The Little Lady of Lagunitas by Richard Henry Savage

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The secret of the disappearance of this mysterious sovereign of
chance is known to but few. It is merely surmised by others. To
Maxime Valois the bloody occurrence has borne fruits of importance.
As soon as some business is arranged, the shadowy barrier of this
tragedy divides the two men. Though slight, it is yet such that
Valois decides to go to Stockton. The San Joaquin valley offers
him a field. Land matters give ample scope to his talents. The
investment in lands can be better arranged from there. The Creole
is glad to cast his lot in the new community. By sympathy, many
Southerners crowd in. They gain control of the beautiful prairies
from which the herds of elk and antelope are disappearing.

Philip Hardin's safety is assured. With no open breach of friendship
between them, Maxime still feels estranged. He visits the scene
of his future residence. His belongings follow him. It was an
intuition following a tacit understanding. Man instinctively shuns
the murderer.

Maxime never asked of the future of the vanished queen of the El
Dorado. In his visits to San Francisco he finds that few cross
Philip Hardin's threshold socially. Even these are never bid to
come again. Is there a hidden queen in the house on the hill? Rumor
says so.

Rising in power, Philip Hardin steadily moves forward. He asks no
favors. He seeks no friends. All unmindful is he of the tattle
that a veiled lady of elegant appearance sometimes walks under the
leafy bowers shading his lovely home.

The excitable populace find new food for gossip. There are more
residences than one in San Francisco, where dreamy luxury is hidden
within the unromantic wooden boxes called residences.

Fair faces gleam out furtively from these casements. At open doors,
across whose thresholds no woman of position ever sets a foot,
wealth stands on guard. Silence seals the portals. The vassals of
gold wait in velvet slippers. The laws of possession are enforced
by the dangers of any trespass on these Western harems.

While the queen city of the West rises rapidly it is only a modern
Babylon on the hills of the bay. The influx augments all classes.
Every element of present and future usefulness slowly makes headway
against the current of mere adventure. Natural obstacles yield
to patient, honest industry. California begins in grains, fruits,
and all the rich returns of nature, to show that Ceres, Flora, and
Pomona are a trinity of witching good fairies. They beckon to the
world to wander hither, and rest under these blue-vaulted balmy
skies. Near the splendid streams, picturesque ridges, and lovely
valleys of the new State, health and happiness may be found, even
peace.

The State capital is located, drawn by the golden magnet, at
Sacramento. The only conquest left for the dominating Americans, is
the development of this rich landed domain. Here, where the Padres
dreamed over their monkish breviaries, where the nomad native
Californians lived only on the carcasses of their wild herds, the
richest plains on earth invite the honest hand of the farmer.

The era of frantic dissipation, wildest license, insane speculation,
and temporary abiding wears away. Bower and blossom, bird and bee,
begin to adorn the new homes of the Pacific.

Mighty-hearted men, keen of vision, strong of purpose, appear.
The face of nature is made to change under the resolute attacks
of inventive man. Roads and bridges, wharves and storehouses,
telegraph lines, steamer routes, express and stage systems, banks
and post-offices, courts, churches, marts and halls, all come as
if at magic call. The school-master is abroad. Public offices and
records are in working order. Though the fierce hill Indians now
and then attack the miners, they are driven back toward the great
citadel of the Sacramento River. The huge mountain ranges on the
Oregon border are their last fastnesses.

In every community of the growing State, the law is aided by quickly
executed decrees of vigilance committees. Self-appointed popular
leaders, crafty politicians, scheming preachers, aspiring editors,
and ambitious demagogues crop up. They are the mushroom growth of
the muck-heap of the new civilization.

Hardin gathers up with friendships the rising men of all the counties.
At the newly formed clubs of the city his regular entertainments
are a nucleus of a socio-political organization to advance the
ambitious lawyer and the cause of the South.

Men say he looks to the Senate, or the Supreme Bench. Maxime Valois,
rising in power at Stockton, retains the warmest confidence of
Hardin. He knows the crafty advocate is the arch-priest of Secession.
Month by month, he is knitting up the web of his dark intrigues.
He would unite the daring sons of the South in one great secret
organization, ready to strike when the hour of destiny is at
hand. It comes nearer, day by day. Here, in this secret cause of
the South, Valois' heart and soul go out to Hardin. He feels the
South was juggled out of California. Both he and his Mephisto are
gazing greedily on the wonderful development of the coast. Even
adjoining Arizona and New Mexico begin to fill up. The conspirators
know the South is handicapped in the irrepressible conflict unless
some diversion is made in the West. They must secure for the
states of the Southern Republic their aliquot share of the varied
treasures of the West. The rich spoil of an unholy war.

