It was puzzling because there had been no storm, nothing of which they knew to account for the silent wire. The line was an independent one from the Junction, and there were only two stations on it, the Jefferson ranch and Granados.
But Vijil forgot about the wire, for he met some sheep men from the hills carrying the body of Singleton. They had found him in the cottonwoods below the road not five miles from the hacienda. His car he had driven off the road back of a clump of thick mesquite. The revolver was still in his hand, and the right temple covered with black blood and flies.
There was nothing better to do than what the herders were doing. The man had been dead a day and must be buried, also it was necessary to send a man to Jefferson’s, where there was a telephone, to get in touch with someone in authority and arrange for the funeral.
So the herders walked along with their burden carried in a serape, and covered by the carriage robe. Pedro had warned them to halt at his own house, for telephone calls would certainly gather men, who would help to arrange all decently before the body was taken into the sala of Granados.
There is not much room for conjecture as to the means of a man’s taking off when he is found with a bullet in his right temple, a revolver in his right hand, and only one empty cartridge shell in the revolver. There seemed no mystery about the death, except the cause of suicide.
It was the same evening that Conrad riding in from the south, attempted to speak over the wire with Granados and got from Central information that the Granados wire was broken, and Singleton, the proprietor, a suicide.
The coroner’s inquest so pronounced it, after careful investigation of the few visible facts. Conrad was of no value as a witness because he had been absent in Magdalena. He could surmise no reason for such an act, but confessed he knew practically nothing of Singleton’s personal affairs. He was guardian of his stepdaughter and her estate, and so far as Conrad knew all his relations with the personnel of the estate were most amicable. Conrad acknowledged when questioned that Singleton did usually carry a revolver when out in the car, he had a horror of snakes, and he had never known him to use a gun for anything else.
Doña Luz Moreno confused matters considerably by her statement that Mr. Singleton was going to meet some man at the Jefferson ranch because the man had called him up before breakfast to arrange it. Later it was learned that no call was made from any station over the wire that morning to Granados. There was in fact several records of failure to get Granados. No one but Doña Luz had heard the call and heard Singleton reply, yet it was not possible that this communication could be a fact over a broken wire, and the wire was found broken between the Jefferson ranch and Granados.
Whereupon word promptly went abroad among the Mexicans that Señor Singleton had been lured to his death by a spirit voice calling over a broken wire as a friend to a friend. For the rest of her life Doña Luz will have that tale to tell as the evidence of her own ears that warnings of death do come from the fearsome spirits of the shadowed unknown land,––and this in denial of all the padres’ godly discourse to the contrary!
A Mr. Frederick James of Nogales, connected with a group of charitable gentlemen working for the alleviating of distress among the many border exiles from Mexico, was the only person who came forward voluntarily to offer help to the coroner regarding the object of the dead man’s journey to Nogales. Mr. James had been called on the telephone by Mr. Singleton, who was apparently in great distress of mind concerning mysterious illness and deaths of horses shipped from Granados to France. A telegram had come from New York warning him that the Department of Justice was investigating the matter, and the excitement and nervousness of Mr. Singleton was such that Mr. James readily consented to a meeting in Nogales, with the hope that he might be of service in any investigation they would decide upon after consultation. When Mr. Singleton did not keep the engagement, Mr. James attempted to make inquiries by telephone. He tried again the following morning, but it was only after hearing of the suicide––he begged pardon––the death of Mr. Singleton, that he recalled the fact that all of Singleton’s discourse over the telephone had been unusual, excitable to a degree, while all acquaintances of the dead man knew him as a quiet, reserved man, really unusually reserved, almost to the point of the secretive. Mr. James was struck by the unusual note of panic in his tones, but as a carload of horses was of considerable financial value, he ascribed the excitement in part to that, feeling confident of course that Mr. Singleton was in no ways accountable for the loss, but–––