In the days of '49 when Murphy's Diggings was as lively a little
placer camp as one could find in a long ride through the red
foot-hills of the Sierras, a young Mexican monte-dealer disappeared.
He was a handsome fellow, lighter of complexion than most of his
countrymen, owned a sunny smile and spoke English fluently, all of
which things made him a favorite among the American customers and
consequently an asset to the house. So when dusk came and the booted
miners began drifting into the long canvas-roofed hall, the proprietor
scanned the crowd for him with some anxiety.
But the proprietor might as well have saved himself the trouble of
that search; the monte-dealer had forsaken his table for a different
sort of job.
Just at this time he was on the hill beyond the upper end of the camp
kneeling beside an open grave; and in his clasped hands, uplifted high
above his head, he held a naked bowie-knife. Some light still lingered
here among the stiff-branched digger-pines, a faint reflection of the
sunset far beyond the flat lands of the San Joaquin valley. It shone
upon his face revealing a multitude of lines, so deeply scored, so
terrible in their proclamation of deadly hate, that the sight of them
would have startled the most case-hardened member of the crowds down
there where the candles were twinkling in the humming camp.
The waning light which sifted through the long plumed tassels of the
digger-pines showed a little group of Mexicans standing at some
distance listening in frightened silence to what he was saying. He
spoke to the dead man in the open grave; and when events that followed
brought the words back to their minds some of these auditors repeated
the vow he made: to color that knife-blade and his hands bright red
with the blood of twenty men of Murphy's Diggings; and after that to
devote his life to killing Americans.
This was the monte-dealer's new job, and in order to understand how he
came to undertake such a piece of work it is necessary to go back a
little.
He was only nineteen, but life had been moving so swiftly with him
that the beginning of these events finds him in that year overseer of
his father's great rancho down in Sonora, a Mexican of the better
class, well educated as education went in those days, a good dancer as
every girl in the section could bear witness, pleasure-loving,
easy-going, and able to play the guitar very prettily. Sometimes--and
more often as the weeks went by--he played and sang at the home of
Reyes Feliz, a packer in his father's employ; and Rosita, the packer's
daughter, liked his music well enough to encourage his visits.
Class counted then, as it does to this day in Mexico, and parents
liked to have a hand in marriages. But Reyes Feliz was away from home
a great deal with his train of mules, the landholder was busy at his
own affairs; the girl was a beauty and the landholder's son had a
winsome way with him. So one night Rosita took the horse which he
brought for her and rode off with him to California.
They made their journey with their mounts and a single pack animal
across the hot plains and arid mountains of the south, then up the
long King's Highway which the padres had beaten down nearly one
hundred years before their time. It was winter and California winter
means Eastern spring; green grass rippling in the soft breezes,
poppy-fields and a rioting of meadow-larks to make their honeymoon
ideal. They rode on northward into the Santa Clara valley where a
gleaming mist of mustard blossoms hung under the great live oaks as
far as the eye could reach; then they struck off eastward across the
Coast Range and the flat lands of the San Joaquin, to climb into the
red foot-hills where the Stanislaus comes out from the Sierras. Here
they settled down and took a mining claim.
The feeling engendered by the Mexican War still rankled in many
neighborhoods; and every mining camp had its lawless element whose
members took full advantage of that prejudice against the conquered
race. The claim proved rich enough to tempt some ne'er-do-wells. They
gathered a crowd of their own breed and the mob came to the young
pair's cabin one evening with the purpose of jumping the property.
When the owner made a show of resistance they bound him hand and foot,
after which they subjected the girl to such abuses as will not bear
the telling. She pleaded with her lover when the crowd had gone and
managed to induce him to leave the place without attempting vengeance.
They went to Columbia and within the month were driven out by another
anti-Mexican mob. Their next move took them to Murphy's Diggings,
where the boy got his job at dealing monte and was doing very
well--until this evening came, and with it, tragedy.
He had been visiting his brother, who had come to California and
settled near Murphy's; and the latter had lent him a horse to ride
home. As he was nearing the upper end of the camp a group of miners
stepped out into the road before him and halted him. The horse had
been stolen from one of their number and they were searching for it at
the time.
They listened to his explanations and went with him to his brother who
told them how he had bought the animal in good faith from a stranger.
Whereat they seized the narrator, bound him, and hanged him to the
nearest live-oak tree; then stripped the monte-dealer to the waist,
tied him to the same tree, and flogged him until the blood ran down
his bare back. After which they departed, satisfied that they had done
their share to bring about law and order in a neighborhood where
thefts were becoming altogether too frequent. But some of them
mentioned in Murphy's Diggings--during the brief space of time while
they had the opportunity--the strange expression which came over their
victim's face while the lash was being applied. Each of these men
spoke of the look as having been directed at himself. Had they been
members of one of the dark-skinned races, to whom the vendetta is
peculiarly an institution, they would have understood the purport of
that look.
