Arizona republican., 1916-01-21
VILLA CAPTURED
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vazos was advancing from the south west
 The circumstantal reports that Francisco Villa, the military chief tain who recently has been declared a bandit by Gen. Carranza, has been captured at Madeira, Chihuahua, lack official confirmation up to 9:3Ol tonight
 Mexican authorities at Chihuahua City tonight were silent on the re- ported capture. The report, however, came from sources. the reliability of which was demonstrated in correct reports regarding the massacre of the IS foreigners at Santa Ysabel on January 10.
 Hacienda San Geronimo is on the boundary of the Hearst property named the Barhicora ranch. near the railroad station of San Tomas, south east of Madeira.
 Herrera Makes Denial
 CHIHUAHUA, Jan. 20.-General Luis Herrera in supreme command of the Carranza forces here late to- night, flatly denied the truth of the
 
 Villa at the San Geronimo ranch. All is quiet in Chihuahua City. General Jacinto Trevino and his staff left tonight at 8 o'clock for the south.
 Hear Report in Washington
 WASHINGTON, Jan. 20.-Reports from the border that General Villa had been captured were heard with eager interest tonight in official and diplomatic circles but up to late hour no official information on the subject had come to either the state department or the Mexican embassy.
 That Francisco Villa would be pres ident of Mexico or die in the attempt, was a prediction made more than two years ago by some of his close friends. With Villas taking of Torreon,, the Huerta stronghold, in April 1914, ob- servers of Mexican affairs discovered that the "unlettered bandit general was a born genius as a strategist and commander. and from the time of his first prominence as a follower of the constiutionalist chief Carranza there appeared the possibility that he would some day completely overshadow this mild hammered old lawyer general as leader in Mexico.
 However familiar his name Villa has never ceased to be an enigma Those who have seen the worst side of him have never pictured him better than d primitive man, still the red handed | bandit he was years ago. Others saw him Saviour of Mexico"
 Sketchng what is most interesting about Villa rather than what, perhaps, | is the most veracious, there is the romantic story of how he turned ban dit Born in 1868, in the little mining town of Las Nieves, in the state of | Durango, he remained there until the death of his father. Then, as a protec- | tor of his mother and sister he be- came a cowboy in western Chihuahua | From their parents, who were peons | of northern Mexico (some accounts say i of a very good family) the children had inherited Spanish and Indian | blood and traits. The story is that when a regiment of Porfiro Diaz sold CTS once visited the town, the eyes of l a captain alighted on Villa sister There was an elopement without marriage. l The most melodramatic accounts say that Villa galloped after the elopers, | caught them and arranged their mar riage Then he told the newly ac- quired brotherinlaw to sign his own death certificate, dig his own grave, anl lie beside it. Villa shot the bride groom and rolled him into the grave. | President DiaZ, hearing of his officers death, set price on Villas head Whatever the exact truth, something l of this sort occurred
 Villa escaped to the mountains and became a bandit. His real name had | been Doreteo Orange, but as a ban dit he became known as Francisco and Rancho" Villa. He gathered together a number of desperate men of the northern mountain country and within a few months his name was the terror of the region. He was Robin Hood in carnate. He and his band subsisted by robbery and pillage on the Chihuahua | mountains.
 l According to the more generous es- inmates of Villas life at this time. his l outlaWry was rather in the form ot guerilla warfare than actual brigand | age, for the purpose of satisfying his revenge upon the distator, Diaz Al the outbreak of the Madero revolt against DiaZ in 1910, Villa, unasked cast his lot with the Maderists, anC rendered such valuable aid that Ma derO was forced to recognize the peor commander When Madero sent Gen. eral Huerta into the north to comba the OroZco rebellion, Villa and Huerts came to d clash. They were mucf alike. Each contemptuous of the oth- CT. Huerta had Villa arrested and con- demned to death by a military cOur for insubordination, but Madero's deb to Villa saved him from this extreme penalty. He was taken to Mexico City as prisoner, readily escaped ant pushed hls way north again, seekins refuge across the Texas border.
 Villas rise to fame dates from thu day-a little less than two years ago when he started across the Rio Grand, with two companions, six borrowed
 horses. $7 in money, and a meager sup
 ply of beans, coffee and sugar. Les