A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY
One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861, a soldier lay ina clump of laurel by the side of a road in Western Virginia. He lay atfull length, upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, hishead upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped hisrifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and aslight rhythmic movement of the cartridge-box at the back of his belt,he might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post ofduty. But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, that being thejust and legal penalty of his crime.
The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a roadwhich, after, ascending, southward, a steep acclivity to that point,turned sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps onehundred yards. There it turned southward again and went zigzaggingdownward through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was alarge flat rock, jutting out northward, overlooking the deep valley fromwhich the road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone droppedfrom its outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feetto the tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on anotherspur of the same cliff. Had he been awake, he would have commanded aview, not only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock, butof the entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made himgiddy to look.
The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valleyto the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through whichflowed a stream scarcely visible from the valley's rim. This open groundlooked hardly larger than an ordinary dooryard, but was really severalacres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the inclosingforest. Away beyond it rose a line of giant cliffs similar to those uponwhich we are supposed to stand in our survey of the savage scene, andthrough which the road had some how made its climb to the summit. Theconfiguration of the valley, indeed, was such that from this pointof observation it seemed entirely shut in, and one could not but havewondered how the road which found a way out of it had found a way intoit, and whence came and whither went the waters of the stream thatparted the meadow two thousand feet below.
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater ofwar; concealed in the forest at the bottom of that military rat-trap, inwhich half a hundred men in possession of the exits might have starvedan army to submission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry. They hadmarched all the previous day and night, and were resting. At nightfallthey would take to the road again, climb to the place where theirunfaithful sentinel now slept, and, descending the other slope of theridge, fall upon a camp of the enemy at about midnight. Their hope wasto surprise it, for the road led to the rear of it. In case of failure,their position would be perilous in the extreme; and fail they surelywould, should accident or vigilance apprise the enemy of the movement.
The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel was a young Virginian namedCarter Druse. He was the son of wealthy parents, an only child, and hadknown such ease and cultivation and high living as wealth and taste wereable to command in the mountain country of Western Virginia. His homewas but a few miles from where he now lay. One morning he had risenfrom the breakfast table and said, quietly but gravely: "Father, a Unionregiment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to join it."
The father lifted his leonine head, looked at the son a moment insilence, and replied: "Well, go, sir, and, whatever may occur, do whatyou conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which you are a traitor, mustget on without you. Should we both live to the end of the war, we willspeak further of the matter. Your mother, as the physician has informedyou, is in a most critical condition; at the best, she cannot be with uslonger than a few weeks, but that time is precious. It would be betternot to disturb her."
So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to his father, who returned thesalute with a stately courtesy which masked a breaking heart, left thehome of his childhood to go soldiering. By conscience and courage, bydeeds of devotion and daring, he soon commended himself to his fellowsand his officers; and it was to these qualities and to some knowledge ofthe country that he owed his selection for his present perilous dutyat the extreme outpost. Nevertheless, fatigue had been stronger thanresolution, and he had fallen asleep. What good or bad angel came ina dream to rouse him from his state of crime, who shall say? Without amovement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languorof the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched withunsealing finger the eyes of his consciousness--whispered into the earof his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips everhave spoken, no human memory ever has recalled. He quietly raisedhis forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of thelaurels, instinctively closing his right hand about the stock of hisrifle.
His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal,the cliff,--motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rockand sharply outlined against the sky,--was an equestrian statue ofimpressive dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse,straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carved inthe marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The gray costumeharmonized with its aerial background; the metal of accoutrement andcaparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin hadno points of high light. A carbine, strikingly foreshortened, lay acrossthe pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping itat the "grip"; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible.In silhouette against the sky, the profile of the horse was cut withthe sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to theconfronting cliffs beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly away,showed only an outline of temple and beard; he was looking downward tothe bottom of the valley. Magnified by its lift against the sky and bythe soldier's testifying sense of the formidableness of a near enemy,the group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size.
For an instant Druse had a strange, half-defined feeling that he hadslept to the end of the war and was looking upon a noble work of artreared upon that commanding eminence to commemorate the deeds of anheroic past of which he had been an inglorious part. The feeling wasdispelled by a slight movement of the group: the horse, without movingits feet, had drawn its body slightly backward from the verge; theman remained immobile as before. Broad awake and keenly alive to thesignificance of the situation, Druse now brought the butt of his rifleagainst his cheek by cautiously pushing the barrel forward through thebushes, cocked the piece, and, glancing through the sights, covered avital spot of the horseman's breast. A touch upon the trigger and allwould have been well with Carter Druse. At that instant the horsemanturned his head and looked in the direction of his concealedfoeman--seemed to look into his very face, into his eyes, into hisbrave, compassionate heart.
