Eternity Street

by John Mack Faragher

  IN EARLY MARCH 1851 the Lugo brothers traveled to Los Angeles to retain an attorney to defend Chico and Menito Lugo. The young lawyer Joseph Lancaster Brent was standing at the door to his office, an old adobe on Calle Principal, when he saw the Lugos coming down the street from the Plaza. They were mounted on horses “pretty as Arabians,” Brent later recalled, dressed in “rich jackets and trousers trimmed with silver bullets or buttons, and mangas or riding cloaks fringed with heavy gold.” The demand for beef in the mines had driven commodity prices to unprecedented levels. Cattle were going for thirty to forty dollars a head in southern California, ten times the price of a year or two earlier, and rancheros like the Lugos suddenly found themselves fabulously wealthy. Brent was surprised and delighted when the brothers stopped in front of his place, dismounted, and asked to speak with him. They had come on the recommendation of friends, said Don José María, to inquire whether Brent would be willing to represent his sons.

  Like almost every American in California, Brent had been drawn west by the Gold Rush. The climate in the north didn’t suit, however, and he relocated to Los Angeles. Like Benjamin Hayes, Brent was a native of Baltimore. He studied law at Georgetown College in Washington, then practiced for several years in Louisiana, where he became fluent in French, enabling him to acquire a competency in conversational Spanish rather quickly. Like Hayes, Brent was a practicing Catholic. For those reasons—and also because he genuinely admired Californio culture—he found the majority of his clients among the Californio elite. Soon after his arrival, in January 1851, he represented Francisca María Pérez in both her divorce proceeding and her suit against Pío Pico. Three of Don Antonio María’s children were married into the Pérez family, and it was probably Brent’s work in that case that caught the Lugos’ attention. They agreed to pay him a very large retainer, twenty thousand dollars according to Horace Bell, the equivalent of half a million in today’s money.

  Brent would represent many of the elite in defense of their lands. In 1851 Congress passed legislation and established a Public Land Commission to consider all claims of title to California land granted under the Spanish and Mexican regimes. The complicated legal process established by the law placed the burden of proof on claimants and created lucrative opportunities for attorneys. Brent was one of the few whom rancheros felt they could trust. His willingness to take on the Lugo case earned him enormous respect. In a letter to a brother in Baltimore, he boasted that his practice was “rapidly rolling me along the path of wealth,” and that “among the Spanish portion, who constitute four fifths of the population, I am regarded without a rival in the most flattering way.”

  In early March, in a makeshift courtroom in the Bella Union Hotel, Brent stood before Justice Jonathan Scott representing Don José María’s two sons as well as six vaqueros who had ridden with the posse. Brent moved for immediate dismissal of the charges, arguing that there was no direct evidence linking any of his clients to the murder, and county prosecutor Benjamin Hayes had to agree. Sheriff Burrill, however, recognized one of the vaqueros, a Sonoreño named Ysidro Higuera, as a suspect in a case of horse theft. Higuera was jailed, but Scott ordered all the others released on their own recognizance.

  Two days later, though, county jailer George Robinson notified Justice Scott that Higuera wished to make a statement, and Hayes took his deposition. After passing the teamsters on the way back to Rancho San Bernardino, Higuera swore, most of the posse dispersed into small groups, but he remained behind with the two Lugo grandsons and their friend Mariano Elisalde. Chico, the elder brother, was steaming, convinced that the teamsters had been in cahoots with the Indians. “Let’s kill those two men,” Higuera heard him exclaim. The four of them waited for the teamsters to come up. It was about midday when they finally saw the wagon approaching, McSwiggen riding on the back of one of the draft mules, the Indian Sam sitting in the wagon, holding the reins. Higuera saw Sam reach down and grab his rifle. Chico Lugo hailed him in Spanish. Nice rifle, he said. How about swapping for my pistol? Chico pulled a piece from his sash. Sam shrugged his shoulders, indicating he did not speak Spanish. Suddenly, without warning, Lugo leveled the weapon and fired point-blank, and Sam fell from the wagon, dead. McSwiggen jumped from his mule and took off running, but Lugo rode up from behind and dispatched him with a single shot to the back of the head. Higuera helped drag the bodies into the chaparral. “Don’t say anything about this affair,” Chico warned him.

