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female, opening the door, and seeing so many armed men, raised a scream, and tried to close the door in their faces; but the rangers were too quick for her, and, tearing in, some of them caught sight of Vasquez leaping through a slit in the adobe wall.
A bullet grazed him as he sprang.
“There he goes through the window,” cried the ranger who had fired.
Lighting on his feet in the garden, Vasquez looked around, as if in doubt.
There stood his horse, if he had only time to mount.
There grew the copse, if he had only time to hide.
A second bullet struck him, and he reeled and fell.
Bounding to his feet, like a wild cat, he glared from ranch to road, from horse to copse.
A third shot smote him. Blood was flowing from his face and from his side.
The game was over; he threw up his hands.
“Selior, you have done well,” he said to the undersheriff, who arrested him; “ I have been fooled, but it is all my fault.”
He spake no more.
The rangers laid him on a pallet in the court yard, believing he was near his end. A tress of black hair and photographs of two children were found in his vest.
The lock of hair was tied in a bit of blue ribbon.
The photographs, he said, were
1875.
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