This Northern trash must disappear! To ride on the top wave of the future successful community, is his settled determination. Without self-surrender, he enjoys every draught of pleasure the cup of life can offer. Without scruple, void of enthusiasm, his passionless heart is unmoved by the joys or sorrows of others. His nature is as steady as the nerve with which he guides his evening pistol practice. The welcome given to Maxime Valois by him arises only from a conviction of that man's future usefulness. The general acceptability of the young Louisianian is undoubted. His blood, creed, and manners prove him worthy of the old Valois family. Their past glories are well known to Philip Hardin. "Bon sang ne peut mentir." Hardin's legal position places him high in the turmoils of the litigations of the great Mexican grants. Already, over the Sonoma, Napa, Santa Clara, San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys all is in jeopardy. The old Dons begin to seek confirmations of the legal lines, to keep the crowding settlers at bay. The mining, trading, and land-grabbing of the Americans are pushed to the limits of the new commonwealth. A backward movement of the poor Mexican natives carries them between the Americans and the yet powerful land barons of their own race. Harassed, unfit to work, unable to cope with the intruders, the native Californians become homeless rovers. They are bitter at heart. Many, in open resentment, rise on the plains or haunt the lonely trails. They are now bandits, horse-thieves, footpads and murderers. True to each other, they establish a chain of secret refuges from Shasta to San Diego. Every marauder of their own blood is safe among them from American pursuers. Every mining camp and all the settlements are beginning to send refugees of the male foreign criminal classes to join these wandering Mexican bands. With riot in the camps, licentiousness ruling the cities, and murder besetting every path, there is no safety for the present. California sees no guarantee for the future. Judge Lynch is the only recognized authority. He represents the rough justice of outraged camps and infuriated citizens. Unrepressed violent crimes lead to the retaliatory butchery of vigilance committees. Innocent and guilty suffer without warrant of law. Foreign criminal clans herd together in San Francisco for mutual aid. The different Atlantic cities are separately represented in knots of powerful villains. Politics, gambling, and the elements of wealth flourishing in dens and resorts, are controlled by organized villains. They band together against the good. Only some personal brawl throws them against each other. Looking at the dangerous mass of vicious men and women, Valois determines that the real strength of the land will lie in the arrivals by the overland caravans. These trains are now filling the valleys with resolute and honest settlers.