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.