The Treasure of Hidden Valley

by Willis George Emerson

Then the sharp ping-ping of bells sounded and the great wheels of the boat began to turn. Roderick was filled with the excitement of an impatient lover. “Gail, Gail, Gail,” his throbbing heart kept thrumming. Would he be able to find her? San Francisco was a strange city to Gail as well as to himself. She had been on the train ahead of him, and might by this time have left the Palace Hotel, the address her telegram had given. But he had learned from one of the porters that Gail’s train had been greatly delayed and would not have arrived before eleven o’clock the previous night. He reasoned that she would perforce have gone to the hotel at such a late hour, and would wait until morning to hunt up the hospital where her father was being cared for.

The boat had hardly touched the slip and the apron been lowered than he bounded forward, hastened through the ferryhouse and came out into the open where he was greeted by the tumultuous calls of a hundred solicitous cab-drivers. Roderick did not stand on the order of things, but climbing into the first vehicle that offered directed to be taken to the Palace Hotel.

Arriving at the hotel Roderick paid his fare while the door porter took possession of his grips. Glancing at a huge clock just over the cashier’s desk, he noticed the hour was three-thirty a. m. Taking the pen handed to him by the rooming clerk, he signed his name on the register, and then let his eyes glance backward over the names of recent arrivals. Ah, there was the signature of Gail Holden. Fortune was favoring him and he breathed a silent prayer of thankfulness that he had overtaken her.

Yes, he would serve her. He would help her. She should see and she should know without his telling her, that nothing else mattered if he could only be with her, near her and permitted to relieve her of all troubles and difficulties.

“Show the gentleman to his room,” said the night clerk and bowed to Roderick with a cordial good night.

As Roderick turned and followed the boy to the elevator, he realized that he was not sleepy—indeed that he was nervously alert and wide awake. After the boy had brought a pitcher of ice-water to the room, received his tip and departed, Roderick sat down to think it all over. But what was the use? “I cannot see her until perhaps eight o’clock in the morning. However, I will be on the outlook and in waiting when she is ready for breakfast. And then—” his heart was beating fast “I certainly am terribly upset,” he acknowledged to himself.

Taking up his hat, he went out, locked the door, rang for the elevator and a minute later was out on the street. He was still wearing his costume of the mountains—coat, shirt, trousers, and puttees, all of khaki, with a broad-brimmed sombrero to match. A little way up Market Street he noticed a florist’s establishment. Great bouquets of California roses were in the windows, chrysanthemums and jars of violets.

He walked on, deciding to provide himself later on with a floral offering wherewith to decorate the breakfast table. He had often heard San Francisco described as a city that turned night into day, and the truth of the remark impressed him. Jolly crowds were going along the streets singing in roistering fashion—everyone seemed to be good-natured—the cafés were open, the saloon doors swung both ways and were evidently ready for all-comers. When he came to Tate’s restaurant, he went down the broad marble steps and found—notwithstanding the lateness or rather earliness of the hour—several hundred people still around the supper tables. The scene had the appearance of a merry banquet where everyone was talking at the same time. An air of joviality pervaded the place. The great fountain was throwing up glittering columns of water through colored lights as varied as the tints of a rainbow. The splash of the waters, the cool spray, the wealth of ferns and flowers surrounding this sunken garden in the center of a great dining room—the soft strains of the orchestra, all combined to fill Roderick with wonder that was almost awe. He sank into a chair at a vacant little table near the fountain and endeavored to comprehend it all He was fresh from the brown hills, from the gray and purple sage and the desert cacti, from the very heart of nature, so utterly different to this spectacle of a bacchanalian civilization.

The wilderness waif soon discovered that he would be de trop unless he responded to the urgent inquiries of the waiter as to what he would have to drink.

“A bottle of White Rock to begin with,” ordered Roderick.