CHAPTER IX. — THE STRANGER'S FOOT AT LAGUNITAS. VALOIS' SPANISH BRIDE.
Through the mines runs a paean of rejoicing. The roads are free; Joaquin is slain at last. Butcher bravos tire of revenging past deeds of blood. They slay the helpless Indians, or assassinate the frightened native Californians. This rude revenge element, stirred up by Harry Love's exploit, reaches from Klamath to the Colorado. Yet the unsettled interior is destined to keep up the sporadic banditti of the valleys for years. Every glen offers an easy ambush. In the far future only, the telegraph and railway will finally cut up the great State into localized areas of civilization.
All the whiskey-drinking and revolver-carrying bravos must be swept into obscure graves before crime can cease. It becomes, however, occasional only. While bloody hands are ready, the plotting brain of Joaquin Murieta never is equalled by any future bandit.
Coming years bring Francisco Garcia, Sebastian Flores, and the "Los Manilas" gang, whose seventeen years of bloodshed end finally at the gallows of Los Angeles. Varrella and Soto, Tiburcio Vasquez, Santos Lotello, Chavez, and their wild Mexican brothers, are all destined to die by shot or rope.
"Tom Bell," "Jack Powers," and other American recruits in the army of villany, have only changed sides in their crimes. All these wretches merit the deaths awaiting them. The last purely international element of discord vanishes from the records of crime.
Wandering Americans aptly learn stage-robbing. They are heirs of the old riders. The glories of "Black Bart," the lone highwayman of eighty stage-robberies, and the "train robbers," are reserved for the future. But Black Bart never takes life. He robs only the rich.
Valois appreciates that the day has arrived when legal land spoliation of the Mexicans will succeed these violent quarrels. Nothing is left to steal but their land. That is the object of contention between lawyers, speculators, squatters, and the defenceless owners. Their domains narrow under mortgage, interest, and legal (?) robbery.
"Vae victis!" The days of confiscation follow the conquest.
Hydraulic mining, quartz processes, and corporate effort succeed the earlier mining attempts. Two different forces are now in full energy of action.
Hills are swept bodily into the river-beds, in the search for the underlying gold. Rivers and meadows are filled up, sand covered, and ruined. Forests are thrown down, to rot by wholesale. Tunnels are blasted out. The face of nature is gashed with the quest for gold. Banded together for destruction, the miners leave no useful landmark behind them. All is washed away and sent seaward in the choking river-channels.
The home-makers, in peaceful campaigns of seed-time and harvest, develop new treasures. Great interests are introduced. The gold of field, orchard, and harvest falls into the hands of the industrious farmers. These are the men whose only weapons are scythe and sickle. They are the real Fathers of the Pacific. Roving over the interior, the miners leave a land as nearly ruined as human effort can render it. In the wake of these nugget-hunters, future years bring those who make the abandoned hills lovely with scattered homes. They are now hidden by orchards, vineyards, and gardens. Peaceful flocks and herds prove that the Golden Age of California is not to be these wild days of the barbaric Forty-niner.
Maxime Valois sees the land sweeping in unrivalled beauty to the Colorado. Free to the snowy peaks of the Sacramento, the rich plains roll. He knows that there will be here yet,
"Scattered cities crowning these, Whose far white walls along them shine, With fields which promise corn and wine."
He realizes that transient California must yield to stable conditions. Some civilized society will succeed the masses as lacking in fibre as a rope of sand. Already the days of roving adventure are over. There are wanderers, gamblers, fugitives, ex-criminals, and outcasts enough within the limits of the new land. Siren and adventuress, women of nameless history and gloomy future, yet abound. They throng the shabby temporary camps or tent cities. He knows there is no self-perpetuation in the mass of men roving in the river valleys. Better men must yet rule.
A visit to San Francisco and other large places proves that the social and commercial element is supplied from the Northern, Eastern, and Middle States. Their professional men will be predominant also.
In the interior, the farmers of the West and the sagacious planters of the South control.
As May-day approaches, Valois, at San Francisco in 1853, sees a procession of growing children. There, thousands of happy young faces of school-children, appear bearing roses in innocent hands.
