[From Robert Welles Ritchie, The Hell-roarin' Forty-niners (1928)]

 

Chapter 8

THE HANGING OF JUANITA

            DOWNIEVILLE was a tough town. Its gamblers were the most hard-boiled of all the Northern Mines. Its booze fighters died the hardest. The highwaymen who plied the gold trails leading to the little town in the shadows of The Forks were quicker on the trigger than the general. Yes, Downieville was a bad, bad town—and proud of it. But once Downieville pulled a trick of which it was not so proud. . . .

            Big doings were on the cards for the Fourth of July of the year '51. Aside from the standard festivities of that day, a Democratic county convention was to have its three-day session just before the Fourth, and that meant a group of brilliant orators up from Marysville, the Valley town—Downieville was then in the same sprawling county with the larger town—and a general whoop-la. That convention brought to Downieville the most representative gathering of potentially great men in the town's history. It was presided over by one William Walker who before many years was to gain the sobriquet of "The Gray-eyed Man of Destiny" by his filibustering sallies in Mexico and Nicaragua.

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            Among the delegates from Marysville was a young lawyer, Stephen J. Field, destined to wear the robes of a United States Supreme Court Justice ; William M. Stewart, afterwards a Senator from the new state of Nevada; Charles N. Felton, who became a California Congressman; Charles S. Fairfax, a big blond Englishman who indulged in no swank over the circumstance that he was the last Lord Fairfax.

            Appropriately the three days of convention oratory came to the climax on the glorious Fourth, some of the bright particular stars of the Democratic firmament being chosen to grace the platform whereon the American eagle would perch in his pride. Miners, flush with gold, swarmed into town from up and down the river until the huddle of wood-and-canvas shacks both sides of The Forks was a-boil with full three thousand men. Earnest drinking was suspended only long enough to allow the orator of the day to wreathe his word garlands over the fair brow of Liberty, then it was resumed with an enthusiasm amounting to positive fury.

            One of the central eddies for the restless drifting tide of heavy footed miners was Jack Craycroft's gambling palace: monte, twenty-one, poker or name your own game. A long, low ceiled room roofed with sagging muslin; enormous gold framed mirrors behind the bar attesting to miraculous sure-footedness of the mules that brought them over mountain trails; crowded close as might be the tables for the games, each presided over by lookout or dealer. And

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the milling, driving crowd that pushed into vacated chairs or loitered behind the players to catch vicarious thrills from the flip of a card : Here was a cross section of life in the placer diggin's.

            Men in homespun and men in broadcloth; with clay stained wool hats and immaculate stovepipes; with shawls or vividly dyed serapes about their shoulders. Chileños under sombreros with little balls of gay worsted bobbing about the brims rubbed shoulders with squat, bulldog-faced Sydney ducks carrying their convict nicks on the lobe of the right ear. Lanky Pikes from Missouri, ague-ridden, sallow, one-gallused, spurted tobacco juice in dumb disregard of dandies' varnished boots. Blond Germans bucked Mexicans with brown mud in the irises of their eyes and the handle of a dirk making a bulge under their shirts. Even the despised Chinaman, with his conical bamboo hat and fresh silk braided into his queue in honor of the white man's holiday, humbly snatched a seat and passed his buckskin poke of gold to the dealer.

            Juanita and her man sat at one of the monte tables; Juanita whom men called by a short and ugly word. Young she was—some say hardly twenty—and of a full and lucious beauty suggestive of pomegranates burst by the sun. Her cheeks and bold bosom were ivory, blue-black was the high mass of her hair topped by tortoise shell, and the velvety brown of horse-chestnuts colored her eyes. Juanita was a Sonora woman. Because she'd come to Downieville

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with a man of her race who was not her husband, Americans had tacked that ugly name to her; so far as I can find out they had no other reason for so doing.

            This Fourth of July night Juanita and her man were all intent on the falling of the cards from the dealer's deft fingers. The stack of doubloons and American silver dollars before them grew and dwindled with the turns of luck. Eyes of both were glued to the game.

            Then into Jack Craycroft's place came big Jock Cannon—his given name was Frank but Jock was what he answered to commonly. Big Jock Cannon from up river, drunk and playful. He was surrounded by his own particular group of satellites, for the big Scotsman belied the legends of his race and when he was drunk he was a fool for buying drinks. So far as contemporary testimony runs, that was his only fault—if fault it can be counted.

