ormer guerrilla chieftains was Francisco
Villa, an old-time bandit, who now rejoiced in the honorary rank of a
Colonel. Villa had appropriated a splendid Arab stallion, originally
imported by a Spanish horse-breeder with a ranch near Chihuahua City.
General Huerta coveted this horse, and one day, after an unusually
lively carouse at general headquarters, he sent a squad of soldiers to
bring the horse out of Villa's corral to his own stable. The old bandit
took offense at this, and came stalking into headquarters to make a
personal remonstrance. He was put under arrest, and Huerta forthwith
sentenced him to be shot. That same day the sentence was to be put into
execution. Villa was already facing the firing squad, and the officer
in charge had given the command to load, when President Madero's
brother, Emilio, who was serving on Huerta's staff in an advisory
capacity, put a stop to the execution by taking Villa under his
personal protection. President Madero was telegraphed to, and
immediately replied, reprieving Villa's sentence, and ordering him to
be sent to Mexico City pending further official investigation.

This act of interference infuriated Huerta. For the moment he had to
content himself with formulating a long string of serious charges
against Villa, ranging from military insubordination to burglary,
highway robbery, and rape. It was even given out at headquarters that
Villa had struck his commanding general.

Huerta never forgave the Madero brothers for their part in this affair,
and his resentment was fanned to white heat, subsequently, when
Francisco Villa was allowed to escape scot-free from his prison in
Mexico City.

Meanwhile Huerta kept telegraphing to President Madero for more
reenforcements of men, munitions, and supplies, more engines, more
railway trains and tank cars, and, above all, for more artillery.
Madero kept sending them, though it cost his Government a new loan of
forty million dollars. Every other day or so a new train, with fresh
supplies, arrived at the front.

At the end of several more weeks, when Orozco had slowly retreated
half-way through the State of Chihuahua, and when he found that the
destruction of the big seven-span bridge over the Conchos River at
Santa Rosalia did not permanently stop Huerta's advance, he reluctantly
decided to make another stand at the deep cut of Bachimba, just south
of Chihuahua City. This was in July.

By this time General Huerta's Federal column h