To Bill that tide meant so much business; and he was not the man to grudge his friend Smith a share of it.  When the fog crept in through the Golden Gate—­a gate which might never be closed against it—­the tide of business would set towards his place, just as surely as the ocean tide would clamor 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 generosity.  “You might better be making that bunk over, m’son, than trying to take the whole blamed town apart and put it together again, like you was doing last night.”  In this way Bill tactfully swung to the subject that lay heavy on his mind.