So things went along for a month. Christmas drew near. Every joint in town was preparing for a big celebration, and we were fully in the mood to take part in it. The Ward Block was finished. From top to bottom it had been swept and cleared. Crowds came every day to admire the varnish, the glass, the fireplaces, the high plastered walls; to sniff the clean new smell of it. Everybody admitted it to be the finest building in the city. Yank, Johnny, and I spent most of our time proudly showing people around, pointing out the offices the various firms intended to occupy. Downstairs Jim Reckett was already installing some of the splendours that were to make the transplanted El Dorado the most gorgeous gambling place in town. Here the public was not admitted. The grand opening, on New Year’s day, was not thus to lose its finest savour.

On Christmas eve we went to bed, strangely enough, very early. All the rest of the town was celebrating, but we had been busy moving furniture and fixtures, had worked late in order to finish the job, and were very tired. By this time we were so hardened that we could sleep through any sort of a racket, so the row going on below and on both sides did not bother us a bit. I, personally, fell immediately into a deep slumber.

426The first intimation of trouble came to me in my sleep. I dreamed we were back on the Porcupine, and that the stream was in flood. I could distinctly hear the roar of it, as it swept by; and I remember Johnny and myself were trying desperately to climb a big pine tree in order to get above the encroaching waters. A wind sprang up and shook the pine violently. I came slowly to waking consciousness, the dream fading into reality. Yank was standing by my cot, shaking me by the shoulder. He was fully dressed, and carried his long rifle.

“Get up!” he told me. “There’s a big fire one or two doors away, and it’s headed this way.”

Then I realized that the roar of the flames had induced my dream.

I hastily slipped on my clothes and buckled my gold belt around my waist. The fire was humming away in a steady crescendo, punctuated by confused shouts of many men. Light flickered redly through the cracks of the loosely constructed hotel building. I found Johnny awaiting me at the door.

“It’s a hummer,” he said; “started in Denison’s Exchange. They say three men have been killed.”

The Plaza was black with men, their faces red with the light of the flames. A volunteer crew were busily darting in and out of the adjacent buildings, carrying out all sorts of articles and dumping them in the square.

“There’s no water nearer than the bay,” an acquaintance shouted in our ears. “There ain’t much to do. She’ll burn herself out in a few minutes.”

The three buildings were already gutted. A sheet 427 of fire sucked straight upward in the still air, as steadily as a candle flame, and almost as unwavering. It was a grand and beautiful spectacle. The flimsy structures went like paper. Talbot saw us standing at a little elevation, and forced his way to us.

“It will die down in five minutes,” said he. “What do you bet on Warren’s place? Do you think she’ll go?”

“It’s mighty hot all around there,” said I doubtfully.

“Yes, but the flames are going straight up; and, as you say, it will begin to die down pretty soon,” put in Johnny.

“The walls are smoking a little,” commented a bystander judicially.

“She’s a fine old bonfire, anyway,” said Talbot.

Fifteen or twenty men were trying to help Warren’s place resist the heat. They had blankets and pails of water, and were attempting to interpose these feeble defences at the points most severely attacked. Each man stood it as long as he could, then rushed out to cool his reddened face.

“Reminds me of the way I used to pop corn when I was a kid,” grinned a miner. “I wouldn’t care for that job.”

“Just the same, they’ll save it,” observed Talbot judicially.

Almost coincident with his words a long-drawn a-ah! burst from the crowd. A wandering gust of wind came in from the ocean. For the briefest instant the tall straight column of flame bent gracefully before it, then came upright again as it passed. In that instant it licked across the 428 side wall of Warren’s place, and immediately Warren’s place burst into flame.

“Hard luck!” commented Talbot.

The firefighters swarmed out like bees from a disturbed hive.

“Our hotel next,” said Johnny.

“That’s safe enough; there’s a wide lot between,” I observed.

A fresh crew of firefighters took the place of the others–namely, those personally interested in saving the hotel.

“Lucky the night is so still,” said Talbot.

We watched Warren’s place burn with all the half guilty joy of those who are sorry; but who are glad to be there if it has to happen. Suddenly Talbot threw up his head.

“Feel that breeze?” he cried.

“Suction into the fire,” suggested Johnny.

But Talbot shook his head impatiently, trying to peer through the glare into the sky.

It was a very gentle breeze from the direction of the ocean. I could barely feel it on my cheek, and it was not strong enough as yet to affect in the slightest the upward-roaring column of flame. For a moment I was inclined to agree with Johnny that it was simply a current of air induced by the conflagration. But now an uneasy motion began to take place in the crowd. Men elbowed their way here and there, met, conferred, gathered in knots. In less than a minute Talbot signalled us. We made our way to where he was standing with Sam Brannan, Casey, Green, and a few others.