But none of them understood and the monte-dealer was left to keep his
promise to his dead brother. He turned his back upon the grave and
went about the fulfilment of that vow as ambitious men go about the
making of careers; and in the days that followed, while his swarthy
company was sweeping through California like fire on a chaparral
hillside when the wind is high, he gained a dark fame, so lasting that
there is hardly an old settled community from Mount Shasta to the
Mexican line which has not some tale of the bandit, Joaquin Murieta.
Sometimes during the weeks after the lynching a miner on his way to
the gambling-houses after supper got a glimpse of Joaquin Murieta in
the outskirts of Murphy's Diggings, as he glided among the tents
cloaked to his eyes in his serape. Occasionally a late reveler,
returning to his cabin in the darkness, was startled by the sight of
his figure beside the road, as black and silent as the night itself;
or was chilled to dead sobriety by the vision of that drawn face
confronting him on a narrow trail. And in the chilly mornings men
going to their work came on the bodies of his victims in the soft red
dust of path or wagon-track, or stumbled over them in the chaparral.
And now fear began to seize the survivors of that lynching party. By
the time its twenty members had dwindled to something like a dozen,
the succession of spectacles afforded by the companions whom they had
been summoned to identify was getting on the stoutest nerves; the
dullest imaginations were working feverishly. Some found friends to
act as body-guards; others moved away to try their fortunes in new
camps; but the body-guards could not be on duty all the time and the
departing ones in most instances made the mistake of confiding their
intentions to acquaintances. All authorities agree that Joaquin
Murieta managed to kill at least fifteen--and possibly two or three
more--of the score whose faces he had so carefully imprinted on his
memory while the lash was biting into his bare back.
When he had finished with the work which the first part of his vow
demanded, he rode away from Murphy's with Rosita and set about the
task of gathering a band that he might be able to carry out the second
half.
There were plenty of cutthroats in California during that spring of
1850, and no lack of Mexicans among them. Several swarthy leaders of
banditti were then operating throughout the State. One of these was
Manuel Garcia, better known as Three-Fingered Jack, who had been
ranging over the Sonoma valley for several years, occasionally varying
the monotony of murder by tying a victim to a tree and flaying him
alive. Joaquin Valenzuela was another, a middle-aged outlaw who had
learned the finer arts of bushwhacking down in Mexico under Padre
Jurata, the famous guerrilla chief. There were also Claudio, a lean
and seasoned robber from the mountains of Sonora, adept in disguises,
skilful as a spy, able to mingle with the crowd in any plaza
unrecognized by men who had known him for years; and Pedro Gonzales, a
specialist at horse-stealing, who had driven off whole bands under the
very noses of armed herders.
Every one of these leaders had his own ugly gang of riders and his
own ill fame long before young Joaquin Murieta ceased dealing
monte; and every one was getting rich pickings from pack trains,
stage-coaches, valley ranches, and miners' cabins. Yet within six
months they all turned over their bands and became lieutenants of the
nineteen-year-old boy. That list of victims at Murphy's Diggings,
his superior breeding, and his finer intelligence gave him high
standing from the beginning, but his greatest asset was the purpose
which had driven him forth among them. They had robbed and killed and
fled with the aimlessness of common murderers, but here was one with
a definite plan, to leave the whole State a smoking shambles. They
submitted their lives and fortunes to the possessor of this appealing
idea.
During the first year, while organization was being perfected, Joaquin
Murieta traveled through northern California with Rosita gathering
recruits, establishing alliances among disaffected Mexicans, and
spying out new fields for plunder. Gradually, as he accomplished these
things, the bands under his different lieutenants began to rob and
plunder more systematically, and the scene of their operations shifted
with bewildering rapidity. To-day a number of travelers were dragged
from their horses by the reatas of swarthy ambuscaders in the Tuolomne
County foot-hills and to-morrow a rancher down in the valley found the
bodies of his murdered herders to mark the beginning of the trail left
by his stolen cattle. As the months went by suspicion that these
different bands were working under one leader grew to certainty among
the longer-headed officers. Then the name of Joaquin Murieta began to
be spoken as that of the mysterious chief. He was quick to confirm the
rumors of his leadership, and before the spring of 1851 was over he
managed by grimly spectacular methods to let more than one community
know that he was responsible for some outrage which had startled its
inhabitants.
That was the case in San Jose. A number of the robbers had swooped
down into the Santa Clara valley and their chief was living with
Rosita in the outskirts of the town, directing their raids, giving
them such information regarding travelers and plunder as he was able
to pick up by mixing with the crowds in the gambling-houses. A deputy
sheriff by the name of Clark captured two of the marauders red-handed,
and Murieta determined to make such an example of him as would put
fear into the hearts of other officers.
