The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 3, 1898, Page 23

-THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 3, 1898. OUND-UP _ JORST or (JUTLAWS OF THE IN THE - | VICENTE StLVA, The |- AW LEADER AND ORGAMZER', fy From a photoyraph . CGies Payrorts RANGH HOUSE , TrE SCENE OF OME OF THE MURDERS. From a phaba.jk: s A .X![N’)’J{gsm\‘“}w--'/'w\)! D) : A \\(3 t could. Silva himself joined an spared. He began to shout, but he was to killing a woman who had been “squealing down-in Las Vegas:? " ing for the band or tion and contributed money choked by the noose about his throat. friendly to him. months later,” when “the gang. 2 ilva laughed and ecting the robbers and for Half dead with fear the wretch was The deed must be done that night. known and Several fnen in it wi ; ( played the agrecable host at his sa- finding what hac become of the men quietly dragged along the narrow anyhow, so the plan of procedure was tumbling over one another in theif an home ¢ ext’ day loon and gave money to the church and who had so strangely disappeared.” streets of Las Vegas an hour before quickly altered. Young Gabriel San- iety to tell all they knew e for the Orphans’ Home and poor old The gang grew bolder and the secret dawn to the b, er Gallinas Cri r S of the frequent crimes came suddenly There amid a blinding together the arte a mooth sa s the country o1 k. doval was to be lured frem his er’s nowstorm he home and then quietly slain. When that necks from hanging, the body-of: Mrs. Silva was dug from. a ‘shallow 'gr: 10w, but people about town. But almost ev: b n Have va and his new wife reached Las day he had reports from the memb 5 efugio B 5 a 2d fr - PRt f 2 = ay E: ports from the memb at last. Refugio Esquibel, the wealth- was hanged from a stringer. When Iva was to go home to his in s God-fo g gone into their graves. The Lopez Jorn out and ragged, after of his band, and once a week or fort- iest ranchman in San Miguel County, Qctober 92, dawned the body of L h e D e L an amovoiinie (God favenkn, DandtheE terorh e e 9f horseback travel, and a month night there was a secret meeting at found four of his best Patricio Mae ff, cold and-covered crefly and hurriedly from his refuge in about the cnost told:the story miners in in s Tolowel arier ek Ssietitamenk th k, heavy old adobe missing from with snow, s ed to and fro in the the jnountains, and force her to fles death. Frighcful.lacemmms'nn ‘the xas for been nde. h. the. &nd the leader south of Salt City. Close upen horribl v Mexico has gor itiary at ‘Santa Fe for'a life t the Silva gang s was the most erfectly organized éver known in the Southw . For the five years that the nce in Las °n, merchants and iat part of the Territory 1t dread that their prop- t be robbed at any time by n thieves. - The people who lived on lo sheep and cattle ranches eut. in the foothills were afraid to go abroad at night lest they, too, ‘would be found dead at the hands of an un- known murdérer. All the cattle ranch- men were at-’their wits’ ends to dis- cover how their h lessening. ‘When Colonel W, a cousin, by.the way, of the la M. Pull- man) and his two st art sons we: found dead at their ranch home on their sheep ‘ran, iles south of 1os Certillos gory bodi bullets in their heads and st chests, it was generally believed the Pueblo Indians had .again.r themselves on the ‘white men. Bilva himself.went about declaring that hé ‘would be one of a committe and. bring the Indians to justice, ranchmen were horrifiéd at the c¢ri It transpired two years 250, how that the murder was one of the de of Silva’s gang and that it was done because Colonel Adams had discovered who was robbing him and his fel eheep raisérs and was about to expose the robbers. All in all the Silva gang was as desperiate and at the same time as sagacious as any band .of outlaws yet known in the Territorfes. How many crimes may be attributed to the gang will never be known, the crimes were gso far apart and committed by different groups of men. So many of them also were thought at the time to have been committed by Indians and drunken cowboys. § Silva, the leader and organizer of that gang, was the last man the people of Las Vegas would have suspected of being the promoter of all the rapine and blood-shedding in that reglon. Vi- cente Silva was a saloon keeper in Las Vegas. He was born in San Barna- 1llo