‘It must have changed a great deal since the early days,’ remarked Collis. He was talking to John Frémont, but he kept his eyes fixed on Laurence Melford. Melford, in his turn, was directing his attention towards the veranda’s tiled floor, and listening to what was being said like a collage principal who has heard more trumped-up excuses than St Peter at the gates of heaven.

‘Changed?’ said Frémont. ‘Yes, it’s changed.’ He sounded almost nostalgic. ‘For instance, when Sam Upham first came here in the summer of ’49, he set himself up in a ship’s galley, which he’d bought himself for one hundred dollars, and all he had was a flour barrel for a table, and a nail keg for a chair. He was obliged to sleep crosswise, because the galley was eight inches shorter than he was. That was in Happy Valley, the wetlands south of Market Street ridge. And do you know something? He went away for a year, and came back to find the whole place burned down, and fine frame buildings standing right where his galley had been. That’s how much it’s changed.’

‘You sound as if you miss the old days.’

‘Do I?’ said Frémont. ‘I don’t really think that I do. Maybe I miss the pioneering spirit. The roughness. The early people were honest, too. You could leave your stores for weeks, and nobody would touch them. It’s not the same today.’

‘It’s a hive of cardsharps and villains these days, this city,’ said Laurence Melford, as if he were talking to himself. ‘And all the whores and crimps and raggle-taggle that go with them.’

John Frémont gave a quick, uneasy frown. ‘But you haven’t told us your business, Mr Edmonds, have you? Are you in business, or are you just touring?’

‘I’m in hardware,’ Collis told him. ‘Do you know Leland McCormick and Charles Tucker? I’m their partner, out in Sacramento.’

‘They’re worthy men,’ Frémont said. ‘Both very worthy. You could have done a great deal worse than join up with them.’

‘It’s a beginning,’ said Collis. ‘Ultimately, though, I’m thinking of building a railroad.’

Laurence Melford stared at him sourly. Then he turned away and looked out across the veranda as if Collis’s ideas about railroads were too tiresome to be listened to twice.

‘A railroad?’ echoed John Frémont. ‘Well, that’s most interesting. I undertook some survey work myself, for a railroad. Something a little more ambitious than anything that you’re planning, I expect. A Pacific railroad across the Rockies. And it was rough, I can tell you. Blizzards such as you’ve never seen. We lost eleven men, frozen stiff. They said it was the worst snow for years.’