Eternity Street

by John Mack Faragher

  Wallace, who participated in the operation, oscillated between eager anticipation and anxious worry. “No one shall escape,” he exclaimed. “What a joyous time we will have hanging the rascals!” But he also expressed concern. “There is much anxiety among the Californians,” he reported. “The thirst for blood increases, and as each new prisoner is carried to jail, his name and acts are made known and magnified. There is little sober judgment in the people, but they have resolved that there is no protection in the courts or the law, and they are now about to make some notable examples.” This was about revenge, not justice. The mass arrests stunned the Californio community. Ramírez’s muted response in El Clamor Público reflected their shock. “We hope,” he wrote, “that those arrested are examined by competent authorities, that the innocent are released, and the wicked receive their deserved punishment.”

  Anglo vigilantes conducted similar searches for “villains” throughout the county. William Osburn’s company continued to terrorize the Spanish-speaking residents of the San Gabriel Valley, invading homes, arresting suspects, and threatening a repetition of the horror they had perpetrated at the mission. A number of Anglos objected to Osburn’s methods, but like the Californios most remained silent. Michael White of San Gabriel was one of the few who did not. Learning that Osburn had seized a young Californio whose family lived and worked at his rancho, White swore he would rescue the boy. Friends warned he might suffer the same fate as the Californios if he challenged Osburn, but White didn’t care. “I was determined to have the boy if it cost me my life,” he later recalled. Arming himself with a pair of revolvers, he rode to the encampment of Osburn’s vigilantes. As White approached, he could see the boy sitting in the midst of the Anglos, his head in his hands, weeping. White dismounted and was immediately challenged by Osburn. “I want that boy and I will have him,” White said. The two men glared at each other for a moment before Osburn stepped aside and White took the boy home.

  ANDRÉS PICO and his fifty-one lanceros, in pursuit of the Manillas, arrived in San Juan Capistrano on Tuesday, January 27, and the following day were joined by a company of twenty-six Americans from the Monte under the command of Dr. Frank Gentry. Pico and Gentry were well acquainted, having served together on the executive committee of the local Democratic Party, and they agreed to work in concert. Their cooperation was in dramatic contrast to the violent ethnic conflict taking place in San Gabriel and Los Angeles, about which both men were ignorant. On Thursday, Luiseño scouts reported the discovery of the gang’s hideout, in a ravine near the head of Santiago Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains, some twenty-five miles north of San Juan, and that evening the combined force of Californios and Anglos headed out together. Traveling at night to avoid detection, they made their way up Trabuco Creek to the mouth of the canyon that led to the Manillas’ lair, where they made a cold camp.

  Don Andrés had a plan. Once again he dispatched his Luiseño scouts, this time with instructions to make contact with the young Angeleno outlaw Antonio María “Chino” Varela, the son of Sérbulo Varela, Pico’s comrade-in-arms during the war of conquest. In exchange for Varela’s betrayal of the gang, Don Andrés offered his personal guarantee that the young man would be neither harmed nor prosecuted. Late on Friday the Luiseños returned with good news. One of them had managed a few secret words with Varela, and he indicated his readiness to surrender. Pico and Gentry agreed the Californios would make the initial advance, while the Americans blocked Trabuco Pass, the escape route north over the Santa Anas.

  Don Andrés and his men began their ascent of the canyon at first light on Saturday and reached their destination by midmorning. Varela had been instructed to watch for an opportunity to join them and provide information on the precise whereabouts of the rest of the gang. But as Pico’s men were taking up position, they heard a clamor on a ridge above, and looking up they saw the Manillas escaping into the mountain fastness. The Californios had been discovered. According to the Luiseños, the gang’s only avenue of escape was by a rugged trail leading ten or twelve miles down Santiago Canyon. Dispatching a runner to inform Gentry, Don Andrés and his men set off in hot pursuit.