In those days the fandango was a popular function in San Jose, which
still retained all the characteristics of a Mexican pueblo, and there
was not a night without the strumming of guitars and the lively
stepping of the dancers in some public hall. Murieta went to one of
these fandangos and, by arrangement with confederates, brought it
about that Clark came to the place searching for a criminal.
The dancing was in full swing when the deputy entered; scores of lithe
dark men and their black-eyed partners were whirling in the fervid
Spanish waltz; but as he crossed the threshold a discordant note
arose: disturbance broke out in a corner of the hall; a woman
screamed; a knife-blade flashed. Clark shoved his way through the
crowd and reached the fight in time to disarm a good-looking young
Mexican who was flourishing the weapon; placed him under arrest and
took him away to the nearest justice of the peace, who passed sentence
of twelve dollars' fine.
"I have not the money on me," the prisoner said, "but if this officer
will go with me to my house I can get it there." It was an easy-going
period and such small matters as pulling a knife were of frequent
occurrence. The deputy consented to the request and the pair went
forth together from the lighted streets to the fringes of the town.
They were talking pleasantly enough when they came to a dark place
where willow thickets lined the road on either side.
Here the prisoner halted abruptly. "I am Joaquin Murieta," he
announced, "and I brought you here to kill you." Upon which he stabbed
Clark to the heart.
All this was told the next day in the streets of San Jose, but where
the information came from no one knew. Murieta's custom of sending out
such tidings through confederates was not so well understood then as
it came to be later.
From San Jose Murieta went northward into the Sacramento valley and
took quarters with Rosita in Sonorian Camp, a Mexican settlement
near Marysville. About twenty cutthroats under Valenzuela and
Three-Fingered Jack began working in the neighborhood. The ambush was
their favorite method--three or four in a party and one of the number
ready with his reata. When this one had cast the noose of rawhide rope
over the neck of some passing traveler and dragged him from the
saddle into the brush the others killed the victim at their leisure.
The number of the murders grew so appalling that Sheriff R. B.
Buchanan devoted all his time to hunting down the criminals.
Finally he got word of the rendezvous in Sonorian Camp and took a
small posse to capture the leaders.
But the news of the sheriff's expedition had preceded him, and when
they had crept upon the tent houses in the dark, as silent as Indians,
the members of the posse found themselves encircled by unseen enemies
whose pistols streaked the gloom with thin bright orange flashes.
While the others were fighting their way out of the ambush Sheriff
Buchanan emptied his own weapon in a duel with one of the robbers, and
collapsed badly wounded in several places. Weeks later, during his
recovery, Joaquin Murieta sent the sheriff word that he was the man
who had shot him down.
Northward the band rode now from Marysville until they reached the
forest wilderness near Mount Shasta, where they spent the most of the
winter stealing horses. Before spring they went south again, traveling
for the most part by night, and drove their stolen stock into the
State of Sonora. Their loot disposed of and a permanent market
established down across the line, Murieta led them back into
California to begin operations on a more ambitious scale. He planned
to steal two thousand horses and plunder the mining camps of enough
gold-dust to equip at least two thousand riders who should sweep the
State in such a raid as the world had not known since the Middle
Ages.
In April--almost two years to a day after the monte-dealer had left
his job at Murphy's Diggings--six Mexicans came riding into the town
of Mokelumne Hill, which lies on a bench-land above the river. A
somewhat dandified sextet in scrapes of the finest broadcloth and with
a wealth of silver on the trappings of their dancing horses, they
passed up the main street into the outskirts where their countrymen
had a neighborhood to themselves.
Here they took quarters in those tent-roofed cottages which were so
common in the old mining camps, and now three of them appeared in
their proper garb, well-gowned young housewives and discreet to a
degree which must have exasperated those of their neighbors inclined
to gossip. For these ladies had nothing to say concerning whence they
had come or the business of their husbands. Two of those husbands were
now spending much of their time in other camps and came home but
seldom to pay brief visits to their wives. The third stayed here in
Mokelumne Hill.
The days went by; the pack-trains jingled down out of the hills; the
processions of heavy wagons lumbered up from the San Joaquin valley
enwrapped in clouds of red dust; an endless stream of men flowed into
the town on its bench-land above the canyon where the river brawled.
Men from all the world, they came and went, and the milling crowds
absorbed those who lingered, nor heeded who they were. Gold was
plentiful, and while the yellow dust was passing from hand to hand
life moved so swiftly that no one had time to think of his neighbor's
business. The good-looking young Mexican was as a drop of water in a
rapid stream.
When dusk crept up out of the canyon and the candles filled the
gambling-houses with floods of mellow radiance he mingled with the
crowds. He drank with those who asked him and talked with those who
cared to pass a word with him; talked about the output of the near-by
gulches, the necessity of armed guards for the wagons and pack-trains,
or the chances of capturing Joaquin Murieta. In spite of his good
looks and expensive clothes he was about as unobtrusive as a Mexican
could be, which is saying a good deal at the period.
