Despite his life of crime and undoubted viciousness, El Vivillo has been the favourite hero of the youth of his country for more than eighteen years. This is not his first term behind prison bars; but all attempts to keep him there long have hitherto proved unsuccessful. Either by the expenditure of money in large sums, the influence of those in high places, or his own genius as a jail-breaker, he has walked out apparently when he pleased.
Like most heroes, either of fiction or reality, El Vivillo seems to have borne a charmed life. Of the reckless band of lawless characters he led during his eighteen years as premier "knight of the road," El Vivillo, with one exception, is the only one still alive. All the others have fallen in skirmishes with that very excellent and sure-shooting body of mounted police, the Civil Guards. El Vivillo's sole fellow-survivor of those strenuous times is Pajarita, his lieutenant, who is now undergoing a sentence of ninety-one years' penal servitude in Cordova prison. Pajarita yields only to his chief in his record of rascality.
A halo of romance has grown up around El Vivillo and his band. According to the general opinion among the ignorant Spaniards of the countryside, he is a sort of second Robin Hood, robbing the rich to assist the poor. Some of the stories which are told of him, and on which this view is based, are undoubtedly true, but the great majority of them are woven out of thin air by imaginative newspaper writers.
El Vivillo was born in the Andalusian town of Estepa as long ago as 1865. As a very young boy he acquired a remarkable dexterity with cards, and it was through the constant exercise of this talent that he earned the nickname by which he has always been known, to the exclusion of his family "handle." El Vivillo translated into English means "Lively Little One," and from all accounts the future bandit was a particularly "lively" youth. His parents appear to have been honest, simple folks, and made a real effort to train him for a commercial career. He was sent to Cordova to serve an apprenticeship in a business house, but his employer soon bundled him back home again because of his unruly ways. He then remained under the paternal roof until he reached the age of twenty-three, when both his parents died, and he inherited a small fortune.
THE HOUSE AT ESTEPA WHERE EL VIVILLO WAS BORN.
From a Photograph.
El Vivillo immediately started out to "paint the town red." His one idea seems to have been to get rid of his fortune in record time, and so successful was he that in two years he was penniless. At this embarrassing point in his career he fell violently in love with the girl who afterwards became his wife. She was a beautiful, dark-eyed lass, named Dolores Gomez, and had hosts of admirers. What she saw in El Vivillo to admire it is hard to say—indeed, what the scores of women who afterwards lost their hearts to the bold rascal saw in him it is equally difficult to discover. He is to-day a burly, ruddy-complexioned man, with distinctly vulgar and repulsive features, and it does not seem possible that he could ever have been attractive to feminine eyes. His manner is harsh and over-bearing, and he feels, and makes no bones about expressing, a supreme contempt for the softer passions of the heart.
With his fortune dissipated El Vivillo was in no condition to contemplate immediate marriage. He decided to remove the financial obstacle in the shortest, quickest, and easiest way. After an unsuccessful attempt to turn his skill with the cards to advantage at the Municipal Casino of his home town, he threw in his lot with a band of smugglers. The future bandit's ingenuity and nimble wit soon made him a favourite with the majority of his fellow-contrabandists, but they also aroused the jealousy of one of the leaders, nicknamed Lobo (Wolf). The latter was renowned for his dexterity with the dagger, and he took an early opportunity of attempting to prove to the newcomer that his fame in that respect was well deserved. One evening, when the members of the band were celebrating an especially successful day's work in a café in Estepa, a quarrel broke out between El Vivillo and Lobo over a game of cards. At the latter's suggestion it was decided to determine the merits of the dispute with the knife, so the two men adjourned to the street, where there was more room and a larger audience. Heated with wine, the combatants drew their long daggers, wrapped their coats around their free arms, and set to. A large crowd gathered and cheered the fighters. Much to his surprise, Lobo discovered that his opponent knew a trick or two about the use of the knife that he himself had failed to learn, and to the astonishment of the spectators, after a particularly lively mêlée, El Vivillo finally ran him through the heart with a well-directed thrust. Before he had an opportunity to get out of town El Vivillo was arrested and thrown into prison. But that mysterious personage, the influential friend, came to his assistance, and he was shortly at large again.