JUANITO.

Waikato Independent, Volume V, Issue 323, 12 January 1907, Page 3

JUANITO.

By A. L. UNGER.

Depredation and murder followed each other rapidly; now here, now there; until he had left his earmarks over nearly all of the central and southern part of the territory, and even as far north as near Skull Valley and Camp Verde. At last, after a particularly cruel murder, followed by the theft of one of the favorite horses at the “Q I” cow ranch, he had in his rapid flight through a rocky canyon broken his horse’s leg and had to walk to this, the nearest water, and now he sleeps peacefully, expecting that in the morning the cowboys will ride away. But Juanito is reckoning without his host, and his hunters are not subject to the orders of —well—anybody. They know that other parties have all the other water holes within a radius of a hundred miles under rigid surveillance, and they know that ii Juanito is anywhere within that territory he must come soon to water. All they have to do is to keep an unfailing watch on the water hole, and sooner or later Juanito, if near, will come; but Juanito had not been used to that kind of a hunt, and has been wondering for the past two days what could possibly keep those idiot Gringo’s in his way. And now, at the end of the third day, his water is all gone. The last two days it has been unsavory, for water does not keep sweet long in Arizona, but while it lasted it was at least wet, but to-night he had drunk the last of it. To-morrow he could stand it, if he had to, shaded as he was by the mesquite thicket, but if the Gringo fools did not go by to-morrow night, “Sangre de Christo save him,” he would have to risk a trip to the water hole. So Juanito reasoned with himself as he prepared to go to sleep; a sleep that was filled with troubled dreams, and pictures of flowing waters. At the first, peep of dawn he awoke with a dry tongue, and, after listening for some minutes and hearing nothing, he concluded that the hated Gringos had gone; when a horse neighed and he sank back with a low groan, full well realizing that a day of torture was before him. His jerky was nearly gone, but that gave him but little concern; he could do without food for several days, but water! ah, yes, water he must have, for none maj r live long on these arid deserts without it. As the sun rises, Juanito blesses his patron saint that he has the shade of the mesquites; here it will be possible for him to endure the day, but out there in the scorching, burning sun, carramba! no! Slowly the hours c'reep by, but the sun seems to get hotter very fast, and Juanito’s blood gets more fiery as it courses more rapidly through his veins, while his tongue gets more and more dry and parched with each hot breath. At last Juanito is desperate; he realizes the trap he is in, but no matter; perhaps he can succeed in getting to the water hole unseen, but if not—well—death from a bullet is far better than this torture that he knows will get a thousand fold worse as the day wears on; and if he fails —he has his trusty Marlin, and no doubt he can at least make the score an even one. Meanwhile the cowboys have not relaxed their vigilance. Just before, the moonrise the night before they had silently gathered from their different points of surveillance and in low whispers discussed the situation; Curly, the leader, giving it as his opinion that if the Greaser” was there he would soon show up. Don’t break away for a minute, boys,” he said, “if he’s round here he must be mightly near o’ water, an’ we’ll purty sure git him to-night or to-morrow.” So they had silently, crawled back to their posts, where in pairs one was ever on the alert. ' Thinking of the water that means life to him, Juanito slowly creeps out from his thicket into the scorching sunshine, and through the no less scorching rocks ar*J sand that almost blister his htinds, but his trail will now be only a short one. At almost his first movement outside of his thicket “Tex,” his nearest foe, had seen him; a moment later there is a sharp crack, and Juanito sinks quietly down, unmarked, save by a little hole in the center of his forehead. A few days later, when Curly and his comrades rode up to the “Q I” ranch they were met by the foreman and a squad of the —th » cavalry, whose lieutenant sneeringly said: “Well, did you see anything of Juanito ?«” "Yes,” replied Curly, “we got him;” hut with a curious lifting of his eyebrows, “he escaped.”—Los Angeles Herald.