PART I: Garcia | Chapter 1: Jailed
Los Angeles County | May 1874
Tiburcio Vasquez lay on his back on the jail’s putrid floor with a torso full of buckshot. He peered up at an old gringo doctor whose stiff whiskers protruded from his chin and cheeks like dry needle grass in the village square in August. Tiburcio squinted up at the lines deeply carved in the physician’s forehead from years of concern and countless hours of contemplation of symptoms and treatments for his patients. The doctor’s name was Joseph P. Widney. He propped up Tiburcio’s neck in one hand and poured firewater down his throat with the other before splashing more whiskey into the dozens of small open wounds on Tiburcio’s chest and midsection. Tiburcio’s body tightened and he winced as pain tore through his body straight up from his toes through his genitals and into his eyeballs. Do not cringe, the bandit admonished himself. Do not let them see you flinch. For in the end, you will stand tall and they will cower like beaten dogs.
“I don’t know why we are keeping him alive,” groused a deputy standing several feet behind Widney.
The deputy’s words were a tinny echo in his ear. Tiburcio wondered if he was the son-of-bitch who had shot him full of lead from point-blank range. The deputy held a single-shot Remington rifle across his belt buckle, the barrel loosely but confidently settled in his left hand and his right-hand finger caressed the trigger. A nickel-plated Colt .44 was holstered on his front hip. His butterscotch trousers were tucked into large black boots, and he wore a dark-blue shirt and a broad-rimmed hat.
“He’s gotta be about the last desperado left to flush out of them hills,” the deputy spit out. “The law’s territory is growing and these sons of bitches don’t have anywhere to go. ’Cept maybe Mexico. And they can have ’em down there.”
The deputy was talking to his boss, Los Angeles County Sheriff Billy Rowland, who was standing, looking over Widney’s shoulder. Rowland had been watching Widney’s every move. Now, with an irritating glance back at the deputy, he snapped:
“Keep your mouth shut until the doctor finishes his work. Remember this bandit’s worth a whole lot more to me alive than dead.”
That was the uppermost fact on Rowland’s mind. Rowland, a well-fed, popular figure, a damn good peacekeeper and an even better politician, stroked his graying, trimmed goatee in one hand as he removed a gold watch on a chain from the pocket of his gray vest with the other, noting the hour. He slipped the timepiece back in its spot.
There was a lot to accomplish, Rowland reminded himself, before those meddlesome lawmen from the north come down to whisk away his prized prisoner. The thought of handing Tiburcio Vasquez over to those ineffectual deputies dampened the glee of capturing the famous outlaw now writhing on the stone floor of his jail. How cunning he, Sheriff Rowland, had been in sidestepping the hordes of officious lawmen to catch his prey. How feted he would be by citizens and historians alike. He wondered what words of praise the governor would write in his proclamation before the Assembly.
But first he had to manage this current situation. He must manipulate the entire process, while he was in control, to the utmost benefit for his city and himself. The manic, noisy Mexican crowds outside the jailhouse had to be controlled. The pushy, droll newspaper reporters clamoring to get inside had to be influenced in what they wrote. And that talkative, trigger-itching deputy standing over there had better keep his wits about him. This was Tiburcio Vasquez, for God’s sake. Not just any desperado. It had taken ten years and a legislative act to capture the bastard. Shaking his head in disbelief over the furor and consternation that one Mexican can cause, Rowland looked down in contempt at the seemingly helpless man they held captive.
The doctor was running his fingers slowly along Tiburcio’s skin and down his torso, all sticky with blood and whiskey. He stopped as his fingers rolled over a metal ball protruding from a tiny open wound. Furrowing his gray-haired brow, he kept a finger on the ball and snapped up a small sharp knife. He began slicing away the damaged skin around the shotgun pellet.
“God damn. Another one,” the doctor exclaimed. “How close was the gunman to this bandit?”
Not waiting for or expecting an answer, Widney deftly switched tools. Wielding forceps, he extracted the pellet. Time after time, for the past hour, Rowland and his deputy had watched him do this. Time after time, the doctor dropped the lead balls into an empty metal bucket. Clank. Clank. Clank
“This man is tough,” the physician said, looking up at Rowland. “No doubt about it. You best put your top deputy on watch over him, Sheriff. He’s definitely more alive than dead, and I would wager to say he could still leap up and accomplish a long day’s ride, if you let him.”
The physician’s fingers probed the prostrate prisoner’s body some more, skimming over the numerous lacerations in search of pieces of lead that he might have missed.
“I am pretty certain I didn’t leave any buckshot to fester in him,” Widney concluded. “If those pellets go undiscovered, they can travel silently through his body straight to the heart and”—he clapped once loudly—“instantly kill him.”
The doctor spilled more whiskey into the bullet holes for good measure and took a swig himself.
“OK, let’s get him up on that bed.”
Tiburcio gritted his teeth. Do not cower, he told himself. Talk, joke, even laugh with the surgeon – but do not show pain or fear.
The three men awkwardly and callously lifted and dragged and finally dropped Tiburcio onto the thin, straw mattress that covered the rusty, iron cot bolted to the limestone block wall. They tossed a thin wool blanket over him, and turned to leave when the prisoner spoke for the first time.
“I don’t blame you boys at all for this,” Tiburcio grunted, his voice strong. The men froze in their tracks. “You had a job to do. That’s all.”
Then his eyes rolled back into their sockets, and he was out cold.
“Damn, he talks some good English for a greaser,” the deputy whistled.
“I will come back in an hour,” Widney said after checking to make sure Tiburcio wasn’t dead. “I don’t like him slipping into unconsciousness like that. If he appears to be struggling for breath, come get me right away.”
