CHAPTER XXXVIII—THE SEARCH FOR RODERICK
THE general shock of horror caused by the San Francisco disaster was intensified at Encampment when the news ran round that three local people had been in the stricken city at the moment of the earthquake shock which had laid the business centre in ruins and prepared the way for the subsequent far-sweeping conflagration. No telegram came from either the Holdens or Roderick Warfield, and their silence, their failure to relieve the anxiety of the friends they must have known were deeply concerned about their safety, could only cause ominous conjectures as to their fate. There was no possibility of reaching them by wire, for the Palace Hotel, the only known address, had been one of the first buildings destroyed.
But Buell Hampton did not wait for telegrams to reach him. He had no sooner been apprised of the catastrophe than he was on his way to Rawlins, hiring a special conveyance on the mere off-chance that railway schedules would have been disarranged and a train might be caught at any moment. In this he showed his usual good judgment for within an hour of reaching the station he was on board a belated limited, in which he had the further good fortune to find one solitary sleeping berth unoccupied. The train was loaded with returning San Francisco people who had been absent when their homes had been swept away, anxious friends of sufferers, doctors, nurses, relief workers of every kind, newspaper men, all hurrying to the scene of sorrow and suffering.
It was on the morning of the fifth day after the earthquake that Buell Hampton, provided with a special permit, at last found himself amid the ruins of San Francisco. Many buildings were still burning or smoldering, but the area of destruction was now defined and the spread of the flames checked. With saddened heart the Major picked his way along what once had been Market Street but was now a long mound of fallen stones, bricks, and mortar lined by the skeletons of lofty iron-framed buildings. Here the work of clearing away the debris in search of victims was in progress. But any inquiries of those actively engaged in these operations were useless. Buell Hampton passed on.
Suddenly he came upon the bread line, a wonderful sight—a long row of people of all sorts and conditions, the rich, the poor, the educated, the ignorant, the well dressed, the tattered, ranged in single file and marching slowly past the commissary to receive a supply of provisions for their own famishing selves or for their destitute families. Buell Hampton scanned each face; neither General Holden nor Roderick were in the line, nor was there any sign of Gail.
Then he began a systematic visitation of the refuge camps that had been formed around the bumed-out area. The remainder of that first day he spent in Golden Gate Park. It was not until the succeeding afternoon that he found himself in the crowded tent city out on the Presidio. Here at last his patient and persistent efforts were rewarded. He caught sight of Gail seated near the door of a tiny tent-house and strode eagerly forward to greet her. In his deep emotion he folded the young girl to his breast, and she in turn clung to him in her joy of meeting at last a dear friend from home.
“Where is your father?” was the Major’s first inquiry.
“He is safe. We have this little tent, and I am nursing him. His right arm was broken in the street accident, but immediately after the fire began all the hospital patients were removed to open places, and here I found him, thank God, the very first evening. You see, my uncle’s house was burned. He is quartered across the bay at Oakland.”
“Your head is bandaged, Gail. Were you badly hurt?”
“Oh, that was nothing,” she replied, pulling off the narrow band of linen that encircled her brow. “Just a little scalp wound when I fell, and it is quite healed now. But, oh, I remember so little about the terrible disaster—how I got out of the Palace Hotel at all.”