AFTER a tedious and delayed trip of three days and nights Roderick’s
train steamed onto the mole at Oakland. During the last night he had
refused to have the berth in his drawing room made down, and had lounged
and dozed in his seat, occasionally peering out of the car window. The
hour was late—almost three o’clock in the morning. The train should
have arrived at seven o’clock the evening before.
There was the usual scramble of disembarking, red-capped porters
pressing forward to carry hand baggage from the train to the ferryboat.
“Last boat to San Francisco will leave in five minutes,” was shouted
from somewhere, and Roderick found himself with his valise in hand being
pushed along with the throng of passengers who had just alighted from
the train. Once on the ferryboat, he climbed to the upper deck and went
well forward for the view. The waters of the bay were illumed with a
half-crescent moon. Far across, six miles away, was San Francisco with
its innumerable lights along the waterfront and on the slopes of her
hills. To the right were Alcatras Island and the lighthouse.
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.
As he was sipping the cold and refreshing water it occurred to him that
he had not tasted food since breakfast the day before in the dining car
of the train. Yes, he would have something to eat and he motioned to the
waiter.
After giving his order he had to wait a long time, and the longer he
waited the hungrier he became. Presently a generous steak was placed
before him. Potatoes au gratin, olives, asparagus, and French peas made
up the side dishes, and a steaming pot of coffee completed a sumptuous
meal.
When he had paid his check he discovered it was almost five o’clock
in the morning, and as he mounted the marble stairway he laughingly
told himself he wouldn’t have much of an appetite at seven or eight
o’clock when he came to sit down at the breakfast table with Gail
Holden. Gaining the sidewalk he found that darkness was shading into
dawn.
Instead of returning by way of Market Street, Roderick lit a cigar and
turning to the right walked up a cross street toward the St. Francis
Hotel. In front was a beautiful little park; shrubbery and flowers lined
the winding walks, while here and there large shade trees gave an added
touch of rural charm.
He seated himself on one of the iron benches, took out his watch and
counted up the number of minutes until, probably, he would see the
object of his heart’s desire. How slow the time was going. He heard
the laughter of a banqueting party over at the Poodle Dog, although at
the time he did not know the place by name.
“Yes,” he murmured, “San Francisco is certainly in a class by
itself. This is the land where there is no night.”
The contrast between the scenes in this gay city and the quiet hill
life away up among the crags, the deep canyons and snow-clad peaks of
southern Wyoming was indeed remarkable.
It was the morning of April eighteen, 1906, and the night had almost
ended. There was a suggestion of purple on the eastern horizon—the
forerunner of coming day. The crescent moon was hanging high above Mt.
Tamalpais.
The town clock tolled the hour of five and still Roderick waited.
Presently he was filled with a strange foreboding, a sense of
oppression, that he was unable to analyze. He wondered if it presaged
refusal of the great love surging in his heart for Gail Holden, the fair
rider of the ranges, the sweet singer of the hills. An indescribable
agitation seized him.
The minutes went slowly by. His impatience increased. He looked again at
his watch and it was only a quarter after five. The city was wrapped in
slumber.
Then suddenly and without warning Roderick was roughly thrown from his
seat and sent sprawling onto the grass among the shrubbery. He heard
an angry growling like the roar from some rudely awakened Goliath of
destruction deep down in earth’s inner chambers of mystery—a roar
of wrath and madness and resistless power. The ground was trembling,
reeling, upheaving, shaking and splitting open into yawning fissures,
while hideous noises were all around. Buildings about the park were
being rent asunder and were falling into shapeless heaps of ruin.
Struggling to his feet, his first impulse was to hasten to the hotel
and protect Gail. As he arose and started to run he was again thrown to
earth. The bushes whipped the turf as if swished to and fro by an unseat
hand. For a moment Roderick was stunned into inaction—stricken with
the paralysis of unspeakable fear.