t working, Billie started Pedro
Vijil to ride the line to Granados Junction, get the mail, and have a
line man sent out for repairs wherever they were needed.

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.

Dona Luz More