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.