Now the rumoring began. First came the report that Bierce had really gone to Mexico to join Villa, whose reputation as a guerrilla fighter had attracted the veteran, and whose emissaries were said to have asked Bierce to join the so-called bandit as a military aide. Bierce, it was reported, had joined Villa and had been with that commander in Chihuahua just before the battle there, in which the rebel forces were unsuccessful. Possibly Bierce had fallen in action. This story was soon discarded on the ground that Villa, had Bierce been on his staff, would certainly have reported the death of so widely-known a man and one so close to himself. 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?