“And why’ll it fail, my young jackanapes?” the gambler blazed at him.  “Do you reckon I’ll let you go to give the alarm?”

It was then Benito threw his bombshell.  It was but a shrewd guess.  Yet it worked amazingly.  “Your plan will fail,” he said with slow distinctness, “because Sam Brennan and Alcalde Geary know you set the town afire.  Because they’re going to hang you.”

Rage and terror mingled in McTurpin’s face.  Speechless, paralyzing wrath that held him open-mouthed a moment.  In that moment Windham acted quickly.  He hurled the bottle, still half full of ale, at his antagonist, missed him by the fraction of an inch and sent the missile caroming against the Bruiser’s ear, thence down among a pyramid of glasses.  There was a shivering tinkle; then the roar as of a maddened bull.  The Bruiser charged.  Windham shot twice into the air and fled.  He heard a rending crash behind him, a voice that cried aloud in mortal pain, a shot.  Then, silence.

CHAPTER XXX

“Growing pains”

On the morning of February 28, 1850, Theodore Shillaber, with a number of friends, made a visit to the former’s leased land on the Rincon, later known as Rincon Hill.  Here, on the old government reserve, whose guns had once flanked Yerba Buena Cove, Shillaber had secured a lease on a commanding site which he planned to convert into a fashionable residence section.  What was his surprise, then, to find the scenic promontory covered with innumerable rickety and squalid huts.  A tall and muscular young fellow with open-throated shirt and stalwart, hirsute chest, swaggered toward him, fingering rather carelessly, it seemed to Shillaber, the musket he held.

“Lookin’ for somebody, stranger?” he inquired, meaningly.

Shillaber, somewhat taken aback, inquired by what right the members of this colony held possession.

“Squatter’s rights,” returned the large youth, calmly, and spat uncomfortably near to Shillaber’s polished boots.

“And what are squatter’s rights, may I ask?” said Shillaber, striving to control his rising temper.

The youth tapped his rifle barrel.  “Anyone that tries to dispossess us’ll soon find out,” he returned gruffly, and, turning his back on the visitors, he strode back toward his cabin.

“Wait,” called Shillaber, red with wrath, “I notify you now, in the presence of witnesses that if you and all your scurvy crew are not gone bag and baggage within twentyfour hours, I’ll have the authorities dispossess you and throw you into jail for trespassing.”

The large young man halted and presented a grinning face to his threatener.  He did not deign to reply, but, as though he had given a signal, shrill cackles of laughter broke out in a dozen places.

Shillaber, who was a choleric man, shook his fist at them.  He was too angry for speech.