Far-seeing and wise is the pupil of Calhoun and Slidell. He is the
coadjutor of the subtle Gwin. Hardin feeds the flame of Maxime
Valois' ardor. The business friendship of the men continues unabated.
They need each other. With rare delicacy, Valois never refers to
the blood-bought "beauty of the El Dorado." Her graceful form never
throws its shadow over the threshold of the luxurious home of the
lawyer. On rare visits to the residence of his friend, Valois'
quick eye notes the evidence of a reigning divinity. A piano and
a guitar, a scarf here, a few womanly treasures there, are indications
of a "manage a deux." They prove to Maxime that the Egeria of this
intellectual king lingers near her victim. He is still under her
mystic spell. Breasting the tide of litigation in the United States
and State courts, popular and ardent, the Louisianian thrives. He
rises into independent manhood. He is toasted in Sacramento, where
in legislative halls his fiery eloquence distinguishes him. He is
the king of the San Joaquin valley.

Preserving his friendship with the clergy, still warmly allied
to Padre Francisco, Maxime Valois gradually gains an unquestioned
leadership. His friends at New Orleans are proud of this young
pilgrim from "Belle Etoile." Judge Valois hopes that the coming
man will return to Louisiana in search of some bright daughter of
that sunny land, a goddess to share the honors of the younger branch
of the old Valois family. Rosy dreams!

Maxima, satisfied, yet not happy, sees a great commonwealth grow
up around him. Looking under the tides of the political struggles,
he can feel the undertow of the future. It seems to drag him back
to the old Southern land of his birth, "Home to Dixie."

CHAPTER VIII.

JOAQUIN, THE MOUNTAIN ROBBER.--THE DON'S PERIL.

The leaders of the San Joaquin meet at the office of Counsellor
Maxime Valois. He is the rising political chief. While multitudes
yet delve for gold, Valois wisely heads those who see that the
miners are merely nomadic. They are all adventurers. The great men
of the coast will be those who control its broad lands, and create
ways of communication. The men who develop manufactures, start
commercial enterprises, and the farmers, will develop resources
of this virgin State. The thousand vocations of civilization are
building up a solid fabric for future generations.

True, the poet, the story-writer, and the careless stranger will be
fascinated by the heroes of camp and glen. High-booted, red-shirted,
revolver-carrying, bearded argonauts are they, braving all hardships,
enjoying sudden wealth, and leading romantic lives. Stories of camp
and cabin, with brief Monte-Cristo appearances at San Francisco,
are the popular rage. These rough heroes are led captive, even
as Samson was betrayed by Delilah. The discovery of quartz mining
leads Valois to believe that an American science of geologic mining
will be a great help in the future. Years of failure and effort,
great experience, with associated capital, will be needed for
exploring the deep quartz veins. Their mysterious origin baffles
the scientist.

Long after the individual argonauts have laid their weary brows
upon the drifted pine needles in the deep eternal sleep of Death,
the problem will be solved. When their lonely graves are landmarks
of the Sierras; when the ephemeral tent towns have been folded up
forever, the broad lands of California will support great communities.
To them, these early days will be as unreal as the misty wreaths
clinging around the Sierras.

The romance of the Gilded Age! Each decade throws a deeper mantle
of the shadowy past over the struggles of fresh hearts that failed
in the mad race for gold.

Their lives become, day by day, a mere disjointed mass of paltry
incident. Their careers point no moral, even if they adorn the
future tale. The type of the argonaut itself begins to disappear.
Those who returned freighted with gold to their foreign homes are
rich, and leading other lives far away. Those who diverted their
new-found wealth into industries are prospering. They will leave
histories and stable monuments of their life-work. But the great
band of placer hunters have wandered into the distant territories
of the great West. They leave their bones scattered, under the
Indian's attack, or die on distant quests. They drop into the stream
of unknown fate. No moral purpose attended their arrival. No high
aim directed their labors. As silently as they came, the rope of
sand has sifted away. Their influence is absolutely nothing upon the
future social life of California. Even later Californian society
owes nothing of its feverish strangeness to these gold hunters.
They toiled in their historic quest. The prosaic results of the
polyglot settlement of the new State are not of their direction.

