Accursed forever be the black night
that stranger came to my door.
The months are now a lifetime ago but
in those days, I was the padre ministering to a small, poor pueblo
on
California's border with Mexico. So when I heard the banging on my door
and saw the pitiful condition of the man standing outside, I couldn't help but
respond to my charitable duty to help him.
Once I invited him inside, the light
more fully revealed the dried bloodstains on his clothing and the dreadful
pallor of his skin. He nearly collapsed and I guided him to the table
where I made him lie down so that I could examine his injury. Pulling open his
shirt, I found that he had merely bandaged a bullet hole in his stomach. Under the loose
wrappings, the ugly wound had become severely infected. It was clear that
between the infection and the great loss of blood, the man would not survive.
With little else I could do, I set out
to make his remaining hours as comfortable as possible. I gave him some of
what little food I had and offered him God's absolution.
Perhaps out of repentance,
perhaps the result of gratitude or maybe just as a product of his near-delirious
state, the man told me that he had ridden with Joaquin's gang. I had heard
of Joaquin Murrieta's numerous raids conducted not only up in California's Gold
Country but throughout much of the southern part of the state, as well.
The outlaw confessed that in the gang's subsequent greed- and blood-fueled
frenzy of robbery and murder, the wrongs which Joaquin had originally suffered
and sought to avenge had long been forgotten. The stranger went on to
enumerate a few of their recent attacks, recounting just a portion of the booty
they had seized. He even described a streambank landmark from which
Joaquin and his men would look down on the road which paralleled the creek,
awaiting unsuspecting victims. More remarkably, he revealed that the base
of that magnificent feature was the precise location of one of Joaquin's many
hiding places...and that the cache still may hold some of Joaquin's gold! Drawing his story
to its recent, bloody conclusion, he explained that he had been shot during Joaquin's ambush by the
California Rangers at Arroyo Cantua and had been fleeing for Mexico when weakness
and desperation had driven him to my doorstep.
By dawn's light, the bandit's speech
grew halting and he lapsed into unconsciousness. Shortly thereafter, his
tainted soul left its earthly container.
I tried to convince myself that it was
pity
for the poor sinner which kept me from turning his body over to the local
authorities. However, in part, I was afraid of being accused of aiding the
fugitive. Worse, the truth was that I knew that there was something else driving me to
keep his presence a secret. So, that night, I buried the stranger's body
in the scruffy patch of land I called a vegetable garden.
As the months went by, my meager crops
withered and died. Attempts to sow and cultivate new plants there were
also unsuccessful. It was as if the rotting corpse of the evil soul buried
there was poisoning the very earth. Yet, at the same time and in an ironic
contrast, the tendrils of
sinful greed were taking root and growing within my heart. I gradually
lost interest in my flock, my work, my calling. My
mind kept going back to what the man had said about the place where Joaquin had
hidden his loot. So
perhaps it wasn't surprising that in the still of yet another black night, I would
abandon my priestly robe, pack some belongings -- including the pistol I had
found among the dead man's few possessions -- and steal away on my horse in
search of Joaquin's treasure cache.
Over the next several days, as I
neared the location, I began to worry as I heard rumors that perhaps the dreaded
Joaquin had safely escaped the Rangers' ambush. Perhaps he, too, was attempting to
recover his loot. I found no comfort in the posters which proclaimed that The Head of Joaquin was being exhibited all over the state as
proof of the notorious bandit's demise -- for what of the whispered stories of
Joaquin's Ghost, guarding his secret treasure?
Several days' ride later, I came to
the vicinity of Joaquin's hiding place. Although I had been wary of
attempting to nab the treasure for fear of incurring Joaquin's wrath, at the
moment, I was even
more concerned about being spotted by squatters and other treasure seekers
encamped in the area of the nearby
crossroads just under two hundred feet to the north. Although Murrieta's
infamy had made him and the general locations of his lairs familiar to the
locals, they did not have my advantage of the precise knowledge of this hideout.
I dismounted my horse and
descended toward the stream. After backtracking a bit and clambering over a small field of
boulders, I approached the base of the landmark which the outlaw had described.
Suddenly, as I drew near the cache, I
heard a twig snap behind me. Spinning around, I saw the indistinct outline
of a figure emerging from some trees directly near the top of a small slope
upstream. With an instinctive reaction and accuracy which seemed not to be
my own, I swiftly drew the dead man's pistol and fired a single shot at
the apparition...and it immediately disappeared from sight. As bad luck would have it,
what I can only imagine to have been Joaquin's Ghost had lured me into firing in the direction of the road -- and of a group of men encamped in that
vicinity. Instantly, shouts and then gunshots rang out in reply.
A white-hot bolt of agony tore through
my shoulder and the flash of pain obscured my vision. Scrabbling back over
the boulders and barely hauling myself back onto my horse, I immediately wheeled
it about. I violently kicked it into a racing gallop back up toward the
southbound streamside trail. Until this point, I didn't stop other than momentary pauses for water.
The story has almost come full
circle. Even now, I feel weaker and it is getting more and more difficult
to continue writing. I know that I will not survive this wound. Nor
will I be the one to re-discover Joaquin Murrieta's Treasure. That will be
left to others....