April 18, 1906


Before dawn at 5:12 a.m., an angry God grabbed Herb Walther’s four-
poster bed and shook it hard, the way a growling dog shakes a rag doll. The first shake lasted 40 seconds, but those who survived it were united in the opinion that it continued much longer. Dogs howled hysterically. Horses panicked, smashing their stalls. A deafening roar filled the air as wooden buildings shuddered and cracked, some toppling in heaps of splintered boards, while more brittle brick buildings quivered, then shattered, collapsing into piles of cloudy rubble. Adding to the crazy din, every churchbell in San Francisco suddenly chimed, convincing the rudely awakened city that it was Judgment Day.

The first shock knocked Walther’s wooden Victorian off its foundation. Listing to one side, the floors became steep slopes. The furniture slid downhill, the heavier pieces smashing into lighter ones, breaking them into kindling. Most of Walther’s windows shattered, covering everything in broken glass. His huge armoire fell over, crushing the wash stand and hurtling porcelain shards everywhere. Then Walther’s chimney crashed through the roof, burying his bed under a half-ton of brick, fractured rafters, and ceiling plaster. The weight of the fallen chimney brick buckled the bedroom floor. Plaster dust fogged the room, dyeing everything ghostly.

Fortunately, neither Walther nor Mei-Lin were in the big mahogany bed when the temblor struck. Mei-Lin had padded down to the kitchen moments earlier to draw water for her Master’s coffee. Walther had spent a fitful night—damn those barking dogs! He’d awakened for good a few minutes before the quake when a milkman yelled at his agitated horse. Walther dressed and paced the bedroom, fretting about the misstrikes, cursing the Army’s incompetence, and recalling that when he returned from Funston’s, he’d found his China girl sound asleep. He lifted the quilt and climbed into bed beside her. Her nightgown had come unbuttoned, revealing the swell of a breast and the delicate raspberry of a nipple.



• • •



Walther’s wife had been lost at sea three years earlier on her way to Seattle to visit her sister. Shipwrecks bring a peculiar grief: no body, no burial, none of the grim finality of witnessing the return to cold earth. Walther had lost loved ones before, but none he adored as much as Helen, and the manner of her passing left him not only bereft but thoroughly disoriented. Nob Hill had plenty of socially prominent widows and daughters hoping to wed. After a decent interval, several discreetly signaled their availability. But Walther wasn’t interested. No one could replace Helen. He buried himself in work at the Mint, but otherwise lived in a lonely daze.

As the months passed and he slowly adjusted to the solitude of his large manse, Walther realized he needed a housekeeper. His next-door neighbor, Gracelia Carter, had a young China girl, Betty. Carter referred him to the smelly dockside shack of a buck-toothed Australian. The shingle said Foster Berryman, Servant Broker. When a woman appeared at his door, Berryman assumed she required a kitchen maid. When a man appeared, he assumed something else.

Technically, the Exclusion Acts had cut off all Chinese immigration. But the Acts were haphazardly enforced, especially in good times when cheap labor was in demand. Or when the brothels needed merchandise.

Berryman winked at Walther, flashing a smirk that revealed rotted teeth with several gaps. The Australian lined up his inventory, a dozen terrified skin-and-bones China maidens. Walther’s heart broke. He realized with a start that Berryman was a slaver. He’d heard the stories: Young Chinese women were tricked into leaving their world by glorified pimps who promised a Golden Mountain and delivered a lifetime—a short lifetime—of misery. Any girls Berryman couldn’t deal in a few weeks to decent people who needed servants, he unloaded to the brothels of the Barbary Coast and Morton Street. The girls wound up under armed guard in rat-infested cowyards on filthy cots. Even if they serviced 20 pawing drunks a day, they could never pay off their indenture. For China girls, the whore’s life meant beatings, syphilis, tuberculosis, opium addiction, and usually within a year or two, a pauper’s grave.

Walther looked the group up and down. Some of the watery eyes that met his were imploring, still vital. Others were vacant, their spark already extinguished. From among the imploring, he selected a rail-thin apparition, Mei-Lin, because she did not have any obvious festering sores, and because she called out, “Me, Ma-tah! Wuh hah!” Me, Master. I work hard.

Walther pointed at the girl. Berryman yanked her arm, standing her atop a stool, and before an embarrassed Walther could protest, ripped her rags from her, leaving her naked and mortified. “A fine li’l gal, matey.”

“What in damnation are you doing?” Walther demanded, doffing his coat and wrapping it around the pathetic waif’s shoulders.

But Berryman was not finished with his pitch. He poked Mei-Lin between the legs with his cane. “Haven’t had that meself, matey, but I guarantee you’ll like it.”

Walther pushed the cane away, paid the leering slaver in gold, and marched the terrified girl to Chinatown, where he bought her decent clothes, then lifted her onto the cable car for the ride up the steep eastern slope of Nob Hill to her new home.

Mei-Lin was 22 at the time. She’d never ridden any land vehicle other than a mule cart. The cable car, with its jerky ride, screeching, and clanging bell, terrified her. Her face contorted and tears fell from her big eyes. Walther tried to calm her with a pat on the shoulder, but she shrank from him into a bony ball on the hard wooden bench and held a pole for dear life.

The horror of the cable car gave way to wonderment when Walther pointed up Pine Street to his hillside home. In all her life, Mei-Lin had never seen such a palace. She’d grown up in a two-room mud hut near Canton. Her new Master’s mansion had more rooms than she could count, and it was filled with riches beyond her imagination. Walther ushered her open-mouthed into the kitchen and offered her bread, fruit, and tea. She ate like an animal, shoveling the meal down her throat, barely stopping to breathe. She’d eaten little of the swill on the freighter and Berryman had given her next to nothing.

While the girl ate, Walther stepped next door and fetched Gracelia’s China girl, Betty, to train his new servant. Betty had been in San Francisco for four years. She spoke to Mei-Lin in her native tongue and introduced her to her duties.

It was a difficult day. Mei-Lin spoke almost no English and Walther’s ability to communicate by pantomime was not much better. The girl was terrified and Walther wondered if he’d made a mistake. He might have done better with a washerwoman from Irishtown. At least they spoke half-decent English.

But Betty showed the girl how to cook a stew of chicken, potatoes, carrots, and onions, and by the time Walther turned on the electric lights, another unimaginable marvel to Mei-Lin, he’d decided to keep her.

Then he realized that he’d neglected to set up a bed for his new servant. Of the three bedrooms in the house, only one held a bed. Helen had used the other two as her sewing room and watercolor studio. Since her death, Walther hadn’t had the heart to disturb them.

Walther felt no physical desire for Mei-Lin. He was still grieving Helen and the half-starved child was emaciated, hipless, and flat-chested, definitely not a woman, hardly even a girl. Sheepishly, he tried to pantomime that she could sleep in the painting studio on a pallet of blankets, and that he would convert it into a proper bedroom as soon as possible.

But Mei-Lin did not understand. Her eyes told her that in her Master’s huge palace, there was only one bed. She knew what that meant. One white devil was better than many, perhaps, but he would certainly breech her Jade Gate … unless—

Walther tried to usher Mei-Lin into the bedroom to collect the blankets for her pallet. She pulled one of his steak knives out of her apron and slashed his arm the way her mother had decapitated rats. Thunderstruck, Walther drew back, clenching the wound as his butchered shirt sleeve turned bright red. Mei-Lin glared at him, holding the knife aloft.

“No ficky!” she cried. “Aykill!” No fucking. I will kill you.

Walther staggered back against the armoire, dripping blood. Did this little wisp of a girl actually mean to kill him? Then he noticed where Mei-Lin was pointing the knife—at her own neck.

“No, don’t!” he cried, thinking as much of his investment in her contract as of her life. He clutched his arm, which was beginning to hurt. “It’s all right,” he reassured her. “No ficky.” Mei-Lin remained frozen, a wildcat cornered by dogs, her eyes ablaze.

