His father came out in '49 with the gold rush crowd, panned out a good pile, and then, liking the life--San Francisco was a gay little burg those days--opened one of the crack gambling houses down on the Old Plaza.

Plate glass windows you could look through from outside if you thought it best to stay out, and see hundreds of men playing at tables where the gold pieces--often slugs--were piled as high as their noses, and hundreds more walking up and down the aisles either waiting for a chance to sit, or hoping to appease their hunger with the sight of so much gold.

They didn't try any funny business, for every gambler had a six-shooter in his hip pocket, and sometimes on the table beside him.
"Sometimes men would walk out and shoot themselves on the sidewalk in front of the windows, and not a soul inside would so much as look up.
Well, Delano the first had a short life but a merry one.

He couldn't keep away from the tables himself, and first thing he knew he was broke, sold up.

He went back to the mines, but his luck had gone, and his wife--she had followed him out here--persuaded him to go back home and live in the old house, on a little income she had; and he bored all the neighbors to death for a few years about 'early days in California' until he dropped off.