Philip Hardin gives him the details of the coming struggle of North and South. It is a battle for the coast from Arizona to Oregon. Lost to England, Russia, and France, lost to the Mormons by stupidity or neglect, this West is lost to the South by the defeat of slavery. Industrious farmers come, in fairly equal numbers, from the Northern and Southern agricultural States. The people of the Atlantic free States come with their commerce, capital, and institutions. The fiat of Webster, Clay, and Seward has placed the guardian angel of freedom at the gates and passes of California. The Southerner cannot transfer his human slave capital to the far West. The very winds sing freedom's song on the wooded heights of the Sierras.
Philip Hardin sighs, as he drains his glass, "Valois, our people have doomed the South to a secondary standing in the Union. This fatal blunder in the West ruins us. Benton and Fremont's precipitancy thwarted our statesmen. This gold, the votes of these new States, the future commerce, the immense resources of the West, all are cast in the balance against us. We must work for a Western republic. We must wait till we can fight for Southern rights. We will conquer these ocean States. We will have this land yet."
The legal Mephisto and his pupil are true to the Southern cause. Neither of them can measure the coming forces of Freedom. Rosalie Leese, the pioneer white child of California, born in 1838, at Yerba Buena, was the first of countless thousands of free-born American children. In the unpolluted West the breath of slavery shall never blight a single human existence. Old Captain Richardson and Jacob Leese, pioneers of the magic city of San Francisco, gaze upon the beautiful ranks of smiling school-children, in happy troops. They have no regrets, like the knights of slavery, to see their places in life filled by free-born young pilgrims of life. All hail the native sons and daughters of the Golden West!
But the Southern politicians forge to the front. The majority is still with them. They carry local measures. Their hands are only tied by the admission of California, as a free State. Too late! On the far borders of Missouri, the contest of Freedom and Slavery begins. It excites all America. Bleeding Kansas! Hardin explains that the circle of prominent Southerners, leading ranchers, Federal officials, and officers of the army and navy, are relied on for the future. The South has all the courts. It controls the legislature. It seeks to cast California's voice against the Union in the event of civil war. As a last resort they will swing it off in a separate sovereignty—a Lone Star of the West.
"We must control here as we did in Texas, Valois. When the storm arises, we will be annexed to the Southern Confederacy."
Even as he spoke, the generation of the War was ripening for the sickle of Death. Filled with the sectional glories of the Mexican war, Hardin could not doubt the final issue.
"Get land, Valois," he cries. "Localize yourself. When this State is thrown open to slavery, you will want your natural position. Maxime, you ought to have a thousand field-hands when you are master at Lagunitas. You can grow cotton there."
Valois muses. He revolves in his mind the "Southern movement." Is it treason? He does not stop to ask. As he journeys to Stockton he ponders. Philip Hardin is about to accept a place on the Supreme Bench of the State. Not to advance his personal fortunes, but to be useful to his beloved South.
While the banks, business houses and factories are controlled by Northern men: while the pothouse politicians of Eastern cities struggle in ward elections, the South holds all the Federal honors. They govern society, dominate in the legislature and in the courts. They dictate the general superior intercourses of men. The ardent Southrons rule with iron hand. They are as yet only combated by the pens of Northern-born editors, and a few fearless souls who rise above the meekly bowing men of the free States.
All see the approaching downfall of lawless pleasure and vicious license in San Francisco. Slowly the tide of respectable settlement rises. It bears away the scum of vice, swept into the Golden Gates in the first rush. The vile community of escaped convicts and mad adventurers cannot support itself. "The old order changeth, yielding slowly to the new."
At the head of all public bodies, the gentleman of the South, quick to avenge his personal honor, aims, with formal "code," and ready pistol, to dragoon all public sentiment. He is sworn to establish the superiority of the cavalier.
The first Mayor of San Francisco, a Congressman elect, gifted editor Edward Gilbert, has already fallen in an affair of honor. The control of public esteem depends largely on prowess in the duelling field. Every politician lives up to the code.
Valois ponders over Hardin's advice. Averse to routine business, fond of a country life, he decides to localize himself. His funds have increased. His old partner, Joe Woods, is now a man of wealth at Sacramento. Maxime has no faith in quartz mines. He has no desires to invest in ship, or factory. He ignores commerce. To be a planter, a man of mark in the legislature, to revive the glories of the Valois family, is the lawyer's wish. While he passes the tule-fringed river-banks, fate is leading him back to Lagunitas. He has led a lonely life, this brilliant young Creole. In the unrest of his blood, under the teachings of Hardin, Valois feels the future may bear him away to unfought fields. The grandsons of those who fought at New Orleans, may win victories, as wonderful, over the enemies of that South, even if these foes are brothers born.
Gliding towards his fate, the puppet of the high gods, Maxime Valois may dream of the surrender of Fort Sumter, and of the Southern Cross soaring high in victory. Appomattox is far hidden beyond battle-clouds of fields yet to come! The long road thither has not yet been drenched with the mingled blood of warring brethren. Dreams! Idle dreams! Glory! Ambition! Southern rights!
At Stockton, Valois receives tidings from Padre Francisco. Clouds are settling down on Lagunitas. Squatters are taking advantage of the defenceless old Mexican. If the Don would save his broad acres, he must appear in the law-courts of the conquerors.
Alas! the good old days are gone, when the whole State of California boasted not a single lawyer. These are new conditions. The train of loyal retainers will never sweep again out of the gates of Lagunitas, headed by the martial Commandante, in all the bravery of rank and office. It is the newer day of gain and greed.
Prospecting miners swarm over Mariposa. The butterflies are driven from rocky knoll and fragrant bower by powder blasts. The woods fall under the ringing axe of the squatter. Ignorant of new laws and strange language; strong only in his rights; weak in years, devoid of friends, Don Miguel's hope is the sage counsel of Padre Francisco. The latter trusts to Valois' legal skill.
As adviser, Valois repairs to Lagunitas. Old patents, papers heavy with antique seal and black with stately Spanish flourish, are conned over. Lines are examined, witnesses probed, defensive measures taken.
Maxime sits; catechizes the Don, the anxious Donna Juanita, and the padre. Wandering by the shores of Lagunitas, Valois notes the lovely reflection of the sweet-faced Dolores in the crystal waters. The girl is fair and modest. Fran‡ois Ribaut often wonders if the young man sees the rare beauty of the Spanish maiden. If it would come to pass!
Over his beads, the padre murmurs, "It may be well. All well in time."
The cause drags on slowly. After months, the famous case of the Lagunitas rancho is fought and won.
But before its last coil has dragged out of the halls of justice, harassed and broken in spirit, Don Miguel closes his eyes upon the ruin of his race. Born to sorrow, Donna Juanita is a mere shade of womanly sorrow. She is not without comfort, for the last of the Peraltas has placed his child's hand in that of Maxime Valois and whispered his blessing.
"You will be good to my little Dolores, amigo mio," murmurs the old man. He loves the man whose lance has been couched in his behalf. The man who saved his life and lands.
Padre Francisco is overjoyed. He noted the drawing near of the young hearts. A grateful flash, lighting the shining eyes of Dolores, told the story to Maxime. His defence of her father, his championship of the family cause, his graceful demeanor fill sweet Dolores' idea of the perfect "caballero."
The priest with bell, book, and candle, gives all the honors of the Church to the last lord of Lagunitas. Hard by the chapel, the old ranchero rests surrounded by the sighing forest. It is singing the same unvarying song, breathing incense from the altars of nature over the stout soldier's tomb.
He has fought the fight of his race in vain. When the roses' leaves drift a second time on the velvet turf, Maxime Valois receives the hand of Dolores from her mother. The union is blessed by the invocation of his priestly friend. It is a simple wedding. Bride and groom are all in all to each other. There are none of the Valois, and not a Peralta to join in merrymaking.
