The Murders at Sunset Cañon

I.

In 185- I was practicing law in Mariposa, California, with a friend and partner named Ichabod Thorne. We had a lucrative and free-and-easy time of it among the Mariposians and the wild, rough miners and cattle-raisers of the vicinity. The Vigilance Committee was then a thing of the past; there were rude court-houses, sheriffs, half-civilized policemen, and other formulas, and frequently honest attempts at the administration of justice, to be met with even at the foot of the Sierra Nevada; and consequently my profession found employment as the emergencies of the times arose. True, the Californians were still fond of taking justice in their own hands, and our prim, legal gallows was now and then robbed of its prey by the violence of the mob. But we were accustomed to regard such eccentricities good-naturedly, as arising from the mere force of habit, and were pretty well content so long as we could charge heavy fees, and have them paid in the bright yellow dust which was not only the cause of the presence, in that not very inviting region, of nine-tenths of the inhabitants, but also of nine-tenths of the crimes from which I reaped my own pecuniary harvest.

It was at the close of a pleasant showery Sunday, just at the commencement of the rainy season, which here endures for several months, that I sat in the “office” portion of our rude cabin in Mariposa, awaiting my partner’s return. He had been visiting the Gonzagos, some very dear friends of ours, at Sunset Cañon. This locality was about thirty miles northeast of Mariposa, at the very foot of the towering Sierras, and was aptly and beautifully named, from the loveliness of the spot itself and the general grandeur of the surrounding scenery.

The Cañon was the property of Santiago de Gonzago, who occupied it entirely as a ranche, and who was esteemed one of the best and… Read More