"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 Marshall's mill on the south fork of the
American River.
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