One April evening he was sitting at a monte-game. The gambling-hall
was filled with raw-boned packers from the hills, dust-stained
teamsters from the valley towns, miners from the diggings, and a
riffraff of adventurers from no one knew--or cared--where. It was a
booted crowd with a goodly sprinkling of red shirts to give it color,
and weapons in evidence on every side. Here walked one with a brace of
long-barreled muzzle-loading pistols in his belt, and there another
with the handle of a bowie-knife protruding from his boot-top; and
every one of those frock-coated dealers at the tables had a Derringer
or two stowed away on that portion of his person which he deemed most
accessible. The bartender kept a double-barreled shotgun under the
counter across which the drinks were being served.
In the midst of this animated arsenal the dark-eyed young Mexican
dandy sat placing his bets while the dealer turned the cards and luck
came, after luck's fashion, where it pleased. As he played, a group of
miners just behind him began arguing about the bandit whose name was
now famous all the way from Mount Shasta to the Mexican line. One of
them, a strapping fellow with a brace of pistols at his waist, became
impatient at something which another had said concerning the robber's
apparent invulnerability and raised his voice in the heat of his
rejoinder.
"Joaquin Murieta!" he cried. "Say! I'd just like to see that fellow
once and I'd shoot him down as if he was a rattlesnake."
A noise behind him made him turn his head, and now, like all the
others in that room, he stared at the dandified young Mexican-who had
leaped to the top of the monte-table and was standing there among the
litter of cards and gold. His broadcloth serape was thrown back; his
two hands moved swiftly to his belt and came away gripping a pair of
pistols.
"I am Joaquin Murieta," he shouted so loudly that his voice carried
the length of the hall. "Now shoot!"
A moment passed; he stood there with his head thrown back, his dark
eyes sweeping the crowd, but no man on the floor so much as moved a
hand. Then laughing he sprang down and walked slowly among them to the
front door. They fell away before him as he came and he vanished in
the shadows of the narrow street before one of them sought to follow
him.
The others of the sextet were waiting for him when he reached the
Mexican quarter; their horses were saddled; and at a word from him
they mounted. For he and his two lieutenants had finished their work;
they knew all they cared to know about the gold trains and the caches
of the miners, and this was to have been their last evening in camp.
With their gathered information they rode southward to Arroyo
Cantoova, in the foot-hills of the Coast Range at the western edge of
the upper San Joaquin valley. This was the band's new headquarters.
They remained here for some days resting before the next raid. Gold
was plentiful among them; the leaders dressed with the splendor of
noblemen; not one of those leaders--save Three-Fingered Jack--but had
his mistress beside him decked out like a Spanish lady; nor one but
rode a clean-limbed thoroughbred. When the hills were turning brown
with summer's beginning young Murieta led them out across the range
and southward to the country around Los Angeles.
Success had made him so serene that during the journey he sometimes
forgot his grim vow of shedding blood and showed mercy to a victim who
had no great store of gold. More than once Rosita induced him to spare
the lives of prisoners; and if his career had ended at this time his
name would have come down surrounded by legends of magnanimity. But as
he went on now that large plan of bloodshed became more of a power in
his life. And as it grew to master him he saw Rosita less; he sought
more frequently the companionship of Three-Fingered Jack, who killed
for killing's sake alone. During the last two years he had often
slipped away from his followers and stolen into the church of some
near-by town, to recite the dark catalogue of his sins in the
curtained confessional; but no priest heard him tell his misdeeds from
this time on.
In the north end of Los Angeles, where the old plaza church fronts the
little square of green turf and cabbage-palms, you can still find a
few of the one-story adobe buildings which lined the streets on the
July afternoon when Joaquin Murieta whispered into Deputy Sheriff
Wilson's ear.
He was a young man, this deputy, and bold, and he had come all the way
from Santa Barbara to help hunt down the famous bandit whose followers
were burning ranch buildings and murdering travelers from the summits
of the southland's mountains to the yellow beaches by the summer sea.
Unlike many of the pueblo's citizens, who had formed the habit of
talking of such matters in undertones and looking over their
shoulders as they did so, for fear some lurking Mexican might be one
of Murieta's spies, he voiced his opinions loudly enough for all to
hear. "Get good men together," he said, "and smoke these robbers out.
I'm ready to go with a posse any time." He preached that gospel of
action in the drinking-places, in the gambling-halls, and on the
street, until the very vigor of his voice put new heart into the
listeners. It was beginning to look as if young Deputy Sheriff Wilson
had really started things moving.
