"Shoot the old Greaser."
A sound of trampling hoofs drowns their cries. The main body of the detachment, stung with shame, have galloped back to rescue Valois. It is over. The mutineers sullenly retire in a body.
Three hours later the detachment rides off. The rebels have wandered away. Guarded by the friends of the wild night-ride, Valois remains at Lagunitas.
Under questioning of the padre, whose honorable French blood boils at the domain being made a nest of assassins, the Don describes Joaquin's lurking-places. With one or two mozos, Valois visits all the old camps of the freebooters, within seventy-five miles. He leaves his men at Lagunitas for safety. He threads the fastnesses of the inviolate forests. They stretch from Shasta to Fresno, the great sugar pines and redwoods of California.
The axe of man has not yet attacked them. No machinery, no tearing saws are in these early days destroying their noble symmetry. But they are doomed. Fires and wanton destruction are yet to come, to leave blackened scars over once lovely areas. Man mutilates the lovely face of Nature's sweetest sylvan retreats. Down the great gorge of the Yosemite, Valois rides past the giant Big Trees of Calaveras. He finds no hidden treasures, no buried deposits. The camps near Lagunitas disclose only some concealed supplies. No arms, valuables, and treasures, torn from the murdered travellers, in the two years' red reign of Joaquin, the Mountain Tiger.
Valois concludes that Joaquin divided the gold among his followers. He must have used it largely to purchase assistance from his spies, scattered through the interior.
The stolen animals were undoubtedly all scattered over the State. The weapons, saddlery, and gear, booty of the native horse-thief bands, have been sent as far as Chihuahua in Mexico. Valuable personal articles were scarce. Few trophies were ever recovered. The gold-dust was unrecognizable. Valois reluctantly gives up the search. He returns convinced that mere lust of blood directed Joaquin Murieta Carrillo.
The bandits under him represented the native discontent. Their acts were a protest against the brutal Americans. They were goaded on by the loss of all property rights. This harshness drove the Indians, decimated, drunken, and diseased, from their patrimonial lands. It has effected the final ruin of the native Californians. Frontier greed and injustice have done a shameful work.
Maxime Valois blushes for his own nation. He realizes that indigenous dwellers must go to the wall in poverty, to their death. They go down before the rush of the wolf pack, hunting gold, always gold.
Taking the precaution to leave men to bear to him any messages from the padre, Maxime leaves Lagunitas for Stockton. The affairs of the community call him home. Property, covered by his investments, has been exposed to fire and flood at Sacramento. Sari Francisco has been half destroyed by a great conflagration. These calamities make thousands penniless.