Inez and Alice were returning from church on Sunday, July 15 when they encountered a strange, unsabbatical procession; a company of grim and tight-lipped citizens marching, rifles over shoulder toward the Bay. At their head was William Spofford. Midway of the parade were a dozen rough-appearing fellows, manacled and guarded. Among these Inez recognized Sam Roberts, gaunt and bearded leader of the hoodlum band known as The Hounds or Regulars. From Little Chili, further to the north and west, rose clouds of smoke; now and then a leaping tongue of flame.
Presently Benito, musket at shoulder, came marching by and Inez plucked at his arm.
"Can't stop now," he told her hurriedly. "We're taking these rogues to the sloop Warren. They're to be tried for arson and assault in the foreign quarter."
"By the Eternal!" shouted a bystander enthusiastically. "We've got Law in San Francisco at last.... Hurrah for Bill Spofford and the Citizens' Committee."
"There's Adrian," cried Inez as the rearguard of the pageant passed. "Isn't it fine? Alice, aren't you proud?"
But Alice was a practical little body. "They'll be hungry when they come home," she averred. "Let us hurry back and get their dinner ready."
Passersby who laughed at the inscription witnessed simultaneously the rescue of an almost-submerged donkey by means of an improvised derrick.
The affair of The Hounds was already past history when the gold-seekers, hunted from the heights by early snows, returned to San Francisco in great numbers. Sara Roberts and his evil band had been deported. Better government obtained but there were many other civic problems still unsolved. San Francisco, now a hectic, riotous metropolis of 25,000 inhabitants, was like a muddy Venice, for heavy rains had made its unpaved streets canals of oozy mud. At Clay and Kearny streets, in the heart of the business district, some wag had placed a placard reading: