Natalie Santos, lying on her couch, watches these young beauties flitting about her room. "Does the heiress, challenged in her right, dream of her real parentage?" A gleam of light breaks in on the darkness of her sufferings. Why not peace and the oblivion of retirement for her, if her child's future is assured in any way? Why not?
Looking forward hopefully to a conference with Colonel Joe, she fears only the clear eyes of old Padre Francisco. "Shall she tell him all?" In these misgivings and vain rackings of the mind, she passes the afternoon. She yields to her better angel, and gives the story of her life to the patient priest.
Armand Valois and Raoul Dauvray have a blessed new bond of brotherhood. They are both lovers. With Padre Francisco, they are a guard of honor, watching night and day the two heiresses.
They share the secret consciousness of Natalie de Santos that Joe Woods has in store some great stroke.
Judge Davis, Peyton, and the resolute Joe are the only calm ones in the settlement. For, far and wide the news runs of racy developments. In store, saloon, and billiard lounging-place, on the corners, and around the deserted court-room, knots of cigar-smoking scandal-mongers assuage their inward cravings by frequent resort to the never-failing panacea—whiskey. Wild romances are current, in which two great millionaires, two sets of lawyers, duplicate heiresses, two foreign dukes, the old padre and the queenly madame are the star actors in a thrilling local drama, which is so far unpunctuated by the crack of the revolver.
It is a struggle for millions, and the clash of arms will surely come.
There has been no great issue ever resolved in Mariposa before the legal tribunal, which has not added its corpses to the mortuary selections lying in queer assortment on the red clay hillsides.
"Justice nods in California while the pistols are being drawn."
Hardin, closeted with his lawyers, suspends their eager plotting, to furtively confer in private with the judge.
When the first stars sweep into the blue mountain skies, and a silver moon rises slowly over the pine-clad hills, Joseph Woods summons all his latent fascinations to appease Madame Natalie de Santos. The sturdy Missourian has had his contretemps with Sioux and Pawnee. He has faced prairie fires, stampeded buffalo herds, and met dangers by flood and field. Little personal discussions with horse thieves, some border frays, and even a chance encounter on a narrow trail with a giant grizzly, have tried his nerve. But he braces with a good stiff draught of cognac now. He fears the wily and fascinating Natalie. He is at heart a would-be lady's man. Roughness is foreign to his nature, but he will walk the grim path of duty.