Dragging his trunk, and shouldering people out of his way, Collis eventually managed to disembark, and he found himself standing on the wharf among a crowd of curious bystanders, bearded sailors, Chinese in pigtails, Chileans in drooping sombreros, and scores of that particular variety of hardbitten, juice-spitting settler which San Francisco’s shantytown sported in great abundance, and who could all have been brothers or cousins of the same man — a man with a sallow suntan, a prickly chin and moustache, a red washed-out shirt and baggy-assed breeches, a knocked-in hat, and an endless line in cussing. Collis was to run into this man again and again, in every saloon, on every upturned barrel, in every whorehouse, or standing in line at the post office for a letter that usually never showed up. He was the pioneer who had never quite made it, the forty-niner who hadn’t come out to prospect for gold until ’51, the storekeeper who had gambled away all his stores, the loser.

A short Mexican in a fringed sombrero and a soiled shirt led a sagging horse and a small wagon through the crowds, buttonholing anybody who looked like a passenger. Eventually he made his way through to Collis and asked: ‘Hotel, señor? I take your trunk.’

‘Not just now,’ answered Collis. ‘Listen — do you know of a man named Andrew Hunt? He runs a food business?’

The Mexican wiped his nose with the back of his hand, sniffed, and thought about that. ‘I know Señor Munt, in the livery-stables business. How’s he? Any good?’

‘No, it’s Hunt I want, not Munt.’

Another man standing nearby with a walrus moustache and a baggy black suit said: ‘I know a fellow called Hunt. Fat fellow, with a stutter? Runs a store on Kearny, up by Market.’

‘That’s not him,’ said Collis.

The man in the baggy black suit looked offended. ‘What do you mean, it ain’t him? His name’s Hunt, ain’t it? Goddam Easterners.’ He stalked off, grumbling.

The Mexican went off, too, still leading his horse and cart. He spoke to one passenger after another, until Collis saw him cajoling the Pearsons, a pale-faced New England family to whom Collis had briefly spoken on the ship. There was a short discussion, and then the Mexican started to load the Pearsons’s baggage on to his wagon. Collis heard him promise to meet them outside of the Yerba Hotel, ‘in quick fandango time, huh?’ Personally, Collis wouldn’t have laid money on the Pearsons’s chances of actually finding the Mexican or their baggage there when they arrived.

He pushed his way across to the father of the family, a onetime school teacher who wore wire-rimmed eyeglasses and grey suits of notable tiredness, and said, ‘If I were you, Mr Pearson, I’d ride along with him, unless you want to lose your bags.’