County, New Mexico, in 1843, was tall and well built and had an intelli- gent face and agreeable manners, He e ran for Sheriff and had a large vote. He was reared a neighbor of the Navajo Indians, and as a youth he saw repeated wanton murders, and knew all_about robberiés and rapine. It is natural then'that he was an outlaw at 20. He went with a dozen other Mexi- cans to Wyoming in 1877, and was a vaquero there for about a year. One an farmer in Southern Cheyenne, had found Aguilar ben ead was nearly cut > were mortal cuts through chest. No one ever doubted that lipe had " cc 1 Silv eloping wife, and that the husband had been stabbed to ¢ and his body concealed in the stra ack. But those d the ithern Colorado Silva had some capital. He opened a saloon on the old plaza in Las V and did a good ning ways, his big mahogany his gorgeous gambling rooms u made this place a center of attrac attle and s herders and sil t in those da: e became the most fre n Miguel County. There Silva’s, § some of the most exciting moments and the old-timers t they have ever known in t Territo- ries were those in Vicente Silva’'s sa- loon- of an evening, when the M from the ranges had become dr ugly. The cattle and wool business rapidly declined in 1887 and 1888, and custom at Silva's bar fell away fast. Hard times and an extravagant taste quickly bred in Silva the old-time taste for outlawry as an easy means of live- lihood, and, while he laughed and joked with patrons at his bar, and gave os- tentatiously and generously to charit he was secretly and at night organizing the most thorough band of marauders vet known in that region. He had been in Colorado and he saw how cattle and horses might be driven there through the unfrequented passes in the Rockies, and how they might be sold in small bunches for large prices per head at the numerous mining camps in Colorado without exciting comment and investi. gation. Then, too, his long association with the Mexican vaqueros in Northern New Mexico—especially in San Miguel, Santa Fe and San Barnalillo counties— made him familiar with- the men most suitable for an organization for rob- bery and plunder, and he made few er- rors in his choice of followers. The meeting place of the new band was the Silva saloon, at night, after the lights had been put out and the business closed. No band of Molly Ma- gulres were ever bound by such secrecy and oaths as were the men who joined tha® Silva gang. Robbery of cattie, horses and sheep from the numeroas lonely ranches in Northern New Mex- ico. with occasional burglary, and a -murder If it became necessary in the course of operations, was the purpose of the band. Silva bought for a mere song a ranch thirty-two miles from Las Vegas (near San Pedro), anmong the Raton Mountains, as the base of operations for his secret band of rob- bers. A more isolated and uninviting spot could hardly have been found in all that region. Scarcely a dozen peo- ple went that way in the course of a year. The route there twisted among towering cliffs and pinnacles of gran- ite. Patriclo Maes and Manuel Ma- lonado were appointed to look.after the ranch, and to tell possible inquirers buildings in Las Ve Periodically the: was a division of the proceeds from recent sales of cattle, mules and sheep m Silva’s mountain ranch to the buyers for the Eastern stockyards. The ranchmen were continually com- plaining of thefts of cattle and horses from their herds. The several Sheriffs and their deputies scoured the coun- try over for the thieves, and the ranch- men banded themselves together to protect their property. 'Still the thefts went on. In July, 1891, over seventy cattle were reported stolen, and three small postoffic we! robbed. There were mysterious d! es, also, of s and who carried about their persons, and had no ed relatl in th Territory. For instance, Pedro Vejar seen go- ing to Las V ing in May, 1890, after he had sold his wool for 200. He was never seen alive again. Then there was Antonio Vasquez, who drew two mon pay from the Santa Fe Railroad Company one afternoon, and was seen last at Silva's saloon a few hours later, partially drunk. His cousin and sister searched diligently for him, but not a clew could ever be had to his fate. Ramon Oberro dis- appeared in the winter of 1891-92 along with $300 from his sale of mules. The Indians were given a good deal of credit