Above his head flapped
the great cloth sign tacked quite across the rough building, heralding
to all who could read the words that this was BILL WILSON'S PLACE.
A flaunting bit of information it was, and quite superfluous; since
practically every man in San Francisco drifted towards it, soon or
late, as the place where the most whisky was drunk and the most gold
lost and won, with the most beautiful women to smile or frown upon the
lucky, in all the town.
The trade wind knew that Bill Wilson's place needed no sign save its
presence there, and was loosening a corner in the hope of carrying it
quite away as a trophy. Bill glanced up, promised the resisting cloth
an extra nail or two, and let his thoughts and his eyes wander
again to the sweeping tide of humanity that flowed up and down the
straggling street of sand and threatened to engulf the store which men
spoke of simply as "Smith's."
A shipload of supplies had lately been carted there, and miners
were feverishly buying bacon, beans, "self-rising" flour, matches,
tea--everything within the limits of their gold dust and their
carrying capacity--which they needed for hurried trips to the hills
where was hidden the gold they dreamed of night and day.
To Bill that tide meant so much business; and he was not the man to
grudge his friend Smith a share of it. When the fog crept in through
the Golden Gate--a gate which might never be closed against it--the
tide of business would set towards his place, just as surely as the
ocean tide would clamor at the rocky wall out there to the west.
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