Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

A little later came a second report, this time backed by what seemed to be more credible evidence. It was said that Bierce had been at the later battle of Torreon in command of the Villista artillery, that he had taken part in the running campaign through the province of Sonora and that he had probably died of hardships and exposure in those trying days.

A California friend now came forward with the report of a talk with Bierce, said to have been held just before the author set out for Mexico. The old satirist was reported to have said that he had grown weary of the stodgy life of literature and journalism, that he wanted to wind up his career with some more glorious end than death in bed and that he had decided to go down into Mexico and find a “soldier’s grave or crawl off into some cave and die like a free beast.”

It sounded very rebellious and Byronic, but Bierce’s other friends immediately declared that it was entirely out of character. Bierce had gone to Mexico to fight and see another war. He had not gone to die. He was a fatalist. He would take whatever came, but he would not go out and seek a conclusion.

So the talk went on and the months went by. There were no scare headlines in the papers. After all, Bierce was only a distinguished man of letters.

But there was a still better reason for the lack of attention. The absence of Bierce had not yet been reported officially when the vast black cloud of war rolled up in Europe. All men’s eyes were turned to the Atlantic and the fields of Flanders. The American adventure along the Mexican border seemed trivial and grotesque. The little puff of wind in the South was forgotten before the menacing tornado in the East. What did a poet matter when the armies of the great powers were caught in their bloody embrace?

Yet Bierce was not altogether forgotten. In April, 1915, more than a year after his last letter from Chihuahua, another note, supposedly from him, was received by his daughter. It said that Major Bierce was in England on Lord Kitchener’s staff and that he was taking a prominent part in the recruiting movement in Britain. This sensation lasted ten days. Then, inquiry having been made of the British War Office, the sober report was issued that Bierce’s name did not appear on the rolls and that he certainly was not attached to Lord Kitchener’s staff.

Now, at last, the missing writer’s secretary put the touch of disaster to the fable. Miss Christianson announced in Washington that careful investigation abroad showed that Major Bierce was not fighting with the Allies, and that she and his family had been forced to the melancholy conclusion that he was dead.

But how and where? The State Department continued its inquiries in Mexico, but many private individuals also began to investigate. Journalists at the southern front tried to get trace or rumor of the man. Old friends went into the troubled region to seek what they could find. The literary world was touched both with curiosity and grief and with a romantic interest in the man’s fate. Bierce became a later Byron, and it was held he had gone forth to fight for the oppressed and found himself another Missolonghi.

Out of all this grew a vast curiosity. Probably Bierce was dead, though even this was by no means certain. There was no evidence save the fact that he had not written for more than a year, which, in view of the man’s character and the situation in which he was caught, might be no evidence at all. But, granting that he was dead, how had his end come? Where was his body? It was impossible to escape the impression that one whose life had been touched with such extraordinary color should have died without a flame. The men and women who knew and loved Bierce—and they were a considerable number—kept saying over and over to themselves that this heroic fellow could not have passed out without some signal. Surely some one had seen him die and could tell of his end and place of repose. So the quest began again.

For years, there was no fruit. Northern Mexico, where Bierce had certainly met his end, if indeed, he was dead, was no place for a hunter after bits of literary history to go wandering in. First there was the constant fighting between Huerta and the Constitutionalists. Then Huerta was eliminated and Carranza became president. There followed the various campaigns of pacification. Next Villa rebelled against his old ally, leading to a fresh going to and fro of armies. Finally the whole region was infested by marauding bands of irregular and rebellious militia, part soldiers and part bandits. To cap the climax came the invasion of Mexico by the expedition under Pershing.