Padre Francisco and Donna Juanita are happy in the knowledge that the shy bird of the mountains is mated with the falcon-eyed Creole. He can defend the lordly heritage of Lagunitas. So, in the rosy summer time, the foot of the stranger passes as master over the threshold of the Don's home. The superb domain passes under the dominion of the American. One by one the old holdings of the Californian families pass away. The last of the Dons, sleeping in the silence of the tomb, are spared the bitterness of seeing their quaint race die out. The foreigner is ruling within their gates. Their unfortunate, scattered, and doomed children perish in the attrition of a newer civilization.
Narrow-minded, but hospitable; stately and loyal; indifferent to the future, suspicious of foreigners, they are utterly unable to appreciate progress. They are powerless to develop or guard their domains. Abandoned by Mexico, preyed on by squatters, these courtly old rancheros are now a memory of the past.
This wedding brings life to Lagunitas. The new suzerain organizes a working force. It is the transition period of California. Hundreds of thousands of acres only wait for the magic artesian well to smile in plenty. Valois gathers up the reins. Only a few pensioners remain. The nomadic cavalry of the natives has disappeared. The suggestion of "work" sets them "en route." They drift towards the Mexican border. The flocks and herds are guarded by corps of white attendants. The farm succeeds the ranch.
Maxime Valois gives his wife her first sight of the Queen City. The formalities of receiving the "patent" call him to San Francisco.
Padre Francisco remains with Donna Juanita. The new rule is represented by "Kaintuck," an energetic frontiersman, whose vast experience in occasional warfare and frequent homicide is a guarantee of finally holding possession. This worthy left all his scruples at home in Kentucky, with his proper appellation. He is a veteran ranger.
As yet the lands yield no regular harvests. The ten-leagues-square tract produces less fruit, garden produce, and edibles, than a ten-acre Pennsylvania field in the Wyoming. But the revenue is large from the cattle and horses. The cattle are as wild as deer. The horses are embodiments of assorted "original sin," and as agile as mountain goats. Valois knows, however, the income will be ample for general improvements.
His policy matures. He encourages the settlement of Southerners. He rents in subdivisions his spare lands.
The Creole, now a landlord, hears the wails of short-sighted men. They mourn the green summers, the showery months of the East. Moping in idleness, they assert that California will produce neither cereal crops, fruits, nor vegetables. Prophets, indeed! The golden hills look bare and drear to strangers' eyes. The brown plains please not.
In the great realm, apples, potatoes, wheat, corn, the general cereals and root crops are supposed to be impossible productions. Gold, wild cattle, and wilder mustangs are the returns of El Dorado. Cultivation is in its infancy.
The master departs with the dark-eyed bride. She timidly follows his every wish. Dolores has the education imparted by gentle Padre Francisco. It makes her capable of mentally expanding in the experiences of the first journey. The gentle refinement of her race completes her charms.
To the bride, the steamer, the sights of the bay, crowded with shipping, and the pageantry of the city are dazzling. The luxuries of city life are wonders. Relying on her husband, she glides into her new position. Childishly pleased at the jewels, ornaments, and toilets soon procured in the metropolis, Donna Dolores Valois is soon one of Eve's true daughters, arrayed like the lily.
Months roll away. The stimulus of a brighter life develops the girl wife into a sweetly radiant woman.
Maxime Valois rejoins Philip Hardin. He is now a judge of the Supreme Court. Stormy days are these of 1855 and the spring of 1856.
Deep professional intrigues busy Valois. Padre Francisco and "Kaintuck" announce the existence of supposed quartz mines on the rancho. Valois will not pause in his occupations to risk explorations.