On a hot July afternoon he was standing on the narrow sidewalk
surrounded by a group whose members his enthusiasm had drawn out of
doors. Few others were abroad; an occasional Mexican woman in her
black skirt and tight-drawn reboso, a peon or two slouching gracefully
by with the inevitable brown cigarette, and a solitary horseman who
was coming down the street.
The men in the group were so intent on what the deputy was saying that
none of them observed the approach of this horseman until he reined in
his animal close to the sidewalk's edge. Then they saw him lean from
the saddle and whisper into Wilson's ear.
What words passed from his lips these others never knew. There was not
time for him to utter more than one or two; perhaps to tell his name.
They saw his white teeth flashing in an unpleasant smile; and Wilson's
hand moved toward his gun. But in the middle of that movement the
young officer pitched forward on his face. The sharp report of a
pistol, the scrape of hoofs, the smell of black powder smoke, and the
vision of the rider through the tenuous wreaths as he whirled his
horse about--these things came to the dazed witnesses in a sort of
blur.
The sound of the shot awakened the drowsing street and many who ran to
their doorways saw the murderer riding away at a swinging gallop. Some
of these claimed to recognize him as Joaquin Murieta, and in the days
that followed their statements were confirmed by captured members of
the band.
Deputy Sheriff Wilson's death aroused more men than his words had, and
when General Joshua Bean began organizing two companies of militia
during the weeks after the murder he found plenty of recruits. The
officers were just getting the new companies into shape for an
expedition against the bandits who were now ravaging most of the
country south of the Tehachapi, when Murieta and Three-Fingered Jack
waylaid General Bean one night near San Gabriel Mission, dropped the
noose of a reata over his head, dragged him from his horse, and
stabbed him through the heart. And the two companies of militia did
nothing more.
Now, while posses were foundering their lathered horses on every
southland road and the flames of blazing ranch buildings were throwing
their red light on the faces of dead men almost every night, a lean
and wind-browned Texan by the name of Captain Harry Love took a hand
in the grim game of man-hunting.
He had gained his title during the Mexican War. As an express-rider
for different American generals he had dodged the reatas of guerrilla
parties who were lurking by water-holes and had outjockeyed swarthy
horsemen in wild races across the flaming deserts of Sonora until he
had come to know the science of their fighting as well as old Padre
Jurata himself. And when he started after Murieta's men he did his
hunting all alone.
One day he ran across the trail of Pedro Gonzales, the horse-thief,
and another lieutenant named Juan, and followed it until he overtook
the pair at the Buena Ventura rancho. Like most of his Southwestern
breed he was a better man at action than at words, and so the story of
the gun-fight which took place when he came upon them has never been
told; but when the smoke of the three pistols cleared away Gonzales
was in custody and Juan was riding hard toward the hills with the
blood running over his face from a bullet's furrow along his scalp.
The fugitive found five others of the band in a sun-baked arroyo that
night, told them the news of the catastrophe, and got a fresh horse to
ride back with them and rescue their companion.
Captain Love was well on his way to Los Angeles with his prisoner when
the sound of drumming hoofs came down the wind. He glanced over his
shoulder and, on a hilltop half a mile behind, saw six horsemen coming
after him at a dead run. If he had any doubt of the nature of that
party he lost it when he turned his head in time to catch Gonzales
waving a handkerchief to them.
The elements of the situation were simple enough,--the Texan's jaded
mount, the fresh horses of the pursuers, the desperation of the
prisoner for whom the gallows was waiting in Los Angeles,--but most
men would have wasted some time in determining on a solution. Love,
who had learned in a hard school the value of seconds in such races as
this, did not choose to part with any more of his handicap than he
had to. So he whipped out his pistol, shot Gonzales through the heart,
and spurred his horse down the dusty road with enough start to
distance the bandits into town.
That was the first noteworthy casualty the band had suffered. It was
followed by the capture of young Reyes Feliz, Rosita's brother, who
was hanged in Los Angeles; and shortly afterward Murieta led his whole
company northward into the oak-dotted hills back of San Luis Obispo
where they lost twenty men--among them Claudio the expert spy--in a
day-long battle with a posse of ranchers whom they had sought to
ambush.
Then Joaquin Murieta rode back with the survivors to Arroyo Cantoova;
and if Rosita, who had been sent with the other women to the
rendezvous early in the summer, felt her heart leap when she saw her
lover coming, she soon felt it sink again, for he spent but few
moments in her company. Horses and gold and his large plan to sweep
like fire through California--these were the only thoughts he had.
Within a week he had divided the band into several parties, two of
which under himself and Three-Fingered Jack went north to plunder the
placer camps.
There is hardly an old town in the whole Bret Harte country that has
not its stories of the raiding during the winter of 1852-53. With the
knowledge which he and his lieutenants had gained at Mokelumne Hill
the chief directed operations, but as the weeks went by the influence
of Three-Fingered Jack grew until his methods were employed in every
robbery. By December the list of wanton murders had grown so great
that the State of California offered a reward of five thousand
dollars for Joaquin Murieta, alive or dead.
