Prominent prisoners were getting short shrift in those days, and Orozco preserved a sullen silence. But I let him ford the river to safety. He eventually got back to Mexico City and Huerta, by way of San Antonio, Galveston and Vera Cruz. The story of his exploit at Ojinaga, the sole Federal officer to come out of it alive, unwounded, and bringing his colors with him, furnished columns of copy to _El Imparcial_ and the other papers. Friends and admirers of his who heard the lion roar at that time may find some interest in this less romantic record of his adventure. I had another account to settle with my old acquaintance, Consul Kueck of Chihuahua. During the last battle before Ojinaga an officer struck up a rifle which he saw a peon aiming at my back. The ball whistled over my head. The soldier later saw fit to confess the reason for his act. He said that a big, fat German—Kueck’s secretary, he thought—had come to him just before we left Chihuahua on our expedition and had given him 500 pesos to attempt my life. Returning to Chihuahua very soon after New Year’s, I made it my business to call on Consul Kueck. He had cleared out across the border to El Paso, just before we got in. Failing the principal, I took the liberty of arresting Kueck’s secretary inside the sacred precincts of the Foreign Club. After my adjutant and he and I had three or four hours’ private talk and he understood how likely he was to occupy the cell in Chihuahua penitentiary which had once been mine, he helped me obtain copies of certain documents in the consular archives, particularly the letter Kueck had written the American Consul affirming himself to be fully responsible for my safety, at the very time when he was setting Mercado on and telling me that he could and would do nothing for me. Once I got hold of that, I felt fairly certain that Kueck would be moderate in his dealings with me thereafter. Only Gen. Salvador Mercado stood wholly on the debit side of my account book. I had heard that he had been captured on United States soil, along with numerous other fugitive Federal officers, and had been put for safekeeping into the detention camp at El Paso. It chanced that Villa and Raul Madero went up to the border for a few days of the winter race-meet at Juarez, just across the river from El Paso. Don Raul was kind enough to invite me too, and I went along in fettle, with a new uniform. Our army was in funds and I had all the money I wanted. From Juarez it was merely a matter of crossing the international bridge to be in El Paso. I went over. I wanted to see Koglmeier, the saddler in South Santa Fe Street, and I wanted to visit the detention camp.