For the Kansas strife, the warring of sections, and the growing bitterness of free and slave State men make daily life a seething cauldron. Southern settlers are pouring into the interior. They shun the cities. In city and country, squatter wars, over lot and claim, excite the community. San Francisco is a hotbed of politicians and roughs of the baser sort. While the Southerners generally control the Federal and State offices, Hardin feels the weakness in their lines has been the journalistic front of their party. Funds are raised. Pro-slavery journals spring into life. John Nugent, Pen Johnston, and O'Meara write with pens dipped in gall, and the ready pistol at hand. Tumult and fracas disgrace bench, bar, legislature, and general society. The great wars of Senators Gwin and Broderick precede the separation of Northern and Southern Democrats. As the summer of 1856 draws on, corruption, violence, and sectional hatred bitterly divide all citizens. School and Church, journal and law-giver, work for the right. The strain on the community increases. While the coast and interior is dotted with cities and towns, and the Mint pours out floods of ringing gold coins, there is no confidence. Farm and factory, ship and wagon train, new streets, extension of the city and material progress show every advancement. But a great gulf yawns between the human wave of old adventurers, and the home-makers, now sturdily battling for the inevitable victory.
The plough is speeding in a thousand furrows everywhere. Cattle and flocks are being graded and improved. Far-sighted men look to franchise and public association. The day dawns when the giant gaming hells, flaunting palaces of sin, and the violent army of miscreants must be suppressed.
Everywhere, California shows the local irritation between the buccaneers of the first days, and the resolute, respectable citizens. The latter are united in this local cause, though soon to divide politically on the battle-field.
Driven from their lucrative vices of old, the depraved element, at the polls, overawes decency. San Francisco's long wooden wharves, its precipitous streets, its crowded haunts of the transient, and its flashy places of low amusement harbor a desperate gang. They are renegades, deserters, and scum of every seaport—graduates of all human villany. Aided by demagogues, the rule of the "Roughs" nears its culmination. Fire companies, militia, train bands, and the police, are rotten to the core. In this upheaval, affecting only the larger towns, the higher classes are powerless.
Cut off, by the great plains, from the central government, the State is almost devoid of telegraphs and has but one little railroad. It has hostile Indians yet on its borders. The Chinese come swarming in like rats. The situation of California is critical.
Personal duels and disgraceful quarrels convulse high life. The lower ranks are ruled only by the revolver. The criminal stalks boldly, unpunished, in the streets.
The flavor of Americanism is no leaven to this ill-assorted population. The exciting presidential campaign, in which Fremont leads a new party, excites and divides the better citizens of the commonwealth.
Though the hills are now studded with happy homes and the native children of the Golden West are rising in promise, all is unrest. A local convulsion turns the anger of better elements into the revolution of the Vigilance Committee of 1856. James Casey's pistol rang out the knell of the "Roughs" when he murdered the fearless editor of the leading journal.
Valois, uninterested in this urban struggle, returns to Lagunitas. His domain rewards his energy.
All is peace by the diamond lake. Senora Dolores, her tutor, Padre Francisco, and the placid Duenna Juanita make up a pleasant home circle. It is brightened by luxuries provided by the new lord. Maxime Valois' voice is heard through the valleys. He travels in support of James Buchanan, the ante-bellum President. For is not John C. Breckinridge, the darling son of the South, as vice-president also a promise of Southern success?
San Francisco throws off its criminals by a spasmodic effort. The gallows tree has borne its ghastly fruit. Fleeing "Roughs" are self-expatriated. Others are unceremoniously shipped abroad. The Vigilance Committee rules. This threshing out of the chaff gives the State a certain dignity. At least, an effort has been made to purge the community. All in all, good results—though a Judge of the Supreme Court sleeps in a guarded cell as a prisoner of self-elected vindicators of the law.
When the excitement of the presidential election subsides, Maxime Valois joins the banquets of the Democratic victors. The social atmosphere is purer. Progress marks the passing months. The State springs forward toward the second decade of its existence. There is local calm, while the national councils potter over the Pacific railways. Valois knows that the great day of Secession approaches. The Sons of the South will soon raise the banner of the Southern Cross. He knows the purposes of the cabinet, selected by the conspirators who surround Buchanan. Spring sees the great departments of the government given over to those who work for the South. They will arrange government offices, divide the army, scatter the navy, juggle the treasury and prepare for the coming storm. The local bitterness heightens into quarrels over spoils. Judge Philip Hardin, well-versed in the Secession plots, feeds the ever-burning pride of Valois. From Kansas, from court and Congress, from the far East, the murmur of the "irrepressible conflict" grows nearer. Maxime Valois is in correspondence with the head of his family. While at Lagunitas, the Creole pushes on his works of improvement. He dreams at night strange dreams of more brilliant successes. Of a new flag and the triumph of the beloved cause. He will be called as a trusted Southron into the councils of the coast. Will they cut it off under the Lone Star flag? This appeals to his ambition.
