Ensenada Rose’s eyes looked into Brannan’s, with a note of challenge her chin went up.  “Quien sabe?” she retorted.  Brannan watched the slender, graceful figure vanish through the lighted door.  In her trail the gambler and bartender followed.  Presently a burst of music issued from the groggery; a tap-tap-tap of feet in rhythm to the click of castanets.  Already the tragedy was forgotten.  Brannan found himself face to face with the sailor.  “I’ll help you carry him—­somewhere,” he said.  He raised the dead man’s shoulders from the ground, and Brannan, following his suggestion, took the other end of the grim burden, which they bore to the City Hotel.  Brannan, in the presence of Alcalde Hyde, searched Burthen’s clothing for the plan which Rosa had described.  But they did not find it; only a buckskin bag with a few grains of gold-dust at the bottom, a jackknife, a plug of tobacco, a scratched daguerreotype of a young girl with corkscrew curls and friendly eyes.

* * * * *

Next evening Nathan Spear chanced in to see the Stanleys.  “Sam Brannan’s gone,” he told them.  “Said he’d let you know about Benito.  And here’s a letter from Alcalde Colton of Monterey—­who’s at the gold-fields now.”

“Has he seen my brother?” Inez questioned, eagerly.

Spear began to read:  “Young Benito Windham has been near here for a fortnight.  I am told, without much luck, He had to sell his horse and saddle, for the price of living is enormous; finally he paired off with a man named Burthen—­strapping, bearded Kansan with a little daughter, about 17.  They struck a claim, and Burthen’s on the way to San Francisco for supplies.  I’ll tell you more when I have seen the lad and had a talk with him.  The girl, I understand, was keeping house for them.  A pretty, wistful little thing, they tell me, so I’d better keep an eye on Friend Benito.”

“Have you seen this Burthen?  Is he here?” asked Stanley.

“He was robbed—­and killed last night at the Eldorado.”

“Sanctissima!” cried the girl, and crossed herself.  “Then the little one’s an orphan.  And Benito—­”

“Her guardian, no doubt.”

Spear laughed.  “He writes that a miner gave $24 in gold-dust for a box of seidlitz powders; another paid a dollar a drop for laudanum to cure his toothache.  Flour is $400 per barrel, whisky $20 for a quart bottle, and sugar $4 a pound.  ‘It’s a mad world, my masters,’ as Shakespeare puts it, but a golden one.  By and by this wealth will flow into your coffers down in San Francisco.  Just now there is little disturbance, but it is bound to come.  Several robberies and shootings have already taken place.  There is one man whom I’d call an evil genius—­a gambler, a handsome ruffian and a dead shot, so they tell me.  It’s rumored that he has a fancy for the little Burthen girl.  Lord save her!  Perhaps you know the rascal, for he hails, I understand, from San Francisco, one Alexander McTurpin.”