Jack Powers: Lion Among Rats
8. The Battle of Arroyo Burro
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8. The Battle of Arroyo Burro
From “Remembering Jack Powers” by Bill Horace in the Los Angeles Star, 1876.
The army of Joaquin broke up and his lieutenants grabbed the pieces. Chief among these were the cruel Senate and "El Huero'' Raphael. Los Angeles was suddenly in danger. Senate and his company moved south and made their camp in Laurel Canyon, in the mountains north of the large brea pits from which the Angelenos drew their caulking. From this densely hidden sanctuary, Senate’s men made raids into the city. They entered homes at will, completely unresisted, raping women, stealing everything and killing for sheer pleasure. Senate couldn't be suppressed, but his gang dissolved in jealousies. He and those most close to him were slaughtered by their comrades, who drifted off so that at last the hurricane dissolved.
But Powers saw how much these ravages had changed Los Angeles. That spirit of exuberance, born of so much sudden wealth, was dying or deflated. The Calle de los Negroes was still busy, but not nearly so much as before. There still was money because a flush of gold production drew new miners to the diggings and these miners needed beef. But the ranchers were no longer quite so quick to spend it or to lavish it on their retainers. Private gaming in Jack's sala was decidedly less lucrative. At least half the gringo gamblers had left town in the decline, and there was generally less need for Powers' Veterans, who had begun to grow obnoxious anyway. Jack knew he had to think about the future.
* * *
His focus turned to Santa Barbara. His appeal to the Supreme Court was denied and Dr. Den moved quickly to evict him. Den was very much aware of how the changes in Los Angeles would cripple Jack's high-flown pretensions, and he would bring him down like Icarus with melted wings. The Santa Barbara sheriff who would serve Jack the eviction was a New York Volunteer himself, and so was loath to throw him off Arroyo Burro. He knew that Jack could not submit without resistance, for risk of tamely suffering chastisement from his enemy, and so he called out the entire county to assist him as his deputies, to discourage Jack from any dangerous defiance. Jack was up against a wall. He couldn't simply fold in front of everyone. But how far would he push it?
When the day arrived to serve the writ, two hundred men rode into town to help the sheriff. Half of these were more inclined toward Jack than Den. But all could understand that Powers lost his court case, and the gringos were determined that the Californios not see anyone defying gringo laws.
Jack was at a loss. He was outnumbered and could not expect his dozen Vets to risk their lives in any violent encounter. And so, inspired by his triumph in Los Angeles with Zavaleta, he turned to comedy. He wrote a quitclaim deed to the Arroyo Burro property, assigning all his rights to one of his retainers for consideration of a single dollar. Two Veterans rode into Santa Barbara where the sheriff was assembling his posse and, without dismounting from their horses, handed him the quitclaim.
The sheriff was confused. His writ was to evict Jack Powers, but maybe Jack was no longer the right party. He didn't know. Meanwhile there were scores of men on horseback pacing nervously and waiting for his orders. Some started laughing, which exasperated him. Then he noticed a small piece of ordnance someone had dragged out, a relic of the old presidio. A mounted Californian tossed his rope around the rusty gun, apparently to drag it off. However small, it could be deadly filled with shrapnel or grapeshot.
The sheriff, already befuddled, demanded that the rider drop the cannon, and when he failed to do so instantly, he fired on the man. He didn't hit him, but the gunshot triggered chaos and some other person fired on Jack's Vets who'd brought the quitclaim. One Vet took a bullet in the stomach, and both galloped off to the Arroyo Burro, trailing blood. Then a Californian standing near the sheriff stabbed him in the back before the lawman shot him dead. This Californian had some personal connection with the Veteran who was shot, and simply acted in a fury without knowing what was happening. The sheriff bled profusely from a knife wound seven inches deep.
