Maxime mentally maps the route he travels. Alas! no chance of
escape exists. At the first open attempt a rifle-ball, or a blow
from a razor-edged machete, would end his earthly wanderings.
Despised, shunned by even the wretched women at the squalid ranchos,
he feels utterly alone. The half-naked children timidly flee from
him. The wicked eyes of his guards never leave him. He knows a
feeling animates the squad, that he would be well off their hands
by a use of the first handy limb and a knotted lariat. The taciturn
chief watches over him. He guards an ominous silence.

The cavalcade, after seven days, are in sight of the purpled outlines
of the sculptured Sierras. They rise heavenward to the sparkling
crested pinnacles where Bret Harte's poet fancy sees in long years
after the "minarets of snow." Valley oaks give way to the stately
pines. Olive masses of enormous redwoods wrap the rising foot-hills.
Groves of laurel, acorn oak, and madrona shelter the clinging
panther and the grim warden of the Sierras, the ferocious grizzly
bear.

Over flashing, bounding mountain brooks, cut up with great ledges
of blue bed rock, they splash. Here the silvery salmon and patrician
trout leap out from the ripples to glide into the great hollowed
pools, yet the weary cavalcade presses on. Will they never stop?

Maxime Valois' haggard face looks back at him from the mirrored
waters of the Cottonwood, the Merced, and the Mariposa. The prisoner
sees there only the worn features of his strangely altered self.
He catches no gleam of the unreaped golden harvest lying under the
feet of the wild mustangs. These are the treasure channels of the