  The chase continued for several hours, and it was late afternoon by the time the Manillas reached the mouth of the canyon, the Californios still on their heels. The trail before them wound around the base of an isolated peak that rose nearly a thousand feet. A mile or two beyond, the plains of the valley floor offered the opportunity to scatter. Then they saw Gentry’s men, who had arrayed themselves along the trail ahead, blocking their passage. The outlaws had nowhere to go but up the side of the peak. It was a moment of desperation, and in the confusion Chino Varela managed to break away, surrendering to the oncoming Californios. He was quick to volunteer information and prove his loyalty. Only five of the gang remained, he told Pico. Three had been killed in the fight with Barton’s posse, and five more—including José Santos, Andrés Fuentes, and the seriously wounded Pancho Daniel—had fled for parts unknown immediately after the shootout. A few minutes later another Manilla, Sonoreño Juan Catabo, gave himself up, declaring his fear of climbing that peak.

  Pico and Gentry assessed the situation. Four Manillas had ascended the northwestern slope, pulling their horses up behind them, but the peak’s southern face dropped off precipitously. It looked as though they would have to come down the way they had gone up, so that was how the leaders positioned their men. One option was to simply wait them out, running the risk that with nightfall one or more of the outlaws might slip through their lines. But going up after them would expose the men to fire from above. Tomás Sánchez, Pico’s lieutenant, nevertheless declared his willingness to lead an assault. He was joined by Bethel Coopwood, second in command of the American company. With a party of half a dozen men, they cautiously ascended the peak on foot, keeping their eyes fixed above as they climbed. None of the outlaws appeared and there was no shooting. Reaching the summit, they still saw no Manillas.

  Sánchez led the men across the rocky pinnacle to its southern face, which fell off at a steep angle. There, some fifty feet down the slope, they saw four horses and one of the outlaws, a Sonoreño named Francisco Ardillero, looking back at them with his hands high in the air. Their revolvers cocked and extended, Sánchez, Gentry, and the others cautiously made their way toward him. Ardillero was standing at the edge of the cliff, and immediately it became clear that the other outlaws had used their reatas to lower themselves down the rock face. Ardillero, who had been too frightened to make the drop, was sent back under guard. Sánchez tested the ropes and found them securely fastened. Placing his knife between his teeth and taking hold with both hands, he slowly made his way down. At the bottom he found a broken gun but no Manillas. Neither the Californios nor the Americans had expected the outlaws to come down on that side, and with the way clear, they had made their escape into the thick chaparral.

  The light was already failing, so the two companies made camp. The following morning Sánchez and a number of Americans started for Los Angeles with Chino Varela, who promised help in locating the Manillas who had left earlier. Pico and Gentry divided their companies into smaller parties and began scouring the area for signs of the fugitives. That afternoon Gentry’s party discovered their trail, several miles down Santiago Creek, and pursuing it his men caught sight of them. “We galloped upon them,” said Pedro Rivera, riding with Gentry, “and they jumped into a ravine.” There was an exchange of gunfire, and one of the Americans was wounded before the outlaws finally gave themselves up. First to surrender was Leonardo Lopez, a Mexican, who asked for water and tobacco. He was followed by Californio José Jesús Espinoza and finally by Juan Flores himself, suffering from a gunshot wound to his left arm, inflicted when his revolver had accidentally discharged during the perilous descent of the cliff. In his pocket was Sheriff Barton’s gold watch.

  Gentry dispatched a messenger to Pico with the news, then turned homeward with his prisoners. It was late Sunday afternoon, and the Americans had been in
the saddle for nearly a week. Five or six miles brought them to the headquarters of Rancho Lomas de Santiago, where they camped for the night, tying up the prisoners and locking them in an outbuilding. Accounts differ about what happened next. According to one report, in deference to his wound, Flores was not bound quite as tightly as the other two, and he was able to wiggle free. According to another, he used his teeth to loosen the ropes of the others. When, about midnight, the sentry unlocked the door to check on the prisoners, they struck him unconscious and fled into the night. By the time the sentry recovered his senses and raised the alarm, the Manillas were long gone.

