"Who's Sam Brannan?"
"Not know who Sam Brannan is?" asked the drayman, lifting his eyebrows in amazement. "He's reputed the richest man in 'Frisco. Owns a big block on Montgomery Street. Income's two thousand a day, they tell me."
Walter could only gape, open-mouthed, in astonishment. The bare idea of any one man possessing such unheard-of wealth was something that he had never dreamed of.
"Fact," repeated the drayman, observing Walter's look of incredulity.
The restaurant at which Walter took his meals, until circumstances suggested a change, was one of the institutions peculiar to the San Francisco of that day. An old dismantled hulk had been hauled up alongside the wharf, the spar-deck roofed over, and some loose boards, laid upon wooden trestles, made to serve the purpose of a table, while the ship's caboose performed its customary office of scullery and kitchen.
The restaurant keeper was evidently new to the business, for he was in the habit of urging his customers to have a second helping of everything, much to the annoyance of his wife, who did the cooking. This woman was one of the class locally known as Sydney Ducks, from the fact that she had come from Australia under the sanction of a ticket-of-leave. She was fat, brawny, red-faced, and quick-tempered,—in fact, fiery,—and when out of sorts gave her tongue free license. The pair were continually quarreling at meal-times, regardless of the presence of the boarders, some of whom took a malicious pleasure in egging on the one or the other when words failed them. But it happened more than once that, when words failed, man and wife began shying plates, or cups and saucers, at each other's head, which quickly cleared the table of boarders.
Walter stood this sort of thing stoically until, one noon, when he was just entering the dining room, a flat-iron came whizzing by him, narrowly missing his head. The language that accompanied it showed madam to be mistress of the choicest Billingsgate in profusion. By the time a second flat-iron sailed through the door Walter was a block away, and still running. It was shrewdly surmised that man and wife had broken up housekeeping.
Meanwhile the search for Ramon was faithfully kept up, yet so far with no better success than if the ground had opened and swallowed him up. Nobody knew a person of the name of Ingersoll. No doubt he had assumed another less incriminating. A decoy letter dropped in the post-office remained there unclaimed until sent to the dead-letter office. "Fool if he hadn't changed his name," muttered Bill, as Walter and he stood at a street corner, looking blankly into each other's face.
They were taking their customary stroll uptown in the evening, when the big bell on the plaza suddenly clanged out an alarm of fire. There was no appearance of fire anywhere,—no shooting flames, no smoke, no red glare in the sky,—yet every one seemed flocking, as if by a common understanding, toward the Chinese quarter. Catching the prevailing excitement, the three friends pressed forward with the crowd, which at every step was visibly increasing. Upon reaching the point where the fire-engines were already hard at work, the crowd grew more and more dense, shouts and cries broke out here and there, lights were glancing hither and thither, and still no sign of fire could be detected. What could it all mean?