Frederick R. Bechdolt

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 serapes 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From San José 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”