429“Thank God the wind is from the northwest,” Talbot said fervently. “The Ward Block is safely to windward, and we don’t need to worry about that, anyway. But it is a wind, and it’s freshening. We’ve got to do something to stop this fire.”

As though to emphasize the need for some sort of action, a second and stronger puff of wind sent whirling aloft a shower of sparks and brands.

We started at double quick in the direction of the flimsy small structures between the old El Dorado and the Parker House. Some men, after a moment, brought ropes and axes. We began to tear down the shanties.

But before we had been at work five minutes, the fire began to run. The wind from the sea increased. Blazing pieces of wood flew through the air like arrows. Flames stooped in their stride, and licked up their prey, and went on rejoicing. Structures one minute dark and cold and still burst with startling suddenness and completeness into rioting conflagration. Our little beginning of a defence was attacked and captured before we had had time to perfect it. The half dozen shanties we had pulled to the ground merely furnished piled fuel. Somewhat demoralized, we fell back, and tried, rather vaguely, to draw a second line of defence. The smoke and sparks suffocated and overwhelmed us, and the following flames leaped upon us as from behind an ambush. Some few men continued gropingly to try to do something, but the most of us were only too glad to get out where we could catch a breath.

430Almost immediately, however, we were hurried back by frantic merchants.

“Save the goods!” was the cry.

We laboured like slaves, carrying merchandise, fixtures, furniture, anything and everything from the darkened interiors of buildings to the open spaces. I worked as I had never worked before, and not once did I know whose property I thus saved. At first I groped in the darkness, seizing what I could; then gradually, like the glow of a red dawn, a strange light grew, showing dimly and ruddily the half-guessed features of the place. It glowed, this light, increasing in power as heating metal slowly turns red. And then the flames licked through; and dripping with sweat, I abandoned that place to its enemy.

All sense of time and all sense of locality were lost. The world was a strange world of deep, concealing shadows and strong, revealing glares, and a mist of smoke, and hurrying, shouting, excited multitudes. Sometimes I found myself in queer little temporary eddies of stillness, where a certain calm and leisure seemed to have been insulated. Then for a brief moment or so I rested. Occasionally I would find myself with some stranger, and we would exchange brief exclamatory remarks.

“Whole city is going!”

“Looks like it.”

“Hear a roof fell in and killed twenty men.”

“Probably exaggerated.”

“Probably. Don’t catch me under no falling roofs! When she gets afire, I get out.”

“Same here.”

431“Well, I suppose we ought to try to do something.”

“Suppose so.”

And we would go at it again.

At the end of two or three hours–no man can guess time in such a situation–the fire stopped advancing. I suppose the wind must have changed, though at the time I did not notice it. At any rate, I found myself in the gray dawn looking rather stupidly at a row of the frailest kind of canvas and scantling houses which the fire had sheared cleanly in two, and wondering why in thunder the rest of them hadn’t burned!

A dense pall of smoke hung over the city, and streamed away to the south and east. In the burned district all sense of location had been lost. Where before had been well-known landmarks now lay a flat desert. The fire had burned fiercely and completely, and, in lack of food, had died down to almost nothing. A few wisps of smoke still rose, a few coals glowed, but beside them nothing remained to indicate even the laying out of the former plan. Only over across a dead acreage of ashes rose here and there the remains of isolated brick walls. They looked, through the eddying mists and smoke, like ancient ruins, separated by wide spaces.

I gazed dully across the waste area, taking deep breaths, resting, my mind numb. Then gradually it was borne in on me that the Plaza itself looked rather more empty-sided than it should. A cold hand gripped my heart. I began to skirt the smouldering embers of the shanties and wooden warehouses, trying to follow where the streets had been. Men were prowling 432 about everywhere, blackened by smoke, their clothing torn and burned.

“Can you make out where Higgins’s store was?” one of them hailed me. “I had a little shanty next door, and some gold dust. Figure I might pan it out of the ashes, if I could only find the place.”

I had no time to help him, and left him prowling around seeking for a landmark.

The Plaza was full of people. I made my way to the northerly corner, and, pushing a passage through the bystanders, contemplated three jagged, tottering brick walls, a heap of smouldering dÉbris, and a twisted tangle of iron work. This represented all that remained of the Ward Block. The change of wind that had saved the shanties had destroyed our fortune!