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Yet none of these have killed for mere lust of blood. This mysterious chieftain who murders for personal vengeance, is soon known to the determined Louisianian. In the long trail of tiger-like assassinations, the robber is disclosed by his unequalled thirst for blood. "Joaquin Murieta, Joaquin the Mountain Robber, Joaquin the Yellow Tiger."
Sometimes during the weeks after the lynching a miner on his way to the gambling-houses after supper got a glimpse of Joaquin Murieta in the outskirts of Murphy's Diggings, as he glided among the tents cloaked to his eyes in his serape.
Doubling on the pursuers, hiding, the bandit whirls from Shasta to Tehama, from Oroville to Sacramento, from Marysville to Placerville. Stockton, San Andreas, Sonora, and Mariposa are terrorized. Plundered pack-trains, murdered men, and robbed wayfarers prove that Joaquin Murieta is ever at work. His swoop is unerring.
A deputy sheriff by the name of Clark captured two of the marauders red-handed, and Murieta determined to make such an example of him as would put fear into the hearts of other officers.
"Joaquin Murieta!" he cried. "Say! I'd just like to see that fellow once and I'd shoot him down as if he was a rattlesnake." A noise behind him made him turn his head, and now, like all the others in that room, he stared at the dandified young Mexican-who had leaped to the top of the monte-table and was standing there among the litter of cards and gold.
Joaquin Murieta was riding away on the wings of the wind, but unwittingly into the jaws of death. Two or three from the main body took up the trail. The whole body pushed ahead on the track of the flying bandit ready for fight. With failing energies, Valois directs the unwounded pursuer to rejoin the column.
He fought a running battle with them for five miles before they shot him down. Murieta lay along the mare's back like an Indian. The hoofs of the pursuing company thundered behind him in the ravine-bed; their bullets spattered on the rocks about him. Before him the land broke in a twenty-foot precipice.
They followed the King's Highway where it looped upward along the flanks of San Juan Hill, came down the other side into the Salinas valley the Salinas plains, men called it then and made camp near the river. That night Captain Love told them what he had learned in the Plaza Inn at San Juan where Joaquin Murieta had often come to confer with friendly Spanish Californians in other days.
He drank with those who asked him and talked with those who cared to pass a word with him; talked about the output of the near-by gulches, the necessity of armed guards for the wagons and pack-trains, or the chances of capturing Joaquin Murieta. In spite of his good looks and expensive clothes he was about as unobtrusive as a Mexican could be, which is saying a good deal at the period.
The leaden slugs that sang about the rider's head chipped bits from the sheer wall beside him. He drew his bowie-knife and brandished it as high as his arm could reach. "I am Murieta," he shouted, turning in the saddle to look back at them. "Kill me if you can."
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