
Monthly mails had been established between San Francisco and San Diego,
as well as intermediate points, and there was talk of a pony express to
Independence, Missouri.

* * * * *

There were many crimes of high and low degree, from rifled tills to dead
men found half buried in the sands. Rumor told of thieves and murderers
encamped in the hollow bowl of a great sandhill, where they slept or
caroused by day, venturing forth only at night. Aleck McTurpin's name
was now and then associated with them as a leader. Men were importing
safes from the States and carrying derringers at night--even the
peaceful Mormons. At this time Governor Mason addressed to Alcalde Hyde
an order for the election of a Town Council.

Adrian was full of these doings when he came home from an executive
session before which he had appeared as an expert on reclamation. "They
are good men, Inez," he declared, enthusiastically. "They'll bring law
to San Francisco. And law is what we need more than all else, my dear."

"And how will they go about it, with no prison-house, no courts or
judges?" asked Inez, wonderingly.

"Oh, those will soon be provided," he assured, "When there is a will for
law the machinery comes." He smiled grimly. "McTurpin and his ilk had
better look to themselves.... We are going after the gamblers."

[Illustration:
Men with shovels, leveling the sand-hills, piled the wagons high with
shimmering grains which were dumped into pile-surrounded bogs. San
Francisco reached farther and farther out into the bay.]

CHAPTER XVI

GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!

San Francisco never could remember when the first rumor of gold reached
it. Gold was to mean its transformation from a struggling town into a
turbulent, riotous city, a mecca of the world's adventurers.

Benito Windham, early in the spring of '48 brought home an echo of it
from San Jose. One of Sutter's teamsters had exchanged a little pouch of
golden grains for a flask of aguardiente. Afterward he had told of
finding it in the tail-race of M