"Lord help us if it ever starts to burn. Even our drinking
water comes from Sausalito across the Bay."
CHAPTER XXV
RETRIEVING A BIRTHRIGHT
Benito Windham stole from his dwelling, closing the door softly after
him so Alice, his wife, might not wake. A faint rose dawn colored the
Contra Costa ridge. From a few of the huts and larger buildings which
sprinkled San Francisco's hills and hollows so haphazardly, curls of
blue white wood smoke rose into the windless air. Here and there some
belated roisterer staggered toward his habitation. But otherwise all was
still, quicscent. San Francisco slept.
It was the morning of December 24, 1849--the first Christmas eve
following the gold rush. Windham, who had lain awake since midnight,
pondered upon this and other things. Events had succeeded each other
with such riotous activity of late that life seemed more like a dream
than a reality. His turbulent months at the mines, his high preliminary
hopes of fortune, their gradual waning to a slow despair; the advent of
James Burthen and his daughter; then love, his partner's murder and the
girl's abduction; his pursuit and illness. Alice's rescue and their
marriage; his return to find the claim covered with snow; finally a
clerical post in San Francisco.
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