  The details in Higuera’s deposition lent it credibility, but Brent argued that his story was improbable. “The witness confessed himself to have participated in a murder of people whom he did not know, without any motive whatsoever except to comply with a mere request from two boys with whom he was not especially intimate, who offered him nothing for his assistance.” Hayes asked Higuera what motive he had for participating in such a cold-blooded crime, to which the vaquero answered that he had simply done as he was told, that Chico Lugo “was the captain of the company,” and that he was duty bound to obey. Brent found that answer hardly credible, but Justice Scott saw it differently, ruling that Higuera’s deposition established a presumption of guilt sufficient to arrest and hold the Lugo brothers and their friend Elisalde. Brent objected that it was unreasonable “to allow the uncorroborated testimony of one man, a confessed accomplice, to overbalance that of twenty men,” the members of the posse examined by Coroner Hodges. But again Scott overruled him and ordered the four men jailed and bound over for trial. Brent requested bail, but that too was denied.

  Don José María was incredulous. “It was an impossibility that the boys had taken part,” he exclaimed. During the posse’s trek over the pass they had never been out of his sight. Jailer Robinson must have coerced a false confession from Higuera. But why would he do such a thing? asked Brent. Because of bad blood between Robinson and the Lugos, Don José María replied. A year earlier Robinson had been involved in a violent affray with the family at Rancho San Bernardino, and he was bent on revenge.

  KENTUCKIAN GEORGE D. W. ROBINSON had arrived in southern California by wagon with his bride, Jane Sutch Robinson, fifteen months earlier. He was thirty and she nineteen when they married at Council Bluffs in the spring of 1849, shortly before commencing their overland journey. Arriving at Salt Lake too late in the season to risk the crossing of the Sierra Nevada, they joined nearly two thousand other immigrants on the trail southwest across the desert, the route followed today by Interstate 15, and in January they reached Rancho San Bernardino in destitute condition. Don José María offered them aid and comfort, as the Lugos did for many of the immigrants coming over Cajon Pass that winter.

  Robinson was headed for the mines and the Lugos invited his wife to remain with them during his absence. During her stay she became a favorite of Don José María’s wife, Doña Antonia. Robinson had little success in the goldfields, and by summer he was back in Los Angeles. He accepted an offer to become the new county’s first jailer, and in July he returned to Rancho San Bernardino for his wife. It was an unhappy reunion. In the privacy of Mrs. Robinson’s room, the couple quarreled. Don José María was absent, but Doña Antonia and the servants heard shouting, then a scream, and investigating they found Robinson, a straight razor in hand, standing over his wife, who was bleeding from a nasty gash across her nose. When she accused her husband of trying to kill her, he hurriedly made his exit and returned to Los Angeles alone.

  Several days later he was back in the company of Luis Robidoux, justice of the peace for San Bernardino township. This time Don José María and his sons, Chico and Menito, as well as several vaqueros, were at the house. They were protective of Mrs. Robinson and wary of her husband. Robinson requested a private conversation with his wife, and the couple withdrew to her room. Again, it did not go well. According to Robinson’s own testimony, “I spoke to Mrs. Robinson harshly, took hold of her, she became frightened and hallowed or screamed.” Don José María rushed in and saw the two of them struggling. “¿Qué escándalo es éste en mi casa?” he ex
claimed. What scandal is this in my house? Robinson pulled a revolver from his coat pocket, leveled it at Lugo, and holding him at bay fled the house and took off running down the road. Lugo’s sons and several vaqueros went after him, and several minutes later they returned with the man in tow, bound with a reata, his face bloodied. As the Lugo sons and associates stood by with their pistols cocked, “ready to plug me,” as Robinson later put it, Robidoux negotiated a truce. Don José Maria allowed Robinson to leave without his wife.

  Eventually Jane Robinson reconciled with her husband and rejoined him in Los Angeles. But soon thereafter Robinson filed a criminal complaint against Don José María for assault and battery, as well as a civil suit for false imprisonment, seeking $30,000 in damages. He was represented by Jonathan R. Scott and Benjamin Hayes, later the justice of the peace and county attorney in the prosecution of the Lugo grandsons. Was it any wonder that Don José considered Higuera’s confession part of a conspiracy?

  FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL WEEKS the Lugo boys and their friend Elisalde remained in the custody of jailer Robinson. “His bearing towards them was harsh and cruel,” recalled Brent. “He refused to allow the boys to see anyone except myself, and availing himself of the plea that the walls of the jail were not very strong, he kept the prisoners heavily ironed day and night.” Brent planned to file a writ of habeas corpus and petition for bail in district court, but he had to await the commencement of the court’s spring term. In late April, Judge Oliver S. Witherby heard Brent’s motion and ruled that the defendants were entitled to bail, which he set at $10,000 apiece—a great deal of money, but certainly not beyond the means of the Lugo family. The law required the bondsmen to undergo examination in open court regarding their personal worth, and Judge Witherby granted Brent a continuance while he made the necessary arrangements.

  As Brent left the courtroom, he could feel the scorn of fellow Americans. Most were convinced of the Lugos’ guilt, a belief Brent attributed to “race feeling rather than a fair consideration of the circumstances.” There was talk of a lynching if the suspects were released on bail. That was no idle threat. Los Angeles remained vulnerable to what Prefect Stephen Foster had described the previous year as “mob law.”

  For several weeks a gang of some twenty-five heavily armed Americans, commanded by a former Texas Ranger named John “Red” Irving, so named for the color of his unkempt hair and beard, had been camped in a sycamore grove in the Arroyo Seco, just north of the pueblo. “They say that they are going to prospect the Gila,” a correspondent reported in the Daily California Alta, but “the real object of the expedition is a descent upon Sonora.” In Mexico men like these were known as filibusteros—filibusters or freebooters—violent and ruthless land pirates, intent on plunder. “These bands are composed generally of deserters from the United States army and other desperate adventurers, whose careers commenced with the Mexican War, and who after the treaty came to this country ready for any deeds of robbery or blood.” That description perfectly described Irving’s gang, which took over the streets of the pueblo, defying the authorities and intimidating residents, especially Californios. Their voices were among the loudest in the angry calls for immediate and summary punishment for the Lugos. It turned out there was motive in their madness.

  When Brent returned to his office from the bail hearing, waiting for him was George Evans, Red Irving’s lieutenant. He had come to discuss the Lugos, Evans said. “Our boys have been given the job of taking them out of jail, and now we hear the judge is going to turn them loose, and we don’t intend to stand it.” Brent had no idea what Evans was talking about. The Lugos had made a deal with his boss, Evans explained. In exchange for a payment of several thousand dollars, his men were to liberate Brent’s clients and deliver them to safety in Mexico. Shocked and disgusted, Brent ordered the man from his office. “They think it is cheaper to buy the judge and district attorney than us,” Evans said as he left. “But those boys will never get out alive except with our consent, and they had better know it.”

  When the Lugo brothers arrived with the bondsmen later that afternoon, Brent confronted them. He was withdrawing from the case, he said, because he couldn’t stomach the pact they had made with Irving. The Lugos firmly denied any knowledge of the deal and quickly convinced Brent of their sincerity. The Star later reported that Irving had approached patriarch Antonio María Lugo, demanding a payment of $50,000 to ensure the safety of his grandsons. It was a classic case of extortion, which Don Antonio had simply ignored.

  As Brent and the Lugos were conversing, they heard a commotion, and looking out saw a number of Irving’s men ride up the hill to where the jail was located and surround it. This uncontested seizure in sight of the entire town offered proof that Irving could count on what Brent termed “the sympathy of the American population.” He would prefer to proceed by legal remedy, he told the Lugos, but under the circumstances the only way to ensure the safety of his clients was to mobilize an armed force of Californios. “If the matter was to be determined by fighting,” said Don José María, “they were willing to so settle it, and they could get plenty of men.” By early evening several dozen armed Californios had placed themselves in the ravines near the jail, with orders to attack Irving’s guards if they perceived any threat to the prisoners.

