LITMIR.BIZ

      To quote Bancroft, "Murieta stood head and shoulders over all knights of the road in California, if not indeed superior to the most famous highwaymen recorded in the annals of other countries." He was only a few months more than twenty-one when he died, after "a brilliant career of crime" of less than three years. Bancroft asserts that "the terms brave, daring and able faintly express his qualities," drawing then the far-fetched comparison that "in the canyons of California he was what Napoleon was in the cities of Europe." It is needless to recite details of his many crimes. Educated in the school of revolution in Mexico, it was an easy gradation for him to consider himself the champion of his countrymen rather than an outlaw.

      The terror of the Stanislaus, his history "though crimson with murder, abounds in dramatic interest." In a few months he headed an organized band that ravaged in every direction, and he "gave proof every day of possessing a peculiar genius for controlling the most accomplished scoundrels that had ever congregated in Christendom." They operated principally in Calaveras, Tuolumne and Mariposa Counties, but covered the state at large in their impartial distribution of murderous attentions. For nearly three years, Murieta flitted between town and country, snapping fingers in the face of authorities and the populace, while throughout the length and breadth of the interior valley from Shasta to Tulare, and along the coast line of missions, the country lamented its dead and rang with demands for his capture, dead or alive. Joaquin lived mostly about the towns but kept his henchmen informed of what was going on and of the opportunities for plunder.

      One of the secluded rendezvous places of the band was in the Arroyo de Cantua foothills on the West Side of Fresno County, where to this day are pointed out caves and watch peaks that served the band. The fraternity was sent out for operations in five subdivisions under as many secondary chiefs, acting simultaneously in widely scattered sections, and this with the membership of Joaquin Valenzuela, with similarity in name and appearance, earned for Murieta a reputation with some for ubiquity almost supernatural. Indeed upon his death, it was long insisted with dogged pertinacity that he was still alive. In disguise one day at Stockton, he halted his horse to read a tacked up handbill offering $1,000 for his capture, and he nonchalantly added in pencil, "I will give $5,000 — Joaquin."

      The monster of the band was Manuel Garcia. "Three Fingered Jack," from the loss of a finger in the war with Mexico. This most sanguinary wretch was no less conspicuous for savage cruelty as for courage. To gratify his lust for human butchery, he adopted as his specialty the throat-slitting of Chinamen. Sometimes he pistoled them, but this was too tame work. He would seize them by the queue and with, a twist peculiar to his practiced hand threw up the chin, presenting an unobstructed mark. His boast was that out of every ten not more than five escaped his aim.

      At last the people of the state were aroused against this saturnalia of crime and butcheries as a reflection on their manhood in permitting it to go unchecked so long, and in March, 1853, the legislature passed an act empowering Love to bring out a ranger company of twenty mountaineers of experience, bravery and tested nerve to hunt down the marauders. Love followed on the trail, spying by night and keeping close cover by day. On Sunday, July 25, 1853, he and eight rangers came upon a party of seven camping west of Tulare Lake, six seated around a fire at breakfast. Murieta gave the alarm and threw himself on the back of his saddleless and bridleless horse, speeded down the mountain side, leaped the animal over a precipice but falling with him was on his feet again, remounted and dashed on. The rangers close at his heels fired and the bay steed was shot in the side and fell. Joaquin ran afoot and received three balls in the body. He turned on his pursuers, saving. "It is enough; the work is done," reeled, fell on right arm and died without groan. Garcia being cornered, fought but was overcome, after riding five miles and being shot nine times.

      Love afterward received the $1,000 reward offered by the governor, and the legislature of 1854 generously added $5,000, the rangers having been engaged for $150 a month. The head of Murieta and the mutilated hand of Garcia were on August 18, 1853, advertised in San Francisco on exhibition at King's saloon at Halleck and Sansome streets — admission one dollar. Certificates of identity were attached of persons who had known Joaquin. These gruesome relics fell, in later years, into the hands of an anatomical museum, and were presumably destroyed in the big" fire of April, 1906. The superstitious made much of the growth after death of Joaquin's hair and of the nails on Garcia's hand, but pshaw! there have been more lurid and incredible tales told about Murieta and his band of a half hundred than were ever circulated concerning Robin Hood, Rob Roy, Fra Diavolo, Capt. John Kidd, Jonathan Wild, Jack Sheppard, Robert Macaire, and all the other unmentioned famous outlaws of history.