A cold, briny breeze sliced through the iron bars of the window and touched Tiburcio’s face and flitted across his body, which was covered with only a threadbare wool blanket and shivered atop a dirty, thin, damp mattress. His eyes were closed but he knew he was alone in the dark. He had no idea where, though. So he listened carefully, the way he had paid attention to the slightest creak, quietest breath or slowest click of a gun’s hammer every time he rested during his twenty years on the run or during those dangerous stints in the penitentiary. He thought he heard soft conversations and placid music in the distance. His eyes opened and the first thing he saw was a framed square of dark-gray sky illuminated softly by the moon beyond the window. His mind was fuzzy and an uneven pain throbbed up and down his left side like someone had dug out small chunks of his flesh with a dull dagger. He felt like vomiting.
Then, a noise startled him. Lie still, listen, he told himself. What do you hear? The whicker of a horse? Whose horse? A single lawman or an entire posse? Arriving or leaving? Grab your Henry rifle! Grab it, damn it! Arm yourself. Be ready. But his ravaged body refused to obey. He could not move, and it didn’t matter. There was no rifle at his side.
Tiburcio glanced at the dim, yellow glow of a kerosene lamp burning in the narrow corridor, the illumination falling just short of the crosshatch metal bars of his dismal, dark jail cell. Slowly his mind lifted out of the fog like a boat suddenly thrust high on a rolling wave and caught for a moment by a lone figure from shore gazing out at the horizon. He grasped the idea of where the hell he was. He shivered again but he was beginning to piece it all together. They had done it, all right. The gringo bastards had finally won and had captured their prize. No revolt. No courageous fight. No freedom for his people. The lawmen’s long hunt had ended. His dream—his people’s dream—of ultimate reprisal and a long-fought-for fulfillment was over. Or was it?
He heard a horse whinny again. Now, his ears more clearly picked up the sounds in the distance: the soft plucking of a guitar braided with hopeful notes from a fiddle and a dull chattering of Spanish. Something was going on outside this jail wall, if he could only see what.
He turned his eyes upward and looked disconsolately at the iron-barred window. He breathed deeply several times, drew a loud groan and summoned the strength to roll over and struggle to his knees. He halted. The stinging pain caused him to gasp and hold still. He leaned his shoulder on the thick limestone wall for a moment. Then, slowly and painfully he hobbled to his bare feet, palms and cheek pressed against the cold stone. The cot creaked under his weight. He groaned with it. Breathing hard, he reached up and grasped the iron bars with both hands and pulled as if his life depended on it. He could just barely get his eyes level with the window. Steadying himself and gaining a toehold on an imperfection in the limestone, he heaved upward another inch and gazed out into the drifting fog and saw dozens of silhouetted figures flickering in the firelight, some sitting, some standing, some dancing. It was a beautiful, intensely encouraging sight. He was not alone. He had not been abandoned. In all his suffering, he managed a small smile.
Weakly clinging to the cold iron bars, he tried to think back to when he had last eaten. It had been a long time. He smelled a strong odor of whiskey on his tattered clothes and skin and tasted it on his breath. Why? But, of course. He remembered now. That was several hours ago, perhaps half a day, maybe even more. Tiburcio didn’t really know. But he now found himself somehow clinging to the frigid metal bars and staring out of his cell window at the preternatural scene outside: a jailhouse vigil in the fog, keeping the revolutionary fire stoked.
Newly inspired by the thought of his people caring so much about this helpless prisoner and holding true to the revolution with enough fervor to spend several days and nights bivouacked outside his jail cell, Tiburcio summoned the strength and shouted: “Compadres! Amigos!”
At first, just a few heads looked up to find who had spoken. Tiburcio strained to raise his voice.
“Aqui! Aqui!” he cried out.
Several more people stopped what they were doing to try to locate the speaker. Determined to address his followers before the guards came running down the corridor to swoop in and beat him, he drew a deep breath and called loudly again: “Compadres! Amigos!”
He heard people hushing others in the crowd. Soon, the music and conversation died down. Tiburcio saw dozens of figures approaching the jail wall. They stopped twenty feet from his cell window.
“It’s Tiburcio!” several people called out. “It’s el capitan!
“Listen, mis compadres,” he barked to the gathering crowd below. “Do not give up! I may be wounded. I may be caged. But I, Tiburcio Vasquez, am alive. I am well. And I am stirred by your love and loyalty, my countrymen. I promise that as long as you are willing, I will never let our twenty-year struggle on behalf of thousands of wronged Californios—citizens like you and me—languish and die. I know you are counting on me to lead our revolt against the Yankee invaders. And I am counting on you to keep the fire burning in each and every one of us. Are we going to let la revolución die out? Hell no!”
“They said they are going to hang you!” yelled a voice, not fatalistic, not worried, but proud and defiant.
“No jailhouse has ever kept Tiburcio Vasquez locked up! And none ever will,” their leader answered back. “I will soon be free! We, as a people, will soon be liberated! The time is near! Very near! Have faith—and long live the revolution!”
Tiburcio crumbled onto the cot and fell unconscious as the guards rushed into the cell. He spent the next two days confused, trembling and battling a high fever. The crowd on the free side of the limestone wall grew stronger in numbers and remained faithful to their captive leader. In his state of delirium, however, Tiburcio only saw crystal clear visions of his joyous youth and lived in the simple pleasures of a pastoral life of twenty years ago. He existed only in a dream of glorious fiestas, open land, golden palominos and, most beautiful of all, Anita.
