THE "CHIHUAHUA TIGER."

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 662, 22 April 1914, Page 3

THE "CHIHUAHUA TIGER."

GENERAL FRANCISCO VILLA. A BRUTAL BANDIT. Imagine a vicious-faced man of 35, very much in need of a shave, a person of big muscle and swaggering gait, unkempt of dress and body and crude of speech, in every way unattractive and even repulsive—then you will have a picture of the tvpe to which belongs General Francisco Villa, or, as he is better know in his hom9 State of Chihuahua, "Pancho Villa, the bandit," states the New York Times. In ths last month the news from Mexico has been news of the victories of Villa in northern Mexico Chihuahua, of his capture of historic old Ciudad Juarez, the adob9 city opposite El Pasco; his butchery of captured Federal troops, and the capture of a few days ago of Chihuahua, capital of the State of the sam 9 name. Now it is said Villa has determined to keep on going south, with Mexico City his objective point. If he wins Mexico city it is a3 certain as anything that can be that he will demand the reward that every Mexian conqueror demands and receives the Presidency of the Republic. And what a President Villa would make! Even the thought of it makes every decent-minded man in Mexico shudder, for Huerta, though cruel and brutal, is a saint compared io the outlaw of the mountains of Chihuahua.

WHAT HAPPENED TO JUAREZ. As has so often been the case, in Mexico's revolution-cursed history Juarez was the place from which began the triumphs of a rebel chieftain. Three weeks ago Ciudad Juarez fell for the sixth time in less than three years, and this time it passed to the tender mercies of Pancho Villa, upon whose head Porfiro Diaz placed a price in an effort to bring him to justice to answer for a score of crimes, eom9 involving murder. These crimes were committed in bewildering sucession in the days when Villa was an out-and-out bandit, his followers then num* bering a hundred or more of the worst characters to be found in Mexico.

When the Madero revolution started Villa was a hunted man in the fa3tnesaes of the Chihuahua mountains. His was the best hated name in that part of Mexico. "Half Indian and half beast" is how an FA Paacan once described Villa. The complste list of murders the' responsibility of which directly or indirectly rests upon the shoulders of Villa has never been written. It probably never will be. It can be stated, however, that a score is an estimate so moderate that it would make an ordainary Chihuahuan laugh. Villa started his killing of men about nine years before the fall of Diaz. ONCE A FwANCHER.

Before he became an outlaw Villa owned a small ranch in Chihuahua about 200 miles south of El Pasco, Texas. As a ranchman he was a failure, and so in course of time he became a bandit. Such he continued to be until the advent of Francisco I. Madero, jun. At that time Villa was a bandit outlaw, and the rurales of Diaz had been chasing him without success for nearly ten years. It was said that therd was not a waterhole, nor a trail, nor a cave big enough to hide in throughout the fastnesses of Chihuahua mountains that Villa and his men did not know about. It was an impossible task to capture him, as Diaz's men soon found out. But old Porfiro appreciated the menace of a live Villa, and bo the rurales kept on chasing the outlaw. When the ill clad veterans of Madero switched the war against Diaz into Chihuahua. Villa came out of his retreat and sought an interview with the rebel leader. Madero was impressed with the man, and, though appreciating to the full the bandit's vicious nature, he decided that Villa was a gold man to have around, if for nothing else than his hatred of Diaz. So Madero took Villa into the insurrectio ermy and commissioned him a colonel. That commission made possible the capture of Juarez three weeks ago and the investment of the City of Chihuanua. ViUa. who had left Chihuahua as a fugitive, wanted for murder in the first degree, because of that favour of Madero was able, ten years later, to re-enter it a conqueror.