Treasure and Trouble Therewith Part 50

He had a memory of her never to be forgotten, walking ahead of him, copper-bright, as she fronted the blazing light, black against it, bending to look at a half-hidden face, kneeling beside a covered shape, outstretched in a stupor of sleep. The night had reached its middle hours, the dense stillness of universal repose held the crowded spot, when she finally sank in a helpless exhaustion and slept at his feet. He could do nothing but cover her with his coat, hold vigil over her, move so that his body was a shield to keep the glare from her face. He watched her till the day came, and the noises of the waking life around them called her back to the consciousness of her anxiety.

The loss of relatives and friends was one of the following features of the great disaster. With every means of communication cut off, with a great area flaming, impossible to cross, enormous to circle, with the exodus in some places so hurried no time was left for plans or the sending of messages, with the spread of the fire so rapid no one knew where the houseless thousands would end their march, families were scattered, individuals lost track of. Groups that at dawn had been a compact whole, an hour later had broken, been dispersed, members vanished, disappeared in the inconceivable chaos. To those who suffered this added horror the earthquake remains less a national calamity than the memory of a time when they knew an anguish beyond their dreams of what pain could be.

So it was with Lorry. The wide, encompa.s.sing distress touched her no more than the storm does one sick unto death. The growing demolition, spread out under her eyes roused no responsive interest. It was like a story someone was trying to tell her when she was writhing in torment, a nightmare coming in flashes of recollection through a day full of real, poignant terrors.

For two days she and Mark searched. There were periods when she sought the shelter of Mrs. Kirkham's flat, dropped on a bed and slept till the drained reservoir of her strength was refilled, then was up and out again. Mark and the old lady had no power to stay her. He went with her, and Mrs. Kirkham kept a fire in the little oven of bricks in the gutter so that food might be ready when they came back. Returning from their fruitless wanderings, they found the old lady seated in a rocking-chair on the sidewalk, a parasol over her head to keep the cinders off, the coffeepot on the curb and the brick oven hot and ready.

It was Mrs. Kirkham who found Aunt Ellen--safe with friends near the Presidio. Lorry would not go to her, unable to bear her questions. So, Mrs. Kirkham, who had not walked more than three blocks for years, toiled up there, sinking on doorsteps to get back her wind, helping where she could--a baby carried, a woman told to come round to the flat and get "a bite of dinner." She quieted Aunt Ellen, explained that Lorry was with her, said nothing of Chrystie, and toiled home, dropping with groans into her chair by the gutter. When she had got her breath she built up the fire and brewed a fragrant potful of coffee, which she offered to the worn and weary outcasts as they plodded past.

There was not a plaza or square in that part of the city to which Lorry and Mark did not go. They hunted among the countless h.o.a.rds that spread over the lawns in Golden Gate Park, and covered the hillsides of the Presidio. They went through the temporary hospitals--wards given to the sick and injured in the military barracks, tent villages on the parade ground. They saw strange sights, terrible sights; birth and death under the trees in the open; saw a heroism, undaunted and undismayed; saw men and women, ruined and homeless, offering aid, succoring distress, gallant, selfless, forever memorable.

Night came upon them in these teeming camping grounds. Along the road's edges the lights of tiny fires--allowed for cooking--broke out in a line of jeweled sparks. Women bent over them; men lighted their pipes and lay or squatted round these rude hearths, all that they had of home. The smell of supper rose appetizingly, coffee simmering, bacon frying. Calls went back and forth for that most valued of possessions, a can opener.

There was laughter, jokes pa.s.sed over exchanges of food, an excess of tea here swapped for a loaf of bread there, a bottle of Zinfandel for a box of sardines. It was like a great, democratic picnic to which everybody had been invited--the rich, the poor, the foreign elements, white, black and yellow, the old and the young, the good and bad, virtue from Pacific Avenue, vice from Dupont Street, the prominent citizen and the derelict from the Barbary Coast.

