The Revenge Of Three Fingered Jack

Picture, if you will, a man standing in a shallow hole, slightly bent,
a shovel held in his hands with which he is slowly scooping dirt out
of the hole and adding it to a growing pile alongside. The man is
someone who might best be described as swarthy; a man of dark facial
complexion through which scars of varied length and depth crisscross
the leathery facade, his face made even darker by the compounded
layers of dirt caked upon his skin, dirt through which several days’
worth of black stubble can be seen poking through like a young crop in
a freshly fertilized field. His black hair hangs loosely all around
his face, for it has been many months since he has indulged in the
luxury of a haircut, and a comb is not an item counted amongst his few
possessions. The old blue cotton shirt hangs loosely upon him,
billowing about his chest and waist. The brown cotton pants, which
long ago were cut trimly about his figure, now also hang in folds;
over-used, under-laundered, and held in place only by the remnants of
a still beautiful silver-studded leather belt. From that belt once
hung a very long and very sharp knife; a weapon which is no longer
with him on this day of digging, but a weapon whose proficient use has
made him famous throughout the Sierra Nevada. The man stops and sighs,
straightening his back and flexing the fingers of his hands, five on
one hand and three on the other, and glances over his shoulder to see
if his guard is still attentive and, even more important, if the guard
has let the point of his rifle relax. Even just a little slack in
attentiveness would be enough. But even a slight glance that way is
enough to cause his hope to sink. The guard is still standing there
staring at him, one foot perched upon a rotten log, the rifle leveled
at him across that raised knee, and eyes staring at him unblinkingly.
The guard gestures with his rifle, waving it slightly just an inch or
two, enough to indicate that he wants the digging to resume. With a
sigh the man in the hole wraps his eight fingers around the worn
wooden handle of the shovel and raises another scoop of dry earth to
the edge of the pit. He is in no haste whatsoever to complete the job
which has been assigned to him; no hurry at all, because he has been
handed the slightly distasteful task of creating a hole which he is
destined to fill.

The year is 1853, the man we are watching is called Three Fingered
Jack, and he is digging his own grave.

Born and christened with the rather generic Mexican name of Manuel
Garcia, it might be thought that the most notable part of this man’s
life would be the no doubt colorful tale of how he had permanently
mangled a hand and achieved the more memorable sobriquet of Three
Fingered Jack, and yet that part of the tale has unfortunately been
lost on the cutting floor of history. Jack, instead, is now remembered
– when indeed he is recalled even at all – for the fact that he hated
the Chinese immigrants in California with a vociferous passion, and
that whenever he found himself in a Sierra Nevada mining camp which
counted such Asian oddities amongst their population he often went
into a rage over the fact that strange men from the other side of the
world had invaded his homeland to take its wealth, and he would then
proceed to  hang several of them from a tree by their long, braided
queues. There was more than a small element of irony in this because,
just a few years before, the United States had fought a war with
Mexico. In claiming victory the United States had also claimed a large
portion of Mexico’s territory as its own, and the Bear Flag Revolt had
then made California’s separation from Mexico permanent. Manuel
Garcia, a man of Mexican descent, had thus become a foreigner in his
own land.

But it is probable that this irony was lost upon him.

The result following the act of hanging the unfortunate Chinese from
the tree by their queues would vary according to the mood Jack
happened to be in – or the state of inebriation. If he was feeling
generous, he would let them hang for a while, laughing as he watched
them struggle, then he would take that long knife which hung from his
belt and slice the queue off at the base of the neck, letting the men
fall to the ground and run away, leaving the lifetime of hair hanging
from the tree, swinging like a macabre decoration used in
acknowledging some strange holiday which only Jack knew and
celebrated. If, however, Jack found himself in a somewhat darker mood
then, after letting the men hang by their hair for some indeterminate
time, he would draw his long-bladed knife and walk around the tree,
slitting the throats of every man whom he had therein hung. And then
he would laugh.

Three Fingered Jack was not a nice man.

And yet, it wasn’t this colorful hobby of Jack’s which landed him in
trouble with the law. Killing Chinese for sport was indeed distasteful
to most, but nobody in the mining camps was going to get too upset
about it. Chinese, like other immigrants, were on the fringe of mining
camp life, and, as immigrants were ranked, they were on the very
bottom of any concept of a social hierarchy. And there was always the
added bonus that the dead men’s diggings would quickly pass into the
hands of others, so although Jack’s actions were far from typical,
they were also not enough to get him into any serious trouble. Serious
Trouble would have been if he had tried to practice this on Gringos,
and although Jack hated those Gringos as well, he was smart enough to
know where the line was drawn. No, Jack had quickly decided that he
would not hang and slice the Americanos. He would rob and shoot them
instead.