Walther staggered to the wash basin to attend to his arm and to take a few tablets of the new century’s miracle pain pill, Aspirin. By the time he bandaged his arm and changed his shirt, Mei-Lin had taken some blankets and set up a pallet in the pantry off the kitchen, as far from the bedroom as possible. When he appeared at the pantry door, she brandished the knife, again pointing it at her neck. Walther held up his good arm in a gesture of surrender, and reiterated, “No ficky,” then went to bed.

The next morning, Walther awoke to the aroma of fresh coffee, eggs, potatoes, and bacon. He took the back stairs down to the kitchen and found Betty showing Mei-Lin how to prepare an American breakfast. Mei-Lin was getting the hang of frying potatoes. Walther sat and Mei-Lin served him, bowed and deferential, as Betty jabbered at her in China talk. After a few bites, he signaled his approval by pointing, nodding, and smiling.

Betty said, “Mei-Lin have sahm-sing say aporo-gee.” Mei-Lin has something to say, an apology.

The girl stepped forward and pointed at his bandaged arm. “Solly, Ma-tah,” she whispered, eyes downcast with contrition and fear. “Solly cut.” Sorry, Master. Sorry I cut you.

“That’s all right,” Walther replied. “No lasting damage. Sleep in the pantry if you like. No ficky. Good breakfast.”

Betty smiled and translated for Mei-Lin, who heaved a sigh that could have cleared fog from the Golden Gate. Then the girl opened her mouth. She had something else to say, but her English failed her. She turned to Betty and spoke in Chinese.

“She say: Tank you bing her. She no wan Moe-tun.” She did not want to wind up on Morton Street.

Walther smiled at Mei-Lin. “That’s quite all right.” Then to Betty, “Tell her I won’t hurt her. And tell her to be more careful with my knives.”

Betty translated, and for the first time, Walther saw the corners of Mei-Lin’s chapped lips curl tentatively upward. That evening, Walther wrote to his brother in Sacramento: Anyone who thinks China girls are submissive has never lived with one.

Mei-Lin carried the steak knife for six months, but never again brandished it. Under Betty’s tutelage, she quickly learned to cook and clean, wash, iron, and mend. She ate with the gusto of those who have known starvation, and gained weight. She remained slender, but her figure grew more womanly and her long black hair acquired a lustrous shine.

Mei-Lin had a facility for language and soon spoke better English than Betty. Walther invited her to join him for dinner in the dining room instead of eating by herself in the kitchen after she’d served him. She introduced him to Cantonese foods: bok choy, chow fun, spring greens, and steamed pork buns she made from ingredients purchased down the hill in Chinatown. He was dubious at first, but grew to enjoy them, which pleased her.

One evening, Mei-Lin announced that she wanted to learn to read and write English. Walther considered hiring a tutor, then decided to teach her himself in the evening after she cleaned up from supper. They sat at the dining room table, poring over a primer he borrowed from Lincoln Elementary, across Jessie Alley from the Mint. As the weeks passed, and Mei-Lin progressed from the ABC’s to reading simple sentences, their chairs moved closer.

Across Pine, a friend of Helen’s, Sonja Bagensie, took ill. Her husband, Big John, a vice president with Southern Pacific, asked Walther if Mei-Lin might help out part-time. At the end of her first week, she presented her earnings with a flourish—two dollars. Walther told her to buy herself something nice. Her eyes widened. She had never known such riches. She went to Isaac Magnin’s on Market near Lotta’s Fountain, one of the few stores outside Chinatown that admitted Chinese, and bought a pair of sturdy American shoes, which worked better on San Francisco’s steep hills than Canton slippers.

The Bagensies had four children. The eldest, 10-year-old John, Jr., known as JJ, spent much of his time riding his treasured bicycle up and down Pine Street with a gang of neighborhood kids. One afternoon, Walther jumped off the cable car to see Mei-Lin shrieking with delight as she pedaled JJ’s two-wheeler shakily toward him. “Lookee me!” she cried as she recognized him. Walther shouted encouragement, then realized how much he enjoyed the sight of her. Helen was gone. But there was still life in him.

As the months passed, Walther took to bringing Mei-Lin little presents purchased from the street vendors at the cable-car turnaround at the foot of Powell: licorice, Italian pastries, spools of satin ribbon, and her favorite, bottles of the fizzy new drink from Atlanta, Coca-Cola.

The girl reciprocated, using money earned at the Bagensies to buy Walther his favorite treat, dark chocolate from the Ghirardelli shop on the northern waterfront.

“Such an extravagance!” Walther exclaimed when Mei-Lin first presented him with the red tin.

Smiling broadly, she replied, “Good sweets. Good man.”

Then, in the wee hours one raw February night as a howling Pacific storm pelted San Francisco with sheets of icy rain, Walther had a dream that he heard Helen calling him, but could not pick her out in a roomful of women. He awoke, and thought he heard a noise downstairs. He found Mei-Lin awake and shivering under her blankets, frightened by the storm. “Too coe pantee.” It’s too cold in the pantry.

Walther took her by the hand, and led her upstairs. In the big four-poster, she pressed her back against his chest, a teaspoon nestling into his tablespoon, thankful for his size and warmth. A moment passed and they both became aware of his arousal.

Walther enfolded her in his arms, cupping her small breasts in his big hands.

“You wahm.” Mei-Lin nestled closer to him, no longer shivering.

“I could make you a lot warmer.”

She giggled as he rolled her over to face him. She never slept in the pantry again.



• • •



At the temblor’s first hard jolt, Mei-Lin shrieked and Walther feared for her life. As he slid down the littered slope that had once been his tidy bedroom, his father’s old leather chair smashed into his hip and some chimney bricks spilling down from the roof hammered his shoulder. He staggered out of the room, and stumbled down the dark stairs twisted all askew like the Tilt-A-Whirl out at the Chutes. In the foyer, he heard soft moaning and whimpering in Chinese. He picked his way toward it crunching through broken glass and plaster rubble, and found Mei-Lin crouched in a daze by the parlor door. Even in the dark, Walther could see a gash on her temple and blood streaks on her long black hair. He helped her up and embraced her. She clung to him as though she were drowning.

“Are you all right?”

She burrowed her head into his chest like a puppy. “Sink so.”

Walther caressed her hair and back, silently thanking God for her deliverance.

The house was a ruin. The windows were shattered. The floors inclined steeply. The furniture was upended, much of it destroyed. An ominous groaning came from the living room ceiling. The collapsed chimney had buckled the bedroom floor above it. Cracked joists poked through the ceiling, creating a cloud of plaster dust. The ceiling seemed on the verge of disintegration. Walther pushed Mei-Lin into the foyer as one massive joist snapped, then another, spilling half the chimney—and what was left of their bed—onto the living room floor.

Walther held Mei-Lin by her arm and, with his other hand, grappled his way in the dark along the wreckage of the hall into the kitchen. It was ankle deep in shattered crockery, flour, potatoes, and onions.

He grabbed a rag and turned on the faucet to wash Mei-Lin’s wound. Gritty brown sludge trickled from the tap, then nothing. Damn, Walther thought, the main must have snapped. Then he became aware of an ominous odor—gas. One spark and the house might explode. Frantic, he lunged for the pantry and excavated a wrench from the debris. Then he pushed Mei-Lin down the hall and out the front door into the foggy dawn. The house, leaning like the tower in Pisa, was no longer connected to its brick front stair. Walther and Mei-Lin jumped from the porch to the top stair, and then Walther crunched across an expanse of broken glass to the gas shut-off valve.

Mei-Lin screamed. Walther turned to find her pointing at the Carter house next door. Nothing was left of it, just a mound of bricks obscured by a cloud of chalky dust. Gracelia, Captain Pete, their three children, and Chinese Betty—all buried alive. Mei-Lin scrambled over the knee-high wrought iron fence that separated the two properties, and began hurling bricks sobbing, “Beh-tee! Beh-tee!” But no sound came from the pile of brick. It was a futile endeavor. Walther pulled the flailing girl away.