  A messenger carried the news to Los Angeles that same day. “The town is in a perfect rage at the escape of the three prisoners,” William Wallace reported. “And worst of all, they escaped from our own men,” meaning the Americans. Since the troubles of the previous summer, the Monte Boys had been lionized by Angelenos. “But the Monte is not popular just now,” Wallace wrote, “because just at the moment when they were desired to be ferocious, they took a freak of being kindhearted.” A report of the escape reached Don Andrés as he and his Californios made the trek down Santiago Canyon with outlaws Juan Catabo and Francisco Ardillero in custody. According to Wallace, Pico “tore his hair, swore a thousand carajos, seized his two prisoners, marched them back into the canyon, and hung them from the branches of a tree.” The large sycamore from which they were hanged still stands in Precitos Canyon, near Irvine Lake. Pico ordered the dead men’s ears cut off, proof that the Californios had done their duty, even if the Anglos had not.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Tuesday, February 3, two men guarding the trail over Santa Susana Pass, in the northern part of Los Angeles County, some seventy miles from Rancho Lomas de Santiago, observed a lone rider slowly approaching from the valley side. Stepping from behind a rock with their revolvers leveled and cocked, they caught him unawares and commanded him to dismount. Dressed in ragged clothing and without arms, the man identified himself as an emancipado from Mission San Fernando, scouting for stray stock. He had not expected to find anyone on this little-used trail, he said. The guards had been stationed there the day before by ranchero James Thompson, proprietor of nearby Rancho del Encino, who suspected that one or more of the Manillas gang might head that way, and ordered his volunteer company to close off all the roads leading out of the San Fernando Valley. The guards had orders to bring in anyone who tried to cross, so they escorted their prisoner back down to Rancho del Encino. Californios there identified the man as Juan Flores.

  A large and boisterous crowd watched as Thompson escorted Flores into Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon. Taken directly to the county jail, a blacksmith spent the better part of an hour manacling his arms and legs in heavy irons. “He rests quietly and seems unconcerned about the fate that awaits him,” Francisco Ramírez reported. “A throng of onlookers crowded around to see such a brave man who had accomplished such daring feats.” Among them was William Wallace, who readily admitted his admiration of the man’s skill at eluding capture. In less than thirty-six hours Flores had made his way from the far south of the county to the far north. “He has run the gauntlet the whole distance—his escapes are marvelous—but his industry and perseverance are not appreciated here.” Anglos were eager for summary justice. “Now for a hanging,” Wallace announced.

  Outside the pueblo the lynching of suspected accomplices continued apace. Marshal Getman reported the discovery of three unidentified Mexican bodies near Los Nietos, two hanging from the branches of a tree, a third at the bottom of a ravine nearby with a bullet in his brain. Another two Mexicans were lynched near Fort Tejon, in the Tehachapi Mountains. It is unlikely these victims had anything to do with the death of Sheriff Barton. Mob law provided a cover for the violent resolution of old disputes, and Mexican bodies swinging from the sycamore trees sent a message of terror to the Spanish-speaking community.

  A company from the Monte, led by the old vigilante Ezekiel Rubottom, returned from the north to report that they had executed two men near Mission San Buenaventura. One had nothing to do with the Manillas, but the other was José Jesús Espinoza, a Californio who escaped with Flores. Espinoza’s confession, printed in the Star, offered a candid thumbnail history of the gang. “We, the thieves and murderers, are but ten persons,” he said, supplying a list of names that corresponded precisely with the one provided by Chino Varela. “Our organization dates back one month or a little less, in which time we committed four murders near San Juan, and one murder in that place. We have stolen from three stores in San Juan, taking away goods and money, which with that taken from the murdered persons, I think might exceed $120, and about ten horses. This is the truth, which I sign with a cross before my name, as I cannot write.” There was nothing “revolutionary” about the Manillas.

  Four members of the gang remained at large, including Pancho Daniel and Andrés Fuentes. Four had already died at the hands of vigilantes, while Juan Flores and Chino Varela were in the custody of the committee of safety, awaiting their fate along with the fifty-two men jailed during the dragnet of Sonoratown. Over the next several days the clamor for summary justice increased among Anglos, and by Tuesday, February 10, with the arrival in the pueblo of a large contingent of Monte Boys eager for a hanging, it looked as if the situation might spin out of control. That afternoon the committee summoned the town to a public meeting chaired by attorney Jonathan R. Scott, who assured the crowd that the prisoners were secure and proposed a public trial on the upcoming Saturday, providing a few more days for those prisoners “to prove their innocence.” Scott’s comment inadvertently highlighted one of the critical distinctions between vigilantism and the law, which considered suspects innocent until proven guilty. Scott’s motion was carried by a majority of those present, although many of the Monte Boys objected that when it came to hanging, there was no time like the present.

