Waterbury Democrat., 1902-04-04

 | freighters who knew him, and re- piled insultingly, but paid for his in- suit by the passage of a 'fortyfour" bullet through his cheek.
 After that he got '.bad.''
 Depreciation 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 Val ley and Camp Verde.
 At last, after a particularly cruel ] murder, followed by the theft of one of the favorite horses at the 70 r cow ranch, he had in his rapid flight through rocky canyon broken his horses 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 sub l ject to the orders of-well-any body. 1 They know that other parties have all the other water holes within radius of hundred miles under rigid surveillance, and they know that if Juanito is anywhere within that ter ritory 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 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 tonight he had drunk | the last of it.
 Tomorrow he could stand it, if he had to, shaded as he was by the mes- quite thicket, but if the Gringo fools did not go by tomorrow night, San gre de Christo save him. he would ] have to risk 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 wa ters.
 At the first peep of dawn he awoke with dry tongue, and, after listen ing for some minutes and hearing nothing, he concluded that the hated Gringos had gone; when a horse neighed and he sank back with low groan, full we'll realizing that a day of torture was before him. His jerky was nearly gone, but that gave him but little concern; he could do with out food for several days, but water! ah, yes, water he must have, for none may live long on these arid deserts without it.
 As the sun rises, Juanito blesses his patron saint that he has the shade of the mosquitoes; here it will be possible for him to endure the day, but out there in the scorching, burning sun, carramba! no!
 Slowly the hours creep 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 1 hot breath.
 At last Juanito is desperate; he realizes the trap he is in, but no mat ter; perhaps he can succeed in get ting 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 diff ferent 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 minute, boys,'' he said, Eff he's round here he must be nightly near O water, an we'll purity sure git him tonight or tomorrow"
 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 and sand that all most blister his hands, but his trail will now be only a short one.
 At almost his first movement out side of his thicket ''Tex," his near est foe, had seen him; moment later there is a sharp crack, and Ju- anito sinks quietly down, unmarked, save by little hole>in the center of his forehead.
 A few days later, when Curly and his comrades rode up to the 70 I" ranch they were met by the foreman and squad of the -th cavalry, < whose lieutenant sneeringly said: "WelI, did you see anything of Juan ito?''
 "Yes,' replied Curly, Eve got him;" but with curious lifting of his eye brows, "he escaped. "-Los Angeles Herald.