Eternity Street

by John Mack Faragher

  Over the years Rains used a substantial portion of the proceeds from the sale of his wife’s assets to subsidize his expenses as a country gentleman. A lifelong Democrat and a local party activist, with his marriage into the local aristocracy Rains rose to the top ranks of the Chivalry. In 1859 he challenged and nearly defeated Andrés Pico in an election for a state senate seat, and the following year he was chosen to be a delegate at the National Democratic Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, a trip he financed with the sale of more of his wife’s livestock. He spared no expense in the construction of the elegant brick ranch house at Rancho Cucamonga, which still stands today, and he delighted in entertaining the personal and political friends who passed by along the stage road. The elaborate irrigation system and the preparation of the vineyard proved considerably more expensive than expected. Rains borrowed heavily, spent freely, and by the end of 1861 was in way over his head. With revenue insufficient to cover his obligations, he was forced to mortgage the properties at usurious rates of interest.

  Rains also found himself in political hot water. An avid secessionist, he allowed Warner’s Ranch to be used as a staging ground for men returning east to fight for the Confederacy. He supplied horses and beef to Alonzo Ridley and the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles when they rendezvoused at Warner’s Ranch before setting off on their march across the desert. Later he and his vaqueros drove horses east for use by the rebels. When Union authorities in Los Angeles caught wind of what Rains was doing, they issued an order for his arrest. In January 1862 a Union officer and twenty dragoons arrived at Rancho Cucamonga looking for him, but he was not at home. Like other prominent secessionists, Rains must have been required to explain himself and swear the oath of allegiance to the United States, although there is no record of it.

  The intelligence about Rains very likely came from ranchero José Ramón Carrillo, who worked as a spy for Deputy Provost Marshal J. J. Warner. Don Ramón, a ranchero in his early forties, had been a prominent defender of the homeland during the American war of conquest. An English traveler described him as “a striking-looking fellow, well-built and muscular,” with large brown eyes and an elegantly waxed Vandyke. According to Horace Bell, Don Ramón was “a dashing Hotspur.” In 1847 he married a wealthy widow, María Vicenta Sepúlveda, and in the 1850s they purchased Rancho Valle de San José, the southern portion of Warner’s Ranch, and relocated there. When John Rains moved a large herd of Doña Merced’s cattle to his spread at Warner’s, he arranged with Don Ramón to oversee their management. That assignment provided Carrillo with an excellent opportunity for gathering intelligence, something Rains realized after his threatened arrest. In the summer of 1862 he confronted Don Ramón. According to Benjamin Hayes, they had “high words,” and Rains “insultingly discharged” Carrillo from any further responsibility for Doña Merced’s livestock.

  JOHN RAINS was a man on the make, a prominent Chiv and the owner of the Bella Union, which secessionists used as their unofficial Los Angeles headquarters. Rains’s murder was widely considered the most dastardly crime since the ambush of Sheriff Barton and his posse five years before. The conflict between Rains and Doña Merced over his finances as well as the confrontation between Rains and Don Ramón were the subjects of a great deal of gossip and speculation. Even before Rains’s body was discovered, rumors circulated that Doña Merced and Don Ramón had conspired in the murder. Some suspected the involvement of the Lugo family, resentful over the upstart Anglo who had seized control of Doña Merced’s share of the family estate.

  Benjamin Hayes, still serving as district judge in 1863, took charge of the investigation. Servants at Rancho Cucamonga as well as friends of the deceased led Hayes to an Indian woman named Semanta who operated a whorehouse in Sonoratown that Rains was said to have “habitually or frequently visited when he came to Los Angeles.” Hayes questioned Semanta, and she provided the names of half a dozen Californios she claimed had been involved in the murder, alleging that it all had been arranged by Don Ramón. Hayes issued warrants, but before any arrests were made Don Ramón came in voluntarily and submitted himself for examination. “I am as innocent as yourself,” he declared. He convinced Hayes that he had neither the means, the motive, or the opportunity to commit the crime, and Hayes discharged him.

