[adapted]

by
Ambrose Bierce

I

One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861 a soldier lay in a group of laurel bushes by the side of a road in western Virginia. He lay flat on his stomach, his feet resting on his toes, his head on his left arm.

His stretched out right hand loosely held his rifle. If not for the rather orderly position of his arms and legs and a small, regular movement of the bullet box at the back of his belt, people might have thought he was dead. He was asleep at his place of duty. But if found he would die soon after, death being the fair and legal punishment for his crime.

The patch of laurel bushes where the criminal was lying was at the bend in a road which, after going up south along a steep slope to that point, turned sharply to the west, running along the top for about one hundred yards. There it turned south again and went down in zigzags through the forest.

At the point of that second corner was a large flat rock, sticking out to the north, looking over the deep valley from which the road went up. The rock was on top of a high cliff; a stone dropped from its outer edge would fall straight down one thousand feet to the tops of the pine trees.

The place where the soldier lay was on another part of the same cliff. If he had been awake he would have had a view, not only of the short part of the road and the rock sticking out, but of the whole shape of the cliff below it. It might have made him dizzy to look.

The land was covered with trees everywhere except at the bottom of the valley to the north, where there was a small natural field, through which a stream ran, hardly visible from the edge of the valley. This open ground looked hardly larger than an ordinary front yard, but was really several acres in size.

Its green was brighter than that of the surrounding forest. Far beyond it rose a line of huge cliffs like those on which we are supposed to stand as we look at the wild scene, and through which the road had somehow climbed to the top. The shape of the valley, in fact, was such that from this point it seemed completely closed in, and one could only wonder how the road that found a way out of it had found a way into it, and where the waters of the stream that split the meadow more than a thousand feet below came from and where they went.

No country is too wild and hard; men will make it a place of war; hidden in the forest at the bottom of that war trap, where fifty men who held the exits could have starved an army until it gave up, were five groups of Federal foot soldiers. They had marched all the previous day and night and were resting.

At night they would go on the road again, climb to the place where their not loyal guard now slept, and, going down the other side of the hill, attack a camp of the enemy at about midnight. Their hope was to surprise it, for the road led to the back of it. If they failed, their situation would be very dangerous; and they would surely fail if by accident or by careful watch the enemy learned about the move.

II

The sleeping guard in the group of laurel bushes was a young man from Virginia named Carter Druse. He was the son of rich parents, an only child, and had known such comfort, good learning, and fine living as money and good taste could provide in the mountain country of western Virginia. His home was only a few miles from where he now lay. One morning he got up from the breakfast table and said, quietly but seriously: “Father, a Union group of soldiers has arrived at Grafton. I am going to join it.”

The father lifted his head like a lion, looked at the son a moment in silence, and replied: “Well, go, sir, and whatever may happen do what you think is your duty. Virginia, which you have turned your back on, must go on without you. If we both live to the end of the war, we will talk more about it. Your mother, as the doctor has told you, is very ill; at best she cannot stay with us more than a few weeks, but that time is very important. It would be better not to bother her.”

So Carter Druse, bowing with deep respect to his father, who returned the bow with a calm, polite manner that hid a breaking heart, left his childhood home to become a soldier. Because of his sense of right and his courage, by acts of loyalty and bravery, he soon won the respect of his companions and his officers; and it was because of these qualities and because he knew something about the country that he was chosen for his present dangerous duty at the farthest outpost.

Still, tiredness had been stronger than his will and he had fallen asleep. What good or bad angel came in a dream to wake him from his state of crime, who can say? Without a movement, without a sound, in the deep silence and the sleepy calm of the late afternoon, some unseen messenger of fate touched with opening finger the eyes of his mind — whispered into the ear of his spirit the secret waking word which no human lips have ever spoken, no human memory has ever recalled. He quietly raised his forehead from his arm and looked between the hiding stems of the laurel bushes, without thinking closing his right hand around the handle of his rifle.

His first feeling was a strong artistic pleasure. On a huge base, the cliff, — motionless at the far edge of the top rock and clear against the sky, — was a statue of a man on a horse, impressive and serious. The figure of the man sat on the figure of the horse, straight and like a soldier, but with the calm of a Greek god carved in marble which stops the feeling of movement.

The gray costume matched the sky behind it; the metal of the gear and straps was softened and dimmed by the shadow; the animal’s skin had no bright spots of light. A rifle, looking very short, lay across the front of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand holding it at the “grip”; the left hand, holding the rein, was invisible.

In dark shape against the sky the side view of the horse was as sharp as a small carved stone; it looked across the high air to the cliffs facing it beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly away, showed only the shape of the side of his head and beard; he was looking down to the bottom of the valley. Made to look bigger by its height against the sky and by the soldier’s strong feeling of how dangerous a near enemy was, the group appeared of heroic, almost huge, size.

For a moment Druse had a strange, not clear feeling that he had slept until the end of the war and was looking at a great work of art raised on that hill to remember the acts of a brave past of which he had been an unimportant part.

The feeling went away by a small movement of the group: the horse, without moving its feet, had pulled its body a little backward from the edge; the man stayed still as before. Wide awake and fully aware of what the situation meant, Druse now put the end of his rifle against his cheek by carefully pushing the barrel forward through the bushes, made the gun ready, and looking through the sights aimed at an important spot of the rider’s chest.

