CHAPTER XXVII
POLITICS AND A WARNING
Benito Windham rose reluctantly and stretched himself. It was very comfortable in the living-room of the ranch house, where a fire crackled in the huge stone grate built by his grandfather's Indian artisans. Many of the valuable tapestries imported from Spain had been removed by McTurpin during his tenure, but even bare adobe walls were cheerful in the light of blazing logs, and rugs of native weave accorded well with the simple mission furniture. In a great chair that almost swallowed her sat Alice, gazing dreamily into the embers. Family portraits hung upon the wall, and one of these, stiff and haughty in the regimentals of a soldado de cuero, seemed to look down upon the domestic picture with a certain austere benignity. This was the painting of Francisco Garvez of hidalgo lineage, who had stood beside Ortega, the Pathfinder, when that honored scout of Portola had found the bay of San Francisco and the Golden Gate.
"Carissima, how he would have loved you, that old man!" Benito's tone was dreamy.
Alice Windham turned. "You are like him, Benito," she said fondly. "There is the same flash in your eye. Come, sit for awhile by the fire. It's so cosy when it storms."
Benito kissed her. "I would that I might, but today there is an election in the city," he reminded. "I must go to vote. Perhaps I can persuade the good Broderick to dine with us this evening; or Brannan--though he is so busy nowadays. Often I look about unconsciously for Nathan Spear. It seems impossible that he is dead."
"He was 47, but he seemed so young," commented Alice. She rose hastily. "You must be very careful, dear," she cautioned, with a swift anxiety, "of the cold and wet--and of the hoodlums. They tell me there are many. Every week one reads in the Alta that So-and-So was killed at the Eldorado or the Verandah. Never more than that. In my home in the East they would call it murder. There would be a great commotion; the assassin would be hanged."
"Ah, yes; but this is a new country," he said, a little lamely.
"Will there never be law in San Francisco?" Alice asked him, passionately. "I have not forgotten--how my father died."