lawn skirts, shirt waists, and garden hats, went
to and fro, invariably in couples, coming in and out of the drug store,
the grocery store, and haberdasher's, or lingering in front of the Post
Office, which was on a corner under the I.O.O.F. hall. Young men, in
shirt sleeves, with brown, wicker cuff-protectors over their forearms,
and pencils behind their ears, bustled in front of the grocery store,
anxious and preoccupied. A very old man, a Mexican, in ragged white
trousers and bare feet, sat on a horse-block in front of the barber
shop, holding a horse by a rope around its neck. A Chinaman went by,
teetering under the weight of his market baskets slung on a pole across
his shoulders. In the neighbourhood of the hotel, the Yosemite House,
travelling salesmen, drummers for jewelry firms of San Francisco,
commercial agents, insurance men, well-dressed, metropolitan, debonair,
stood about cracking jokes, or hurried in and out of the flapping white
doors of the Yosemite barroom. The Yosemite 'bus and City 'bus passed
up the street, on the way from the morning train, each with its two or
three passengers. A very narrow wagon, belonging to the Cole & Colemore
Harvester Works, went by, loaded with long strips of iron that made a
horrible din as they jarred over the unevenness of the pavement. The
electric car line, the city's boast, did a brisk business, its cars
whirring from end to end of the street, with a jangling of bells and
a moaning plaint of gearing. On the stone bulkheads of the grass plat
around the new City Hall, the usual loafers sat, chewing tobacco,
swapping stories. In the park were the inevitable array of nursemaids,
skylarking couples, and ragged little boys. A single policeman, in grey
coat and helmet, friend and acquaintance of every man and woman in the
town, stood by the park entrance, leaning an elbow on the fence post,
twirling his club.

But in the centre of the best business block of the street was a
three-story building of rough brown stone, set off with plate glass
windows and gold-lettered signs. One of these latter read, "Pacific and
Southwestern Railroad, Freight and Passenger Office," while another much
smaller, beneath the windows of the second story bore the inscription,
"P. and S. W. Land Office."

Annixter hitched his horse to the iron post in front of this building,
and tramped up to the second floor, letting himself into an office
where a couple of clerks and bookkeepers sat at work behi