Pine Street was a shambles. The Carters had the only brick home on the block. The rest were wood-frame Victorians. They hadn’t shattered the way brick does, but like Walther’s, many had been hurled off their foundations and stood twisted like dishrags. A few had collapsed. Everywhere he turned, Walther saw shattered glass, fallen roof slates, broken furniture the earthquake had tossed out of windows, and cracked retaining walls. In the middle of the street, a milk wagon lay overturned, a white rivulet burbling from its tank. Neither the driver nor the horse that had awakened him—and saved his life—were anywhere in sight. Church bells continued to ring, and everywhere, dogs barked as if rabid. Walther’s neighbors slowly stumbled from their homes, dazed, most barely dressed. No one said a word.

Walther pressed a dry rag into Mei-Lin’s scalp wound. She wept into his shoulder, moaning, “Beh-tee. Beh-tee.”

Just then, movement down Pine Street caught Walther’s eye. At first he thought he was hallucinating. The Street itself seemed to be undulating like a wave approaching Ocean Beach. There was no time to react. The aftershock swept under them, a geologic trickster pulling a rug from under their feet. Walther fell hard, smacking a shoulder on what was left of his front stair. Mei-Lin landed on top of him howling, and held him in a death grip.

The shock wave passed. Pine Street was still again. Walther and Mei-Lin struggled to their feet. She grabbed his hand. A piece of broken glass had sliced it open. She tore the sleeve from her robe and tied it around the wound.

“Herb! Mei-Lin!” Someone called from across the street. It was Big John Bagensie, wearing a robe thrown over his nightshirt, shepherding his children out of their home. JJ and his brothers looked sleepy and frightened, but unharmed. “Sonja’s still inside!” His invalid wife had trouble getting around in the best of circumstances. “Can you help me carry her out?”

Walther and Mei-Lin picked their way across the rubble-strewn cobblestones. Past Powell, a fountain shot up from a crack in the street. The break in the water main, Walther realized. The water mixed with debris, forming globs of muck.

Mei-Lin huddled the Bagensie children around her. The youngest one, Jenny, was whimpering, calling for her mommy. Mei-Lin lifted the child and sang her a Chinese lullaby in a squeaky soprano.

Walther clapped a hand on Bagensie’s shoulder in silent affirmation of his willingness to help. John was a mountain of a man with an enormous potato-shaped head, but in the foggy light of dawn, he appeared stooped, diminished. He touched Walther’s arm in return, then turned and plunged into the ruined house with Walther close behind.

“Sonja!” Bagensie yelled up the mangled stair case.

“Johnny?” Sonja calling weakly from her sickbed above them. “Johnny, honey?”

“We’re coming, darling! Hold on!”

As the two men grappled their way up the twisted stair, the building groaned. Then something snapped, and the house shuddered with a horrible roar.

“Sonja!” Big John called.

Silence.

The two men clawed their way up to the second floor and through a haze of plaster dust toward the couple’s bedroom. They never reached it. The hallway ended in a precipice. The back half of the house had sheared off. It lay in a heap of boards and rubble in the yard below. From the wreckage, a ghostly hand protruded, dust-covered yet dainty. John’s face went ashen. He turned and vomited. Walther gazed at Sonja Bagensie’s outstretched hand. On her finger, he could still make out her gold wedding band.

The gold! My God, Walther thought, the Mint!

He helped John outside. Bagensie reeked from the vomit covering his robe. The children had never seen their father cry.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” JJ whispered, and the children began wailing.

“Stay here,” Walther told Mei-Lin. “Help John. I’ve got to get to the Mint.”



• • •



At the corner of Pine and Powell, a cable car lay on its side, wrecked, one big steel wheel still lazily turning. The tracks had been wrenched out of the street. Steel rails pointed skyward, bent this way and that, giant pipe cleaners. Nearby, a broken water main had carved a sinkhole in the street. Water poured down Powell, creating a stream of muddy debris.

Walther slid and stumbled down the water-slickened hill on a treacherous carpet of broken glass, splintered boards, and loosened bricks and cobblestones. Everywhere he looked buildings were twisted, cracked, collapsed. Sloven’s Produce Market, where Mei-Lin shopped, was gone, its display cases collapsed, its stock—lemons, apples, carrots, lettuces, everything—littering the street, already rotting and attracting rats. Alan Spielman Liquor, where Walther bought brandy, was no more than rubble reeking of alcohol. From every doorway, a stream of dazed humanity emerged, most in nightclothes and slippers with coats or blankets wrapped haphazardly around them. Few spoke. Several knelt and prayed.

From halfway up Nob Hill, Walther surveyed the city. Both of the enormous onion-topped minarets of the Israelites’ Temple Emanu-El had collapsed, turning the skyline they dominated into a dreamscape, familiar but transformed. Looking downtown and south toward the Mint, everything appeared eerily normal, at least from a distance—except that here and there, pillars of black smoke rose skyward.

Fire. San Francisco was a city constructed mostly of wood. It had burned several times in its brief history. As a child, Walther barely escaped one of those conflagrations with his life. If his kitchen sink and the broken water mains were any indication, few hydrants, if any, would still hold water. First damnation, he thought, then the flames of Hell. He quickened his pace down the hill.

In Union Square, by some miracle, the new Dewey Monument to the Navy’s victory in the Philippines stood intact. A bedraggled throng milled around it, drawing comfort from its unlikely survival. Bankers, sailors, bartenders, seamstresses, undertakers, shopkeepers, beggars, society matrons, priests, Chinese, gamblers, and whores—the entire city, it seemed, was streaming into the vast open space toting whatever effects they could carry: babes in arms, framed mirrors, photo albums, candelabras, bags of clothing, fur coats. Dogs raced around crazed, chasing rats that scurried amid the ruins. Horses snorted, balking at pulling carriages through the rubble-strewn streets. Wisps of smoke wafted through the foggy haze, sticking hot pins into Walther’s nostrils.

Across Post Street from the Square, half of the red-brick Catholic church, Our Lady of Peace, lay collapsed in a pile of rubble. A tall, thin, ghostly figure in a long brown robe emerged from the wreckage dragging a heavy sack. Walther recognized him as the baker-priest, Father James LaSalle, well-known around San Francisco for feeding the poor, even Chinese and Indians. He reached into his sack and handed long loaves to any upraised hand.

As Walther passed Union Square, the crowd parted and a short fat man in a silk nightshirt and black tophat waddled past carrying a framed portrait of Teddy Roosevelt and jabbering in a foreign tongue. He was trailed by a valet who tried to wrap him in a gray greatcoat and two porters pushing suitcases stacked in a wheelbarrow. Walther recognized him—Enrico Caruso. He blubbered at his entourage in Italian as they tried to calm him. Could it have been only ten hours since he’d throttled that colonel for Funston’s address?

Someone grabbed Walther’s arm. A hooligan! The Mint Super- intendent whirled, balling a fist to brain his assailant, then became dimly aware that the man was calling his name. “Mr. Walther! It’s me, Rocky.” It was Alfred “Rocky” Humphrey, one of the Mint’s pressmen. Humphrey was shorter than Walther, but broader and tough as leather, with Indian, Mexican, British, and African blood in his veins. He ducked to avoid Walther’s blow, but it never came. Walther recognized him in time.

“Rocky!”

“Red sent me to fetch you, sir.”

Walther grabbed the man by his lapels. “How’s the—?”

“Tight as a drum, sir,” the wiry Creole replied. “We lost some windows, but the shutters all held. The Old Girl come through fine.”

“And the vaults?”

“All secure, except—”

“Except what?!”

“The doors got knocked off plumb. Red says we’ll have to drill.”

“And the misstrikes?”

“Safe in Stamp One, under Army guard.”

