May 1

Even in early May the sun tears into everything, but the water is running and it’s pleasant enough in the shade and as long as I keep a steady pace I can keep the windows down and the dust wont get in. Later in the summer the asbestos hazard increases, and the rattlesnakes are awake, and according to Ranger Tom, it’s a furnace. For now, the pointy rocks are about all I have to worry about. I got my eye out for Spanish Lake, gotta be just up ahead, and I wonder if it’s anything like Mendota Pool, or maybe even bigger, and this gets me thinking about the Feliz brothers and something to do with swimming and San Carlos Creek, maybe not Mendota Pool, because that was after their time, but they had a favorite swimming hole, probably more than one, all vaqueros did, especially in the Sierra. Picture them swimming along the Mokelumne River and diving off the rocks and splashing each other like there was no tomorrow in the pools of water, warm by the afternoon and filled with a hover of trout not a minute before, Three Fingered Jack sits up in his saddle and lets off a big fart and slides off with yahoo and a belly flop after a hard days ride – Consider the irony, a gang of murderers called the Happy Bros – I’ve mentioned Claudio, the oldest, several times, but Reyes was the younger one, the kid brother. He went on trial for the murder of General Joshua Bean, who was the head honcho of the San Gabriel Mission, and one night, on the way home from the maromas he gets popped right outside his front door. The circumstances are peculiar and fall directly into Murrieta’s lap, at least according to Ana Benitez and her testimony, not exactly an innocent bystander, or a bystander at all, she was sleeping with him, according to her, when they hear shots at 3am, but she refuses to finger him, instead concocts this other story involving Reyes Feliz and some other poor sod, who had a dog in the race, but was a cobbler’s son, and may have been jilted by the woman Bean was hosing down, but he was not the type to lay in wait in fit of jealous rage for anyone, let alone Bean, who was as prominent a citizen as there was in those days – so for him to stand up and shoot a man of Bean’s status is unlikely, that only leaves Murrieta. Benitez had plenty of reasons to modify her story, one was to save her neck from the noose, and the other was to save her neck from Murrieta’s butcher knife, either way she was in a bind. Bottom line is Reyes Feliz, the baby brother, barely 16 , takes the fall, but not for Bean! After a week of interrogations, in which everyone involved is cross examined by this hackneighed committee, he confesses to killing one person, in the goldfields the previous year, with Joaquin and the gang, It had nothing to do with Bean, but they hang him anyway, and some other guy too, but everyone knows Murrieta was up to his eyeballs, and rumor is all over it that he pulled the trigger. Bean was the alcalde of San Gabriel, which is kind of like the mayor, and on record, abused his authority several times, and when drunk, which was most of the time, he abused his women, Mexican women, Californias – he was just the type of gringo that Murrieta might lay in ambush for. That’s not Benitez’ testimony, but then again she managed to save her neck. First Claudio, now Reyes takes the fall and swings, it must have weighed heavily on his head, that is while he still had it on his shoulders and not in a jar. After shooting this picture I’m back on the road, I figure 20 more miles. I have a half a tank of gas, a half a Kombucha, and a half of something else around here to keep me awake, coffee, maybe I’ll brew one up at Spanish Lake.