The Posse After Juan Soto, The Human Wildcat

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Principles of Posse Management: Lessons from the Old West for Today’s Leaders

Sheriff Harry Morse removed a Model 1866 Winchester carbine rifle from the leather holster on his saddle and cocked it to make sure he had a bullet in the chamber. He surveyed the sprawling canyon deep in the depth of the Panoche Hills, more than fifty miles outside of Gilroy, California. In the distance below were three small adobe houses, and Morse had every reason to suspect members of outlaw Juan Soto’s gang were inside one of the buildings.

High above the sheriff and his eight-member posse was a seemingly inexhaustible mat of black, rainless clouds moving steadily across the world. Morse watched the sun disappear behind the billows and exchanged a determined look with Captain Theodore Winchell, on horseback next to him. Winchell, an undersheriff from Alameda County, had been riding with Sheriff Morse for several months in search of the fugitive. San Jose sheriff Nick Harris and six other deputies made up the rest of the posse. All of the lawmen had years of experience tracking lawbreakers through the Northern California terrain. Each was an exceptional shot and could hold his own in hand-to-hand combat.

Harry Morse had been sheriff of Alameda County for more than seven years. From 1864, when he took the job, to April 1871, when he peered down on the possible hiding place of Juan Soto’s men, Morse had traversed the hills and plains of eastern and northern Alameda County in search of horse thieves, highwaymen, and cutthroats. Until Morse took the job at twenty-eight years of age, most lawmen had been too afraid to venture very far to catch outlaws, worried they would be outnumbered. Thus, the criminals were able to go about their businesses, relatively unconcerned about being apprehended. Sheriff Morse, along with Nick Harris and Theodore Winchell, changed all that.

Juan Soto, the man Sheriff Morse and is posse were tracking, was a thief and a murderer. He had a reputation as a brutal man who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. Soto mainly operated in the central part of California, but, like the other bandits before him, went whenever the possibility of loot beckoned. For more than four years, the six-foot-two, 220-pound, half-Indian, half-Mexican man had terrorized the area from the Livermore Valley to San Luis Obispo. Soto and his gang of desperados robbed stages, stage stops, lone emigrants, and prospectors. Their victims were often beaten and killed.

To learn more about Juan Soto and the posse chasing after him read

Principles of Posse Management: Lessons from the Old West for Today’s Leaders