So that Lieutenant, Funston’s aide, what was his name? Larkin? No, Laiken had arrived with a company from the Customs House. At least someone in the Army had his head screwed on straight.

Across Union Square on Post, a building groaned, then its timbers snapped and its facade sheared off and fell into the street, drawing gasps from onlookers nearby. The building’s collapse shook the street enough to pancake a nearby building, which threw a cloud of dust into the morning fog. All around, people caught between shock and panic pushed their way west, away from downtown, away from the billowing smoke that was starting to get thick.

A company of police in blue uniforms materialized around Union Square. They blew whistles in an effort to herd the dazed multitude west past Van Ness to the Western Addition. More police appeared, blowing more whistles, and suddenly, the crowd lurched into motion. Walther and Humphrey were swept up in the human tide as it surged out Geary. They clawed their way out of the swarm, and headed down Powell to Market.

It was morning now, but unlike any San Francisco had ever witnessed. The fog hung thick with the chalky dust of broken buildings and the black smoke and papery ash of the growing fires. Everything seemed covered in a ghostly shroud. Walther and Humphrey strode past the Columbia Theater. Its marquee had come unhinged and hung at an odd angle, like a man with a broken neck. The title of the play had fallen off, but the young star’s name was still legible, John Barrymore.

At Market, the magnificent new Flood Building was still standing, but its windows were gone and its sculpted facade looked like it had taken cannon fire. Great clots of plaster littered the sidewalks around it. At ten stories, the Flood was one of the city’s tallest buildings, and one of the busiest. Now it was a tomb. Walther saw just one person in the lobby, a janitor who appeared unaware of how ridiculous he looked sweeping up with a broom and long-handled dustpan.

At Powell and Market, Walther and Humphrey encountered a hot plume of smoke blowing up the city’s main thoroughfare from downtown. It stung their eyes. They looked down Market, but could see no fire, just twisted fallen buildings and a huge bewildered throng moving their way. Before them the domed roof of the Wells Fargo branch had caved in, burying the interior under rubble that stood shoulder-high. In front of it, a broken water main had turned the intersection into a lake, ankle deep. With a sinking feeling, Walther realized there was no chance of moving the misstrikes into that vault, or most likely any bank in the city.

They turned up Market and down Fifth. Walther held his breath and peered through the fog past the school and across Jessie to the Mint. As they approached, it came into focus. Humphrey was right. Aside from broken windows, the Granite Lady appeared intact. God bless whoever designed her foot-thick walls. They approached the Ship Gal doors, where a half dozen soldiers menaced them with bayonets. Some had bandannas over their noses and mouths for protection from the gathering smoke.

“It’s all right,” Humphrey said. “Remember me? Rocky? And this here’s the Superintendent.”

The bayonets turned aside. The line of uniforms parted.



• • •



“Your girls?” Walther asked Patrick Reilly as they stepped into his office.

“All safe, thanks be to God,” the Irishman replied, crossing himself. “Megan ran down here to check on me. The house got knocked about, and the shed collapsed, killing a few chickens, but the girls are all right. They’re with the O’Learys.” Neighbors.

Two soldiers approached. One was the young lieutenant, David Laiken. The other was his second in command, a man who looked about 30, Sergeant Joseph Alta.

“All right, men,” Walther addressed the group, unable to suppress an anxious quiver in his voice. “How bad off are we?” He already had a pretty good idea, but he wanted to give Reilly and the soldiers a chance to talk out some of their tension, before announcing his plan.

“Well,” Reilly began, “the Old Girl’s solid. I went through her from the cisterns to the rafters and couldn’t find any structural damage. But she’s an awful mess.” He swept his arm around Walther’s dim office: The new electric lamps lay fallen and smashed. The big bookcases had toppled, splintering several chairs and raining ledgers and Treasury directives all over the rug. A piece of marble had broken off the fireplace. And everything was covered with a film of gritty white dust shaken loose from the cracked plaster of the walls and ceiling.

“We lost most of the windows on Mission and Fifth,” Reilly continued, “and some on Jessie and Mint. The vault got thrown off plumb. The doors won’t open without drilling. The press in Stamp One survived all right, but in Stamp Two, a conveyor leg snapped and mangled things pretty bad. Of course, with no electric, the presses are useless—”

“What about water?” Walther interjected.

“The cisterns held, thank God, they’re still full—”

“The flood in the courtyard?”

“Broken pipe. It’s being capped—”

“And the pump?”

“Dead—with the electric out.”

“Dammit to Hell,” Walther spat. How long had it been since they’d replaced the old steam-driven pump with the new electric? A month? Two? Electric is the future, everyone said. Got to embrace the new century. Now they couldn’t draw the one thing they needed most, water. “The old engine?”

“Dismantled. But Jess thinks he can rig up some bicycles, give us a pedal-powered pump.” Jess Thompson, one of the press mechanics and the Mint’s only colored employee, was a wizard of a tinkerer.

Walther pursed his lips. “Give him all the help he needs.”

Reilly nodded.

The four men were gathered around Walther’s grit-covered desk, their faces illuminated by the feeble glow of a kerosene lantern. Little daylight entered the room, or for that matter, the rest of the Mint. For security reasons, Laiken had forbidden anyone to open the iron shutters more than a crack to allow the sentries lookouts. The Lieutenant’s order also helped keep smoke out of the building. It was getting thicker now, rolling up Mission in great sooty billows from the docks and Butchertown, carrying with it papery black ash that rained down from the sky. Through the shutter opening behind him, Walther peered through the black haze at several pillars of flame in the distance. Fires were chewing through South Beach and Rincon Hill.

“The building’s secure,” Laiken declared, “at least for now. I’ve deployed armed squads at the front entrance, Shipping, and Receiving, with sentries around the rest of the ground floor and first floor. They have orders to shoot anyone who approaches. So far, no one has.”

“Good,” Walther nodded. “I want the iron opened up enough so people on the street can see the sentries, see their rifles. A show of force.”

“Easily done,” Laiken continued, “but it means we eat more smoke.”

“Better smoke than lead,” Walther replied.

Laiken nodded. “Beg pardon, sir, but we have a serious problem with your iron shutters. I took the liberty of inspecting them. They look solid from a distance, but I must tell you they wouldn’t stand up to a mob with crowbars. They’re old. Some of the hinges are about rusted through. And the wall anchors are loose. They won’t stop—.”

“I know,” Walther interrupted, pursing his lips. He cursed all Washington bureaucrats under his breath, though loud enough for Laiken and the others to hear. Then he cleared his throat. “But they still look impregnable from a distance. That’s something.”

Just then, the floor beneath them began to tremble, only slightly at first, then more so until it was shaking. The lantern danced on the desk and an awful clatter rose from the direction of Mission Street, punctuated by hideous inhuman groaning.

“Earthquake!” Reilly shouted.

“No!” cried the sentry at the window. “Stampede!”

Reilly and Walther exchanged incredulous glances.

“That’s cattle,” Sergeant Alta concurred. “I’d know that sound anywhere.” Alta was a big man, square jawed, with beefy hands and a chest that strained his uniform’s buttons. He’d grown up on a ranch in East Oakland and was familiar with stampedes.

The four of them stepped over the fallen bookcases to the sentry post and swung the iron open to get a better view. Through the dust and smoke, hundreds of beef cattle were rampaging up Mission Street. Several tripped over debris and fell, breaking legs, unable to get up. They brayed in dim-witted agony. After the herd passed, several men loitering by the Cosmopolitan stepped from one animal to the next. Some had pistols, others shotguns. They put the fallen beasts out of their misery.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Reilly whispered. “Who would believe a stampede up Mission Street?”

“Butchertown’s in flames,” Walther said, pointing east toward the waterfront. “They must have broken out of slaughterhouse pens.”

