The story opens with a raid by Joaquin Murrieta and Manuel Garcia AKA Three-Fingered Jack. They kill several men and steal bags of gold. On the way out of town, the bandit cries, "I am Joaquin!" Elsewhere, Stephen Dix is enjoying an evening with his wife and infant daughter. He commands a riverboat that travels to and from the gold fields, leaving for a week at a time. He begs his wife to let him take their daughter on his next circuit and she reluctantly agrees. Of course, Joaquin and his band attack the riverboat, killing Stephen and absconding with the infant. Ann is desperate to locate her missing daughter and thus wants to talk to Murrieta. She contacts Captain Love, the ranger assigned to track Joaquin and end his long series of crimes. Love and his men encounter Murrieta's band but are forced to kill both Joaquin and Three-Fingered Jack. Deciding that she will never find her daughter, Ann retreats to a church she has visited many times since the tragedy only to find that her daughter was left there by Joaquin shortly after the river raid. Happy reunion of mother and daughter.
The framing of the story is awkward. How to tell the tale of a notorious outlaw without having the outlaw as the central character? Joaquin Murrieta was active during the California Gold Rush. His banditry was brought to an end by Captain Harry Love. Love had been a Texas Ranger who fought in the war with Mexico before joining the Gold Rush in 1850. His mining efforts came to naught. He instead found his fortune by tracking and killing Joaquin Murrieta in 1853.
Originally, Murrieta was a 49er like many others. The legend from a dime novel of the period is that he was beaten, his brother killed, and his wife raped. He killed those responsible and was thereafter branded a criminal. This background was not provided in the episode, and he is a straight black hat, his only redeeming feature being his refusal to leave an infant on a riverboat of corpses.
By contrast, Love is shown as the clean-shaved white hat who is eager to help Ann find her missing daughter. That is far from an accurate portrayal of Love. It was often said that he killed innocent men in place of Murietta and Garcia to claim the immense reward offered by California. In later years, he killed his estranged wife and was in turn killed by her bodyguard.
Joaquin Murietta, Three-Fingered Jack, and Captain Love appear in The Mask of Zorro (1998), though greatly fictionalized and placed in the wrong decade.
No comments:
Post a Comment