Texas Confidential by Michael Varhola

Author:Michael Varhola
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781578604593
Publisher: Clerisy Press
Published: 2011-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Revolutionary leader Pancho Villa led the forces that Ambrose Bierce joined and followed through war-torn Mexico in late 1913 and early 1914.

One theory of Ambrose Bierce’s death postulates that he was buried in the west Texas town of Marfa.

This old gringo was very sick, apparently from a cold, and was trying to fix a broken wheel on his horse cart so that he could find the rebel army that Montoya and the other soldiers were trying to get away from. After camping together, the old American man changed his plans and the next morning offered to pay the soldiers to escort him across the U.S. border to Marfa, which they agreed to do.

“During the trip they heard of different books he had written, including one that my narrator recalled with the word ‘devil’ in its title,” Sanchez continued in his letter. “He said his name in Spanish was Ambrocio.… On the second day after crossing the Rio Grande they were captured by elements of the 3rd Cavalry, who were rounding up stragglers who had crossed the border. Bierce by this time had pneumonia and could hardly speak … ”

By this time the old man was enfeebled and had lost his voice and neither he nor the federal soldiers could convince the U.S. Army cavalry troopers that he was indeed an American. Accordingly, they placed him in a wagon filled with dead and dying Mexicans, and he himself died soon after and was buried in a common grave in Marfa.

Silverstein was unable to locate the grave in question or to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the old gringo who breathed his last in Marfa in early 1914 was, indeed, Ambrose Bierce, but he was convinced that he was. It seems likely that this is the case—and, if so, then it appears that Bierce met his end not through the malice of Mexican soldiers but through the indifference of American ones.

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