There are omens everywhere. The Free-State Democrats must be suppressed. The South must and shall rule.
He often dreams if war and tumult will ever roll, in flame and fire, over the West. The mists of the future veil his eyes. He waits the signal from the South. All over California, the wealth of the land peeps through its surface gilding. There are no clouds yet upon the local future. No burning local questions at issue here, save the aversion of the two sections, distrustful of each other.
It needs only the mad attack of John Brown upon Virginia's slave-keepers to loose the passions of the dwellers by the Pacific. Martyr or murderer, sage or fanatic, Brown struck the blows which broke the bonds of the brotherhood of the Revolution. From the year 1858, the breach becomes too great to bridge. Secretly, Southern plans are perfected to control the West. While the conspiracy slowly moves on, the haughtiness of private intercourse admits of no peaceable reunion. Active correspondence between officials, cool calculations of future resources, and the elevation to prominent places of men pledged to the South, are the rapid steps of the maturing plans. On the threshold of war.
For the senators, representatives, and agents in Washington confidentially report that the code of honor is needed to restrain the Northerners under personal dragooning. Yankee self-assertion comes at last.
Around the real leaders of thought their vassals are ranged. Davis, Toombs, Breckinridge, Yancey, Pryor, Wigfall, Wise, and others direct. Herbert, Keith, Lamar, Brooks, and a host of cavaliers are ready with trigger and cartel. The tone at Washington gives the keynote to the Californian agents of the Southern Rights movement. There are not enough Potters, Wades, and Landers, as yet. The Northern mind needs time to realize the deliberation of Secession.
The great leaders of the free States are dead or in the gloomy retirement of age. Webster and Clay are no more. There are yet men of might to fight under the banners streaming with the northern lights of freedom. Douglas, Bell, Sumner, Seward, and Wade are drawing together. Grave-faced Abraham Lincoln moves out of the background of Western woods into the sunrise glow of Liberty's brightest day.
On the Pacific coast, restraint has never availed. Here, ancestry and rank go for naught. Here, men meet without class pride. The struggle is more equal.
California's Senator, David C. Broderick, was the son of an humble New York stone-cutter. He grapples with his wily colleague, Senator Gwin.
It is hammer against rapier. Richard and Saladin. Beneath the banners of the chieftains the free lances of the Pacific range themselves. Neither doubts the courage of the opposing forces. The blood of the South has already followed William Walker, the gray-eyed man of destiny, to Sonora and Nicaragua. They were a splendid band of modern buccaneers. Henry A. Crabbe found that the Mexican escopetas are deadly in the hands of the maddened inhabitants of Arispe. Raousset de Boulbon sees his Southern followers fall under machete and revolver in northern Mexico. The Southern filibusters are superbly reckless. All are eager to repeat the glories of Texas and Mexico. They find that the Spanish races of Central America have learned bitter lessons from the loss of Texas. They know of the brutal conquest of California. The cry of "Muerte los Americanos!" rings from Tucson to Darien. The labors of conquest are harder now for the self-elected generalissimos of these robber bands. "Extension of territory" is a diplomatic euphemism for organized descents of desperate murderers. The wholesome lessons of the slaughter in Sonora, the piles of heads at Arispe, and the crowded graves of Rivas and Castillo, with the executions in Cuba, prove to the ambitious Southrons that they will receive from the Latins a "bloody welcome to hospitable graves."
As the days glide into weeks and months, the thirst for blood of the martial generation overcrowding the South is manifest. On the threshold of grave events the leaders of Southern Rights restrain further foreign attempts. The chivalry is now needed at home. Foiled in Cuba and Central America, restrained by the general government from a new aggressive movement on Mexico, they decide to turn their faces to the North. They will carve out a new boundary line for slavery.