The notices announcing this reward were posted in Stockton one Sunday.
The town was then the point of departure for the southern placer
district, a lively place with craft of all kinds coming from San
Francisco to tie up at its levee and an endless procession of wagons
traveling out cross the flat lands of the San Joaquin valley to the
foot-hills. Everything was running wide open and the sidewalks were
crowded with men, most of whom were ready to take a rather long chance
for five thousand dollars.
One of the bills, tacked to the flag-pole in the public square,
attracted more readers than the others, and many a group gathered
about it to discuss what show a bold man might have of earning the
reward. The sidewalk loungers watched these debaters come and go until
the thing was beginning to be an old story; and they were almost ready
to turn their jaded attention elsewhere when a well-dressed Mexican
came riding down the street, turned his fine horse into the square,
and reined up before the flag-pole. The audience watched him leap from
the saddle and write something at the bottom of the bill.
When he had touched his horse with the spurs and ridden away at a slow
Spanish trot, one of the onlookers, more curious--or perhaps he was
less lazy--than his fellows, sauntered over to read what had been
written; and when he read it waved his hand in so wild a gesture that
every one who saw him came running to the flag-pole. At the bottom of
the placard with its offer of five thousand dollars' reward for
Joaquin Murieta, alive or dead, they found this subscription set down
in a good bold hand:
"And I will pay ten thousand dollars more. JOAQUIN MURIETA."
Faith in the State's promise rather than that of the robber sent many
riders out of Stockton that day to scour the willow thickets by the
river and the winding tulle sloughs. The posses were speeding back and
forth all night long and the excitement attending their comings and
goings lasted into Monday. So there were few on hand to watch the
departure of a schooner for San Francisco that morning.
She left the levee with her crew of three and with two passengers,
miners from San Andreas who were taking out about twenty thousand
dollars in gold-dust. The crew let out the sails, the canvas bellied
before the easy breeze, the schooner glided down the reed-lined slough
whose smooth waters held her reflection like a mirror. Flocks of wild
fowl rose before her as she came along.
A rowboat shot out of the tulles just ahead of her. The helmsman took
one look at the five men in the little craft and dropped his tiller to
pick up a double-barreled shotgun. He shouted to the sailors; they
sprang for weapons, and the two miners in the cabin leaped up the
companion stairs, their pistols in their hands. Before the foremost
was half-way up the flight the shooting had begun; he gained the deck
in time to see the body of the helmsman drooping over the swinging
tiller, overhung by a thin white cloud of powder-smoke. The small boat
lay alongside with a dead man huddled between the thwarts. The other
four bandits were swarming over the rail, firing at the sailors on
the forward deck as they came.
It was a short fight and sharp. When it ended every man in the ship's
company was lying dead or mortally wounded and two of the robbers were
killed. Murieta and Three-Fingered Jack lingered aboard long enough to
lower the gold-dust overside into the small boat and set fire to the
schooner; and the pillar of black smoke drew horsemen from Stockton in
time to hear the story which the dying men gasped out.
Up in Sacramento where the State legislature was considering the
extermination of Joaquin Murieta some weeks later the Stockton
incident was used by a lean and wind-browned lobbyist as an argument
for a company of rangers, and this argument by Captain Harry Love had
much to do with the passage of the bill authorizing such a body under
his leadership.
From Stockton the two companies of bandits fled southward up the San
Joaquin valley and brought more than fifty thousand dollars in
gold-dust to Arroyo Cantoova. Then Murieta took seventy men and rode
back to make his final raid on the placer camps. Three-Fingered Jack
went by his side: the only human being whose companionship he shared.
What talks those two men had together one can only guess from the
nature of the deeds that followed. No miner was too small game for the
chief now, he slit the throats of Chinamen for their garnerings from
worked-over tailings, he tortured teamsters to learn where they kept
their wages hidden, and where he passed during the night men found
corpses in the morning, until those of his own countrymen who had
befriended him in other days turned against him and betrayed his
hiding-places to the officers, and the whole foot-hill country from
the Tuolomme to the Feather River was patrolled by riders hunting
him.
In Hornitas he sought out a Mexican who had notified a posse of his
presence in the neighborhood, shot him down at broad noonday on the
main street, and galloped away with the pistol-bullets of his pursuers
raising little spurts of dust about his horse's flying hoofs. A few
weeks later he revisited the town; killed a deputy sheriff who sought
to capture him; and then hanged another of his countrymen, who had
informed the officer of his hiding-place.
One spring day he was riding alone in the foot-hills of Calaveras
County when he came on a party of twenty-five miners at the head of a
box canyon. They were encamped in a sort of amphitheater among the
rocks with steep walls on three sides and only one outlet, a narrow
Digger trail along the cliff a hundred feet above the brawling
stream.