The bizarre Western character is due to an admixture of ill-assorted
elements. Not to gold itself or the lust of gold. The personal
history of the gold hunters is almost valueless. No hallowed memory
clings to the miner's grave. No blessing such as hovers over the
soldier, dead under his country's banner.

The early miners fell by the way, while grubbing for gold. Their
ends were only selfish gain. Their gold was a minister of vilest
pleasures. A fool's title to temporary importance.

Among them were many of high powers and great capacity, worthy of
deeds of derring-do, yet it cannot be denied that the narrowest
impulses of human action drove the impetuous explorers over the
high Sierras. Gain alone buried them in the dim canons of the Yuba
and American. The sturdy citizens pouring in with their families,
seeking homes; those who laid the enduring foundations of the social
fabric, the laws and enterprises of necessity, pith, and moment,
are the real fathers of the great Golden State. In the rapidity of
settlement, all the manifold labors of civilization began together.
Laus Deo! There were hands, brains, and hearts for those trying
hours of the sudden acquisition of this royal domain.

The thoughtful scholar Nevins, throwing open the first public
school-room to a little nursery-like brood, planted the seeds of
a future harvest, far richer than the output of the river treasuries.

A farmer's wife toiling over the long plains, caring for two
beehives, mindful of the future, introduced a future wealth, kinder
in prophetic thought, than he who blindly stumbled on a bonanza.

Humble farmer, honest head of family, intelligent teacher, useful
artisan, wise doctor, and skilled mechanic, these were the real
fathers of the State.

The sailor, the mechanic, and the good pioneer women, these are
the heroes and heroines gratefully remembered now. They regulated
civilization; they stood together against the gold-maddened floating
miners; they fought the vicious camp-followers.

Maxime Valois, learned in the civil law of his native State, speaking
French and Spanish, soon plunged in the vexatious land litigation
of his generation. Mere casual occupancy gave little color of title
to the commoner Mexicans. Now, the great grant owners are, one by
one, cited into court to prove their holdings; many are forced in
by aggressive squatters.

While gold still pours out of the mines, and the young State feels
a throbbing life everywhere, the native Californians are sorely
pressed between the land-getting and the mining classes. Wild herds
no longer furnish them free meat at will. The mustangs are driven
away from their haunts. Growing poverty cuts off ranch hospitality.
Without courage to labor, the poorer Mexicans, contemptuously
called Greasers, go to the extremes of passive suffering. All the
occupations of the vaqueros are gone. These desperate Greasers are
driven to horse-stealing and robbery.

Expert with lasso, knife, and revolver, they know every trail.
These bandits mount themselves at will from herds of the new-comers.

The regions of the north, the forests of the Sierras, and the
lonely southern valleys give them safe lurking-places. Wherever
they reach a ranch of their people, they are protected; the pursuers
are baffled; they are misled by the sly hangers-on of these gloomy
adobe houses.

In San Joaquin, the brigands hold high carnival; they sally out on
wild rides across the upper Sacramento. The mining regions are in
terror. Herds of stolen horses are driven by the Livermore Pass to
the south. Cattle and sheep are divided; they are used for food.
Sometimes the brands are skilfully altered by addition or counterfeit.

Suspicious Mexicans are soon in danger. Short shrift is given to
the horse-thief. The State authorities are powerless in face of
the duplicity of these native residents. They feel they have been
enslaved by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The roads became
unsafe. Travellers are subject to a sudden volley from ambush.
The fatal lasso is one trick; the midnight stab, when lodging in
Mexican wayside houses, is another. There is no longer safety save
in the large towns. From San Diego to Shasta, a chain of criminals
leaves a record of bloody deeds. There are broader reasons than the
mere friction of races. The native Californians are rudely treated
in the new courts; their personal rights are invaded; their homes
are not secure; their women are made the prey of infamous attack.

A deadly feud now rises between the Mexicans and Americans. These
brutal encroachments of the new governing race bring reprisals in
chance duels and secret crimes. This organized robbery is a return
blow. The Americans are forced to travel in posses. They reinforce
their sheriffs. They establish armed messengers. In town and county
they execute suspects by a lively applied Lynch law.

All that is needed to create a general race-war is a determined
leader.

