While Valois watches for news, the buds and blossoms of early spring call him back to the American River. The bay whitens with the sails of arriving thousands. Political combinations begin everywhere. Two years have made Fremont, Kearney, Colonel Mason, General P. F. Smith, and General Bennett Riley temporary military governors. Maxime leaves with ample stores; he rejoins the "Missouri Company," already reaping the golden harvest of the golden spring. Sage counsel reaches him from Padre Francisco. He hears with delight of the youth's success in the mines. The French missionary, with a natural love of the soil, advises Valois to buy lands as soon as good titles can be had. The Mexican War ends in glory to the once despised Gringos. Already the broad grants of the Dons are coveted by the officials of the military regency. Several of the officers have already served themselves better than their country. The entanglements of a new rule amount to practical confiscation of the lands of the old chieftains. What they saved from the conqueror is destined later to fatten greedy lawyers. The spoliated Church is avenged upon the heirs of those who worked its temporal ruin. For here, while mad thousands delve for the gold of their desire, the tramping feet of uncontrolled hosts are heard at the gates of the Sierras. When the fleets give out their hordes of male and female adventurers, there is no law but that of force or duplicity; no principle but self-interest. Virtue, worth, and desert meekly bow to strength. Wealth in its rudest form of sacks of uncoined gold dust rules the hour. The spring days lengthen into summer. Maxime Valois recoils from the physical toil of the rocky bars of the American. His nature is aristocratic; his youthful prejudices are averse to hand work. Menial attendance, though only upon himself, is degrading to him. The rough life of the mines becomes unbearable. A Southerner, par excellence, in his hatred of the physical familiarity of others, he avails himself of his good fortune to find a purchaser for his interests. The stream of new arrivals is a river now, for the old emigrant road of Platte and Humboldt is delivering an unending human current. Past the eastern frontier towns of Missouri, the serpentine trains drag steadily west; their camp fires glitter from "St. Joe" to Fort Bridger; they shine on the summit lakes of the Sierras, where Donner's party, beset in deepest snows, died in starvation. They were a type of the human sacrifices of the overland passage. Skeletons dot the plains now. By flood and desert, under the stroke of disease, by the Indian tomahawk and arrow, with every varied accident and mishap, grim Death has taken his ample toll along three thousand miles. Sioux and Cheyenne, Ute and Blackfoot, wily Mormon, and every lurking foe have preyed as human beasts on the caravans. These human fiends emulate the prairie wolf and the terrific grizzly in thirst for blood.