Murieta had ridden up the ravine by that dangerous pathway and now he
was sitting with one leg thrown over his saddle-horn, talking to the
members of the party. They were on their way out from some winter
diggings, they told him, and they had plenty of dust with them. He
spoke of Joaquin Murieta and they pointed to their belts; they were
heavily armed, every man of them. Why should they fear the bandit? He
let his eyes go around the place taking quick appraisal of their
numerous pack and saddle animals, their camp equipment, their plump
buckskin sacks--rich booty if only he had a party of cutthroats at his
heels. But he was alone; the best he could do was to put a good face
on the matter and, in his role of honest traveler, learn what he
could, to store it up for future reference.
He was doing this and getting on very nicely at it, when one of the
party, who had gone down to the stream for water before his arrival,
came climbing up among the rocks with two filled buckets. The man
looked up at hearing a stranger's voice and Murieta glanced down at
the same instant. The eyes of each proclaimed recognition. For the
water-carrier was James Boyce, who had played monte over the table of
the good-looking young dealer many a night in Murphy's Diggings.
Boyce dropped the buckets of water and, drawing his pistol, "Boys!" he
shouted, "That's Murieta. Shoot him!" Then he fired.
But Murieta had wheeled his horse and was already spurring it on a
dead run down the gulch. The miners were lining their sights on him;
and now the canyon walls echoed to the volley they sent after him.
He gained the trail along the cliff. A bullet knocked off his hat and
his long hair streamed behind him as the horse leaped out on the
narrow path. The rocks spurned by its flying hoofs dropped over the
brink into the roaring stream one hundred feet below. The leaden slugs
that sang about the rider's head chipped bits from the sheer wall
beside him. He drew his bowie-knife and brandished it as high as his
arm could reach.
"I am Murieta," he shouted, turning in the saddle to look back at
them. "Kill me if you can."
The cliff on one side was so close that he scraped it with his stirrup
and on the other side the horse's upflung hoofs hung in mid-air
beyond the brink. The weapons flamed behind him at the canyon-head.
Their bullets rained on the rocks about him as he flourished his knife
in a final gesture of defiance and passed round a turn of the trail
beyond sight of his enemies.
But Boyce and his companions were a hardy crowd, and instead of
letting the incident end here they broke camp the next morning to
follow Murieta's trail. They traced him without much trouble down the
canyon, over a ridge and into another steep-walled gulch, where they
came on tracks of fourteen others of the band. From this point the
robbers had struck off toward the high country.
All that day the miners climbed the tall ridges where the sugar-pines
stood like enormous pillars in the vast cathedral of the out of doors,
until night found them in the midst of the forest right under the bare
granite peaks. Here they made camp, and when the cold breath of the
snow-fields came down upon them they kindled a great fire. They
lounged about the flaming logs smoking their pipes and warming their
wearied limbs. Beyond the circle of firelight the enshadowed woods
gave forth no sound to tell them that fifteen men were crawling
through those black aisles among the trees like fifteen swarthy
snakes.
The click of a pistol-hammer coming to full cock brought one of the
lounging miners to his feet. He fell forward in the instant of his
rising, and the woods gave back a hundred crashing echoes to the
volley which the bandits fired. Their aim was so true--for they had
stolen close in and taken good time to settle themselves before
cocking their weapons--that when the echoes died away fifteen men
were lying dead and dying in the red light of that fire.
The others were springing for their pistols, for nearly every one of
the miners had laid aside his belt to ease himself, but before one of
them had pulled a trigger there came the crackling of a second
fusillade and seven fell. Then Boyce and two of his companions leaped
outside that fatal circle of radiance in time to save themselves. As
they were creeping away in the darkness they saw Joaquin Murieta and
Three-Fingered Jack rush into the camp waving their bowie-knives
exultantly above their heads, and for a long time afterward they heard
the band whooping like Apaches while they killed the wounded.
Murieta and his company rode away from this massacre with thirty
thousand dollars in gold-dust and about forty horses as their loot.
But the story which Boyce and the other two survivors told turned the
mining towns into armed camps; and now Sheriff Charles Ellis of
Calaveras County started so fierce a warfare against the bandits that
they had to flee the country.
When Murieta rode back to Arroyo Cantoova that spring, a closely
hunted fugitive, he found that Rosita had deserted him for an American
settler by the name of Baker. Even at this critical period when he was
beginning actual preparations for his enormous raid he took the time
to track her to a cabin among the hills nearly a hundred miles from
the rendezvous. He shot her down and set fire to the place, but
perhaps the very frenzy of his anger blinded him or perhaps he rushed
away in horror of his own deed, for she survived her wounds, the only
one of his victims who lived when he had the time to kill, and showed
the scars to officers years afterward.
