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Updated: June 7, 2025
Four or five bandits were cooking their breakfast over the fire; and Three-Fingered Jack lay at a little distance, sprawled full-length in the morning sunshine like a basking rattlesnake. The mare raised her head; her ears went forward, and Murieta glanced up in time to see the rangers riding in across the pale saffron ridges from three sides. They came at a dead run.
He was doing this and getting on very nicely at it, when one of the party, who had gone down to the stream for water before his arrival, came climbing up among the rocks with two filled buckets. The man looked up at hearing a stranger's voice and Murieta glanced down at the same instant. The eyes of each proclaimed recognition.
Pride of race, and a bitter thirst for revenge, made Joaquin Murieta what he was, a human scourge. His boyhood, spent roaming over the interior, rendered him matchless in local topography. It was possible to disguise the fact of supplies being drawn from Lagunitas. Don Miguel was a great ranchero. As days rolled on, the plunder of the bandits was brought to the rancho.
He patches up the face of the wounded scout, whose proudest future boast will be that Joaquin Murieta gave him those honorable scars. Maxime, worn and faint, falls into a fevered sleep. His subordinate holds the ranch, with all the force ready for any attack. The afternoon wears on. In sleep Valois forgets both the flying bandit and his fate.
A fiend in his thirst for blood. A charmed life seems his. On magnificent steeds, he rides down the fleeing traveller. He coolly murders the exhausted "Gringo," taunting his hated race with cowardice. Sweeping from north to south, five hundred miles, this yellow-clad fiend always keeps the Sacramento or San Joaquin between him and the coast. Men shudder at the name of Joaquin Murieta.
Manuel, following Don Andres across to the veranda, had caught the gesture and tone; and while his knowledge of English was extremely sketchy, he knew six and four when he heard those numerals mentioned, and the rest was easy guessing. "The four strands are good, but the six are better when Joaquin Murieta lays the strands.
In those days the fandango was a popular function in San José, which still retained all the characteristics of a Mexican pueblo, and there was not a night without the strumming of guitars and the lively stepping of the dancers in some public hall. Murieta went to one of these fandangos and, by arrangement with confederates, brought it about that Clark came to the place searching for a criminal.
Lying on the portico, tied in the sack, in which it swung at the ranger's saddle-horn, is the head of Joaquin Murieta. Valois struggles to his feet. Surrounded by the victors, by the light of a torch, he gazes on the awful token of victory. As the timid priest sees the fearful object, he cries, "Joaquin Carrillo!" It is indeed he. The disgraced scion of an old and proud line.
At the bottom of the placard with its offer of five thousand dollars' reward for Joaquin Murieta, alive or dead, they found this subscription set down in a good bold hand: "And I will pay ten thousand dollars more. Faith in the State's promise rather than that of the robber sent many riders out of Stockton that day to scour the willow thickets by the river and the winding tulle sloughs.
With the knowledge which he and his lieutenants had gained at Mokelumne Hill the chief directed operations, but as the weeks went by the influence of Three-Fingered Jack grew until his methods were employed in every robbery. By December the list of wanton murders had grown so great that the State of California offered a reward of five thousand dollars for Joaquin Murieta, alive or dead.
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