Collis took a notepad out of his tailcoat pocket and scribbled three or four words in it, in pencil. ‘I’ve written myself a reminder,’ he told Mr Yee. ‘When we finish the railroad, the Sierra Pacific will make a financial contribution to the Chinese companies, one dollar for every man who worked on the track. What the companies do with the money — well, that’s up to them. But I hope they use it for better housing and better schools.’

Mr Yee looked at Collis without blinking. Then he said, ‘I believe there is no question. You are, indeed, the man.’

Dan McReady sniffed. ‘What do you mean by that? What man?’

Mr Yee smiled at him. ‘Mr Edmonds knows what I mean. True, Mr Edmonds?’

‘I think I’ll try some of that wind-dried duck, if there’s any going,’ Collis said. ‘How about you, Dan?’

Mission Dolores had been proudly established in 1776 as Spain’s northernmost outpost on the West Coast of America. Now it stood peeling and decrepit among the barren hills of southwest San Francisco, its cemetery overgrown with pampas grass, juniper bushes, ferns, and poinsettias. Birds settled on the clay-tiled roof, watching for bread and oranges discarded by the Sunday visitors who came out to promenade, and picnic, and canter their horses.

Collis walked around the mission, waving his hat to keep himself cool. Then he stood beside one of the whitewashed adobe walls for a while and had a smoke. He could see the flagstaff from where he was standing, but he wanted to stay in the shadow. There was no cloud, no breeze. Just the glaring sun, and the afternoon dust.

At about ten after three, he went inside and looked at the church. It was darker there, and cool, because the heat of the day was kept out by mud walls that were four feet thick. There were decorative altars, nearly ninety years old, carved in Mexico and brought to San Francisco by ship, and statues of the saints that had been crudely fashioned by the local Indians. The ceiling was painted in blues and reds and pale greens.

Collis stood there for a while, in the shadows, and then in a halting, embarrassed voice, he began a prayer. ‘Dear Lord,’ he said, as if he were starting a letter to a friend in a foreign country, ‘I don’t know what it is that You want of me; or even if You want anything from me at all. But I guess it’s You behind all this, because it’s all too big to be anybody else.’

He paused. He felt like a fool. But he knew, somehow, that God was really there. He knew that God was waiting for him to continue, that God expected more.