for the crimes, but no evidence could ever be found against any of them. The people were shocked when the news came in the summer of 1891 that the nch home of George E. Payson (in San Barnalillo County), a young man just out from Cairo, 11, had been found broken into and the remains lay badly decomposed on the floor, where the young man had fallen in a desper- ate encounter with unknown murderers, The house had been robbed of the money Payson was believed to have had there, besides its valuables, A bunch of cattle had been killed and skinned on the ranch. There was never even the faintest clew to the mur- derers and robbers, except that several skins bearing Payson’s brand were found a year later after Silva had been killed, among several hundred skins secreted at the Silva ranch near San Pedro. “There is no doubt that the earth under Silva’'s old saloon over there across the plaza holds a number of bodies of men who have mysterjously Wisappeared from this locality,” said a merchant at Las Vegas recently to the writer as he talked of the crimes that the arrested members of the Silva gang had confessed in court and the findings of the detectives. “But the men who disappeared were persons without friends and relatives here and no one wants to pull up the floor and dig. Be- stdes, what good would it do now, any- way? Seven people quite well known in San Miguel County dropped out of sight from 1888 to 1892, The Sheriffs of Santa Fe and San Miguel counties had a constant flow of reports of robberies of cattle and horses and burglaries of ranch houses and isolated stores, and they and their deputies were ceaseless- . ly vigilant. There was not a clew to be had as to the offenders, search as hard QUEER JAIL FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS ONLY. T the anclent and famous Uni- versity of Heidelberg a jail is --maintained specially for the ben- efit of students. For all minor crimes and misdemeanors they are tried ‘and imprisoned not by the+ ~‘eivil authorities, but by the university. The Heldelberg Carcer, or university prison, has been occupled by the most -famous men of Germany. While there they always decorate the walls with _their names and in other ways, so that thelr stay in jail may be permanently _:remembered. 5 Every reader of Mark Twaln will re- call his entertaining description of the place, and how he contrived to visit it, even unwittingly enlisting as his guide & “Herr Professor.” His pretext was to see & young friend who had “got” twenty-four hours, and had conven- fentlv arranged the day to suit Mark— for the German student-convict goes to prison on the first suitable day after conviction and sentence. If Thursday is not conveénient he tells the jofficer sent to hale him to jail that he will come_on ¥riday or Saturday or Sun- day, as the case may be. The officer never doubts his word, and it is never broken. The prison is up three flights of stairs and is approached by a passage as richly decorated with the art: work of convicts as the cell itself. That apart- ment is not roomy, but bigger than an ordinary prison cell. It has an. iron grated window, a small stove, two wooden chairs, two old oak tables and a narrow wooden bedstead. The fur- niture is profusely ornamented with carving, the work of languishing cap- tives, who have placed on record their names, armorial bearings, their crimes and the dates of thelr imprisonment, together with quaint warnings and de- nunciations. Walls and ceilings are coyered with portraits ahd Jegends ex- ecuted in colored chalk and in soot, the prison candle forming a handy pen- cil. The prisoner must supply his’ own bedding and is subject to various charges. On entering he pays about. 20 cents, and on leaving a similar sum. Every day in prison costs 12 cents; fire and light, 12 cents extra. The jailer ‘supplies coffee for a trifle. Meals may be ordered from outside. Every pris- oner leaves his carte de visite, which is fixed, with a multitude of others, on the door of the cell. Academic criminal procedure in Held. elberg is curious. If the city polics apprehend a student, the captive shows his matriculation card. He is then asked for his address and set free, bue will hear more of the matter, for the clvil authority reports him to the uni- versity. In Heidelberg the University Court try and pass sentence, the civil power taking no further concern with the offense. ranchmen he mountains for upon them in the little rock corral at Silva’s lonely ranch and forthwith he went and notified the Sheriff that at last a clew had been had to the thieves who had so long been miles around. the corral, was ar- ested and fearful of lynching he se- ly offered to tell all about the rob- He was accordingly let go for a week, in which time he was to get more ation for the police of- vas in October, 1892. 