The Elbert County tribune., 1913-08-22


as he could Being Gringo from Cincinnati. he
thought It ghost.
Any Mexican vaquero would have recognized
the sign Such light burns over buried treas
ure-nowhere else.
Had he followed the light 1t would probably
have led him to the buried loot of old joaquin
Murrieta, Three Fingered Jack Tiburcio vasquez
or some other OF the hundred bandits who
infested the TETON Pass and the Valley of the
San Joaquin.
And SIR they were bandits. Dick Turpin!
Pough! wretched pikerl Dick Turpin and
Claude Duval 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 stage
He was chief of band that sometimes num-
bered nearly hundred daredevis, and the treas
ure that he collected must have been enormous.
An examination into the events of his pctur-
esque career would clearly indicate that the sto-
ries of his buried gold are not vaquero
myths. He must have left treasure in consider
able quantities cached somewhere In the vicinity
of the TETON rnnch-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
1S49. With him came beautiful young Spanish
Feliz.
She and Joaquin settled in stanislaus 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 all manner of
riots through California result of the "anti-
foreign" mining laws that had been passed Dur
ing Of these riots Murrieta and his bride
were driven out of the gold diggings with insult
and indgnity, Shortly thereafter, Joaquin,
while riding horse borrowed from his half
brother was arrested and whipped as a horse
thief
With black murder in his heart he took the
road" and no knows how many innocent
lives were sacrificed to wipe out the wrong done
this Mexican peon when ashed to 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 anttforeign
legislation, there we're hundreds of young Mexi-
cans ripe for Joaquin's picking and he soon col
lected desperate band of cutthroats. Chief
among them were Manuel Garcia known as
Three Fingered Jack on account Of a mutilated
hand which had been wounded In the Mexican
war Reyes Feliz brother Of his bride; Claudio,
Joaquin Vaenzuela and Pedro Gonzales.
ThreeFingered Jack was monster of vice
and maniacal cruelty. He seemed to take spe-
cial delight In numbering Chinese. On one occa-
zion he rounded up six Cinnamon on the road.
tied their queues together and cut their throats
one at a ume-laughing at the terrified yes of
the living as the dying struggled In their
blood
For about four years Murrieta's band ravaged
central California Their main field Of opera
tions through the San Joaquin valley. The
old-timers say that the stage that ran from Los
Angeles to Stockton was held up many times
in the vicinity of Bakersfield that 1t became an
ordinary and commonplace event. No road was
safe and every traveller rode at the peril OF his
life. The solitary horseman, rounding clump
OF chaparral, was quite likely to hear the sing of