The chap­ter begins with a doc­tor unex­pect­ed­ly acquir­ing a fer­ry on his way to Cal­i­for­nia. He builds wealth through gold, sil­ver, and jew­el­ry along­side two men who helped him at the fer­ry. The men reside on the west bank, near a rudi­men­ta­ry for­ti­fi­ca­tion. Although the doc­tor claims to main­tain a friend­ly rela­tion­ship with the Yumas, Glan­ton, an expe­ri­enced char­ac­ter, advis­es him against trust­ing Native Amer­i­cans, insist­ing that any man who does is a fool. As ten­sion esca­lates, the doc­tor grants Glan­ton and his men per­mis­sion to for­ti­fy their posi­tion and charge their moun­tain how­itzer.

Two days lat­er, the Yumas launch a sur­prise attack on the fer­ry dur­ing a car­go oper­a­tion. Brown and Long Web­ster fire the how­itzer, cre­at­ing a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the Yumas. Fol­low­ing the chaos, Glan­ton and his men method­i­cal­ly kill wound­ed sur­vivors, an act watched by fer­ry trav­el­ers, who are fur­ther trau­ma­tized as these men take scalps. The doc­tor wit­ness­es this sav­agery and retreats to his quar­ters, where he remains iso­lat­ed as Glan­ton exploits the sit­u­a­tion, charg­ing high­er fares and rob­bing trav­el­ers.

Events inten­si­fy as a Ken­tucky com­pa­ny arrives but choos­es not to engage with Glan­ton, sub­se­quent­ly jour­ney­ing down­stream where they meet a grim fate, cap­tured by the Yumas. Mean­while, dur­ing the fes­tive cel­e­bra­tion of East­er, the main char­ac­ters observe the bru­tal slaugh­ter of a straw effi­gy rep­re­sent­ing Judas by Sono­rans, a reflec­tion of the vio­lent world around them.

As the days go on, Glan­ton enslaves Sono­rans to help with for­ti­fi­ca­tions, while indulging in the accu­mu­la­tion of wealth. David Brown, along with Long Web­ster and Toad­vine, heads to San Diego to pro­cure sup­plies. They suc­cess­ful­ly cross the desert and arrive drenched, with Brown eager to trade their coins for whiskey.

After a night of drudgery and drunk­en­ness, Brown finds him­self alone in a small hut with only a mem­o­ry of the pri­or night’s events. Attempt­ing to retrieve his com­pan­ions, he becomes embroiled in a pow­er strug­gle with a local far­ri­er over a fine shot­gun, which he desires to have mod­i­fied. The con­fronta­tion esca­lates, cul­mi­nat­ing in Brown tak­ing mat­ters into his own hands with threats and phys­i­cal action, show­cas­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tic bru­tal­i­ty of life in this era.

He suc­cess­ful­ly mod­i­fies his gun amidst con­fronta­tion­al behav­ior towards author­i­ty fig­ures, before meet­ing with Toad­vine and Web­ster, lead­ing to a dis­play of their shared exhaus­tion and excite­ment about the ocean for the first time. The chap­ter con­cludes with a series of vio­lent events fol­low­ing their reck­less indul­gence, illus­trat­ing the harsh, chaot­ic nature of their exis­tence against the back­drop of a law­less fron­tier.