8 made to Silva at was about to tell An order that the gang only knew went forth for a business meeting at midnight at the saloon. another dividend every one of the band was there. the gang assembled, coming one at a time, and being admitted by a sign at Silva presided. sat there, unmindful of the purpose of the meeting. charged Maes with perfidy to the gang, what he knew agreement to reveal the gang to the A brief trial was held. denied and other members of the band told what they knew about Maes’ per- Silva called for a vote on the innocence of the accused. Every one voted “‘gulilty.” been agreed upon as the punishment for perfidy when the gang had been or- Silva had prepared for the decision of guilty, and he had a rope and noose hidden behind his saloon. In the partial bound and gagged by his companions. He begged and wept that his life be went hunting over the robbing the Maes, who was a accurate infor A secret report w: his saloon that M It was believed the rear door. A member about Maes’ wind that was blowing over Raton Mountains. The Coron jury decided that he had been lynched for an un- known crime. Events moved swiftly with the Silva gang after that. Silva knew that he was suspected. He fled on October 26 to a secret hiding place in the moun- tains near Los Alamos. He was in- dicted for horse and cattle stealing on November 7, 1892, and became a refu- gee from justice. The Governor of the Territory and the Sheriffs in Northern New Mexico together offered $1000 for his capture. Suspecting that his wife and her youthful brother, ‘Gabriel Sandoval, were giving information to the Sheriff and the secret organization of citizens that were slowly uncovering the crimes of his band, Silva determined to get rid of his family. So t about plan- ning how to expeditiously and with no suspicion of guilt on himself kill his wife and her younger brother. The plans were finished by January 23, 1893, and on the evening of that day Siiva and Guadalupe Caballero rode stealth- ily into LasVegas. Two policemen int town,Julian Trugelio and Jos Chav Z’ Chavez, who had been partially in league with the robbers and murderers from the first, were sought out. They agreed to go with Silva to his own adobe home and stand guard at the door while Silva and Caballero went in- side to deliberately stab Mrs. Silva and her brother to death. Jose Chavez Chavez was sent ahead to spy out the situation at the Silva home before Silva and Caballero went there. Chavez came back and reported that Mrs. Silva had company, and that he had reconsidered and would not be a party with him back to the mountains, where her murder might be accom- ned more at leisure and with no sses to the crime. That plan suited Policeman Jose Chavez, who, as an officer of the law, did not wish quite such a wholesale murder as was first proposed. Trug- elio was sent to tell young Sandoval that he was wanted at the home of a sick friend in another part of Las The young man responded to the call. Just as he was hurriedly passing along a narrow dark street, lined with one-story adobe houses, Silva leaped from a dark retreat and stabbed him. Sandoval uttered a shriek and Jose Chavez, fearing the noise would rouse the neighbors, struck the youth upon the head with a re- volver until the skull was fractured. All the party fled but Silva and Ca- ballero, who carried the body to a cesspool near by. It was dug out two years later, when the details of the crime were confessed. After washing his hands at Police- man Chavez's house, after the mur- der of Sandoval, Vicente Silva has- tened to his wife. He protested his love and devotion to her, and told how he had risked his very life to come to see her again. He soon induced her to leave at once with him for his hid- ing place among the mountains. No one knows what occurred on that ride along the lonely trail from Las Vegas to the Raton Mountains that cold Jan- uary night. When Silva returned to his half dozen marauding followers the next day he said he had finished the job, and there would be no more deep interest. Three mén:were not e dead woman’s hands: told - theé-struggle she made .with .her -bandit. husbahd while he stabbed her.] confessions and three moré: told- parts of the details of -the ]5ng: series Of crimes. Silva was dead, and {here wa no longer fear of vengeance fram Him. Then the mills of justice in-the Gov~ ernment courts in New. MeXico “began to grind. They ground very slowl d they have not ground so fine; after al s of. gang have been ‘in every term ¢ United States courts in’.New.