Pascual Orozco and Victoriano Huerta, the original "odd couple" of the Mexican Revolution, were arrested in southern New Mexico on Jun. 27, 1915 and taken to Fort Bliss for temporary safekeeping.

By 1910 Mexicans from all walks of life realized the Porifirio Diaz dictatorship was on its last legs, everyone, except the 80 year old tyrant who had ruled the country with an iron fist for 25 years. The people's hope for peaceful change was dashed by the dictator, who reneged on a promise to abide by the outcome of a fair and democratic election.

Mexicans knew in their hearts that Francisco Madero, a reform-minded intellectual, had been the voters' overwhelming choice. Yet Diaz had the audacity to declare himself the winner with a nearly unanimous mandate.

That was the last straw for mildmannered Madero. From his homeaway from-home in San Antonio, the favorite gathering place of Mexican exiles, he called for the armed overthrow of the Diaz regime in November 1910.

The poorly planned uprising was a colossal failure. However, it did succeed in fanning the flames in Chihuahua, where Abraham Gonzales channeled bitter resentment against the local elite into an honest-to-goodness rebellion.

A thinker not a fighter, Gonzales put former mule-teamster Pascual Orozco in charge of military matters. In "Fire and Blood," his brilliant history of Mexico, T.R. Fehrenbach describes Orozco as "a moody, unprincipled, packtrain operator who had a genius for guerilla warfare in the mountains and desert."

Though only 28 at the time, Orozco already grasped the necessity of making do with the human resources at hand. Among the many bandits he recruited for his guerilla force was a cattle rustler and killer named Doreto Arango, who reinvented himself as the Robin Hood figure called Pancho Villa.

Orozco and his ready-made rebels recorded the revolution's first victory over government troops in late November 1912 and a month later seized control of Ciudad Guerrero. He collected the hats and uniforms of Diaz defenders slain in a January 1911 skirmish and sent the bloody clothing to the dictator with the message "Here are the wrappers, send me more tamales."

Madero rewarded Orozco with quick promotions to colonel and brigadier general but not a place in his cabinet. Even after Orozco and Villa handed him Ciudad Juarez on a silver platter, he picked somebody else for the post of minister of war.

Decrepit Diaz may have been out of touch with reality but not his aides. They forced him to resign on May 25, 1911 and physically put him on a ship bound for Europe.

A cheering crowd of 30,000 lined the dusty streets of Chihuahua City welcome back their hero. Pascual Orozco was the toast of his hometown, but in Mexico City he was viewed with increasing suspicion that turned out to be well-founded.

Shortly before declaring himself an enemy of the Madero state in March 1912, Orozco sent his father with an under-the-table offer to Villa. If the reformed rustler agreed to sit out the rest of the revolution north of the border, he would pay him $300,000 pesos.

Orozco was puzzled by Villa's angry and indignant refusal. He could be bought, as his recent acceptance of a big bribe from wealthy landowners showed, and thought everyone else was for sale too.

The Orozco revolt lasted a mere six months. He was no match for Victoriano Huerta on the battlefield or the American embargo on weapons shipments. Beaten and wounded, he fled for his life across the Rio Grande in September 1912.

The corrupt Huerta proved to be a man after his own heart. The general who saved Madero from Orozco ordered his back-street execution on Feb. 22, 1913 and took his place.

As the price he had to pay for a return trip to Mexico, Orozco sided with Huerta. United in their fury over the coldblooded murder of Madero, all the rival factions put aside their differences to drive the usurper and his lap dog from power. By January 1914, Orozco was back in the United States and six months later Huerta joined him.

The two former foes met in New York City in May 1915 and plotted their comeback. But their arrest that June by federal authorities put a stop to their pipe-dream plans, and after a short stay at Fort Bliss, the pair was released and restricted under house arrest to the city limits of El Paso.

Orozco vanished on Jul. 3 and for eight weeks was the subject of a Southwest-wide manhunt. On Aug. 29 a posse of federal marshals, deputy sheriffs, Texas Rangers and cavalrymen tracked four suspected horse thieves to Green River Canyon in the Van Horn Mountains. Not until the shooting was over did they realize they had killed Pascual Orozco.

Victoriano Huerta also died on Texas soil but not under such dramatic circumstances. He succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver in an El Paso jail five months after his strange bedfellow's - as in "politics make for" -- last stand.

Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549. And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!