eighteen, and Fred Kohler, Broderick’s partner and chief engineer of all the volunteer companies, arms folded, leaned back on cane-bottomed chairs and observed the blue light that came so suddenly over the Gold Rush town. As summer approached, its soft evening light would seemingly last forever. These were fine times for the Brooklyn street boy—a warm bed, good friends, and heroes packed with foolhardy courage to admire. Best of all he had a puzzle to solve and a villain to catch. At that moment San Francisco was the most exciting and swiftest-moving city on earth. Every day on average thirty new houses were built, two murders committed, and one small fire set. Rugged, heavily armed men trudged past on Kearny Street—unkempt, unwashed young men—a fine hardy breed in heavy woolen shirts with rolled sleeves, sashes for belts, and trousers cut from canvas tents. Rugged mountain men and well-fed merchants passed together. Lynx-eyed gamblers in black broadcloth coats learned that their patent leather boots got just as caked with mud as theminers’ plain boots. The arsonist, if Broderick was right, could be any of them, even someone Sawyer knew. One question dominated his mind: What was the arsonist’s motive for burning down San Francisco? In the search for the Lightkeeper, Sawyer’s attention focused on a gang called the Hounds. It happened that he and George Oakes met a particularly vicious band of them the following Sunday.
“Watch out,” Oakes warned the boy. “The Hounds are barking!” When the Hounds barked, the town became meek. Like an army under command, the thugs struck hard and shot fast. Storekeepers never antagonized these masters of the plunge and knife who robbed and stabbed in daylight without the slightest provocation. One passerby returned an insult from a Hound. The thug tore his tongue out. Another accidentally brushed a Hound’s shoulder. His ears were sliced off. One Sunday some citizens collided with their ragtag parade. The riot, which lasted all afternoon, left the innocents clubbed and bloody and the Hounds stronger and more feared than ever. At the head of the reconstructed Square, an arrogant group of men in grimy quasi-military dress entered the public space. Playing discordantly on a fife and drum, the Hounds marched, accompanying their makeshift parade with groans, hisses, catcalls, and yelps. Tramping directly into the center of the Square, they stopped waving their banners to shove a few folks from their path.
“Lieutenant” Sam Roberts, the “Hound Supreme,” guided five of his men into a restaurant. Roberts, an illiterate brute in a tattered uniform of full regimentals with dirty gold braid, made sure his men ate and drank gratis. He sat down at a table and propped up his muddy boots. “Gin and Tonic! Gin and Tonic!” he jeered. The owner obeyed. He knew the Hounds often piled up restaurant furniture and set it afire before they left. At a shadowed table not far away, a tall thin man with greasy black hair sat listening. His hands were callused and scarred and his face pockmarked. His long coat hid a soot-stained, handmade copper lantern the size of a snuffbox at his belt. A crude opening had been cut into its side to create a small door. The interior was large enough for a single coal and some kindling. This man observed the Hounds wherever he could. It was easy. All day every Sunday, Hounds dressed in outrageous military costumes marched into every corner of the city.
“The Hounds are a semimilitary company of sixty to a hundred young thugs,” Oakes explained to Sawyer. They sprang from the gangs of the Bowery and the Five Points at the intersection of Baxter, Park, and Worth streets, a “bull-baiting, rip-roaring hell” with its own “Den ofThieves” and “Murderer’s Alley.” New York diarist Philip Hone wrote of Five Points’ child gangs as “swarms of ragged barefooted, un-breeched little tatterdemalions.” Many had been signal boys for the New York fire
“Watch out,” Oakes warned the boy. “The Hounds are barking!” When the Hounds barked, the town became meek. Like an army under command, the thugs struck hard and shot fast. Storekeepers never antagonized these masters of the plunge and knife who robbed and stabbed in daylight without the slightest provocation. One passerby returned an insult from a Hound. The thug tore his tongue out. Another accidentally brushed a Hound’s shoulder. His ears were sliced off. One Sunday some citizens collided with their ragtag parade. The riot, which lasted all afternoon, left the innocents clubbed and bloody and the Hounds stronger and more feared than ever. At the head of the reconstructed Square, an arrogant group of men in grimy quasi-military dress entered the public space. Playing discordantly on a fife and drum, the Hounds marched, accompanying their makeshift parade with groans, hisses, catcalls, and yelps. Tramping directly into the center of the Square, they stopped waving their banners to shove a few folks from their path.
“Lieutenant” Sam Roberts, the “Hound Supreme,” guided five of his men into a restaurant. Roberts, an illiterate brute in a tattered uniform of full regimentals with dirty gold braid, made sure his men ate and drank gratis. He sat down at a table and propped up his muddy boots. “Gin and Tonic! Gin and Tonic!” he jeered. The owner obeyed. He knew the Hounds often piled up restaurant furniture and set it afire before they left. At a shadowed table not far away, a tall thin man with greasy black hair sat listening. His hands were callused and scarred and his face pockmarked. His long coat hid a soot-stained, handmade copper lantern the size of a snuffbox at his belt. A crude opening had been cut into its side to create a small door. The interior was large enough for a single coal and some kindling. This man observed the Hounds wherever he could. It was easy. All day every Sunday, Hounds dressed in outrageous military costumes marched into every corner of the city.
“The Hounds are a semimilitary company of sixty to a hundred young thugs,” Oakes explained to Sawyer. They sprang from the gangs of the Bowery and the Five Points at the intersection of Baxter, Park, and Worth streets, a “bull-baiting, rip-roaring hell” with its own “Den ofThieves” and “Murderer’s Alley.” New York diarist Philip Hone wrote of Five Points’ child gangs as “swarms of ragged barefooted, un-breeched little tatterdemalions.” Many had been signal boys for the New York fire
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