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front of him in the cell. The undertaker, Mr. Woodson, had
removed the casket and Vasquez was trying on the pantaloons
that he would wear on the trap.
"They're too tight," he complained, tugging at them. Then,
making a wry face and apologizing, he concluded, "But then I
won't have to use them much."
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. After a late supper,
Vasquez retired shortly before midnight, but soon arose, and
talked with young Adams, the sheriff's son, before returning
to his bunk to fall into a deep sleep.
And young Adams, chosen for that last, long, lonely vigil,
spent the night watching and waiting outside the cell. There
was a cold white moon that washed through the window, spot-
lighting the slight figure on the narrow prison cot.
Adams later told of spending the entire night in conjecture
as to what had brought the man in front of him to this date
with the hangman's noose. What had changed him from one of
a family of five laughing children, born and raised of respec-
table parents in a handsome adobe house in the city of Mon-
terey, to a hunted killer brought to bay? Where had he taken
the wrong turn? Why had he made the decision to leave his
brothers and sisters forever, to roam the cold and lonely owl
hoot trail?
Tiburcio Vasquez, a man of great appetites, much vanity,
and a tendency to regard himself as a Robin Hood avenging
himself upon the gringo citizenry of early California, was born Newspaper reporter George Beers was member of posse.
in 1835 in the sunny, gentle city of Monterey.
Long before he reached the accepted age of manhood, he
drenched himself in blood. Vasquez was barely seventeen when peace and establish order, he was slain.
his name was linked with murder. He had fallen in with a vil- The record does not show who actually killed the officer,
lain of local notoriety, one Anastacias Garcia. but both Vasquez and Garcia fled to the hills that night. One
Tiburcio and Garcia, along with some other friends, attend- of their companions, Jose Heiguerro was not so fortunate and
ed a fandango in downtown Monterey. During the evening, the morning sun found him swaying at the end of vigilante
wild tempers flashed in the angry night; knives followed a fist hemp. Six months later, Garcia was to be captured and hanged
fight. And when Constable William Hardmont tried to make by another vigilante group in Los Angeles.
This was the first of literally hundreds of crimes with which
Vasquez was to be involved. First with the brash, devil-may-,
care attitude of youth and later with the cold blooded, revolt-
ing heartlessness of an experienced, callous killer. Vasquez
was quickly to ride past the point of human redemption.
It may have been his Robin Hood complex that led him to
his fate; at first he actually saw himself as an avenger of wrongs
against the early Spanish Americans. But he soon adopted the
opinion that any crime committed against the hated gringo
was acceptable.
Indeed, when Vasquez was later captured, he told the edi-
tor of the Los Angeles Express that if he had had S60,000, he
could have recruited enough men and arms to take the State
of California from the existing government. Many of the won-
derfully warm, friendly, law-abiding Spanish Americans of
the west were horrified by his criminality, which he insisted
on associating with his racial background. They suffered from
his image and they wanted his capture as strongly as the rest
of the populace.
But it is also a well documented fact that as Vasquez ranged
over the state of California, striking in widely scattered areas,
that he was often helped by information from some of the local
Mexican population. This intelligence enabled him to know
many times where his pursuers were and when they would ar-
rive so that he was able to escape ahead of them as though
he had eyes in the back of his head.
On a grey morning in July of 1857, with a biting breeze drift-
ing off the clumps of greasewood that sat out in the desert,
Vasquez and one sole companion, Juan Soto, slipped into a
remuda of horses on a ranch near the Santa Clara River. Tibur-
cio gentled himself up onto the back of a magnificent roan
while Soto put a quiet loop on a chestnut mare that struck his
fancy. Together they drove off a sizable herd which they took
all the way to Los Angeles.
Here their luck ran out and they were caught with the horses
in their first attempt to sell them. Vasquez pleaded guilty and
Ardon Leiva - turned State's evidence against leader. was sentenced to five years in San Quentin. After serving two
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