The early 1850’s saw California play host to a number of notorious
bandits, but the most colorful of them all was another man of Mexican
descent by the name of Joaquin Murietta. One of the most famous
outlaws in all of California history, Murietta was considered by most
to be a scourge on the land, while at the same time he was held by
many to be a folk hero who embodied the frustrations of California’s
Mexican population and who symbolized their need for resistance to the
influx of greedy white men. Murietta was a legend, like Zorro and
Robin Hood, nebulous and unreal, yet nevertheless he was a very
tangible reality to all those Gringos who felt that, real or not, he
epitomized the embodiment of the continuing threat of the Mexican
presence in California. So when it was rumored that Three Fingered
Jack had joined Murietta’s band of outlaws, the political pressure in
the California state capitol reached a boiling point and the
legislature voted to offer a reward for the capture of Murietta and
his gang of outlaws. However, a member of the California Committee on
Military Affairs pointed out that perhaps it wasn’t entirely ethical
to put a price on the head of someone who had never been convicted of
a crime.  He also wisely warned the California legislature that there
was actually no real proof that any such person as Murietta really
existed and that a large reward just might encourage bounty hunters to
randomly kill people of Mexican descent and present the body to claim
the reward. So instead the legislature grudgingly voted to authorize a
band of self-styled rangers under the direction of a man named Harry
Love to hunt down Murietta and his gang and bring an end to the public
outcry.

The confusion over whether or not Joaquin Murietta was in fact a real
individual or instead a myth – a myth which had so often been repeated
that it came to be believed - was now relegated to a peripheral
argument, for it was an irrefutable fact that Three Fingered Jack had
elevated himself from what had been a sideshow act to mainstream
crime, that he and a gang of other Mexican desperados were robbing
miners in the Sierra Nevada, making off with untold amounts of gold,
and occasionally shooting the victims in the process. The legislature
authorized the formation of the ranger patrol and the governor signed
it, and that is how a newly-arrived Texan by the name of Harry Love
came to lead a party of twenty newly-arrived volunteer Gringos on a
chase throughout the state for a notorious outlaw of Mexican descent
and his supposed gang of  thieves, the only one of whom could be
identified with certainty was Three Fingered Jack, a man whose claim
to California being his rightful home was more legitimate than any of
these others. Three Fingered Jack, though vicious, was far from
stupid. He could see trouble when it was coming his way, and
immediately headed south through the Sierra, away from most of the
mining camps where he was both well-known and easily recognized.

At this point the Jack’s tale becomes a little more nebulous, with
history divided on which version, if any, holds the higher level of
authenticity. There is here a divergence in the possible paths of
Three Fingered Jack, and his tale turns into one of those adventure
stories where you can choose your own ending.

The first version was the one most often told in California later in
1853. Harry Love and his troupe of rangers ranged the length and
breadth of California for two months, investigating any incident in
which Murietta and his gang had been said to take part; following even
the most phantom lead in the hope of finding the outlaw and his
followers. On July 25th of 1853 Love and his men rode into a clearing
in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Tulare Lake and came upon a group
of Mexicans encamped there. The rangers, after two long months on the
trail, were tired and frustrated, and any group of Mexicans camped in
the hills were, as far as they were concerned, highly suspicious and
candidates for a noose. The rangers headed directly for the camp and
accosted the men, asking questions about who they were, what they were
doing, and which one of them was Joaquin Murietta, even though they
had no tangible evidence that these men were even outlaws, much less
the stuff of legend which they sought. The Mexicans, understandably,
did not take kindly to the intrusion and gruff accusations leveled at
them and basically told Love and his rangers to piss off. Weapons were
drawn and shots were fired. The Mexican who had been the most verbal
was the first to fall dead, and at that all the rest of the men fled
in different directions, some on foot and others on horseback. The
rangers took off after one mounted man who was still firing at them
over his shoulder.

