The Yale expositor., 1913-08-21
u
Y VI


as he could. Being Gringo from Cincinnati. he
thought it was a ghost.
Any Mexican vaquero would have recognized
the sign. Such light burns 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 Turpn!
POUCH! wretched piker! 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 a stage.
He was chief of a band that sometimes
bered nearly hundred daredevs, 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-
ries of his buried gold are not mere vaquero
myths. He must have left treasure in consider
able quantities cached somewhere in the vicinity
of the Tejoa ianch-very likely in the TETON
Pass
Murrieta is described as a Very ordinary-ook-
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 a beautiful young Spanish
girl of high-born family Her name rosetta
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 were all manner OF race
riots through California a result Of the anti
foreign mining laws that had been passed. Dur
ing one Of these riots. Murrieta and his bride
drv % 81, Nth
and indgnity. Shortly thereafter, Joaquin,
while riding horse borrowed from his half
brother, was arrested and whipped a horse
thief.
With black murder in his heart he took the
road" and no one knows how many innocent
lives were sacrificed TO wipe out the wrong done
this Mexican peon when dashed to tree at Muir
phys Dggings in Calaveras county that day
when they took him from the borrowed horse
On account Of the injustice of the antforeign
legislation, there were hundreds Of young Next
cans ripe for Joaquin's picking and he col
lected desperate band of cutthroats. Chief
among them Manuel Garcia, known as
Three-Fingered Jack account of a mutated
hand which had been wounded in the Mexican
war; Reyes Feliz brother of his bride; Claudio,
Joaquin Vaenzuela and Pedro Gonzales.
Three-Fingered Jack a monster OF vice
and manacal cruelty. He seemed to take a spe-
cial delight in numbering Chinese. On one occa-
sion he rounded up six Cinnamon on the road.
tied theft queues together and cut their throats
one at time-laughng at the terrified yes OF
the living as the dying men struggled in their
blood.
For about four years Murrietas band ravaged
central California. Their main field OF opera
tons through the San Joaquin valley. The
oldtmers 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 a clump
Of chaparral was quite likely to hear the sing OF