The boy who had taken her northward so short a time ago--for his years
were barely a man's years yet--rode back to Arroyo Cantoova and the
one thing he had in life--his plan.
* * * * *
Captain Harry Love and his company of twenty rangers rode down the
King's Highway into the little town of San Juan. In the plaza, where
the California poppies bloom to-day before the cloistered arches of
the mission as they bloomed on that July afternoon in 1853, the dusty
horsemen drew rein outside the old adobe inn. Their captain dismounted
and went inside and while he stayed the others lounged in their deep
stock saddles smoking cigarettes or eased the cinches to rest their
sweaty horses; a sunburned troop and silent as men who know they have
large work ahead of them.
An hour passed and Captain Love came out, to swing into his saddle and
ride off without a word with the twenty behind him. They followed the
King's Highway where it looped upward along the flanks of San Juan
Hill, came down the other side into the Salinas valley--the Salinas
plains, men called it then--and made camp near the river.
That night Captain Love told them what he had learned in the Plaza Inn
at San Juan where Joaquin Murieta had often come to confer with
friendly Spanish Californians in other days. One of these former
friends had betrayed to him the rendezvous at Arroyo Cantoova and
told him how to reach the place by a pass across the Coast Range near
Paso Robles.
The ranger company rode on southward day after day until the
wind-swept plain grew narrower between oak-dotted hills; then turned
eastward to climb among a tangle of grassy mountains scorched by the
sun to the color of a lion's coat. They crossed the divide and
descended into the upper valley of the San Joaquin. And one morning,
when they were following the trail of several horsemen, they saw the
thin smoke of a little camp-fire rising from the ravine-bed ahead of
them. Captain Love deployed his company to close in on the place from
three sides, and sent one man to the rear with orders to hang back
until the others had all ridden in. The man was William Byrnes who had
known Joaquin Murieta well in the days before that lynching at
Murphy's Diggings.
* * * * *
Murieta was washing his thoroughbred mare in the bed of the ravine.
She stood, without halter or tie-rope, as docile as a dog while he
laved her fine limbs with a dampened cloth. His saddle lay about ten
or fifteen yards away with his pistols in the holsters beside the
horn. Four or five bandits were cooking their breakfast over the fire;
and Three-Fingered Jack lay at a little distance, sprawled full-length
in the morning sunshine like a basking rattlesnake. The mare raised
her head; her ears went forward, and Murieta glanced up in time to see
the rangers riding in across the pale saffron ridges from three
sides.
They came at a dead run. Before he could reach his saddle one of the
company had pulled up between him and the weapons. Captain Love was
leaning from his horse questioning Three-Fingered Jack. Murieta took
another step toward his weapons; the ranger stopped him with a
gesture; he halted, glanced at Captain Love, and scowled.
"If you have any questions to ask," he cried, "I am leader of this
party. Talk to me."
"I'll talk to whom I please," Love answered, and just then William
Byrnes came riding into sight.
Murieta took one look at the man whom he had known in the days when he
walked unfeared among his fellows and let his eyes go around the
circle of riders; he saw Three-Fingered Jack watching him narrowly.
His hand stole up along the mare's glossy neck. Her ears moved back
and forth as she stood there biding some word from him.
Then, "Vamos, amigos!" he shouted, and sprang on the mare's back. He
leaned far forward as she leaped down the bed of the ravine.
Three-Fingered Jack took advantage of the moment of confusion that
followed to mount his own horse, and half the rangers followed him
across the grass ridge firing as they went. He fought a running battle
with them for five miles before they shot him down.
Murieta lay along the mare's back like an Indian. The hoofs of the
pursuing company thundered behind him in the ravine-bed; their bullets
spattered on the rocks about him. Before him the land broke in a
twenty-foot precipice. He called into the mare's ear and she headed
bravely for the cliff, leaped out into space, and turned a complete
somersault at the bottom. He rolled among the rocks beside her, lay
for a moment stunned, then rose and found her waiting for him where
she had gained her feet. He sprang to her back again and urged her
on.
Several of the rangers were pressing their horses along the hillside
to gain the bed of the ravine by that roundabout route; one who had
ridden full-tilt over the cliff lay stunned beside his injured animal;
and three or four others had dismounted. These lined their sights on
the fleeing mare, and now her legs went from under her; she crashed
down with the blood gushing from her nostrils.
The rangers rested their rifles for more careful aim as the rider
started to flee on foot. The volley raised rattling echoes in the
hills. He took four or five strides and then, halting, faced about. He
raised one hand.
"No more," he called. "Your work is done."
And as they slowly came toward him, their rifles ready to fly to their
shoulders at the first suspicious movement, Joaquin Murieta swayed
slightly and sank slowly into a heap near the dead mare. The breath
was gone from his body when they reached it.