  Chino Varela presented a special case since he had surrendered with the promise of a pardon. In a letter to the Star, Frank Gentry and Bethel Coopwood declared themselves “honor bound” to uphold that agreement because it had been made by Andrés Pico, “who in every action was honorable and acted in good faith towards the Americans.” Honoring that promise was only just, Franciso Ramírez argued in El Clamor Público, because Varela had joined the gang under “threats of violence.” But no evidence supports that contention. According to witnesses, Varela had participated enthusiastically in the invasion of the shops in San Juan and was triggerman in the murder of shopkeeper George Pflugardt. Pico made his offer of pardon not because Varela was a victim but because, as Antonio Coronel put it, the young man was “very respectably connected,” with kinship ties to several elite Californio families. Influential Americans endorsed the deal not only out of respect for Don Andrés but because Varela’s father, Don Sérbulo, had risked his life during the war of conquest to save the American prisoners from execution.

  Varela’s fate was the subject of some debate, but there was virtual unanimity about what should be done with Flores. Ramírez was among the few dissenters. “Let us not stain our hands with the blood of our brothers,” he cautioned. He remained opposed to vigilantism. “Let the authorities carry out their responsibilities. If we do not respect the law, we renounce all sense of honor and respectability.” Henry Hamilton, editor of the Star, counterpunched. If the prosecution of Flores was left to the state, he feared, he would be “patted on the shoulder and told to go away home and be a good boy.” In a matter of such importance, Hamilton insisted, it was meet and proper that the decision be left to the people. “God bless the people, we say—they may be deceived and deluded for a while, but in the end they make all things right.” The most bellicose counsel came from Henry Barrows, local correspondent for the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin and a leader of the county’s nascent Republican Party. Barton’s assassination, Barrows declared, “was the fatal result of not hanging Juan Flores and his companions two years ago,” when he was arrested for horse theft. The people shoul
d not pass up the opportunity to rectify that error.

  SATURDAY MORNING dawned cloudy and cool, the aftermath of a heavy rainstorm the previous day that turned the pueblo’s streets into seas of mud. At ten the clang of the triangle summoned a crowd of some several hundred men to the street in front of Montgomery House. Among them were a number of volunteer companies from the pueblo, including one from the French community, another from the Monte, and two or three made up entirely of Californios. Those who arrived on horseback remained mounted, while those on foot were forced to stand in mud up to their ankles. The meeting was chaired by Judge Scott. “Old Scott rose,” Wallace reported, “and proposed that in the proceedings of the day, the will of the majority should govern the whole.” The crowd roared its approval. Scott, always an enthusiastic vigilante, did not raise the option of turning the case against Flores over to the courts, but immediately began presenting it to the crowd. The evidence was read aloud in three languages, Spanish, French, and English. Ramírez knew what was coming. “It was of course proposed that Flores be hung, his crimes being well documented, and of course the crowd cheered its approval without dissent.” Wallace’s account was more enthusiastic. “This, I think, was one of the most magnificent spectacles ever witnessed by man,” he wrote. “The whole people, of all colors, rose up together as one and said: ‘Let him be hung.’ The cold-blooded murderer was beyond the pale even of friendship. Not a human voice was raised in his behalf. He was not fit to live even in this community, and you may well conceive that a man who is not fit to live in this community must be a very bad man.”

  What of the suspects who remained in jail? Over the previous several days their number had been whittled down to some twenty men. According to Ramírez, “before being released, each had to undergo a kind of inquisition in which they were asked about their lives and occupations—and if at any time they had committed an offense for which they had been punished.” Those who remained incarcerated were suspected of various crimes, but none were linked to the Manillas, and Scott proposed that their cases be turned over to the legally-constituted authorities. The crowd indicated its approval by voice vote, with Henry Barrows on the losing side. “It was generally expected that there would have been several of the compadres of Flores hung with him, and there is a good deal of dissatisfaction expressed because they were not,” he reported. “A great ado is made, talking, voting, excitement, and it all ends in smoke.”