LITMIR.BIZ

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the prisoner that the murder could have been the deed of Indians for revenge on account of a feud between the Bethel family and the Monos. Followed the recital of Judge Smilie who was a walking encyclopedia of the neighborhood and familiar with the history of every one who had ever lived in the region. And in this connection it is interesting to record as a historical fact that the division of the county to form the later Madera left the larger number of earliest pioneers located north of the San Joaquin River as the common boundary; also necessarily the greater number of these survivors are to this day in the younger county. Reason there was for this. The greatest mining activities, with exception in a narrow belt along the San Joaquin about Millerton, had been in that portion of Fresno County north of the San Joaquin; the northern portion of the county lying between the San Joaquin and the Chowchilla and on the Madera and the Fresno between the two first named contributed more to the making of early history than did the southern portion between the San Joaquin and the Kings with population nuclei in the Millerton foothills, on the Upper Kings at what is today Centerville, on the Lower at what is today the Kingsburg and Reedley country and in the Coast Range on the west in a nook at what is today the New Idria quicksilver mining country in San Benito County, all between these points being a waste, desert plain awaiting the bringing on of water and the coming of the husbandman to cultivate the parched and baked virgin soil.

      Putting in sequence the tale narrated by Pioneer Smilie, it appeared that when Bethel settled in the Crane Valley country more than a quarter of a century ago and took as a companion an Indian woman he had a quarrel over her with one of her tribesmen and shooting him thrice, killed him. This was so long ago that even Smilie would not hazard giving the year of the occurrence. Bethel had declared that he expected he would forfeit his life someday to an Indian assassin. However, early in the 80's Bob Bethel, a half breed son, shot an Indian in the leg but a white man's jury cleared him. About 1885 this Bob married according to the tribal custom the daughter of Mono chief named Pemona, who hankered for a rancheria for his subtribe on' the Bethel ranch. With the marriage, Pemona secured that rancheria. A day came and Bob deserted the chief's daughter, took up with another marriageable squaw of the tribe and the proximity of the rancheria having become objectionable (a circumstance not to be wondered at). Bethel tried to have it removed and of course trouble arose.

      Pemona came to pow-wow with Bethel, who supposed at first that the chief had come to kill his half breed son for the desertion of the chief's daughter. Bethel aided the son's escape with the help of a horse, but Pemona tarried all day and drinking too much there was a quarrel. Pemona advanced in menacing manner with a rock in hand and Bethel blew the top of his head off and killed him. Months thereafter, mayhap a year, the tribe had a gathering to grieve over the leaving from the rancheria and partly in memoriam of the dead chief. Bob Bethel was at the gathering standing at the camp fire. A shot rang out in the still of the night. A bullet struck him in the back and there was a dead half-breed. The shot was from a nearby house and the supposition has always been that the murder was by an Indian who had taken up the quarrel of Bob's wife.

      Bethel feared to go among the Indians to rescue the body of this son because he would be foully dealt by for the hostility between the Bethels and Mono tribe was at this period at fever heat. Bethel induced Smilie to accompany him in the recovery of the body for burial. Smilie acquiesced but for his pains was shot at mistakenly for Bethel. The body of Bob was recovered. About two years before the murder of Bethel, Barge, a younger -brother of Bob, was found dead one day at home with bullet wound in the head. At the time it was declared to have been a suicide and the coroner's verdict so declared and found. Since that finding the impression gained ground that it was a murder because it was impossible for Barge to have shot himself in the location of the rifle wound, the fact that there were no powder marks on him as there would have been had the firearm been discharged at so close range as it necessarily must have been if it was a suicide, and lastly because it has never been known for a half-breed to take his life. There was also evidence at the trial that Bethel had ordered an Indian off the premises some weeks or months before, that on the morning following the murder an Indian had been seen prowling about the Bethel store at North Fork, that he had been drunk and excited suspicion. The above fragmentary and disconnected recital was furnished as a basis for the jury to believe or conclude in the absence of any proven or indicated motive for the killing of Bethel on Muhly's part that the murder must have been committed by an Indian, who had taken the law into his own hands as avenger of a series of outrages suffered by his tribe through acts of the Bethels.

      "Last scene of all, "That ends this strange, eventful history." On the hillside near the Bethel roadhouse is a collection of graves, most of them unnamed, forgotten, dilapidated, weed or grass overgrown and dank. Four mark the earthly resting-places of known dead. One is the sepulcher of Ben Harding called before his Maker unprepared for the journey into eternity many years ago. In the other three graves lie the remains of the three Bethels, father and two sons. And all died with their boots on!

      CHAPTER LXIV

      Fresno was agitated to its depths in 1907-08 over a conscienceless effort made with apparent support of a ring in the legislature to divide the county by lopping off western territory embracing the Coalinga oil field developed in large part by Fresno men and capital and annexing it for the enlargement of Kings County to satisfy an insatiate greed.

      Kings contained then 1,200 square miles. The Coalinga district embraced 1,242 square miles. It is one of the richest oil fields in the world. The proposed steal of the land south of the Fourth Standard Parallel would have more than doubled Kings' area. In the proposed change, Coalinga was sought to be voted by hook or crook from one of the richest to one of the poorest counties in the state: from one of the largest to one of the smallest.

      Fresno ranked then sixth in the state in order of population and wealth. Its immediate future according to every reasonable prospect was to rise to fourth place. Beyond that it could not well advance. To do so, it would have to pass San Francisco, Los Angeles and Alameda. Kings was then not so large as the rich district upon which it had cast covetous eyes.

      The ambition of Kings was to improve its river and swamp land at the expense of the taxes to be levied on the land and improvements of the oil district with which it was perhaps in closer relation because of the poor railroad connections and the lack of roads across the plains between Fresno and Coalinga. Indeed the railroad connection was by a circuitous route via Hanford in Kings. As a bribe to cajole it into annexation, the coveted territory was promised a supervisorship in the enlarged Kings County, besides other empty inducements, which with the ultimate defeat of the annexation project no attempt was ever made at fulfilment. Coalinga by going over into Kings was asked to forever cut off the chance for a big West Side county with itself as the largest community the possible county seat. A development had then been started and has since continued, and a population might be looked for to warrant someday the formation of a county with the oil district as the nucleus. Had Coalinga gone into Kings, the latter would never have population enough to suffer the territorial loss of Coalinga annex, and Coalinga, so the anti-annexationists argued, would have shut of? its opportunity for a big county north of the Kings River to satisfy the ambitions of a few politicians south of the river. It was after all is said and done a raw effort by Kings to grow by conquest.

      This county division plan never had inception in Fresno but was conceived in Kings. Two years before the Hanford papers began the agitation and campaign to enlarge the territory of the vest-pocket county for the sake of the enlarged tax income, Kings having reached the limit at home and Coalinga being a convenient and contiguous field with possibility of exploitation and assuredly worth the effort. There was everything to win and nothing to lose. In April, 1906, the Coalinga Record, under another management than that which dictated its policy later, denounced the Hanford county division of Fresno project and the manifest effort to divide sentiment in the Coalinga district by fomenting dissension and declared that it was content to remain in Fresno. What induced the change in policy in the sheet is left to conjecture. Certain it was not in a change of conditions because they were improving. The annexation scheme was an inspiration of Kings for its material benefit, carried through its' first steps in the legislature by a combination of politicians and thereafter attempted to be pushed through to a successful consummation by methods suggestive of the

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