It was just a question of who dared to shoot first. My blood ran cold; but just at that moment four hands came round the corner of the car, two had him by the back of the neck and two had taken his gun away. Then slowly but surely he was withdrawn from view. The conductor asked me not to report the occurrence, as the man was a fireman, a family man, and all right when sober. I was so glad to get away with my life that I would never have told a soul. Furthermore, I sold my pistol as soon as I reached San Francisco, and have never carried another. The rarest sight I ever saw was the sudden change from six feet of snow to the southern slope of the Sierras. With a plunge from winter into summer, the whole character of the landscape changed. The air was balmy, the sky was a soft blue, and looking like orchards of apple trees of enormous size were the live oaks that covered the slopes of those mighty mountain sides. But best of all, beside the tracks, and almost denying the month of February, was growing tender young green grass! I picked some of it, put it in my buttonhole, and cried. I had fallen in love with California. After that every shanty station saw me out of the car, smelling the atmosphere and feasting my eyes on the beauty of this big, good-natured, sweet, mild country. At one of these mountain stops, feeling hungry, I bought a large slab of custard pie. Beside the tracks was a cage on wheels in which lay a big female grizzly whose owner was taking her to San Francisco to be sold. The man was nothing loath to explain his prowess in capturing such a fearsome beast, and we all crowded about, myself, of course, in the front row. Looking at us while talking and gesticulating, his hand went fairly well within the bars, whereupon the lazy grizzly, seemingly dozing, closed her mouth over his fingers and backed slowly to the rear of the cage, pulling his arm in with her. With that he whirled, fed his arm in between the bars and, quickly looking around, grabbed my pie and slapped the bear in the face with it. Of course it splashed, and she immediately let go of him to lick her chops, but his hand came out with the mark of every tooth upon its back. In spite of its lack of humor, I truly believe that this is the original custard-pie story. San Francisco was a very different city in those days from what it is to-day; the sea came almost up to Montgomery Street, and beyond Van Ness Avenue there was nothing but sand dunes shifting and changing every minute. This is practically all new now, as the great fire of 1906 swept it away. I remember the Bay and the ferryboat, the long pier at the Oakland Mole and passing the romantic and lonely Goat Island. The water seemed strangely quiet and strangely blue to me, whose only experience of the sea was the coast of Maine.