The Butchertown fire was still a distant glow, but it was working its way up Mission. Meanwhile columns of smoke and flame rose elsewhere South of the Slot. Walther counted nine fires, some large, others larger, all spreading. A stream of refugees hurried past the Mint, fleeing the flames—longshoremen, washerwomen, slaughterhouse stiffs in bloody aprons, and families pulling wagons full of household goods.

But not everyone was on the move. Outside the Cosmopolitan and the Brunswick, the men who executed the injured cattle loitered in sullen knots, staring listlessly at the Mint, fondling their weapons.

“I don’t like the look of those men,” Laiken said.

“Me neither,” Walther agreed.

“You recognize any of them?” Laiken asked no one in particular.

“Not a one,” Reilly replied softly.

“I’ll bet gold they don’t live at the Brunswick or the Cosmopolitan,” Walther observed. “Look at all the people leaving those buildings, taking their things, helping their neighbors, hardly glancing our way. Those men aren’t doing that. They’re just watching us, sizing us up, biding their time.”

“Surely if the fires approach our position, they’ll be forced out by the heat,” Alta ventured.

“Maybe,” Walther replied, “but there’s no telling for how long. First comes the fire, then the looting. That’s how it works, like spring floods after winter snow.”

Walther knew all about fires and looting. When he was a boy, his father owned a jewelry store on Broadway below Telegraph Hill. A hooligan gang demanded protection money, threatening to torch and loot the neighborhood if they weren’t paid off. The merchants banded together and refused to pay, so early one morning, the gang set fires. The owner of the liquor store next door to the Walther place broke out barrels of red wine and all the merchants filled buckets and doused their roofs. The neighborhood soon smelled of warm wine, and it looked like the merchants might beat back the flames. Then the police arrived and ordered everyone out, saying the fire could not be stopped. Walther’s father was convinced they were on the take. But they had guns and insisted on evacuation. Walther’s father filled a satchel full of watches, rings, bracelets, and necklaces, and stuffed his pockets and his young sons’ as well. He crammed everything else into the safe moments before the police prodded them down the hill toward the waterfront, yelling assurances that they would protect any property that didn’t burn. The next day, when the embers cooled, Walther and his father returned to the hole in the ground where the store had been. There was nothing left. The safe was gone.

“How are we fixed for rifles and ammunition?” Walther asked.

“We brought a dozen rifles and maybe a thousand rounds,” Alta said.

“That gives us around twenty-five rifles, a few pistols, and three thousand rounds,” Reilly declared.

No one spoke. They all understood their predicament. They could hold out for a while, but with only three thousand rounds, eventually a determined mob would overwhelm them.

“All right, men,” Walther began, still recalling the aroma of burned red wine, “we have to assume we’re on our own. We have no idea if the Presidio survived, and even if it did, we can’t count on Funston to send a battalion, or even a company, to our aid. With what’s happened, we can’t even assume he’ll remember he promised to.”

Lieutenant Laiken stiffened. He considered Funston a brilliant, albeit difficult, general, and bridled at hearing him criticized. But he had to admit that Walther was probably right.

“The way I see it,” Walther continued, “we have three problems: the hoodlums, the fires, and the misstrikes.” The others nodded. Smoke snaked its way into the building and stung their eyes. They could taste it in their throats, feel it tighten their chests. Coughing echoed along the central corridor. Out of the gloom, Rocky Humphrey appeared with a bucket of water and some rags. Walther and the others moistened cloths and placed them over their mouths and noses. They didn’t help much.

“Laiken, I want you to keep your men at the doors and windows, with their rifles at the ready,” Walther declared through the rag over this face. “I want a show of force. I don’t want ammunition wasted. But I don’t want hesitation either. If anyone approaches the building with what looks like hostile intent, I want him shot.”

“Make the rounds, Joe,” Laiken told Alta. “Give those orders.”

“Yes sir.” Alta marched out. His footsteps crunched on the plaster and glass littering the floor.

“Next,” Walther continued, “I want that broken press from Stamp Two torn apart and piled up at the top of the stair leading to the vault. If a mob storms in, we can fall back and use it as a rampart.”

“We can move the ammo behind it,” Reilly offered. “Stockpile it there. Be ready for them.”

“Good,” Walther replied. “Then I want as much furniture as possible broken up and piled against the vault doors. When the area is packed, I want it doused with kerosene.”

Laiken could not believe his ears. “What the hell for?” he demanded. His lapse of military formality flew like a battle flag in the smoky air.

“To protect the $200 million,” Walther snapped. “That’s our mission, and I intend to see it through. If the mob is too much for us, I want our last man to light it.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” Laiken pressed him, “but how does—” he paused to consider his choice of words—“how does arson serve this objective?”

Walther looked him in the eye. He spoke slowly as one might to an obstinate child. “The blaze should keep them away from the vault for a while, and with any luck, it’ll heat the doors so hot that they won’t be able to get close enough to drill them or blow them for a while longer. By then, the police might have restored order or Funston’s troops might have arrived.”

Laiken pulled at his mustache. Militarily, the plan made perfect sense. But he was twenty-five years old. He had never seen combat, much less room-to-room fighting with hooligans hardened by the viciousness of the Barbary Coast. This was not the baptism in fire he’d imagined. And now his commanding officer, who wasn’t even Army, was ordering a suicide defense. Laiken was well aware of their mission. But he had difficulty recalling why he should risk his life for it.

“Maybe it won’t come to that,” Reilly ventured. “With the shutters open just a crack, the air’s better in here than outside. If the fires get much closer, the heat and smoke should drive the goons away.”

“Or drive them to attack,” Walther countered. “Which brings me to our second problem. I doubt the fires can be stopped. The quake knocked out the water to my home. I’d be surprised if many mains survived. By this afternoon, everything around us could be burning.”

“And roast us like pigs on a spit,” Laiken whispered, shaken.

“Pull yourself together, man.” Walther’s voice was a stew of sympathy and contempt. It brought Laiken back to the smoky present. “I doubt we’ll roast. The granite is a foot thick. It won’t burn. But the roof is vulnerable. So are the rafters under it. If the roof catches and collapses, we have a major problem.”

Alta crunched back into the group with another soldier who joined the sentry at the window. “All quiet so far,” he reported, “but we’re looking at two gangs, one on Mission, the other across Fifth. The men have them in their sights.”

“Good,” Walther said. “Patrick, until that bicycle rig gets working, I want the men to form a bucket brigade from the cisterns, and wet down the roof, the rafters, and anything else up there that might burn. If everything is really wet,”—he glanced at Laiken—“we just might make it.”

“Right away,” Reilly replied, and turned to leave.

Walther stopped him. “Wait. We still have our third problem, the misstrikes. We can’t leave them in Stamp One. It’s too exposed.”

He’s right, Laiken thought, the gold would be difficult to defend if a gang—. Suddenly, he felt nauseous. Then he recalled old Colonel Jenkins, who taught Strategy at the Point. As a young man at Gettysburg, he’d taken a ball in the thigh. What was it he’d said about fear? Every soldier shares the fellowship of terror. The key to command was deceiving your men into believing you didn’t. Was Walther scared? If so, it didn’t show. Laiken pushed his panic into a little box in the pit of his stomach. Then he took a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said. “Stamp One is too exposed. We should move the misstrikes to the vault area. Pile the broken furniture on top of them. Hope the blaze protects them until help arrives.”

“I considered that,” Walther replied, “but I have a better idea. I want the bags loaded into your wagon. I want a small squad to run them up to the Presidio and return with help.”

Silence. Reilly, Laiken, and Alta glanced at one another.

“I know it’s a risk,” Walther continued, “maybe even rash. But consider our situation. The odds are against us. We need help. Two mobs are gathering. Other hoodlums could be on the way. We can’t expect Funston to send troops on his own. But if we send the misstrikes up there, we might get some attention.”

“But why send the gold?” Reilly asked. “Why not just send a man on horseback?”