The crowd rode out without the sheriff to Arroyo Burro where Jack braced for an attack. There was no way he could hold off such an army, so enraged, and to fight them would mean certain death. But when Jack was told how the disaster started with the fieldpiece, he proved again his talent for improvisation. He pulled a stovepipe from a cookstove, and shoved it through a window facing down the entrance to the ranch. From a distance, it might look something like a cannon, and if it did, the posse wasn’t likely to ride in closer to investigate.
And so the farce played out. The army raised against him, although furious, was halted when Jack called out, warning of his “cannon.” From fifty yards it was impossible to know the truth, but having seen a cannon at assembly, the thing was possible. The army paused, drew back, and finally rode back to town. Inside the ranch house, Jack's wounded Vet expired in agony. But Jack had not been driven from his ranch.
* * *
Jack's boys inside the ranch house were aghast to see their comrade die so miserably. Powers had assured them with his charismatic flair that his comedic strategy for foiling the eviction would leave everybody laughing. But now everybody's mood was black, and the men all worried openly that they couldn’t ride to town, or even leave the ranch at all, without being murdered. Jack decided he had better act enraged, and not defensive. So at great risk, he mounted his black mare and brought his boys into the village, seeking out the killer of their friend. The problem was that no one knew who'd shot the man, or even if the shot had been intended for the victim in the chaos and confusion. So when Powers led his men through Santa Barbara making threats, but without knowing who, exactly, they were looking for, he only managed to estrange a bunch of Barbareños who had always been his friends. In fact, when dawn broke the next morning, there was a sense in Santa Barbara that Jack Powers was about to start a civil war and tear the whole community apart. The mayor rowed out in a skiff to board a coast guard cutter in the neighborhood to see if anyone could help him keep the peace.
The ship drew close to shore to make a showing, but its captain told the mayor he had no authority to land his crew. Finally, the de la Guerra clan stepped forward. Pablo de la Guerra, the eldest, most respected son of the Old Captain, rode out to the Arroyo Burro, waving a white handkerchief. He met with Jack and told him that his family, which had always been Jack's fondest Californian patrons, would break with him unless he dropped his fight against eviction. He'd make sure that Jack could leave the ranch on his own terms, and after some delay to let things cool. But leave he ultimately must or lose that pillar of his own prestige which was his warm alliance with the greatest of the Barbareño dons.
* * *
It took a couple months, but Jack moved off Arroyo Burro. The de la Guerras' found him someplace else, to rent for little money, but nothing could disguise the fact that Den had thoroughly defeated him. An even larger issue had resolved itself because the sheriff had survived his stab wound. He was most popular, and had he died, as he well might have, all the Barbareño gringos would have turned on Jack, even though he wasn't technically responsible.
Having kicked Jack off his ranch, Den now sought to drive him from the Lower Country. Los Angeles had slowed so much, and changed in character, that Jack's Veterans were no longer needed. Or rather, they'd worn out their welcome with their strutting arrogance. And in the two years they'd been down there they'd grown up. Two of them were dead, one shot as we've described and the other in an accident. Most now sought to settle down, get married, start a trade in Santa Barbara, and end their reckless and extended Hound-inspired youth. Nick Den understood that and he gave the boys a push.
The Doctor used the influence his triumph had supplied him to get the local prosecutor to indict Jack Powers and his boys on a temporary charge of "felony," to be made specific later. The purpose was to frighten Jack's retainers with the chance of being punished for the violence attending the eviction, and this strategy was most effective. Since Jack was leaving the Arroyo Burro anyway, and since the Vets weren’t any longer welcome in Los Angeles, it would be best to not move on with Powers to his new location or stay attached to him. In short, Jack lost all of his retainers, though they remained his friends, and all these men saw their indictments dropped. Only Jack still faced the charges, and he was perfectly alone. Den’s message was impossible to misinterpret. Jack could flee from Santa Barbara permanently, right away, or he could face down Den’s men naked. Without retainers of his own, he had no bodyguard, and could be killed at any easy opportunity.