The natural treasury of the country is an object of especial interest. To break away peaceably is hardly possible. But slavery needs more ground for the increasing blacks. It must be toward the Pacific that the new Confederacy will gain ground. Gold, sea frontage, Asiatic trade, forests and fisheries,—all these must come to the South. It is the final acquisition of California. It was APPARENTLY for the Union, but REALLY for the South, that the complacent Polk pounced upon California. He waged a slyly prepared war on Mexico for slavery.
As the restraints of courtesy and fairness are thrown off at Washington, sectional hostilities sweep over to the Western coast. The bitterness becomes intense. Pressing to the front, champions of both North and South meet in private encounters. They admit of neither evasion nor retreat.
Maxime Valois is ready to shed his blood for the land of the palmetto. But he will not degrade himself by low intrigue or vulgar encounter.
He learns without regret of the extinction of the filibusters in Sonora, on the Mexican coast, Cuba, and Central America. He knows it is mad piracy.
Valois sorrows not when William Walker's blood slakes the stones of the plaza at Truxillo. A consummation devoutly to be wished.
It is for the whole South he would battle. It is the glorious half of the greatest land on the globe. For HER great rights, under HER banner, for State sovereignty he would die. On some worthy field, he would lead the dauntless riflemen of Louisiana into the crater of death.
THERE, would be the patriot's pride and the soldier's guerdon of valor. He would be in the van of such an uprising. He scorns to be a petty buccaneer, a butcher of half-armed natives, a rover and a robber. In every scene, through the days of 1859, Valois bears himself as a cavalier. Personal feud was not his object.
In the prominence of his high position, Valois travels the State. He confers with the secret councils at San Francisco. He is ready to lead in his regions when needed. The dark cabal of Secession sends out trusty secret agents, even as Gillespie and Larkin called forth the puppets of Polk, Buchanan and Marcy to action. Valois hopes his friends can seize California for the South. Fenced off from Oregon and the East by the Sierras, there is the open connection with the South by Arizona.
A few regiments of Texan horse can hold this great gold-field for the South. Valois deems it impossible for California to be recaptured if once won. He knows that Southern agents are ready to stir up the great tribes of the plains against the Yankees. The last great force, the United States Navy, is to be removed. Philip Hardin tells him how the best ships of the navy are being dismantled, or ordered away to foreign stations. Great frigates are laid up in Southern navy-yards. Ordnance supplies and material are pushed toward the Gulf. Appropriations are expended to aid these plans. The leaders of the army, now scattered under Southern commanders, are ready to turn over to the South the whole available national material of war. Never dreaming of aught but success, Valois fears only that he may be assigned to Western duties. This will keep him from the triumphal marches over the North. He may miss the glories of that day when Robert Toombs calls the roll of his blacks at Bunker Hill Monument. In the prime of life and vigor of mind, he is rich. He has now a tiny girl child, gladdening sweet Senora Dolores. His domain blossoms like the rose. Valois has many things to tie him to San Joaquin. His princely possessions alone would satisfy any man. But he would leave all this to ride with the Southern hosts in their great northward march. Dolores sits often lonely now, on the porch of the baronial residence which has grown up around the Don's old adobe mansion. Her patient mother lies under the roses, by the side of Don Miguel.
Padre Francisco, wearied of the mental death in life of these lonely hills, has delayed his return to France only by the appeals of Maxime Valois. He wants a friend at Lagunitas if he takes the field. If he should be called East, who would watch over his wife and child? Fran‡ois Ribaut, a true Frenchman at heart, looks forward to some quiet cloister, where he can see once more the twin towers of Notre Dame. The golden dome of the Invalides calls him back. He sadly realizes that his life has been uselessly wasted. The Indians are either cut off, chased away, or victims of fatal diseases. The Mexicans have fallen to low estate. Their numbers are trifling. He has no flock. He is only a lonely shepherd. With the Americans his gentle words avail nothing. The Catholics of the cities have brought a newer Church hierarchy with them. "Home to France," is his longing now.