“Because one man or even a few won’t command as much attention as a wagon carrying $130 thousand in gold. The Army was supposed to take possession of it. Let’s give it to them.”

“But can we spare the men?” Alta asked. He was seven years older than Laiken. He’d seen action in Cuba and had risen through the ranks. He had a rancher’s perspective on long odds: There’s always green pasture somewhere. You just have to find it.

“Obviously, I’d rather not deplete our forces. We’re spread pretty thin. But if the mob breaks through and we have to fall back, it’s going to get mighty crowded down at the end of the hall. It’s a calculated risk, but we’re better off sending a squad for help now, than—” He looked at Reilly and the two soldiers. “Laiken, you want to lead the wagon?”

Laiken gazed into the flickering lantern light. His stomach ached. He raised his eyes to meet Walther’s. “No. My place is here. Joe, you lead the wagon detail. Pick some men.”

Alta nodded. “How many?”

“Your teamster and one other,” Walther interjected before Laiken could speak. “We’ll send a couple more.”

Laiken and Alta left to move the wagon into the Ship Gal and supervise the loading.

“Patrick, I want you with the wagon.”

“Isn’t my place here, with the gold? With the men? With you?”

The Irishman dipped his rag in the bucket and covered his nose and mouth. Either it was warm for April or the fires were getting close. The smoke seeping into the room was thicker and hotter. The sentries coughed and rubbed their eyes. Had it been just eighteen hours since his ride in search of Funston? It felt like a lifetime.

Walther stared hard into his production supervisor’s deep blue eyes. “I need someone I can trust with the wagon. I don’t know Alta or his men. That much gold might tempt even good soldiers. If they get tempted, if they make any move for the gold, I want you to shoot them.”

Walther’s words made sense, but his tone was more telling. He was a father sending his son out of harm’s way. “This isn’t just about the gold, is it?” Reilly ventured.

Walther sighed. “Dammit, Patrick, you have four daughters. I’m thinking about them, too. You have a better chance of surviving if you go.”

“But—”

Walther cut him off sharply. “No argument. Even if we weren’t”—he paused a moment—“friends, I’d still want you with the wagon. You’re the number two man here. I need you to survive, to get the gold to the Presidio safely, and take over here if—” He fell silent.

Reilly knew he was right. “I’ll be back with help as fast as horses can run.”

They covered the seventeen bags of gold with a few blankets. John Anderson, a Mint press mechanic, sat on top of the load, holding a rifle. Reilly, Alta, and Corporal Leroy Allen mounted horses. They held pistols and had holstered rifles hanging from their saddle horns. The flames were closer now. One fire marched up Mission. Another chewed its way up Fifth. And several were spreading along Howard. The sky was orange with flame. The fires did not just burn, they howled, monsters unleashed from a nightmare. Hordes of people streamed up Mission, gazing blankly at the dead cattle, stumbling over other debris, choking on the smoke and ash, trying to calm their whimpering children. In all the commotion, few people outside the Ship Gal noticed the teamster snap the reins. “Yah!” The horses leaned into their traces. The wagon lurched out to the street with its four-man guard, Anderson in the wagon, and on horseback, Alta on one side, Allen on the other, and Reilly behind.

“Good luck!” Walther called grimly from the doorway.

“God keep you!” Reilly yelled back as the party clattered up Jessie, turned down Mint, and disappeared into the smoke and chaos of Mission Street.

“Sir,” a soldier addressed Walther through a wet bandanna, “a man to see you.”

The man wore a San Francisco Fire Department uniform and introduced himself as Captain Jack Brady. “I’ve come to help.”

“One man?” Walther almost laughed.

“That’s right,” came the testy reply. “You don’t want me, I can fight plenty of other fires. Did your cisterns survive?”

“Yes. We’re running a bucket brigade up to the roof.”

“Good. What about your window sills?”

“What about them?”

“They’re wood,” Brady said. Walther regarded the fireman dubiously. “Fire can come in through the windows just like through the roof.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Douse them. Lucky your sills haven’t been painted in a while. Exposed wood absorbs more water.”

Great, Walther thought, finally some good from Treasury’s neglect of maintenance.

Just then a dark, colored man appeared. “Got three bikes rigged to work the pump.”

Walther clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Great work, Jess. Let’s run the hose to the roof.”

“Cain’t. Even wit’ three men pedalin’, cain’t get water above the second floor.”

“All right. Use the hose to douse every windowsill you can reach—and anything else that might burn. We’ve got water. Let’s use it.” Walther turned to the men who loaded the gold into the wagon. “You men! Help him!”

Walther and Brady inspected the bucket line that snaked upward from the cisterns. Full buckets up, empties down. It was tedious backbreaking work and the air was thick with smoke. Through the narrow opening between a pair of iron shutters, Walther glimpsed the dome atop the Grand Opera House catch fire and burn, illuminating the blackened sky. Thank God Helen didn’t live to see this.



• • •



The gold would have arrived safely at the Presidio, except that the teamster holding the reins was Private Ellis Bohman. He had joined the Army in Carson City six years earlier as an alternative to a stretch in prison. He’d killed a man who’d used a marked deck in a poker game. The judge, a poker player himself, didn’t see anything wrong with shooting a cheat, but Bohman had plugged him in the back, which was frowned upon in Nevada, even if the victim deserved a bullet. The judge was ready to lock Bohman up, but at the time, the state prison was bursting with IWW agitators who were raising hell in the silver mines, and the Nevada Chamber of Commerce, which the judge chaired, was up in arms about how much the good citizens of the thirty-sixth state were paying to house and feed that bunch of no-account radicals. Bohman had the good fortune to hire a lawyer who was a friend of the judge. The lawyer said his client would be happy to repay his debt to society by serving his country and would never set foot in Nevada again.

Private Bohman knew horses and worked the stables at Army posts from Seattle to Monterey. He was surprised how much he enjoyed Army life. As a stableman, he was left pretty much on his own, which allowed him plenty of time for gambling, debauchery, and pilfering and selling supplies. He served at various forts up and down the West Coast, and wound up at the Presidio, where he prospered by trading stolen Army supplies to several Marin County ranchers who sold the Army horses. He became the stableman at the small outpost the Army maintained at the Customs House at the foot of Market Street. Here, Bohman turned larceny into an art form. So many goods passed through the Customs House—Scotch whisky, Mexican leather, Chinese silk, Panama cigars, Australian gems, Russian furs—that the wily stableman had to rent a warehouse on lower Broadway by East Street to store his booty. He traded it for gold and whores in the dives of the Barbary Coast and Morton Street.

When Lieutenant Laiken showed up at the Customs House, riding a bicycle, of all things, and looking like a schoolboy with a pasted-on mustache, the stableman slipped into the shadows. Bohman had just finished his evening chores and was looking forward to a night of drinking and harlotry at the Crowing Cock. He wanted no part of whatever the young Lieutenant was selling. Then the rogue of a clerk Bohman occasionally paid to cover his thievery by altering ships’ manifests whispered that the young officer’s mission was to protect a fortune in gold at the Mint. Bohman sensed a potential opportunity and stepped forward to volunteer.

On Alta’s order, Bohman pushed the horses. The Sergeant figured the faster the wagon rolled, the less it invited attack and the sooner they would arrive at the Presidio, and return with help. But Mission Street was covered with debris and choked with dazed refugees. Alta and Corporal Allen screamed, “Out of the way! Army business! Move aside! Let us pass!” But their shouts were drowned by the roar of the fires around them and the collapse of teetering buildings. Meanwhile, the smoke, dense and acrid, rendered them ghostly, their uniforms virtually invisible. Those who glanced their way wore vacant expressions and shuffled west with a sullen listlessness no prodding—not even pistol shots in the air—could hasten.

The wagon and its three-horse escort inched past Seventh Street and the new Post Office. Alta looked up Seventh toward Market. Visibility was poor. It was mid-morning, but the smoke and steady rain of ash made it seem like dusk. He peered into the black haze. It cleared for a moment, allowing him to see a fire north of Market and a stream of refugees crowding the city’s main thoroughfare.

