Imperial Valley press., 1908-04-04
STORY OF CHRIS EVANS, TRAIN RoBBER AND KILLER, WHO
 PLEADS FOR PARDON.
JOAQUIN MlLLER'S MYTHS
The Poseur Poet Puts Wings on>the Old Villain and Tells AbsurdIy Un- true Tale of His Career of outIawry to Aid His Release,

releaSlng IrOm pIlSOp Ol0 CuTlS bVanS, train robber and wholesale murderer, serving a life sentence by mercy of jury whose plain duty it was to let him be hanged. Evans has been try ing to get out on parole or pardon for some time, and doing a lot of hypocritical whining and lying to arouse sympathy for poor old man, whose errors were of the head, not of the heart" and some persons with more sentimentality than sense are trying to worry the board of pardons into turning him loose.
 Among these joggle-witted senti. mentalists is Joaquin Miller, who has written some good stuff in verse and a fearful lot of rubbish in prose. To seriously criticize Miller for misstate- ment of fact would be absurd to those who really know him, for Joaquin is constitutionally unable to differentiate the truth from the vaporings of his vain imagination, but the public knows
 
 repute and maybe inclined to give credence and weight to what he writes.
 In one of the coast magazines Mil. Ter attempts to tell the story of Evans and Sontag, and there is not one es- sential fact of the history of those notorious outlaws that he has not dis torted and perverted beyond recogniE ton. He ministers to his own ridicu- lous vanity by representing himself to have taken part in the famous chase and reported one of the combats, cred iting himself with experiences of oth- CTS. But that is Miller all over. His adventures with Indians and bears, of which he brags constantly, are pure myths. His connection with the Evans and Sontag case was confined to writ ing for the Examiner an account of pretended meeting with Evans ill the mountains, which was printed with fake picture of Joaquin in the outlaws retreat.
 Murderous Robbers.
 It was about fifteen years ago that Evans and Sontag ran their career of outlawry in Tulare and Fresno coun- ties and furnished the newspapers with sensational stories. They had been robbing trains frequently in San Joa- quin Valley, twice adding murder to their other crimes, but had not been suspected until by accident the officers found evidence pointing to one of the Sontag brothers. George Sontag was arrested, and two officers went to John Sontag's house in Visalia to search for a trunk Even then nobody had thought of Chris Evans as one of the gang, but when the officers en- tered the Sontag house, Evans opened fire on them with a shotgun and gave himself away. This is Miller's version of the incident:
 That evening posse of half-drunken men, with mob at their heels, came up from town to the little farmhouse with warrant for John Sontag. He started for the barn and the posse opened fire right there among the terrified children. Mrs. Evans, with a babe at her breast, tried to get be- hind horse, when drunken deputy" fired, almost in her face, and brought down the horse. Then this man fell. The battle was short, but long enough to riddle the little board house, hurt many of the deputies" one of them mortaRy. It lasted long enough to drive Mrs. Evans and her aged mother into mysteries and to blight the lives of those little ones as with a~midnight frost. Evans and Sontag went away together, came back, and then the next day another battle.
 Not one true statement in the whole mess. There were but two officers, and one was wounded in the neck. Mrs. Evans was not present, and there was no battle" the officers being taken wholly by surprise. Evans and Sontag hid in barn that night, and an officer was detailed to watch the place. They sneaked out in the dark, murdered the officer and took to the mountains.
 Perverse Sympathy.
 For months the outlaws were hunted