- 3 The whole Tetritory, '.especiall Mexicans, has ‘watched. the cases. victed. Four were sentenced -to. deat and their senten. commuted: -t6 _im~ prisonment for life. Three.-have been: - hanged. Five are serving. santences . varying: from four to ten .years in.the. -’ Territorial penitentiary. Two.se year or two and were pardoned by ‘the recent Governor L. Bradford.Prince: The case of Jose Chavez Chadvez, .the policeman who assisted”in. the murder: " of young Gabriel Sandoval, was in the. courts three years. e he was sEn- tenced to death. He was to have beén hanged on October 29 -last... Governor:. Otero reprieved him four weeks. -Now- " Chavez's sentence has.beeh commuted. to life imprisonment, and the last. Gt - the Silva gang has had: punishment:’: meted out to him. 3 3 : 2 of their fathers. “"\ A L tin-clad opponent.” Whereas the tax on the price of beer in the can has been It takes a dime to buy what a nickel would pay for a few days ago. The sa- loon-keeper isn't getting the worst of it on the deal. He pays, at the outside, $7 for a barrel of beer. Each barrel con- tains 480 glasses, which he sells at § 24, making a clear profit of §$17 a barrel. Can sales may reduce these profits some- what, but the tax cannot possibly reduce The smoker who clamored for war will SLEEPING Ticker 7 ¢ 4R o it il | f i et T costs money to sink fleets, cork up the drink dealer is using the war tax as The seductive little paper rolls can no harbors and provide places for sons an excuse to fire a broadside into his If the average citi- zen has been too busy enthusing t0 peer has been increased only $1 a barrel, think of this he will be rudely awak- ened soon. He is going to be taxed doubled. The stamp act will be vogue again, and life will be subject to an Internal revenue grind. The war taxes on tobacco, snuff, cigar- ettes and beer are now In effect. sult is most noticeable In the case of cents each. He thus sells his barrel for Saloon-keepers are massing their 3 strength for a dea.tdhl blnwthat n;le growler. The old tin paliadilum that has been g rushed so often is being rushed off tho tfl:na%]l_oonlns comfortable margin more | The can. and the saloon-keeper time enemies, and it appears longer be purchased at the rate of twen- tv for a nickel. Cigars, too, are taxed, but the burden will not be heavy, and the best dealers have promised that it will not be felt by consumers. The tax on smoking tobacco Is so heavy that three, instead of four, ounces, will be sold for 5 cents. Five o'clock teas will come high. An additional war tax of 10 cents a pound is being levied on the product. Here are some of the taxes that are still to come under the new war bill, and they must be paid by the purchase of stamps to be affixed to the article taxed: One cent on every telegram sent. Two cents_on each .bank check, money order and draft. One cent on receipts. One cent on each railway and sleeping-car t also suffer, especlally the cigarette fiend. ticket. M PN Twenty-five cents for each lease signed, One dollar for each $1000 covered by a life - insurance policy and $§1 for each $2000 cove’ ered by a fire insurance policy. = - On legacies, 75 cents for earh $100. -re- cefved. On mortgages, 2 cents for loans up to $1500 and an equal amount for each - $500 additional. e o5 All business paper, even rent- receipts, will be taxed. Brokers will -have to pay : a year, pawnbrokers $20, commercial rokers $20, and custom-house.-brokers. $10. Bankers will have to pay $100 a year, besides §2 for each F1000 of thelr capital stoc! Proprietors of theaters, museums, con- cert halls and circuses will be taxed $160 4 year, and there will be an impost of $5 a year on each billiard table and bowling . d{ey for public use. B :