As evening fell, the open spaces about the town, common and waste, smoked with the fires of a thousand camps. The rolling upland rioted with feverish life, or vibrated with a boisterous cheerfulness, for hope was everywhere. Numberless white-topped wagons gleamed opaquely in the gathering darkness; black figures moved restlessly to and fro about the fires; there was the continual lowing of oxen; now a noisy chorus of men's voices could be heard; then nearer at hand a clear tenor voice took up the words. “I soon shall be in 'Frisco, And then I'll look around, And when I see the gold lumps there, I'll pick 'em off the ground. I'll scrape the mountains clean, my boys, I'll drain the rivers dry, A pocket full of rocks bring home, So, brothers, don't you cry!” A hundred men roared out the refrain: “Oh! California, That's the land for me! I'm bound for San Francisco, With my wash-bowl on my knee!” The fur trader grinned and nodded over his tin cup of steaming coffee. “Some of 'em will do their singing out the other side of their mouths before they finish the first five hundred miles; eh, California?” “I reckon so,” said Rogers, sententiously. “Stephen, here, tells me you've crossed the mountains?” Again Rogers contented himself with a brief answer in the affirmative. “Ever been in the fur trade?” asked Basil. “No.” “Oh, aye, just knocking about maybe?” “Trying mighty hard to make a living,” corrected Rogers shortly. “That's easy to pick up.” “The kind I wanted wa'n'..” “What kind were you looking for?” inquired Basil. “Something a mighty sight different from what I got out of soldiering and ranching,” responded Rogers. The fur trader devoted a moment to a close scrutiny of the Californian. “It don't seem to have agreed with you specially well, for a fact,” he commented drily. “Come, Basil,” said Stephen, “if you are ready, we'd better go into town before it gets any later.” They found the town alive with the unwonted traffic of that season. Before the warehouses and stores, which for years past had outfitted the Santa Fe traders and the great fur companies, freight wagons from the river landings or from St. Louis were still discharging their loads. There were other wagons from the country about, each drawn by its six or eight oxen or mules, and laden with flour, pork, and farm produce; and from the distant trading posts were still other wagons, loaded with bales of beaver and buffalo robes. The teams blocked the street, and their drivers swore hoarsely at each other; and the crowds showered them with advice.