“Market’s mobbed!” he shouted to his men. “We’ll stay on Mission!”

“But Market’s wider!” Reilly yelled back. “Easier for the wagon!”

“Maybe one of the alleys is clear!” Anderson shouted from the back of the wagon, struggling to retain his perch atop the gold.

The alleys! Anderson’s words warmed Bohman like a bearskin coat. A plan formed in his mind. But for it to work, he had to get the wagon off Mission Street, out of the surging throng.

“Wider’s better!” the teamster called to Alta. “More room to maneuver! Let’s head to Market! We can check the alleys on the way!”

“All right,” Alta decided. “If we don’t pick up speed by the next corner, we’ll try Market!”

If anything, the long block from Seventh to Eighth was even slower going. A row of tenements had collapsed on the south side of Mission, spewing wreckage all over the street. On the north side, a stable and blacksmith shop were listing precariously, about to topple, with a fire gathering strength toward the rear of the building. The refugees gave the tottering stable a wide berth, which pushed all traffic into the quagmire of tenement debris on the other side of the street. It was tough going for the horses and worse for the wagon. “If we get stuck—!” Bohman shouted to Alta.

“I know!” the Sergeant replied. “Turn up Eighth! We’ll take our chances on Market!”

Bohman smiled. Just as he hoped. He rolled the plan around in his mind like dice. Eighth Street was coming up. If it were deserted or close to it, he just might be able to make his move. The thicker the smoke, the better.

The party reached the corner and turned toward Market. Along Eighth, a long, deep gash split the roadbed in two. It was filled with brown muck reeking of sewage. On either side, the tenements had pancaked, leaving only a few posts and lightpoles standing. Unlike Mission and Market, Eighth was deserted. Everyone was heading west, out of the fire zone. But Eighth ran north-south and offered nothing but flames at either end.

Bohman rejoiced. This looked promising. Deftly, he piloted the wagon to the left of the giant crevasse, and whipped the reins, “Yah!” The horses, skittish from the smoky chaos, jumped, hurling Anderson roughly to the wagon bed as the wagon bounced over piles of dislodged cobblestones.

City Hall loomed before them a block north of Market Street, towering above what was left of the surrounding buildings. A twenty-year construction project, the building had opened only six months earlier, the pride of San Francisco and the largest building west of Chicago. Now it was writhing in flames. Refugees scurried past, none slowing to pay their respects.

Jessie Alley was impassable, a jumble of broken buildings and wreckage. But by some miracle, Stevenson was wide open. Its tenements had fallen, but they’d collapsed backward, away from the street, and nothing was burning. Bohman reveled in his good fortune. In a few minutes, he was now confident, the Army would be minus one teamster, and he would be rich.

“Sergeant!” Bohman called. “This one’s clear! Let’s take it as far as we can, then cut up to Market!”

The teamster’s suggestion made sense to Alta. The alley was clear of fire and debris. A deserted street meant speedier passage than they could manage through the crowd dragging up Market. “Take it!” he ordered and swung his horse hard to the left.

Bohman ran the wagon half a block up Stevenson, then suddenly reined the team. “Whoa!”

“What’s wrong?” Alta demanded.

“Damn linch pin’s loose,” he informed his commanding officer.

“Can’t it wait?” Alta asked impatiently. The sergeant’s mare refused to stand still. Snorting, she stepped sideways, then around in agitated circles.

“Not if you want to keep the team,” Bohman explained, jumping down from the box. He stuck his head under the traces, then announced. “I can fix it. Just take a minute.”

“All right,” Alta replied, as his horse reared. He called to the others: “Face outward! Backs to the wagon! Weapons ready! If you see anything you don’t like, fire!” Anderson, Allen, and Reilly did as they were told. A great billow of hot smoke wafted over them from the direction of City Hall. It stung their eyes, singed their throats, and reduced their visibility to only perhaps ten yards. Weapons poised, they peered into the dark haze, certain that if attackers were tracking them, this would be the moment to strike, when they were stopped.

Bohman reached under the wagon seat and extracted the rifle he’d hidden there. When he stood up, four backs were turned toward him. Fish in a barrel, he thought. Calmly, he aimed at the spot between Alta’s shoulder blades. His shot ripped a gaping hole in the Sergeant’s back. The impact blew him out of his saddle. Blood spurted from his back and chest. He was dead before he hit the pavement.

It took the other three a moment to realize that the shot came from the wagon and not from hooligans lurking in the smoky ruins. That moment was all Bohman needed to put a bullet through the side of John Anderson’s head. He tumbled off the back of the wagon in a hail of brains and skull fragments.

Reilly and the soldier horseman, Corporal Allen, yanked their mounts around to face their attacker and opened fire. But they wielded pistols, difficult to aim under the best of circumstances, and impossible from horseback, with their animals spooked by gunfire and smoke. Their shots went wild, taking jagged chunks out of the wagon’s side walls.

Bohman fired again, and Reilly’s horse dropped to its knees, then disappeared from the teamster’s view.

Allen fired several more rounds. Some hit the gold and ricocheted with loud pings. One hammered the wagon bench, showering Bohman with splinters, forcing him to duck. Allen used that moment to dismount and reach for his rifle. But Bohman popped back up faster than the horseman anticipated. As Allen’s boot hit the pavement, Bohman dropped him with a shot through the chest. Four shots, four hits, he mused with a marksman’s satisfaction. He lay the rifle in the box and climbed up to what was left of the bench.

Behind the wagon, Reilly’s horse lay on its side, blood spurting from its neck, gasping, straining deliriously at the bridle, dying. When the horse went down, Reilly’s lower leg was pinned underneath it. He worked his foot out of the stirrup. Every wiggle felt like a nail being driven through his ankle. The leg would not support his weight. He rolled over the whimpering horse and Anderson’s body, and latched onto the side of the wagon, pulling himself up to draw a bead on Bohman. But as the teamster seated himself and reached for the reins, the wagon lurched forward a foot, throwing Reilly off balance. He groped for a new hold and his hand found one of the bags of misstrikes, its canvas ripped open by Allen’s wild barrage. Reilly grabbed a handful of canvas to steady himself, aimed at the middle of Bohman’s back, and squeezed the trigger.

The shot knocked Bohman off the bench and onto his hands and knees in the box. A sharp pain shot through his side and something warm and wet dampened his hip.

Bohman’s fall yanked the reins and the horses started, lurching the wagon a few more feet forward, throwing Reilly off balance again. He fired another round, but missed. He tried to steady himself. He balanced on his good leg and grasped for a more solid hold. He groped inside the bullet-ripped bag of gold. The misstrikes felt cold and oily. They’d never been rinsed or polished, having been diverted off the conveyor before those final steps. He leaned on his elbow, trying to will his arm still, and fired again. The shot hit the front wagon wall, but missed Bohman.

Wounded but coherent, Bohman grabbed his rifle, and swung it over the bench. He aimed for Reilly’s chest. Reilly fired again, but was off-balance and missed. He watched Bohman sight down on him and noticed a crescent-shaped birthmark near the corner of his eye. Then Bohman’s rifle flashed. The force of the shot spun the Irishman around and he fell hard on his dead horse.

Bohman peered into the smoke. Reilly didn’t move. None of them moved. Then he looked around. Not a soul nearby, just a silent black snowfall of ash. He lay his rifle down and dropped his pants to examine his side. It hurt badly, but it looked like a flesh wound just above the hip bone—no fun, but not serious. He cut the sleeve from his jacket and stuffed it into his pants to stanch the bleeding.

The gold was his—almost $130,000. He was set for life. He limped to the back of the wagon and rearranged the blankets over the bags. The Irishman lay still. His head was covered with blood.

