Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1913-08-21

as he could. Being Gringo from Cincinnati, he
thought it a ghost
ANY Mexican vaquero would have recognized
the sign. Such light burns over buried treas
ure-nowhere else.
Had he followed the light it would probably
have led him to the buried loot of old Joaquin
Murrieta Three-Fingered Jack Tiburcio Vasquez
or some other one of the hundred bandits who
infested the TETON Pass and the Valley OF the
San Joaquin.
And sir, they were bandits. Dick Turpin!
Plough, wretched piker, Dick Turpin and
Claude Duyal couldn't have got job currying
horses for Joaquin Murrieta. Don Joaquin was,
without doubt the most terrible boodthirsty and
successful bandit who ever held up a stage.
He was chief Of a band that sometimes num-
bered nearly hundred daredevls, and the treas
ure that he collected must have been enormous.
An examination into the events of his pictur-
esque career would clearly indicate that the sto-
res of his buried gold are not mere yaquero
myths. He must have left treasure in consider
able quantities cached somewhere in the vicinity
of the TETON ranch-very likely in the TETON
Pass
Murrieta is described a very ordinary-look-
ing young Mexican at the time he began his dep
relations. He sometimes went by the name OF
Garlic and many suppose that to have been his
real name.
He came up from Mexico, where he was born.
at the time of the California gold excitement in
1849. With him beautiful young Spanish
girl of high-born family. Her name was rosetta
Feiz.
She and Joaquin settled in Stanisaus county
and had begun washing the gravel for gold when
the tragedy occurred that turned Murrieta into
the cruelest outlaw the world has known
At that time there were all manner of race
riots through California result Of the anti
foreign mining laws that had been passed. Dur
ing one of these riots, Murrieta and his bride
were driven out of the gold diggings with insult
and indignity. Shortly thereafter, Joaquin,
while riding a horse borrowed from his half
brother, arrested and whipped a horse
thief
With black murder in his heart, he took the
road" and no one knows how many innocent
lives sacrificed to wipe out the wrong done
this Mexican peon when dashed to a tree at Muir
phys Diggings in Calaveras county that day
when they took him from the borrowed horse.
On account of the injustice of the anti-foreign
legislation, there were hundreds of young Next
ripe for JoaQuins picking and he col
lected desperate band of cut-throats. Chief
among them were Manuel Garcia, known
Three-Fingered Jack on account of a mutilated
hand which had been wounded in the Mexican
war; Reyes Felz, a brother Of his bride; Claudio,
Joaquin Valenzuea and Pedro Gonzales.
Three-Fingered Jack a monster of vice
and maniacsl cruelty. He seemed to take spe-
eial delight in numbering Chinese. On one occa-
sion he rounded up six Cinnamon the road,
IiSO tneF queues UOgeIner ana cut Lnelf thrOatS
at a time-laughing at the terrified yells of
the living the dying struggled in their
blood
For about four years Murrietas band ravaged
central California. Their main field of opera
tons was through the San Joaquin valley. The
o1d-timers say that the stage that ran from Los
Angeles to Stockton held up so many times
IN the vicinity of Bakersfield that it became an
ordinary and commonplace event. No road was
safe and every traveller rode at the peril of his
life The solitary horssman, rounding clump
Of chaparral, was quite likely to hear the sing of