A real photo postcard documenting one of the most viscerally charged subjects produced by Walter H. Horne, the American photographer and postcard publisher who operated out of El Paso, Texas from 1910 until his death in 1921. Horne built a commercial enterprise around photographic documentation of the Mexican Revolution and its border-region violence, selling postcards of battles, casualties, and executions to a public hungry for images from the conflict. This card, bearing the W.H. Horne Co. copyright imprint and catalog number 3015, almost certainly dates from the 1916 period when Horne was most active in documenting Punitive Expedition subjects following Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico.

The image shows the body of a man described in bold script on the card face as "The Body of a Mexican Bandit Leader," propped upright on sandy ground, barefoot, wearing a plain open-collar jacket and light trousers. A smiling soldier in campaign hat and field shirt sits beside the body with his arm around it, while a second man in a wide-brimmed hat stands behind. Tent canvas and camp gear are visible in the background, placing the scene in a military field encampment.

Horne purchased a camera after arriving in El Paso and built a business selling postcards of battles and border-war scenes; by 1916 he was paying Mexican military members for access to document executions. When Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico, Horne was the first photographer on the scene, and cards from this period rank among the most historically significant and sought-after of his output.

The reverse bears a standard undivided-style "POST CARD" back with "Correspondence Here" and "Name and Address Here" fields; no correspondence or address is present. The copyright notice on the image face reads: "W.H. Horne Co. / Copyrighted. / El Paso, Tex. / 3015."