Southern California from the first took an active part in State affairs. Edward Hunter and Charles E. Carr were the Assemblymen from this district in 1853; and the following year they were succeeded by Francis Mellus and Dr. Wilson W. Jones. Carr was a lawyer who had come in 1852; Hunter afterward succeeded Pablo de la Guerra as Marshal. Jones was the doctor who just about the time I came, while returning from a professional call at the Lugos at about sunset, nearly rode over the bleeding and still warm body of a cattle-buyer named Porter, on Alameda Street. The latter had been out to the Dominguez _rancho_, to purchase stock, and had taken along with him a Mexican named Manuel Vergara who introduced himself as an experienced interpreter and guide, but who was, in reality, a cutthroat with a record of one or two assassinations. Vergara observed that Porter possessed considerable money; and on their way back to Los Angeles shot the American from behind. Jones quickly gave the alarm; and Banning, Stanley and others of the volunteer mounted police pursued the murderer for eighty-five or ninety miles when, the ammunition of all parties being exhausted, Vergara turned on the one Vigilante who had caught up with him and, with an adroit thrust of his knife, cut the latter's bridle and escaped. In the end, however, some of Major Heintzelman's cavalry at Yuma (who had been informed by a fleet Indian hired to carry the news of the fugitive's flight) overtook Vergara and shot him dead. These volunteer police or Rangers, as they were called, were a company of one hundred or more men under command of Dr. A. W. Hope, and included such well-known early settlers as Nichols, J. G. Downey, S. C. Foster, Agustin Olvera, Juan Sepúlveda, Horace Bell, M. Keller, Banning, Benjamin Hayes, F. L. Guirado, David Alexander, J. L. Brent and I. S. K. Ogier. Under the new order of things, too, following the adoption in 1849 of a State constitution, County organization in Los Angeles was effected; and by the time I declared myself for American citizenship, several elections had been held. Benjamin Hayes was District Judge in 1853; Agustin Olvera was finishing his term as County Judge; Dr. Wilson W. Jones was County Clerk and Recorder--two offices not separated for twenty years or until 1873; Lewis Granger was County Attorney; Henry Hancock was Surveyor; Francis Mellus (who succeeded Don Manuel Garfias, once the princely owner but bad manager of the San Pasqual _rancho_), was Treasurer; A. F. Coronel was Assessor; James R. Barton was Sheriff and also Collector of Taxes; and J. S. Mallard, whose name was given to Mallard Street, was Coroner. Russell Sackett was a Justice of the Peace here when I arrived; and after a while Mallard had a court as Justice, near my store on Commercial Street. All in all, a group of rather strong men!