As months roll on, the record of violence becomes alarming. Small
stations are attacked, many desperate fights occur. Dead men are
weltering in their blood, on all the trails. A scheming intelligence
seems now to direct the bandits. Pity was never in the Mexican
heart. But now unarmed men are butchered while praying for mercy.
Their bodies are wantonly gashed. Droves of poor, plodding, unarmed
Chinese miners are found lying dead like sheep in rows. Every
trail and road is unsafe. Different bodies of robbers, from five
to twenty, operate at the same time. There is no telegraph here
as yet, to warn the helpless settlers. The following of treasure
trains shows that spies are aiding the bandits.

The leading men of the new State find this scourge unbearable.
Lands are untenanted, cattle and herds are a prey to the robbers.
Private and public reward has failed to check this evil. Sheriff's
posses and occasional lynching parties shoot and hang. Still the
evil grows. It is an insult to American courage. As 1852 is ushered
in, there are nearly two hundred and fifty thousand dwellers in the
new State. Still the reign of terror continues. One curious fact
appears. All of the bandits chased south toward Monterey or Los
Angeles are finally driven to bay, killed, or scattered as fugitives.
In the middle regions, the organization of the Mexican murderers
seems to be aided by powerful friends. They evidently furnish news,
supplies, and give concealment to these modern butchers. They are
only equalled by the old cutthroats of the Spanish main.

A meeting of citizens is called at Stockton. It is privately held,
for fear of betrayal. Maxime Valois is, as usual, in the van. His
knowledge of the country and his renown as a member of Fremont's
party fit him to lead. A secret organization is perfected. The
sheriff of the county is made head of it. He can use the power
of posse and his regular force. The plundered merchants agree to
furnish money as needed. Maxime Valois is needed as the directing
brain. In study over news and maps, the result proves that the
coast and south are only used for the sale of stock or for refuge.

The extreme north of the State shows no prey, save the starving
Klamath Indians. It is true the robbers never have cursed the
upper mountains. Their control sweeps from Shasta to Sonoma, from
Marysville and Nevada as far as the gates of Sacramento, and down
to the Livermore Pass. Mariposa groans under their attacks.

Valois concludes this bloody warfare is a logical result of the
unnecessary conquest of California. To lose their nationality is
galling. To see Mexico, which abandoned California, get $15,000,000
in compensation for the birthright of the Dons is maddening. It
irritates the suspicious native blood. To be ground down daily,
causes continual bickering. Ranch after ranch falls away under
usury or unjust decisions. In this ably planned brigandage, Valois
discerns some young resentful Californian of good family has assisted.
The terrific brutality points also to a relentless daring nature,
aroused by some special wrong.

Valois muses at night in his lonely office. His ready revolvers are
at hand. Even here in Stockton a Mexican, friendly to the authorities,
has been filled with bullets by a horseman. The assailant was swathed
to his head in his scrape. He dashed away like the wind. There is
danger everywhere.

The young lawyer pictures this, the daring bravo--hero by nature--made
a butcher and a fiend by goading sorrows. It must be some one who
knows the Americans, who has travelled the interior, and has personal
wrongs to avenge.

These dark riders strike both innocent and guilty. They kill without
reason, and destroy in mere wantonness. The band has never been
met in its full muster. The general operations are always the same.
It seems to Valois that there are two burning questions:

First--Who is the leader?

Second--Where is the hiding-place or stronghold?

To paralyze the band, this master intelligence must be neutralized
by death. To finish the work, that stronghold must be found or
destroyed.

There is as yet no concurrent voice as to their leader. Maxime
Valois is positive, however, that the stronghold is not far from
the slopes of Mariposa. The deadly riders seem to disappear,
when driven towards Stockton. They afterwards turn up, as if sure
shelter was near.

But who will hound this fiend to his lair? Valois sends for the
sheriff. They decide to organize a picked corps of men. They will
ride the roads, with leaders selected from veteran Indian fighters.
Others are old soldiers of the Mexican war. The heaviest rewards
are offered, to stimulate the capture of the bandit chiefs. Valois
knows, though, that money will never cause a Mexican to betray any
countryman to the Americans. A woman's indiscretion, yes, a jealous
sweetheart's bitter hatred might lead to gaining the bandit chief's
identity. But gold. Never! The Mexicans never needed it, save to
gamble. Judas is their national scapegoat.