  Meanwhile, several of the Californios fingered by Semanta were picked up, including a man named Manuel Cerradel, who shot and wounded a deputy sheriff during his apprehension, for which he was charged with attempted murder. Cerradel made a jailhouse confession, claiming that Carrillo had offered him $500 to murder Rains. A second warrant was issued for Don Ramón’s arrest, and once again he volunteered himself for examination by the district attorney, who later declared that “the people of the State of California have no complaint against Ramón Carrillo.” Hayes dismissed Cerradel’s accusation as fabrication.

  Hayes believed these informants had been bribed or intimidated into implicating Don Ramón. He suspected Robert Carlisle, the murdered man’s brother-in-law, who was conducting what Hayes called an “extra-judicial” investigation. Carlisle harshly interrogated the servants at Rancho Cucamonga, then announced that the evidence pointed to Carrillo. Hayes was appalled not only by Carlisle’s conduct but by the implication of his charge, for his insistence on Don Ramón’s guilt carried with it an assumption that Doña Merced was guilty as well. “Some enemies have murdered John Rains,” Hayes wrote. “And now some friends would murder him again by destroying the fame of his wife.”

  For all the talk, not a shred of evidence linked Doña Merced to the crime. The rumors of her complicity, however, made the burden of her husband’s death all the harder to bear. Just twenty-three years old, she had four young children to raise and was pregnant with a fifth. There were plenty of servants to do the work, including several half siblings, but Doña Merced was, for the first time in her life, in charge of operations. She soon learned that despite what her late husband had led her to believe, she was not registered as the legal owner of any of the properties.

  Her petition in district court for the reregistration of the deeds amounted to a painful acknowledgment of the bitter truth about her marriage. John Rains never had any money of his own, but had used her inheritance, without her consent, to purchase properties he illegally registered in his own name. In his brief to the court, attorney Scott argued that Doña Merced had been “deceived by said Rains,” who “fraudulently contrived and intended to deprive her of her separate property and convert it to his own use.” Scott, of course, was the man who had advised Rains to ignore his wife’s rights in the first place. The law was clear, and Hayes ordered the transfer of all titles to Doña Merced.

  The day after the ruling Doña Merced met with attorney Scott, her uncle Stephen Foster, and her brother-in-law, Robert Carlisle, for several hours, going over the tangled finances of the estate. They did not expect her to understand the intricacies, they told her, but they wanted her to grasp the magnitude of the problem. They advised her to protect herself and the children by assigning power of attorney to Carlisle, a man with the expertise to manage both properties. Apparently Doña Merced resisted. The three men remained with her for many hours, using all their powers of persuasion. But not until they assured her that Judge Hayes had recommended this course did she finally relent and sign. Later she learned that Hayes had said nothing of the kind.

  The irrevocable power of attorney she signed gave Carlisle complete control of all of her property for a term of four years. Over the next several months Carlisle placed his own men in positions of management at Rancho Cucamonga and sold off real estate, livestock, and the entire first vintage from the winery. He used the funds for his own purposes—having diamonds set in his teeth, for example—and paid none of Doña Merced’s debts. Besieged by her husband’s creditors, she complained to her sister, begging for provisions to feed and clothe her large household. But Doña Francisca stood implacably by her husband, and soon the sisters were estranged.

  IN THIS TIME OF TROUBLE, r
anchero José Ramón Carrillo stepped forward to assist Doña Merced. Although Rains had dismissed Carrillo from the management of his wife’s cattle at Warner’s Ranch, some time after the murder Don Ramón spoke with her about it, and Doña Merced requested that he continue. “I did not abandon my place as superintendent of the stock, and I still hold the position,” he wrote to his brother, Julio María Carrillo. “It is for her interest that I am taking care of her property.” Carillo’s intervention enraged Carlisle, and it is entirely likely that in the zero-sum calculations of male honor, getting one-up on his principal accuser in the John Rains murder case may well have been Don Ramón’s prime objective. Carlisle “cannot conduct the business with as much liberty as he could if I was out of the way,” Carrillo wrote, adding pridefully, “I am satisfied that while awake he thinks of nothing else but a half chance to assassinate me so that he can do with the widow as he sees fit.”

