verdure of sandy meadows. In a distant grove a score of
Indian tepees raised their cone shapes to the sky; lazy plumes of
blue-white smoke curled upward. Canoes, rafts of tules, skillfully bound
together, carried dark-skinned natives over wind-tossed waters, the ends
of their double paddles flashing in the sun.

"One may not know the ways of God." Ortega spoke a trifle bruskly. "What
is plain to me is that we cannot journey farther. This estero cuts our
path in two. And in three days we cannot circle it to reach the Contra
Costa. We must return and make report to the commander."

He wheeled and shouted a command to his troopers. The cavalcade rode
south but young Francisco turning in the saddle cast a farewell glance
toward the shining bay. "Port O' Gold!" he whispered raptly, "some day
men shall know your fame around the world!"

PORT O' GOLD

CHAPTER I

YERBA BUENA

It was 1845. Three quarters of a century had passed since young
Francisco Garvez, as he rode beside Portola's chief of Scouts, glimpsed
the mystic vision of a city rising from the sandy shores of San
Francisco Bay.

Garvez, so tradition held, had taken for his spouse an Indian maiden
educated by the mission padres of far San Diego. For his service as
soldado of old Spain he had been granted many acres near the Mission of
Dolores and his son, through marriage, had combined this with another
large estate. There a second generation of the Garvez family had looked
down from a palatial hacienda upon spreading grain-fields, wide-reaching
pastures and corrals of blooded stock. They had seen the Mission era wax
and wane and Mexico cast off the governmental shackles of Madrid. They
had looked askance upon the coming of the "Gringo" and Francisco Garvez
II, in the feebleness of age, had railed against the destiny that gave
his youngest daughter to a Yankee engineer. He had bade her choose
between allegiance to an honored race and exile with one whom he termed
an unknown, alien interloper. But in the end he had forgiven, when she
chose, as is the wont of women, Love's eternal path. Thus the Garvez
rancho, at his death became the Windham ranch and there dwelt Dona Anita
with her children Inez and Benito, for her husband, "Don Roberto"
Windham lingered with an engineering expedition in the wilds of Oregon.

Just nineteen was young Benito, straight and slim, combining in his
fledgling soul the austere heritage of Anglo-Saxons with the leaping
fires of Cast