The fire flung its banners across the sky, a vast lighting up for them, under which they went about the business of living. At intervals, booming through the sounds of their habitation, came the dynamite explosions blowing up the city in blocks. When the m.u.f.fled roar was over, the gathering quiet was pierced by the thin, high notes of gramophones. From the shadow of trees Caruso's voice rose in the swaggering lilt of "_La Donna e Mobile_," to be answered by Melba's, crystal-sweet, from a machine stored in a crowded cart. There were ragtime melodies, and someone had a record of "Marching Through Georgia" that always drew forth applause. Then, as the night advanced, a gradual hush fell, a slow sinking down into silence, broken by a child's querulous cry, a groan of pain, the smothered mutterings of a dreamer. Like the slain on a battlefield, they lay on the roadside, dotted over the slopes, thick as fallen leaves under the trees, their faces buried in arms or wrappings against the fall of cinders and the hot glare.

In all these places Lorry and Mark sent out that call for the lost which park and reservation soon grew to know and echo. Standing on a rise of ground Mark would cry with the full force of his lungs, "Is Chrystie Alston there?" The shout spread like a ring on water, and at the limits of its carrying power, was taken up and repeated. They could hear it fainter in a strange voice--"Is Chrystie Alston there?"--then fainter still as voice after voice took it up, sent it on, threw it like a ball from hand to hand, till, a winged question, it had traversed the place.

But there was no answer, no jubilant response to be relayed back, no Chrystie running toward them with welcoming face.

Late on the second night he induced her to go back to Mrs. Kirkham's. She was heavy on his arm, stumbling as she walked, not answering his attempts at cheer. He delivered her over to the old lady, who had to help her to bed, then sat and waited in the dining room. No lights were allowed in any house, and this room was chosen as the place of their night counsels because of the illumination that came in through the open hole of the fireplace, wrenched out when the chimney fell. When Mrs. Kirkham came back he and she exchanged a somber look, and the old lady voiced both their thoughts:

"She can't stand this. She can't go on. She's hardly able to move now.

What shall we do?"

Their consultation brought them nowhere. As things stood there was no way of inst.i.tuting a more extended search. The police could be of no a.s.sistance, overwhelmed with their labors; individuals who might have helped were lost in the melee; money was as useless as strings of cowrie sh.e.l.ls.

At dawn Mrs. Kirkham stole away to come back presently saying the girl was sleeping.

"She looks like the dead," she whispered. "She hasn't strength enough to go out again. I can keep her here now."

Mark got up.

"Then I'll go; it's what I've been waiting for. Without her I can cover a big area; move quick. I want to try the other side of town. In my opinion Mayer had Chrystie somewhere. She was prepared for a journey--the trunk and the money show that--and the journey was to be with him. If he got her off we'll hear from her in a day or two. If he didn't she's in the city, and it's just possible she drifted or was caught in the Mission crowd. Anyway, I'm going to try that section. Tell Lorry I've gone there.

Keep up her hope, and for heaven's sake try to keep her quiet. I'll be back by evening."

So he went forth. It seemed a blind errand--to find a woman gone without leaving a trace, in a city where two hundred thousand people were homeless and wandering. But it was a time when the common sense of every day was overleaped, when men attempted and achieved beyond the limits of reason and probability.

Half an hour after he had left the flat he met with a piece of luck that gave his spirit a brace. On the steps of a large house, deserted for two days, he came upon one of his companion clerks. This youth, son of the rich, had procured a horse and delivery wagon and had come back to carry away silver and valuables left piled in the front hall. Also he had a bicycle, an article just then of inestimable value, and hearing Mark's intention of crossing the city, loaned it to him.

People who live in the Mission are still wont, when the great quake is spoken of, to remember the man on the bicycle. So many of them saw him, so many of them were stopped and questioned by him. Looking for a lady, he told them, and that he looked far and wide they could testify. He was seen close to the fire line, up along the streets that stretched back from it, in among the crowds camped on the vacant lots, through the plazas and the tents that were starting up like mushrooms in every clear s.p.a.ce. In the little shack where the _Despatch_ was getting out its first paper, full of advertis.e.m.e.nts for the lost and offers of shelter to the outcast, he turned up at midday. He saw Crowder there, told him the situation, and left with him an advertis.e.m.e.nt "for any news of Chrystie Alston."