Bohman turned the wagon around, then urged the horses down Stevenson back to Eighth, hoping to run down the alley for a few blocks, then cut through downtown to his warehouse. But across Eighth, a collapsed tenement made Stevenson impassable, forcing him to turn north toward the wall of flame that had been City Hall. A company of police ringed Civic Plaza, herding refugees past the blazing landmark.

Bohman whipped the reins, bursting suddenly from a cloud of smoke at the top of Eighth. He turned down Market against the human tide fleeing the inferno.

“You there!” a police officer bellowed, blowing his whistle. “Wrong way! Turn around!”

Bohman ignored him and plunged deeper into the smoky inferno. Every time the wagon jounced, he felt a sharp stab in his side. Smoke stung his eyes, burned his throat, and clawed at his chest. He was beginning to feel woozy. He fought to clear his head, thinking: You’re rich, man, rich beyond your wildest dreams. Hold on.

Market Street was a vision of Hades—dark smoke everywhere punctuated by hot orange flames, with ghostly beings moving about.

At Sixth Street, he passed a knot of soldiers watching helplessly as the building housing the Army’s downtown offices went up in flames. They noticed his uniform.

“Hey soldier!” one of them called as the wagon clattered past, “Where the hell—?!”

“Funston!” Bohman yelled as if to pull rank, and snapped the reins to keep the horses moving.

At Stockton, Market was blocked. Buildings on both sides had collapsed, covering the boulevard with a large mound of rubble. A man on foot might scramble over it, but not a wagon, and certainly not a wagon with such a heavy load. Bohman cursed and yanked the reins left, turning north toward Union Square. With any luck, he thought, he could skirt the Square, bypass Chinatown, and head for his warehouse or, better yet, the docks. The piers would be deserted, or undermanned. It shouldn’t be that difficult to steal a boat and make for Oakland, and from there, live out his days in wealth, whiskey, and whores.

A block up Stockton, a man emerged from the wreckage of a watch- repair shop balancing a heavy box on his shoulder. Two policeman stepped from the shadows.

“Drop it, looter!” The officers aimed rifles at him.

“Looter?!” the man cried. “I’m the owner!”

Too late. A rifle cracked, and the man fell. Under him, the sidewalk turned crimson. Timepieces spewed from the box. The policemen fell upon them, stuffing their pockets, ignoring Bohman as the wagon clattered by. He had no idea how long he could keep control of the horses before the smoke, fires, and gunshots made them bolt.

At Union Square, the teamster turned down Geary and confronted a squad of approaching police about a block away.

“You there! Halt!” Several of them drew pistols. “This area is off limits! Halt!”

Bohman yanked the reins and the wagon rattled back to Stockton with the police chasing on foot. “Stop or we’ll shoot!” Bohman whipped the reins, “Yah!” and bounced up Stockton. His side burned. He heard shots. Something whizzed past his ear. Ahead of him was a wall of flame. The horses balked, refusing to get any closer. Fortunately, the smoke parted briefly, revealing an alley to his right. He urged the horses down it.

Where was he? For a moment, he had no idea. His eyes watered badly from the smoke. He could hardly see. His side throbbed. He breathed in labored gasps. He felt dizzy, faint. Then he spied a large painted sign hanging awry from a doorpost that appeared to be all that was left of a collapsed building. The sign was shaped like a bird, a bright red rooster. The Crowing Cock brothel! He was on Morton Street. Before him, San Francisco’s most notorious alley stood eerily quiet. He’d never seen it deserted before. Behind him, more gunshots. A bullet ricocheted off a street lamp near him. “Looter! Halt! Surrender!” Bohman whipped the horses, putting distance between himself and his pursuers. But ahead, a burning building collapsed into the street, and the horses stopped, refusing to take another step.

The teamster spun around and fell on the gold. Frantic, he hurled the bags into a black pit beneath the wreckage of a ruined building. A brothel? A saloon? An opium den? No matter. The bags were heavy. His side ached.

Once the wagon was emptied, Bohman rolled painfully off it. He slapped one of the horses’ rumps. “Yah!” The team wheeled around and trotted up the street toward the police.

“Here’s his wagon!” he heard them say. “Now where is that bastard? Get him.”

Bohman scrambled down into the pit. Above him, he heard the approaching clip-clop of boots slapping cobblestones. He held his breath. The officers ran past him, then drew up short before the collapsed burning building.

“Where the hell did he go?” one asked.

“Work the wreckage!” another one ordered. “You see him, arrest him. He resists, shoot.”

“Son of a bitch disappeared!”

In a dark alcove ten feet below them, the teamster crouched surrounded by bags of gold. The building that sheltered him had been a cowyard, and like most Morton Street establishments, it boasted a basement where the liquor was stored and opium smoked.

“Shit! Where’d he go?” He heard the police poking at the debris. After a while, their voices faded away up the street.

The cellar was dark, but not quite pitch black. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Bohman noticed two legs sticking out from under several cases of something … whiskey from the smell, most of the bottles smashed. Beyond the body, behind the remnants of a brick wall that had shattered, he found an alcove big enough for the bags. Slowly, favoring his injured side, he picked his way through the wreckage, hauling the gold to his hiding place, then covering it with debris. Ordinarily, the job would not have taxed him. But by the time he finished, he was breathing hard, dripping sweat, and feeling faint. His chest ached. His side burned.

Dazed and wobbly, he stumbled over something and landed hard on his knees. A hideous smell assailed him. He was kneeling over the head and chest of the corpse. To stink that badly, the man must have been dead a while. He wore an apron. He was probably a bartender who’d been down fetching whiskey when the earthquake hit. Poor bastard must have been crushed when the quake hurled cases of liquor off the shelves.

Barely conscious, Bohman stared at the dead man. Slowly, an idea bubbled up through the pain in his side. He coaxed the whiskey crates off the crushed corpse. Rats had already gotten to part of his face. His eyes were gone and the flesh of his lips and jaw had been eaten away, giving him a sickening, skeletal grin.

Bohman was overcome by a wave of nausea. He stripped off his Army uniform. He would never need Uncle Sam’s rags again. Then he undressed the dead man, and donned his clothing. He poked among the crates until he found a bottle intact. He opened it, poured some liquor down his throat and over his head, then doused a rag and stuffed it into his new pants against his wound. It stung fiercely. For a moment he thought he might collapse. But the thought of the fortune in gold—his gold—kept him from fainting. With liquor in his hair and the whiskey-soaked rag dripping down his leg, he reeked of alcohol. Holding the bottle, he grappled his way back up to the street.

Not a moment too soon. The fire that stopped his team was churning his way. He limped toward Stockton, counting the number of paces he took so he could retrace his steps back to the gold.

As he approached Union Square, he launched into his act. He swung the whiskey bottle, making circles in the smoky air, and began braying off-key: “Oh, m’darlin,’ Oh m’darlin,’ Oh m’darlin’ Clementi-i-i-ne…”

A knot of policemen noticed him.

“Jesus!” one exclaimed approaching him. “Been on a bender?” Bohman gazed at him wild-eyed, incoherent, and kept on singing: “You are lost and gone fore-e-ever. …”

“Come ’ere, John Barleycorn.” Bohman staggered into the officer’s arms. The policeman called to his comrades, “He stinks of liquor. And he’s bleeding.”

Bohman kept singing and rolling his head. The officer slapped his cheek. “Christ, man, you’re hurt! Do you even know there’s been an earthquake? The city’s burning. Christ Almighty!”

Bohman made no reply except to belch loudly.

Another policeman approached and relieved the drunk of his bottle. The two officers grasped him under the arms and dragged him to the grass by the Dewey Monument. They lay him down to wait for an infirmary wagon.

Bohman’s cheek pressed against the lawn. Despite the rain of ash and debris, it was cool and damp. Ninety-seven paces. He concentrated on fixing the number in his mind. Ninety-seven. He felt sleepy and closed his eyes. Ninety-seven paces. The last thing he remembered was the dead bartender’s hideous grin.