He wheeled and shouted a command to his troopers. The cavalcade rode south but young Francisco turning in the saddle cast a farewell glance toward the shining bay. "Port O' Gold!" he whispered raptly, "some day men shall know your fame around the world!" PORT O' GOLD CHAPTER I YERBA BUENA It was 1845. Three quarters of a century had passed since young Francisco Garvez, as he rode beside Portola's chief of Scouts, glimpsed the mystic vision of a city rising from the sandy shores of San Francisco Bay. Garvez, so tradition held, had taken for his spouse an Indian maiden educated by the mission padres of far San Diego. For his service as soldado of old Spain he had been granted many acres near the Mission of Dolores and his son, through marriage, had combined this with another large estate. There a second generation of the Garvez family had looked down from a palatial hacienda upon spreading grain-fields, wide-reaching pastures and corrals of blooded stock. They had seen the Mission era wax and wane and Mexico cast off the governmental shackles of Madrid. They had looked askance upon the coming of the "Gringo" and Francisco Garvez II, in the feebleness of age, had railed against the destiny that gave his youngest daughter to a Yankee engineer. He had bade her choose between allegiance to an honored race and exile with one whom he termed an unknown, alien interloper. But in the end he had forgiven, when she chose, as is the wont of women, Love's eternal path. Thus the Garvez rancho, at his death became the Windham ranch and there dwelt Dona Anita with her children Inez and Benito, for her husband, "Don Roberto" Windham lingered with an engineering expedition in the wilds of Oregon. Just nineteen was young Benito, straight and slim, combining in his fledgling soul the austere heritage of Anglo-Saxons with the leaping fires of Castile. Fondly, yet with something anxious in her glance, his mother watched the boy as he sprang nimbly to the saddle of his favorite horse. He was like her husband, strong and self-reliant. Yet,--she sighed involuntarily with the thought,--he had much of the manner of her handsome and ill-fated brother, Don Diego, victim of a duel that had followed cards and wine. "Why so troubled, madre mia?" The little hand of Inez stole into her mother's reassuringly. "Is it that you fear for our Benito when he rides among the Gringos of the puebla?" Her dark crowned and exquisite head rose proudly and her eyes flashed as she watched her brother riding with the grace of splendid horsemanship toward the distant town of Yerba Buena. "He can take care of himself," she ended with, a toss of her head. "To be sure, my little one," the Dona Windham answered smiling. No doubt it was a foolish apprehension she decided. If only the Dona Briones who lived on a ranchita near the bay-shore did not gossip so of the Americano games of chance. And if only she might know what took Benito there so frequently.