            Now Jock Cannon is settin' 'em up, and settin' 'em up right. The unwritten law of Downieville's barroom code is that no man may order less than an ounce-worth of drinks for a round; if he doesn't feel like spending $16 at a crack he'd better stay away from the bar. No snoozers need apply! Big Jock lays five fat nuggets in the pan of the bartender's scales and suggests a wee dram for everybody within calling distance. That ceremony over, Jock Cannon and his bar flies circulate among the

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tables. The big Scot comes to an unsteady pause behind Juanita.

            Owlishly Jock eyes the smooth bare shoulder so close to him, then lifts one of his bear's paws and gives the ivory colored flesh a mighty whack. Instantly Juanita is on her feet. Her eyes have hardened and narrowed to a rattler's darting glance. Up comes her crinoline and with a swift dart of her hand to her garter she is armed with a slender dirk. Her man is fumbling for something secreted under his shirt.

            Crackling Spanish from Juanita's just-parted lips —big Jock's surprised and stumbling back step. Then when others get between the little fury and her big tormentor the incident is closed. No, not quite closed, for down below the fumes of drink in the Scoichman's skull is planted a sullen little thought: Drew a knife on him, eh? The dirty little slut!

            Near morning Cannon, very drunk and irresponsible, tried to force an entrance into the home of Juanita. He had kicked in the door before his satellites pulled him away. After a few hours sleep and with the liquor still boiling in him, Cannon went back to the house of the Sonora girl. His friends said afterwards in his defense that Jock went back to apologize for his rudeness of the night before. Juanita's paramour told the informal jury that tried him for murder the big miner returned to revile Juanita in the few indecent words of Span-

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ish he possessed. One is inclined to lean to this latter version. At any rate, friends of the Scot saw him go to the door of the Sonora girl, saw her suddenly leap at him and plunge a butcher knife into his breast.

            "Murder!" The cry was bellowed through Downieville: into saloons, hotels, gambling houses. "Jock Cannon stabbed to death by the Sonora gal!"

            This was the day after the Fourth, the day after the big community drunk. Safe to say a whole lot of the citizens still were boozy and a whole lot more were suffering that nervous reaction some mute inglorious word blacksmith has designated "the jumps." Even that is no palliation of the hideous thing Downieville proceeded to do. A mob of men marched to Juanita's home and found her awaiting their coming calmly and with a smile of greeting. They bound her and her man and carried them to an empty building on the main street to stand "trial."

            You must know that Judge Lynch of the California Fifties wore a little less shabby ermine than he does on the rarer modern occasions when he sits on his lawless bench—sometimes hooded in white: In those days of a very shadowy dominion of law, when men of the diggin's took the law into their own hands they were rather scrupulous to provide at least legal form and ceremonial : a jury, a judge, prosecutor and counsel for the defendant. Perhaps no oftener than in our times was the jury swayed by the sentiment of the mob whence they had been

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elevated. In a surprising number of instances these extralegal courts dispensed even-handed justice. Not so in the case of Juanita, the Sonora girl.

            She and her paramour were tried together. The interior of the vacant store was packed with spectators, and a mob to the number of four or five hundred jammed the street in front. A self-appointed crier stood in the door of the improvised court room and passed the news on to the press outside : "The gal's smilin' an' shakin' her head at what Bill Guernsey says from the witness chair."—"Now Doc Carr's on the stand, tellin' how the knife cut Jock's heart in two—"

            A young lawyer from Nevada, who'd come to hear the oratory of the county convention and who was appointed counsel for the accused, did his best to save Juanita's pretty neck. Once he suspended proceedings while, through an interpreter, he held a whispered conversation with the two prisoners. At the end he faced the judge and twelve jurymen.

            "Gentlemen, you cannot vote to take this woman's life. Perhaps you may feel her life must be sacrificed for the crime she freely admits having committed, but Almighty God has ordained that the life of this Juanita must be sacred for many months to come; for upon it depends the life of another—her unborn babe.

            "I challenge you squarely, gentlemen : You cannot rob that unborn child of life because of the fault of her who is to become its mother."

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            Above the buzz of surprise in the store rises the voice of the self-appointed crier at the door : "He says Juanita's goin' have a baby an' we kain't hang her !"

            On orders of the man sitting as judge two of the camp's self-styled doctors were ordered to retire with Juanita to an adjoining tent. They reported back to the court that this was a trick of the defending counsel; the girl was not enciente.

