guez considered himself sufficient for all corners, give him his pistols and his gun.
Alvitre, the bandit, was notable in his brief day for his escape from a Mexican prison, his long ride to California on the very horse that Juan Molinero had captured, and his contempt for both church and state. He would rob a priest as readily as he would a rancher, but the poor he let pass, a provision of his code which had won him great respect and many friends, as similar exemptions have won for other bandits, before and since, among those whom it does not pay to rob.
This Alvitre had his lair in the Pueblo de Los Angeles, in that year of 1806 but a poor collection of refugees, banished ones, retired and brokendown soldiers, and such as had been induced by the government bounty offered to settlers in the California pueblos, to take up life there. The town was an unattractive and shiftless place, built around the plaza, an irrigation ditch leading water through it from the little river that ran near by. There were a few small mercantile establishments, many cantinas, or retail liquor stores, and goats and pigs, and crumbling adobe bricks, under the feet at every turn.
Here Alvitre and his four or five attendants came to spend the proceeds of their excursions upon the king's highway; here they were safe, for every hut was a refuge, and the comisionado, an ex-sergeant, was not notable as a disciplinarian in civil life, no matter what he had been in military.
All these things Dominguez had for his consid-