  Given the risk, Carrillo’s chivalric conduct toward Doña Merced seems quixotic. “I am resolved to protect her if it costs me my life,” he declared. Inevitably his self-appointed role as her protector fed public suspicion of them both. In the minds of many Anglos, Doña Merced became a “black widow,” and Don Ramón a genteel version of Joaquín Murieta or Juan Flores, supposedly in charge of a “band of cutthroats” who swore vengeance “against the American race.” A visitor to Los Angeles in late 1863 reported hearing fabulous tales of Don Ramón’s gallantry and ferocity that embraced “all the charms of romance.” None of this was even remotely true.

  In November, Manuel Cerradel, the Californio who had implicated Don Ramón in his jailhouse confession, was convicted of shooting the deputy sent to arrest him and sentenced to five years at San Quentin. On December 10, 1863, as he was being shuttled by lighter to the steamer that would take him to prison, a small but determined delegation of vigilantes overpowered Sheriff Sánchez, seized his prisoner, and hanged him from the main mast, announcing to all present that Cerradel was paying the price for his role in the murder of John Rains. The lynching came during the epidemic of vigilantism in Civil War Los Angeles, and there was a general expectation that Carrillo would be the next victim.

  Once again Don Ramón took preemptive action. He recognized that the vigilance committee had become an ongoing extralegal institution in Los Angeles. “When I learned that government forces here were sustaining the vigilance committee,” he wrote, “I resolved to pay a visit to the president of the committee.” He didn’t say who that was, perhaps the ham-fisted barber Felix Signoret, or the gunslinging attorney Jack Watson, both leading vigilantes. Whoever it was, Don Ramón believed he had made a convincing case for his innocence, just as he had previously convinced Judge Hayes. “Since that time,” he wrote to his brother, “I have lived peaceably, attending to my business.”

  That business included acting as Doña Merced’s protector. With Carrillo’s encouragement she retained Benjamin Hayes—in private practice for the first time in fourteen years—to sue for revocation of the power of attorney assigned to Carlisle. Hayes announced the suit with a notice in the Star, alleging that the assignment had been obtained “by fraud.” Carlisle responded in the next issue of the paper. Having seen the notice “published by instigation and at the request of Benjamin Hayes,” he announced, “I declare said notice totally false in every respect and pronounce Hayes a low-lived vilifier, liar, and coward.” Those were fighting words, and while Carlisle knew full well that Hayes would never respond to his challenge, his language signaled a willingness to use violence to maintain his stranglehold over the widow and her property.

  In April, while visiting Doña Merced at Rancho Cucamonga, Don Ramón came down with an illness that kept him laid him up for several weeks. His prolonged presence in her house set tongues wagging. Among Anglos it was taken as a confirmation of their conspiracy. Among Californios, who continued to believe in Don Ramón’s honorable intentions, it raised fears for his safety. Several residents in the vicinity reported seeing Carlisle in huddled conversation with the managers of Rancho Cucamonga at an inn operated by “Uncle Billy” Rubottom along the stage road near Doña Merced’s ranch house. Rubottom later reported the arrival at his place, about the same time, of a man calling himself Lewis Love, who claimed to be awaiting the arrival of friends from the north and requested accommodations for an extended stay. “He seemed to be killing time around the place,” Rubottom said, “going out rabbit hunting a great deal.” Friends warned Don Ramón. While at Doña Merced’s he wrote to his brother, Don Julio, naming Carlisle as his persecutor. “He does not do it personally, but through others paid by him,” Carrillo wrote. “If by bad luck I should happen to disappear, Bob Carlisle will know and he will be the cause of my disappearance and he is the one whom you should prosecute.”

  ON THE MORNING OF MAY 21, Carrillo, having fully recovered, set out for his home in the south. Doña Merced and one of her half sisters accompanied him on the first leg of his journey. He and a companion were riding horseback, with the women alongside in a buggy. Lewis Love saw them pass Rubottom’s inn. “Well, Uncle Bill,” he said, “guess I’ll go out and get a few more rabbits.” Not long afterward Rubottom heard the sound of gunfire. Carrillo was hit in the back. Doña Merced saw him grasp his chest and slump to the side of his saddle. “Don’t let him fall!” she cried, as the other rider jumped down, caught the wounded man, and lowered him to the ground. “Leave this place,” Don Ramón exclaimed through clenched teeth, fearing there would be more shooting. Doña Merced whipped the horses and the buggy took off, leaving Carrillo alone. He struggled to his feet and staggered back to the inn, where he was carried inside, spitting blood.