Late afternoon saw him back on the edges of the Mission Hills. The great human wave here had reached the limit of its wash. The throng was thinner, dwindling to isolated groups. Wheeling his bicycle he threaded a way among them, looking, scrutinizing, asking his questions. But no one had any comfort for him, heads were shaken, hands uplifted and dropped in silent sign of ignorance.

He followed a road that ascended by houses, steps and porches crowded with refugees, to the higher slopes where the buildings were small and far apart. The road shriveled to a dusty track, and leaning his bicycle against the fence he sat down. He felt an exhaustion, bodily and spiritual, and propping his elbows on his knees, let his forehead sink on his hands. For a s.p.a.ce he thought of nothing but Lorry waiting for news and his return to her that night.

A woman's voice, coming from the hill above roused him,

"Say, mister, have you got a bicycle?"

He started and turning saw a girl running down the slope toward him. She came with a breathless speed--a grotesque figure, thin and dark, loose cotton garments eddying back from her body, her feet in beaded, high-heeled slippers sure and light among the rolling stones.

"Yes," he said, rising, "I've got a bicycle."

She came on, panting, her hair in the swiftness of her progress blown out in a black mist from her brow. Her face, dirty and smoke-smeared, struck him as vaguely familiar.

"I saw you from the barn up there," she jerked her hand backward to a barn on the summit, "and I just made a dash down to catch you." She landed against the fence with a violent jolt. "This morning a man who'd come up from below told me the _Despatch_ was going to be published with advertis.e.m.e.nts in it."

"It is," he said. "By tomorrow probably."

"Are you going down there again?" She swept the city with a grimed, brown hand.

"I'm going down sometime, not right now."

"Any time'll do--only the sooner the better. I've got an advertis.e.m.e.nt to put in. Will you take it?"

He nodded. He would be able to do it tomorrow.

She smiled, and with the flash of her teeth and something of gamin roguishness in her expression, the feeling that he had seen her before--knew her--grew stronger. He eyed her, puzzled, and seeing the look, she grinned in gay amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I guess you know _me_, a good many people do. But my make-up's new--dirt. Water's too valuable to use for washing."

He was not quite sure yet, and his expression showed it. That made her laugh, a mischievous note.

"Ain't you ever been to the Albion, young man?"

"Oh!" he breathed. "Why, of course--Pancha Lopez!"

"Come on then," she cried; "now we're introduced. Come up while I write the ad."

She drew away from the fence while he wheeled his bicycle in through a break in the pickets. As she moved along the path in front of him, she called back:

"We're up here in the barn, our castle on the hill. It mayn't look much from the outside, but it's roomy and the view's fine. Better than being crowded into the houses with the people sleeping on the floors. They'd have taken us in, any of 'em, but we chose the barn--quieter and more air. My pa's with me." She turned and threw a challenging glance at him.

"You didn't know I had a pa? Well, I have and a good one." Then she raised her voice and called: "Pa, h.e.l.lo! I've corralled a man who'll take that ad."

From the open door of the barn a man of burly figure appeared. He nodded to Mark, bluffly friendly.

"That's good. We didn't know how we was to get in from this far, and we bin lookin' out for someone." Then turning to the girl, "You get busy?

honey, and write it. We don't want to waste this young feller's time."

They entered the barn, a wide, shadowy place, cool and quiet, with hay piled in the back. Depressions in it showed where they had been sleeping, a horse blanket folded neatly beside each nest. To the left an open door led into what seemed a room for tools and farm supplies. Mark could see one corner where below a line of pegs gunny sacks, stacked and bulging, leaned against the wall.

"Now if you'll further oblige me with a pencil and paper," said the girl, "I'll tackle it, though writing's not my strong suit."

He pulled out a letter--offering a clean back--and a fountain pen. The girl took them, then stood in dubious irresolution, looking at them with uneasy eyes.

"I don't know as I can," she said. "I don't know how to put it. I guess you'd do it better. I'll tell you and you write."

"Very well." She handed the things back, and going to the wall he placed the letter against it and, the pen lifted, turned to her. "Go ahead, I'm ready."