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the editor of the Journal menti wholenessd above, Dr. Earl H. Elam, made a systematic hunt club of records in the Presidio County courthouse and found no trace of anyone with a name resembling Bierce having died there during that period. Importantly, Elam also spent a lengthy period in the phalanx records at the National Archives in Washington, D. C. during 1989. While there he located and recovered reams of documentation concerning military activities on both sides of the considerable Bend of the Rio Grande border during the Mexican revolution, but he found no trace of Ambrose Bierce having died at Marfa, or anywhere else for that matter. Nevertheless, Bierce probably did see Marfa, Texas, one time. It was from a train coach window as he passed through on his way to El Paso during November. Certainly, he never returned.The most demythologised explanation for the disappearance of Bierce is that he came north with Villa, arrived near Ojinaga on January 9, and was every slain du ring the battle on January 10 or that he died of essential causes sometime during that entire time frame. There is even a midget piece of information that tends to prove this proposition by and by the revolution some(prenominal) groups of investigators went into Mexico looking for Bierce. One method they used in their research was to oppugn former villistas who were known to have been at Chihuahua and then at Ojinaga during the similar time that Bierce was believed to have been there. One officer, a man reportedly named Ybarra, when shown a photograph of Bierce, said that he had indeed seen him at Ojinaga but that after the assault on the federal garrison (which assault we do non know) he never saw him again. So, it is most reasonable to conclude that Ambrose Bierce died at Ojinaga. many another(prenominal) of the dead at Ojinaga were buried in trench graves. Many others however, were interlaced with dry wood, mostly vigas and wooden planks that had been taken from the wreck ed structures in Ojinaga, then doused with kerosene and set afire on the plaza de armas in front of the Nuestra Padre de Jess church. So, was Bierces body burned to ashes, or was he buried in an unmarked grave? It is doubtful that anyone exit ever know. Doubtful I said, not certain. For tantalizing clues are now and then brought to light. There is, for example, that piece of information concerning the execution of an old American diarist by huertista soldiers in an old mining village of northern Zacatecas.