Nor do the other details ring true. If the captured Americano was Ambrose Bierce, one of two things must have happened. Either he would have resorted, to save his life, to invective and persuasiveness, for which he was remarkable, or he must have shrugged and been resigned. This Bierce was too old, too cynical, too tired of living and pretending for valedictory heroics. And he was too much of a soldier to wince. For this and another reason the story of his execution will not go down. Unhappily, the tale of a distinguished victim of the firing squad asking that his face be not disfigured is a piece of standard Mexican romance. According to the tradition of that country, the Emperor Maximilian, when he faced his executioners at Queretaro, begged that he be shot through the body, so that his mother might look upon his face again. Hence, I suspect the soldierly Mexican _raconteur_ of having been guilty of a romantic anachronism, perhaps an unconscious substitution. If the man whom Urbina shot had been Ambrose Bierce, he would neither have knelt, nor made the pitiful gesture of asking the inviolateness of his face. Adolphe de Castro, who won a lawsuit in 1926 compelling the publishers of a collected edition of Bierce’s writings to recognize him as the co-author of “The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter,” has within the year published a version of Bierce’s end[11] that has some of the same elements in it. Bierce, says de Castro, was shot by Villa’s soldiers at the guerilla leader’s command. Here is the story condensed: [11] “Ambrose Bierce as He Really Was,” _The American Parade_, October, 1926. Bierce was with Villa at the taking of Chihuahua in 1913. After this fight there was nothing for the novelist-soldier to do and he took to drinking _tequila_, a liquor which causes those who drink it any length of time to turn blue. (Sic!) Bierce had with him a peon who understood a little English and acted as valet and cup companion. When he was in his mugs Bierce talked too much, complained of inactivity and criticised Villa. One drunken night he suggested to the peon that they desert to Carranza. Someone overheard this prattle and carried it to Villa, who had the peon tortured till he confessed the truth. He was released and instructed to carry out the plan with the Gringo. That night, as they started to leave Chihuahua, the writer and his peon were overtaken by a squad, shot down “and left for the vultures.” Though Vincent Starrett[12] records that Villa flew into a rage when questioned about Bierce, a reaction looked upon by some as confirming Villa’s guilt, others have pointed out objections that seem insuperable. The break between Carranza and Villa did not follow until a long time after the battle of Chihuahua, they point out, and Bierce must have been alive all the while without writing a letter or sending a word of news to anyone. Possible but improbable, is the verdict of those who knew him most intimately.