A touch on the trigger and everything would have been fine for Carter Druse. At that moment the horseman turned his head and looked toward his hidden enemy — seemed to look into his very face, into his eyes, into his brave, kind heart.

Is it then so terrible to kill an enemy in war — an enemy who has found out a secret important to the safety of yourself and your friends — an enemy more dangerous because of what he knows than all his army because of its size? Carter Druse grew pale; he shook all over, felt faint, and saw the group like statues before him as black figures, rising, falling, moving unsteadily in curved lines in a red sky. His hand fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested on the leaves where he lay. This brave gentleman and strong soldier was almost fainting because his feelings were very strong.

It did not last long; in another moment he lifted his face from the ground, his hands went back to the rifle, his first finger went to the trigger; mind, heart, and eyes were clear, his conscience and his reason were good. He could not hope to catch that enemy; to scare him would only send him running to his camp with his dangerous news.

The duty of the soldier was plain: the man must be shot dead from hiding — without warning, without a moment to prepare himself, without even a silent prayer, he must be sent to his death. But no — there is a hope; he may have noticed nothing — perhaps he is only admiring the beauty of the landscape.

If allowed, he may turn and ride carelessly away in the direction from which he came. Surely it will be possible to tell at the moment of his going away whether he knows. It may very well be that his fixed attention — Druse turned his head and looked through the depths of air downward, as from the top to the bottom of a clear sea.

He saw moving slowly across the green field a curving line of shapes of men and horses — some foolish commander was allowing the soldiers of his guard to give their animals water in the open, in clear view from twelve hilltops!

Druse looked away from the valley and looked again at the man and horse in the sky, and again it was through the sights of his rifle. But this time his aim was at the horse. In his mind, as if they were a command from God, sounded the words of his father when they said goodbye: “Whatever happens, do what you think is your duty.”

He was calm now. His teeth were closed tight but not too hard; his nerves were as calm as a sleeping baby’s — no part of his body shook; his breathing, until he stopped it to aim, was regular and slow. Duty had won; his mind had said to his body: “Be calm, be still.” He fired.

III

An officer of the Federal army, who, for adventure or to learn something, had left the hidden camp in the valley, and with no clear plan had walked to the lower edge of a small open place near the bottom of the cliff, was thinking about what he could gain by going further with his search.

At a distance of a quarter mile in front of him, but as if at a stone’s throw, rose from its edge of pine trees the huge face of rock, rising so high above him that it made him dizzy to look up to where its edge made a sharp, rough line against the sky.

It showed a clean, straight up-and-down shape against a blue sky to a point halfway down, and of far hills, almost as blue, from there to the tops of the trees at its base. Lifting his eyes to the dizzy height of its top the officer saw an amazing sight — a man on a horse riding down into the valley through the air!

Straight upright sat the rider, in a soldier’s way, with a firm seat in the saddle, a strong grip on the rein to hold his war horse from too wild a jump. From his bare head his long hair streamed up, waving like a feather. His hands were hidden in the cloud of the horse’s lifted mane. The animal’s body was as level as if every hoof step met the hard earth. Its movements were those of a wild gallop, but even as the officer looked they stopped, with all the legs thrown suddenly forward as if landing from a jump. But this was a flight!

Filled with wonder and fear by this sight of a horseman in the sky — half believing he was the chosen writer of some new end of the world, the officer was overcome by the strength of his feelings; his legs could not hold him and he fell. Almost at the same moment he heard a crashing sound in the trees — a sound that faded without an echo — and all was still.

The officer stood up, shaking. The familiar feeling of a scraped shin brought back his confused senses. He pulled himself together and ran quickly at an angle away from the cliff to a place far from the bottom of it; around there he expected to find the man; and around there he of course failed.

In the brief moment he saw it, his imagination was so affected by the grace and ease and purpose that seemed to be in the wonderful show that he did not think that the path of the horsemen in the air is straight down, and that he could find what he was looking for at the very bottom of the cliff. Half an hour later he returned to camp.

This officer was a wise man; he knew better than to tell a truth that was too hard to believe. He said nothing of what he had seen. But when the commander asked him if in his scouting trip he had learned anything that would help the mission he answered:

“Yes, sir; there is no road going down into this valley from the south.”

The leader, who knew better, smiled.

IV

After firing his shot, Private Carter Druse reloaded his rifle and went back to his watch. Only ten minutes had passed when a Federal sergeant crawled carefully to him on hands and knees. Druse did not turn his head or look at him, but lay without moving or any sign that he noticed him.

“Did you shoot?” the sergeant said quietly.

“Yes.”

“At what?”

“A horse. It was standing on that rock over there — very far out. You see, it is not there now. It went over the cliff.”

The man’s face was white, but he showed no other sign of feeling. After he answered, he turned his eyes away and said no more. The sergeant did not understand.

“Listen, Druse,” he said, after a short silence, “there is no point keeping it secret. I order you to tell me. Was there anybody on the horse?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“My father.”

The sergeant stood up and walked away. “Good God!” he said.