  Brent had little faith in the capacity of Sheriff Burrill. But Burrill was determined not to be undercut like Marshal Purdy. Shortly after the arrival of Irving’s gang in Los Angeles, he had sent a request for help to U.S. Army Major Edward H. Fitzgerald, in command of a garrison of fifty dragoons in San Diego, and Fitzgerald responded by bringing his men north on what he said was a routine patrol. When Irving’s gang seized the jail, Fitzgerald was encamped only a few miles away from the pueblo. Burrill dispatched a messenger with an appeal for immediate assistance. The following morning, as Brent prepared for the continuation of the bail hearing, he heard the tramping of horses and saw Major Fitzgerald and his dragoons riding up Calle Principal. “If the men had descended from Heaven,” Brent wrote years later, “my surprise and my pleasure could not have been greater. There marched law and order, and the physical power to support them.” Fitzgerald directed his men to the Plaza, where they dismounted and watered their horses.

  A few minutes prior to the court session, scheduled for 2 PM, Brent armed himself with a revolver and walked over to the Bella Union. The street was filled with a milling crowd, including Irving’s men, conspicuous in their red flannel shirts, with pistols and knives tucked into their belts. But the crowd also included dozens of armed Californios with orders to target the outlaws at a signal from their leader, who was off to the side, surveying the situation from horseback. The air was thick with morbid excitement. Entering the makeshift courtroom, Brent noted that both Judge Witherby and county attorney Hayes were armed with pistols. At Witherby’s order the clerk opened the doors and the crowd surged in, including Irving and a dozen of his men, all of them “armed to the teeth,” according to Hayes. Finally Sheriff Burrill marched in with the prisoners, surrounded by a detachment of dragoons. Irving jerked to attention. He had not figured on military intervention.

  After Judge Witherby carefully examined the sureties, he approved the bonds and ordered the release of the prisoners. They rose, were immediately surrounded again by Sheriff Burrill and the dragoons, and escorted out of the Bella Union and up the street to the Plaza, where a group of mounted Californios waited. Within minutes they were gone. Through the remainder of the afternoon and into the evening the streets surrounding the Plaza were thronged. “A great deal of liquor was consumed and many ugly threats made,” wrote Brent, “but no violence took place.” That evening as he was finishing his supper in the dining room of the Bella Union, Red Irving approached his table, drunk and angry. For a moment he loomed over Brent. “Young man, I don’t blame you,” the outlaw finally said. “You did your duty.” But for the Lugos, he continued, he had nothing but contempt. “I solemnly swear, I will have their hair, or be in hell.”

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sp; THE IRVING GANG remained in Los Angeles until the third week of May, when they packed up and left town, headed for Sonora, they said. Three days later, on May 25, Sheriff Burrill received an urgent message from the officer in charge of the small army contingent garrisoned at Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, forty miles east, reporting that Irving’s men were stealing horses, killing cattle, and intimidating residents throughout the countryside. “They had threatened to ravish the females, and men, women, and children had left the ranchos and fled,” he reported. According to ranchero Isaac Williams, Irving said that his men were “determined to take from the native Californians whatever they wanted.” They were “well armed with Colt’s revolvers,” Williams wrote, “and outnumber the troops three to one. The whole country is entirely at the mercy of these highway robbers.” Brent dispatched a messenger to San Bernardino, warning the Lugos to be on their guard. Sheriff Burrill, armed with warrants for the arrest of the gangsters, organized a posse of some fifty men, nearly all of them Californios, and departed with them early the following morning.

  By the time Burrill’s men arrived at Chino, the Irving gang had already departed for Rancho Jurupa. Formerly the property of Benjamin Davis Wilson, it had been purchased by Luis Robidoux, who was standing on the veranda when he saw a dozen men riding toward the house. He recognized Irving, whom he had seen in the pueblo several weeks before. Where were they headed? Robidoux asked as Irving drew near. Sonora, he replied. About half his men had gone ahead to Warner’s Ranch, he said, and he planned to meet them there after he and his party had attended to important business at San Bernardino. Each of his men carried a brace of revolvers. “They made some inquires about Lugo’s ranch,” Robidoux later testified, “the distance to it, and where the troops were stationed.” Robidoux figured they were up to no good. “They were bad men,” he later told the authorities. Yet he made no attempt to warn his neighbors, the Lugos. They had taken separate sides during the war, and had been further estranged by the affray with George Robinson. Irving and his men camped in the yard, and Robidoux saw him off the following morning.