Jack Powers: Race Against Time
7. Death of Jack Powers
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7. Death of Jack Powers
From “Remembering Jack Powers” by Bill Horace in the Los Angeles Star, 1876.
Once in Mexico, Jack settled in Sonora. He assumed that he'd be able to return to California once the temperature cooled down, and sent a letter to Los Angeles. But this editor advised him not to plan on coming back. The climate everywhere had changed against him. For one thing, David Broderick, his greatest friend and patron, had fallen in a duel and therefore could do nothing to protect him. And although San Francisco was reluctant to believe he'd been a renegade, his sudden, unexpected flight had troubled many friends. Even Nugent at the Herald was conceding that the stories of Jack heading up a gang of greaser bandits just might possibly be true.
Jack decided on Sonora because his gang had family there. They weren't welcoming. That he would flee from California to their hostile desert landscape meant his fortunes had turned desperate, and bad fortune never made a friend. He invested all he had to stock a cattle ranch. But ranching where such little grass could grow was hopeless. Nor was there wealth enough to pay much for his beef. After a devastating drought, it looked like Powers' cattle might just drop right where they stood unless he found a market quickly.
A rumor spread about a copper strike up north, across the border. Jack couldn't know if the Americans in that vicinity would trouble him, but was obliged to take the risk. He hired a few Yaquis as vaqueros and pushed out, riding an expensive mount because fine horses were expensive in Sonora. Three weeks later, Powers crossed the border. A sergeant at Fort Yuma told him that some people like himself, who'd been in California, would surely recognize him, and that Jack was known to be a wanted man. And the copper strike had played out quickly. There weren't any miners left.
The herd could not survive a drive back home across the desert. The sergeant told Jack of a small abandoned ranch a few miles further up the trail where he might keep his stock alive another week. The sergeant asked if he felt safe with only Indian vaqueros, and Jack replied that he was more secure with them than with Americans. And so he pressed on to the ranch.
That evening, close to sunset, two Americans arrived. Some pigs escaped their nearby ranch and were discovered in the tules on Jack's refuge. The two men didn't know Jack. They were friendly and would come back for their hogs at dawn. And so Jack was left alone to last the night out in an empty shack with just a little food and liquor. The Yaquis bedded down beneath the stars.
* * *
By midnight, Jack had finished all his brandy, which had not been very much. He stood out on the porch, staring through the starlight. The moon would be appearing soon. His future was opaque, a smoky glass. He had not the slightest good idea what to do because his genius for improvisation had abandoned him at last. Alone, without an audience, theatricality meant nothing. He felt old, but he was strangely peaceful, staring toward the east horizon waiting for the moon.
Such were Powers’ final thoughts because the Yaquis, sneaking up behind him, clove his skull in with an axe. The cattle drive had been a failure and they would likely not be paid, and so they wanted Jack's majestic mare and hand-tooled saddle. They rode off before the sunrise, taking turns atop Jack's mount.
The two Americans returned that morning. What they found appalled them. The pigs had crawled out of their swamp, and smelling blood, they made a mess of Powers' corpse, tearing it apart and eating some. The two men buried the remains right there, as there was no alternative, and sent word to Fort Yuma.
The news reached California two weeks later. The sentiment throughout the state, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, took a little time to gel. The gruesome, lonely death of such a gorgeous man and great celebrity, along with further proof that he'd betrayed his race in California, wiped him out of people's minds. His memory became too painful and folks refused to even think of him. A career that had commenced so fresh and sparkling had expired in decay and shame. And the era he epitomized was over. The Gold Rush decade died away with Jack and David Broderick. The nation faced the threat of dissolution, even civil war. Would California stay in the United States or break off as a separate nation? Would it divide in two and let the Spanish country follow its own path? These issues crowded out all thoughts about the past. Long sunshine years were yielding to a storm front, and Jack Powers moldered in a desert grave.