torial which was
deplored by many prominent business men, he pointed out that unpunished
murderers were all too common in the State. He cited several cases like
this of Don Delcasar in which prominent men had been assassinated, and no
arrest had followed. Thus, only a few years before, Col. Manuel Escudero
had been killed by a shot fired through the window of a saloon, and still
more recently Don Solomon Estrella had been found drowned in a vat of
sheep-dip on his own ranch. He cited statistics to show that the
percentage of convictions in murder trials in that State was exceedingly
small. Daringly, he asked how the citizens could expect to attract to the
State the capital so much needed for its development, when assassination
for personal and political purposes was there tolerated much as it had
been in Europe during the Middle Ages. He ended by a plea that the Mounted
Police should be strengthened, so that it would be capable of coping with
the situation.

This editorial started a controversy between the two papers which
ultimately quite eclipsed in interest the fact that Don Delcasar was dead.
The _Morning Journal_ declared that the _Herald_ editorial was in effect a
covert attack upon the Mexican people, pointing out that all the cases
cited were those of Mexicans, and it came gallantly and for political
reason to the defence of the race. At this point the _"__Tribuna del
Pueblo__"_ of Old Town jumped into the fight with an editorial in which it
was asserted that both the gringo papers were maligning the Mexican
people. It pointed out that the gringos controlled the political machinery
of the State, and that if murder was there tolerated the dominant race was
to blame.

Meanwhile the known facts about the murder of Don Delcasar remained few,
simple and unilluminating. About once a month the Don used to drive in his
automobile to his lands in the northern part of the State. He always took
the road across the _mesa_, which passed near the mouth of Domingo Canyon
and through the scissors pass, and he nearly always went alone.

When he was half way across the _mesa_, the front tires of the Don's car
had been punctured by nails driven through a board and hidden in the sand
of the road. Evidently the Don had risen to alight and investigate when he
had been shot, for his body had been found hanging across the wind-shield
of the car with a bullet hole through the head.

The discovery of the body had been made by a Mexica