La Vereda – I jumped the first fence and nearly rolled down the hill, I’m in bliss, the grass is knee high and the smell brings me back to my romps through fields as a boy, and as I come over the next little rise, I look down upon his ranch, and there it is, the Stone House. I can clearly make them out now, the stones, with the wood cut over the windows. Marsh was an important figure in Contra Costa history, not much room for him here, other than to say he was involved in the horse trade, was white, and was murdered a few years after Feliz’s raid, on the Pacheco Rd, not by bandits, but for vengeance. That story, another time, this story involves Claudio Feliz, and if you believe Mero’s account, Feliz portrayed himself as an Argentinian horse trader, had lunch at Marsh’s ranch, then returned later in the night, couldn’t find the cash box, stole horses and butchered one of the guests, presumably the gentlemen doing business with him earlier. Maybe so, but maybe not quite so. I’ve read little other than these accounts, based on news clippings, which are not entirely reliable, and even Lorrie Wilson in her book The Joaquin Band: History behind the Legend, takes more or less the same view. My take is there is more to it than bandits and butchers. Feliz mined gold and was a vaquero, like all these guys, and came from a family of some prominence, how else could he portray himself as an Argentine horse trader? As you recall, he is the older brother of Rosa Feliz, Murrieta’s wife. All of them were born in a town that bears the Murrieta name, in Sonora, of Spanish decent, and all of them, it seems to me, were ‘honorable men’, at least in their own dealings, Murrieta, Feliz, Valenzuela, they all spoke English, not that that should matter, but fluently, not all Californios could do business as Murrieta’s gang could. The Argentine swindle, maybe, but random terror in the night, they had to be motivated by something other than loot. Besides, with a name like Claudio Feliz – happy clouds, doesn’t exactly conjure images of terror. Quien sabe? But it does raises this whole political question: racism, the Californio, and who owned the land in 1850? ‘Dr’ Marsh sure had his fair chunk, he made his contribution to early California culture, to be sure, but as far as the horse runs go, he was a horse trader, and both aided and made money off Murrieta and his droves of Mustangs going south.- La Vereda del Monte