In the interior, quarrels bring about frequent personal encounters between political disputants. The Northern sympathizers, stung by jeer, and pushed to the wall, take up their weapons and stand firm—a new fire in their eyes. The bravos of slavery meet fearless adversaries. In the cities, the wave of political bitterness drowns all friendly impulses. Every public man takes his life in his hand. The wars of Broderick and Gwin, Field and Terry, convulse the State. Lashed into imprudence by each other's attacks, David C. Broderick and David S. Terry look into each other's pistols. They stand face to face in the little valley by Merced Lake. Sturdy Colton, and warm-hearted Joe McKibbin, second the fearless Broderick. Hayes and the chivalric Calhoun Benham are the aids of the lion-hearted Terry. It is a meeting of giants. Resolution against deadly nerve. Brave even to rashness, both of them know it is the first blood of the fight between South and North. Benham does well as, with theatrical flourish, he casts Terry's money on the sod. The grass is soon to be stained with the blood of a leader. This is no mere money quarrel. It is a duel to the death; a calm assertion of the fact that neither in fray, in the forum, nor on the battle-field, will the North go back one inch. It is high time.
Broderick, the peer of his superb antagonist, knows that the pretext of Terry's challenge is a mere excuse. It is first blood in the inevitable struggle for the western coast. With no delay, the stout-hearted champions, friends once, stand as foes in conflict. David Terry's ball cuts the heart-strings of a man who had been his loving political brother. His personal friend once and a gallant comrade. Broderick's blood marks the fatal turning-off of the Northern Democrats from their Southern brothers. As Terry lowers his pistol, looking unpityingly at the fallen giant, he does not realize he has cut the cords tying the West to the South. It was a fatal deed, this brother's murder. It was the mistake of a life, hitherto high in purpose. The implacable Terry would have shuddered could he have looked over the veiled mysteries of thirty years to come. It was beyond human ken. Even he might have blenched at the strange life-path fate would lead him over. Over battle-fields where the Southern Cross rises and falls like Mokanna's banner, back across deserts, to die under the deadly aim of an obscure minion of the government he sought to pull down. After thirty years, David S. Terry, judge, general, and champion of the South, was destined to die at the feet of his brother-judge, whose pathway inclined Northwardly from that ill-starred moment.
Maxime Valois saw in the monster memorial meeting on the plaza, that the cause of the South was doomed in the West. While Baker's silver voice rises in eulogy over Broderick, the Louisianian sees a menace in the stern faces of twenty thousand listeners. The shade of the murdered mechanic-senator hovers at their local feast, a royal Banquo, shadowy father of political kings yet to be.
The clarion press assail the awful deed. Boldly, the opponents of slavery draw out in the community. There is henceforth no room for treason on the Western coast. Only covert conspiracy can neutralize the popular wave following Broderick's death. Dissension rages until the fever of the Lincoln campaign excites the entire community. The pony express flying eastward, the rapidly approaching telegraph, the southern overland mail with the other line across the plains, bring the news of Eastern excitement. Election battles, Southern menace, and the tidings of the triumph of Republican principles, reach the Pacific. Abraham Lincoln is the elected President.
Valois is heavy-hearted when he learns of the victory of freedom at the polls. He would be glad of some broad question on which to base the coming war. His brow is grave, as he realizes the South must now bring on at moral disadvantage the conflict. The war will decide the fate of slavery. Broderick's untimely death and the crushing defeat of the elections are bad omens. It is with shame he learns of the carefully laid plots to seduce leading officers of the army and navy. The South must bribe over officials, and locate government property for the use of the conspirators. It labors with intrigue and darkness, to prepare for what he feels should be a gallant defiance. It should be only a solemn appeal to the god of battles.
He sadly arranges his personal affairs, to meet the separations of the future. He sits with his lovely, graceful consort, on the banks of Lagunitas. He is only waiting the throwing-off of the disguise which hides the pirate gun-ports of the cruiser, Southern Rights. The hour comes before the roses bloom twice over dead Broderick, on the stately slopes of Lone Mountain.