  Rubottom proposed sending for a doctor, but Carrillo shook his head. “Don’t bother, I’m done for,” he said. Rubottom was deeply impressed by the man’s stoicism. “There came over his face a smile of scorn,” he later recalled. “He faced the approach of death with bitter gayety.” People had accused him of arranging the murder of John Rains, Carrillo said to Rubottom, but he was incapable of doing such a thing. “If I had been the enemy of John Rains, I would have challenged him face to face.” He always prided himself on confronting his enemies. “I never did a cowardly act nor fought a man except face to face,” he said. “But for all this, I am murdered from behind!” Rubottom was convinced Carrillo was telling the truth. “A man who could talk like that in the presence of death could not be lying,” he said. Could he identify the man who shot him, Rubottom asked. He had seen a man fleeing on foot, Carrillo said, but did not recognize him. But that did not concern him, for he knew who was responsible. He slipped into unconsciousness, but roused himself just before the end. “I’m going to die and I’m going to hell,” he said. “I’m going to meet the devil and fight him. And may the best man win!” According to Uncle Billy Rubottom, those were Carrillo’s last words.

  The murder stirred up a whirlwind of controversy in Los Angeles. “You have little idea of the quiet, deep-seated rage of the Californians,” Hayes wrote a friend in San Bernardino County, which encompassed Rancho Cucamonga. “They ask me continually if the authorities . . . are not going to do something in relation to it.” A warrant was issued for the arrest of Lewis Love, who disappeared immediately after the shooting. He was arrested in San Francisco several months later and brought south. Two managers at Rancho Cucamonga were accused of conspiring with him, but the grand jury in San Bernardino, citing the absence of any direct evidence, refused to indict them, and all three were released.

  Don Ramón’s brother, Don Julio, published an angry letter in the press. “I desire,” he wrote, “to brand, as it deserves, the foul aspersion upon the name of my brother, Ramón Carrillo, who was recently murdered in a most cowardly manner near Los Angeles.”

  Ever since the death of John Rains, one Carlisle, whose designs upon the property of Rains have been crossed by my brother in the interests of the widow, has endeavored to blacken the character of my brother and his friends and has given circulation to the most infamous f
alsehoods in regard to him. This Carlisle has grown rich and infamous by practicing with superior American cunning upon the too easily and confiding disposition of native Californians, and was now indignant that one intractable subject should be found among those whom he considered the legitimate victims of his rapacity.

  Doña Merced never publicly accused Carlisle, her brother-in-law, of the murder, but she cut off all relations with her sister, Doña Francisca. “We are sure that money was what done it,” she wrote to Hayes, and expressed fear for the safety of herself and her children. “It is impossible for me,” she wrote, “to be amongst so many thieves and murderers.”

  Rubottom later recounted a story of an attempt on Doña Merced’s life. “There were a good many threats made against her,” he told Horace Bell, “so that the air was buzzing with things that might happen any time.” One day at his inn, he claimed, he had overheard a group of Carlisle’s friends conspiring to lynch the widow. Rubottom was widely celebrated for his kitchen, which featured southern cooking, including fried chicken, stewed greens, and buttermilk biscuits. “I served the men at the long supper table myself,” he said, “then when they all had their heads well down into their plates I returned, stood at the head of the table and said: ‘Now, gentlemen, don’t make a move or I’ll shoot.’ They all looked up with the mouths full of food and saw me standing there with a double-barreled shotgun at ready.” He took their guns and sent them packing once they had finished their meal. “I’d seen enough of lynching in my time,” Rubottom told Horace Bell, “and when it came to stringing up a woman without a trial, I wouldn’t stand it in my neighborhood.” Skeptics argue that the story sounds implausible. But consider the warning Hayes received from the sheriff of San Bernardino County. “I really believe these men are becoming insane,” he wrote of Carlisle’s associates shortly after Don Ramón’s murder. “And you will think so too when you hear of something that has taken place at Cucamonga.” The reference is vague, but it lends credibility to Rubottom’s story.