The sheriff has collated every story of attack. Valois draws out
the personality of the leading actor in this revelry of death. A
superb horseman, of medium size, who handles his American dragoon
revolvers with lightning rapidity. A young man in a yellow,
black-striped scrape. He is always superbly mounted. He has curling
blackest hair. Two dark eyes, burning under bushy brows, are the
principal features. This man has either led the murderers or been
present at the fiercest attacks. In many pistol duels, he has
killed some poor devil in plain sight of his comrades.

Valois decides to search all towns where Spanish women abound,
for such a romantic figure. This bandit must need supplies and
ammunition. He must visit women, the fandango, and the attractions
of monte. He must have friends to give him news of treasure movements.
Valois watches secretly the Spanish quarters of all the mountain
towns and the great ranchos.

The Louisianian knows that every gambling-shop and dance-house is
a centre of spies and marauders. The throngs of unnoticed Mexicans,
in a land where every traveller is an armed horseman, enable these
robber fiends to mingle with the innocent. The common language,
hatred of the Americans, the hospitality to criminals of their
blood, and the admiration of the sullen natives for these bravos,
prevent any dependence on the Mexican population.

The pursuers have often failed because of lack of supplies, and
worn-out steeds. The villains are secretly refitted by those who
harbor them. An hour suffices to drive up the "caballada," and
remount the bandits at any friendly interior ranch.

Obstinate silence is all the roadside dwellers' return to questions.

Valois cons over the bloody record of the last two years. The
desperate crimes begin with Andres Armijo and Tomas Maria Carrillo.
They were unyielding ex-soldiers. Both of these have been run to
earth. Salamon Pico, an independent bandit, of native blood, follows
the same general career. John Irving, a renegade American, has
held the southern part of the State. With his followers, he murdered
General Bean and others. He was only an outcast foreigner.

Maxime Valois knows that Irving and his band have been butchered
by savage Indians near the Colorado. Yet none of these have killed
for mere lust of blood. This mysterious chieftain who murders for
personal vengeance, is soon known to the determined Louisianian.
In the long trail of tiger-like assassinations, the robber is
disclosed by his unequalled thirst for blood.

"Joaquin Murieta, Joaquin the Mountain Robber, Joaquin the Yellow
Tiger." He flashes out from the dark shades of night, or the depths
of chaparral and forest. His insane butchery proves Valois to be
correct.

Dashing through camps, lurking around towns, appearing in distant
localities, he robs stages, plunders stations, and personally
murders innocent travellers. Express riders are ambushed. The word
"Joaquin," scrawled on a monte card, and pinned to the dead man's
breast, often tells the tale. Lonely men are found on the trails with
the fatal bullet-hole in the back of the head, shot in surprise.
Sometimes he appears with followers, often alone. Now openly daring
individual conflict, then slinking at night and in silence. Sneak,
bravo, and tiger. He is a Turpin in horsemanship. A fiend in his
thirst for blood. A charmed life seems his. On magnificent steeds,
he rides down the fleeing traveller. He coolly murders the exhausted
"Gringo," taunting his hated race with cowardice. Sweeping from
north to south, five hundred miles, this yellow-clad fiend always
keeps the Sacramento or San Joaquin between him and the coast. Men
shudder at the name of Joaquin Murieta.

Valois sees that the robber chief's permanent haunt is somewhere
in the Sierras. This must be found. The sheriffs of Placer, Nevada,
Sierra, El Dorado, Tuolumne, Calaveras, and Mariposa counties
are in the field with posses. Skirmish after skirmish occurs. All
doubtful men are arrested. Yet the red record continues. Doubling
on the pursuers, hiding, the bandit whirls from Shasta to Tehama,
from Oroville to Sacramento, from Marysville to Placerville.
Stockton, San Andreas, Sonora, and Mariposa are terrorized. Plundered
pack-trains, murdered men, and robbed wayfarers prove that Joaquin
Murieta is ever at work. His swoop is unerring. The yellow serape,
black banded, the dark scowling face, and the battery of four
revolvers, two on his body, two on his saddle, soon make him known
to all the State.

The Governor offers five thousand dollars State reward for Joaquin's
head. County rewards are also published. Valois watches all the
leading Mexican families. Some wild son or member must be unaccounted
for. No criminal has yet appeared of good blood, save Tomas Maria
Carrillo. But he has been dead a year, shot in his tracks by a brave
man. The bandits hover around Stockton. The Americans go heavily
armed, and only travel in large bodies. Public rage reaches its climax,
when there is found pinned on the body of a dead deputy-sheriff a
printed proclamation of the Governor of $5,000 for Joaquin's head.

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