As is often the case when history is recorded, the truth becomes lost
in the tangle of stories told, often changing and sometimes
disappearing entirely, and the legends that remain are all that we
have left to glimpse a snapshot of the past. One version of the tale
which branches off at this point has the man on horseback quickly
being shot in the back, falling off his horse, and pronounced as being
dead by the time the rangers caught up with him. They threw his body
over the back of his horse and returned to the Mexicans' camp, where
the only person remaining was the deceased man who had been the first
to fall in the fray. The rangers buried the two men and did not bother
to pursue the others. But before burying them they cut off the head of
the first victim, christening him as the famous yet ephemeral bandit,
Joaquin Murietta. Then they cut off the hand of the second man – and
perhaps a couple of fingers as well – and deemed him to be the evil
Three Fingered Jack. The hand and the head returned to Sacramento with
Harry Love and his rangers. They were given a triumphal welcome when
they displayed their trophies, and no one thought to ask for proof of
identification. The outlaws were dead; the rangers were heroes– End of
Story.

A second version of the tale has Love and his self-styled rangers
getting tired of the chase and deciding to give up. On their way home,
near Tulare Lake, they came upon a group of Mexicans peacefully
encamped. Not wishing to return to Sacramento as the pathetic losers
which they apparently were, Love and his men saw their chance to
redeem themselves from the laughter and derision which surely awaited
them. They decided to attack the Mexicans, and succeeded in killing
two of them before the rest disappeared into the trees. These two
conveniently became the two most notorious outlaws in California, and
the gratitude of a relieved population was heaped upon the victorious
men – as well as a generous cash reward from the personal coffers of
the governor. The outlaws were dead; the rangers were heroes – End of
Story.

A third version of the tale had Murietta and his gang heading south
and crossing the border into the safety of Mexico as soon as they
heard about the group of innocent men killed in their name near Tulare
Lake. They knew when to cut their losses and were wise enough to do
so, making it well south of the border into safety, where they lived
quite comfortably for the remainder of their lives on the spoils they
had taken from the Gringos to the north. Successful both in their
illegal endeavors as well as in their wise and hasty retirement, they
faded into history, never to be heard from again. End of Story.

A fourth version of the tale – the one with which this story began –
has the vocally vociferous Mexican at the encampment near Tulare Lake
immediately shot dead and the most rebellious of the others shot and
wounded after a long chase on horseback. The wounded man was taken
back to the encampment and sat on a log beside the body which waited
there. He protested his innocence, but of course the shooting of two
innocent men wasn’t quite the end to the tale which could be tolerated
by the rangers; not even one which could be considered. So the wounded
man was handed a shovel and told to dig. He asked the rangers why he
should have to dig his friend’s grave; why they just couldn’t bring
the body of the dead man back with them to Sacramento, where it could
probably be identified and this whole mess cleared up. After a bit of
polite coughing and delay, it was explained to him that the whole
thing was already quite clear; that he was, in fact, the notorious
outlaw known as Three Fingered Jack and the dead man on the ground
next to him was the even more notorious outlaw, Joaquin Murietta.

“No”, he protested, “that can not be! The man on the ground is my
friend, not an outlaw! And it’s obvious that I’m not Three Fingered
Jack!” He held up his hands to show them. “I still have all my
fingers!”

His short speech was received with more nervous coughing and
uncomfortable murmuring, as well as some laughter from some of the
more insensitive of the rangers. Then it was politely explained to him
that as soon as he finished digging, his hand would be modified to
meet the necessary requirements.

And, by the way, he wasn’t digging one grave – he was digging two.

And so this man from Mexico who had, just a few hours before, been
peacefully camping along the shores of a beautiful lake with his
friends, now found himself standing in a hole which was growing slowly
yet inexorably deeper, lowering him to his fate. And when the rangers
felt that it was deep enough – or perhaps they had just grown
impatient – they nodded to the guard with the rifle and a single
bullet found its way into the back of the man who had found himself in
the wrong place at the wrong time. A head and a hand were severed and
the two bodies were buried in an unmarked grave, where they rest
quietly to this day. The head and the hand, after returning to
Sacramento with the victorious rangers, toured California for several
years as a demonstration of the inevitable victory of Good over Evil,
drawing paying crowds wherever they went until they both disappeared
forever in the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of April, 1906.
End of Story.

Unless, of course, Murietta and Jack lived on in Mexico, in which case
they would have enjoyed this absurd Gringo circus from a long and safe
distance as they eventually laughed themselves to death at a ripe old
age.

Three Fingered Jack cut off the long braided queues of the Chinese
invaders of his homeland. Harry Love cut off the head of a man who was
never proven to even exist. And Harry Love, just a few years later,
went crazy, losing his own head in a different way. He barricaded
himself in his house and died in a shootout with a posse of lawmen
whom he saw in his deranged mind as a band of enemy Mexican bandits.

Karma, so they say, can be a real bitch.