Shillaber had more than his peck of trouble with the Sydney Ducks that roosted on his land.  He sent the town authorities to dispossess them, but without result.  There were too many squatters and too few police.  Next he sent an agent to collect rents, but the man returned with a sore head and bruised body, minus coin.  Shillaber was on the verge of insanity.  He appealed to everyone from the prefect to the governor.  In Sydney Town his antics were the sport of a gay and homogeneous population and at the public houses one might hear the flouted landlord rave through the impersonations of half a dozen clever mimics.  At The Broken Bottle a new boniface held forth.  Bruiser Jake had mysteriously disappeared on the evening of election.  And with him had vanished Alec McTurpin, though a sly-eyed little man now and then brought messages from the absent leader.

In the end Shillaber triumphed, for he persuaded Captain Keyes, commander at the Presidio, that the squatters were defying Federal law.  Thus, one evening, a squad of cavalry descended upon the Rincon squatters, scattering them like chaff and demolishing their flimsy habitations in the twinkling of an eye.  But this did not end squatterism.  Some of the evicted took up claims on lots closer in.  A woman’s house was burned and she, herself, was driven off.  Another woman was shot while defending her husband’s home during his absence.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s streets had been graded and planked.  The old City Hall, proving inadequate, was succeeded by a converted hotel.  The Graham House, a four-story wooden affair of many balconies, at Kearny and Pacific streets, was now the seat of local government.

For it the council paid the extraordinary sum of $150,000, thereby provoking a storm of newspaper discussion.  Three destructive fires had ravaged through the cloth and paper districts, and on their ashes more substantial structures stood.

There was neither law nor order worthy of the name.  Only feverish activity.  A newsboy who peddled Altas on the streets made $40,000 from his operations; another vendor of the Sacramento Union, boasted $30,000 for his pains.  A washerwoman left her hut on the lagoon and built a “mansion.”  Laundering, enhanced by real estate investments, had given her a fortune of $100,000.

Social strata were not yet established.  Caste was practically unknown.  Former convicts married, settled down, became respected citizens.  Carpenters, bartenders, laborers, mechanics from the East and Middle West, became bankers, Senators, judges, merchant princes and promoters.

White linen replaced red flannel, bowie knives and revolvers were sedately hidden beneath frock coats, the vicuna hat was a substitute for slouch and sombrero.

But, under it all, the fierce, restless heart of San Francisco beat on unchanged.  In it stirred the daring, the lawless adventure, the feverish ambition and the hair-trigger pride of argonauts from many lands.  And in it burned the deviltry, brutality, licentiousness and greed of criminal elements freed from the curb of legal discipline.