Is it, then, so terrible to kill an enemy in war--an enemy who hassurprised a secret vital to the safety of one's self and comrades--anenemy more formidable for his knowledge than all his army for itsnumbers? Carter Druse grew pale; he shook in every limb, turned faint,and saw the statuesque group before him as black figures, rising,falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky. His handfell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face restedon the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardysoldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion.
It was not for long; in another moment his face was raised from earth,his hands resumed their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought thetrigger; mind, heart and eyes were clear, conscience and reason sound.He could not hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him would but sendhim dashing to his camp with his fatal news. The duty of the soldier wasplain: the man must be shot dead from ambush--without warning, withouta moment's spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspokenprayer, he must be sent to his account. But no--there is a hope; he mayhave discovered nothing; perhaps he is but admiring the sublimity ofthe landscape. If permitted, he may turn and ride carelessly away inthe direction whence he came. Surely it will be possible to judge atthe instant of hi
s withdrawing whether he knows. It may well be that hisfixity of attention---Druse turned his head and looked through the deepsof air downward as from the surface of the bottom of a translucent sea.He saw creeping across the green meadow a sinuous line of figures of menand horses--some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers of hisescort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a hundredsummits!
Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley and fixed them again upon thegroup of man and horse in the sky, and again it was through the sightsof his rifle. But this time his aim was at the horse. In his memory,as if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at theirparting: "Whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty." Hewas calm now. His teeth were firmly but not rigidly closed; his nerveswere as tranquil as a sleeping babe's--not a tremor affected any muscleof his body; his breathing, until suspended in the act of taking aim,was regular and slow. Duty had conquered; the spirit had said to thebody: "Peace, be still." He fired.
An officer of the Federal force, who, in a spirit of adventure or inquest of knowledge, had left the hidden bivouac in the valley, and, withaimless feet, had made his way to the lower edge of a small open spacenear the foot of the cliff, was considering what he had to gain bypushing his exploration further. At a distance of a quarter-mile beforehim, but apparently at a stone's throw, rose from its fringe of pinesthe gigantic face of rock, towering to so great a height above him thatit made him giddy to look up to where its edge cut a sharp, ruggedline against the sky. At some distance away to his right it presented aclean, vertical profile against a background of blue sky to a point halfthe way down, and of distant hills hardly less blue, thence to the topsof the trees at its base. Lifting his eyes to the dizzy altitude of itssummit, the officer saw an astonishing sight--a man on horseback ridingdown into the valley through the air!
Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat inthe saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from tooimpetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward,waving like a plume. His hands were concealed in the cloud of thehorse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level as if everyhoof-stroke encountered the resistant earth. Its motions were those ofa wild gallop, but even as the officer looked they ceased, with all thelegs thrown sharply forward as in the act of alighting from a leap. Butthis was a flight!
Filled with amazement and terror by this apparition of a horseman in thesky-half believing himself the chosen scribe of some new apocalypse, theofficer was overcome by the intensity of his emotions; his legs failedhim and he fell. Almost at the same instant he heard a crashing sound inthe trees--a sound that died without an echo--and all was still.
The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The familiar sensation of anabraded shin recalled his dazed faculties. Pulling himself together,he ran obliquely away from the cliff to a point distant from its foot;thereabout he expected to find his man; and thereabout he naturallyfailed. In the fleeting instant of his vision his imagination had beenso wrought upon by the apparent grace and ease and intention of themarvelous performance that it did not occur to him that the line ofmarch of aerial cavalry is directly downward, and that he could find theobjects of his search at the very foot of the cliff. A half-hour laterhe returned to camp.
This officer was a wise man; he knew better than to tell an incredibletruth. He said nothing of what he had seen. But when the commanderasked him if in his scout he had learned anything of advantage to theexpedition, he answered:
"Yes, sir; there is no road leading down into this valley from thesouthward."
The commander, knowing better, smiled.
After firing his shot, Private Carter Druse reloaded his rifle andresumed his watch. Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Federal sergeantcrept cautiously to him on hands and knees. Druse neither turned hishead nor looked at him, but lay without motion or sign of recognition.
"Did you fire?" the sergeant whispered.
"At what?"
"A horse. It was standing on yonder rock-pretty far out. You see it isno longer there. It went over the cliff."
The man's face was white, but he showed no other sign of emotion. Havinganswered, he turned away his eyes and said no more. The sergeant did notunderstand.
"See here, Druse," he said, after a moment's silence, "it's no usemaking a mystery. I order you to report. Was there anybody on thehorse?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
"My father."
The sergeant rose to his feet and walked away. "Good God!" he said.
Here ends No. Four of the Western Classics containing A Son of the Godsand A Horseman in the Sky by Ambrose Bierce with an introduction byW. C. Morrow and a photogravure frontispiece after a painting by WillJenkins. Of this first edition one thousand copies have been issuedprinted on Frabriano handmade paper the typography designed by J. H.Nash published by Paul Elder and Company and done into a book for themat the Tomoye Press in the city of New York MCMVII
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