            The jury found her guilty and ordered that she be hanged. Her man went free of the murder charge.

            What of the tension outside that shabby court room during this mock trial? By great fortune I found, in Downieville, an Old Timer's scrapbook, wherein was the narrative of that Charles N. Felton who came up from Marysville as a Democratic convention delegate : what he saw of the hanging of Juanita. And Felton injects a strong note of melodrama into the scene.

            When the mob dragged Juanita from her home for trial, says Felton, he and the other Marysville delegates who had remained in Downieville over the Fourth were shocked at the implications of what was going forward. Especially was young Steve Field, he who was afterwards to become Justice Field of the Supreme Court at Washington, distressed and sympathetic of the girl's hard lot. "Find Walker !" Field shouted. "If anybody can handle this mob Walker can."

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            The Marysville men scoured the town for William Walker, whose magnetic personality had dominated the convention and the Fourth of July demonstrations following. Walker, they discovered, and Sheriff Gray had started on horses over the trail for the Valley two hours before the murder cry set the camp's blood lust crying vengeance. They sent a horseman at breakneck speed up the mountain to overtake Walker and bring him back to the scene of violence, but the future filibuster never returned. It is an interesting speculation whether even the Gray-eyed Man of Destiny could have prevailed against the half-drunk, wholly crazed mob of ruffians.

            With this hope gone, young Steve Field tried the persuasive power of his own tongue—and even in his youth Field had gained fame as a pleader and knockabout orator. See this tall, spare, black headed youngster in his long surtout and frilled stock mount a barrel in the heart of the mob. He has the face of a knight, all glorified by his high purpose.

            "Gentlemen of Downieville, you cannot hang a woman! Think, I beg of you! Our fair California has been one of the sisterhood of states not ten months. Her fame is world-wide. Would you have it rolled off the whole world's tongue that Californian men are cowards enough to—"

            A voice from the mob—"Aw, to hell with him!"

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            Steve Field is knocked off the barrel and rolled in the dust.

            Her executioners gave Juanita an hour in which to prepare for death. She was escorted to her own home and guards placed before the door. A carpenter climbed up on the struts of the new bridge then a-building across one fork of the river and rigged a rough gallows. Men tallowed a rope and fashioned the hard cruel knot of the noose.

            It was four o'clock and the first lilac shadows were creeping from Piety Hill down into the gorge of Downieville when Juanita came from her house. Men with rifles surrounded her. The mob followed hooting. Perhaps at a distance and alone a man walked unsteadily and with horror in his eyes -- Juanita's man.

            The Sonora girl was dressed in her finery: red silk skirt bulging over its hoops, new black stockings, the short frogged and flower sprigged bodice of her people. A rich mantilla de Manila was thrown over her shoulders to hide her bold ivory colored bosom. A new Panama hat sat upon her black head jauntily. She was lifted onto the gallows. Juanita swept the crowd of bearded faces and the close-packed ring of hungry eyes with a look of scorn. She saw a single friend and with a smile tossed him her Panama before her hands were bound. When asked if she had any farewell to give—sardonic request—the Sonora girl answered ringingly : "I would do the same thing again if I were treated as I have been."

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            Then she died.

            Where she was buried none of Downieville's Old Timers know. They will show you the bridge across the river and say, "Thar's where they hung the Spanish gal." But it isn't even the same bridge, though it looks old enough to be.

            I found a strange echo of this tragedy when I was prowling around the old ghost camps in Downieville's vicinity. It was in a long vacant and dilapidated house near the once booming town of Brandy City high on the ridge above The Forks. A fragment of news print cut from some old newspaper was pasted on the wall of what once had been a living room. "Lines on the Hanging of Juanita," ran the head and, "By George Barton, Downieville."

                                    The sun sank low down in the West

                                                And tinged with gold each mountain ridge.

                                    The crowd closed in and, eager, prest

                                                Onward toward the fatal bridge

                                    That spanned the rapid mountain stream.

                                                And thousands darkly lined each shore.

                                    The noose was dangling from the beam.

                                                Her dream of life would soon be o'er.

 

                                    Gayly she climbed the fatal pile;

                                                To one she knew, with graceful bend,

                                    Flung him her hat, and with a smile:

                                                "Adiós, amigo"—good-by, friend;

                                    And pressed the noose beneath her hair,

                                                And smoothed it down with steady palms.

                                    Like making up her toilet there,

                                                Ere Death embraced her in his arms.