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_ A Horseman in the Sky
One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861, a soldier lay in a
clump of laurel by the side of a road in Western Virginia. He lay at
full length, upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head
upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his
rifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and a
slight 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 of
duty. But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, that being the
just and legal penalty of his crime.
The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road
which, after, ascending, southward, a steep acclivity to that point,
turned sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps one
hundred yards. There it turned southward again and went zigzagging
downward through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was a
large flat rock, jutting out northward, overlooking the deep valley from
which the road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone dropped
from its outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet
to the tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another
spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake, he would have commanded a
view, not only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock, but of
the entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made him
giddy to look.
The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valley to
the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through which
flowed a stream scarcely visible from the valley's rim. This open ground
looked hardly larger than an ordinary dooryard, but was really several
acres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the inclosing
forest. Away beyond it rose a line of giant cliffs similar to those upon
which we are supposed to stand in our survey of the savage scene, and
through which the road had some how made its climb to the summit. The
configuration of the valley, indeed, was such that from this point of
observation it seemed entirely shut in, and one could not but have
wondered how the road which found a way out of it had found a way into
it, and whence came and whither went the waters of the stream that
parted the meadow two thousand feet below.
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of
war; concealed in the forest at the bottom of that military rat-trap, in
which half a hundred men in possession of the exits might have starved
an army to submission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry. They had
marched all the previous day and night, and were resting. At nightfall
they would take to the road again, climb to the place where their
unfaithful sentinel now slept, and, descending the other slope of the
ridge, fall upon a camp of the enemy at about midnight. Their hope was
to 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 surely
would, should accident or vigilance apprise the enemy of the movement.
The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel was a young Virginian named
Carter Druse. He was the son of wealthy parents, an only child, and had
known such ease and cultivation and high living as wealth and taste were
able to command in the mountain country of Western Virginia. His home
was but a few miles from where he now lay. One morning he had risen from
the breakfast table and said, quietly but gravely: "Father, a Union
regiment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to join it."
The father lifted his leonine head, looked at the son a moment in
silence, and replied: "Well, go, sir, and, whatever may occur, do what
you conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which you are a traitor, must
get on without you. Should we both live to the end of the war, we will
speak further of the matter. Your mother, as the physician has informed
you, is in a most critical condition; at the best, she cannot be with us
longer than a few weeks, but that time is precious. It would be better
not to disturb her."
So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to his father, who returned the
salute with a stately courtesy which masked a breaking heart, left the
home of his childhood to go soldiering. By conscience and courage, by
deeds of devotion and daring, he soon commended himself to his fellows
and his officers; and it was to these qualities and to some knowledge of
the country that he owed his selection for his present perilous duty at
the extreme outpost. Nevertheless, fatigue had been stronger than
resolution, and he had fallen asleep. What good or bad angel came in a
dream to rouse him from his state of crime, who shall say? Without a
movement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languor of
the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched with
unsealing finger the eyes of his consciousness - whispered into the ear
of his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips ever
have spoken, no human memory ever has recalled. He quietly raised his
forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of the
laurels, instinctively closing his right hand about the stock of his
rifle.
His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal,
the cliff, - motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rock and
sharply outlined against the sky, - was an equestrian statue of
impressive dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse,
straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carted in
the marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The gray costume
harmonized with its aerial background; the metal of accoutrement and
caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had
no points of high light. A carbine, strikingly foreshortened, lay across
the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at
the "grip"; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible. In
silhouette against the sky, the profile of the horse was cut with the
sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the
confronting cliffs beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly away,
showed only an outline of temple and beard; he was looking downward to
the bottom of the valley. Magnified by its lift against the sky and by
the 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 had
slept to the end of the war and was looking upon a noble work of art
reared upon that commanding eminence to commemorate the deeds of an
heroic past of which he had been an inglorious part. The feeling was
dispelled by a slight movement of the group: the horse, without moving
its feet, had drawn its body slightly backward from the verge; the man
remained immobile as before. Broad awake and keenly alive to the
significance of the situation, Druse now brought the butt of his rifle
against his cheek by cautiously pushing the barrel forward through the
bushes, cocked the piece, and, glancing through the sights, covered a
vital spot of the horseman's breast. A touch upon the trigger and all
would have been well with Carter Druse. At that instant the horseman
turned his head and looked in the direction of his concealed foeman -
seemed to look into his very face, into his eyes, into his brave,
compassionate heart.
Is it, then, so terrible to kill an enemy in war - an enemy who has
surprised a secret vital to the safety of one's self and comrades - an
enemy more formidable for his knowledge than all his army for its
numbers? 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 hand
fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested
on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy
soldier 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 the
trigger; mind, heart and eyes were clear, conscience and reason sound.
He could not hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him would but send him
dashing to his camp with his fatal news. The duty of the soldier was
plain: the man must be shot dead from ambush - without warning, without
a moment's spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspoken
prayer, he must be sent to his account. But no - there is a hope; he may
have discovered nothing; perhaps he is but admiring the sublimity of the
landscape. If permitted, he may turn and ride carelessly away in the
direction whence he came. Surely it will be possible to judge at the
instant of his withdrawing whether he knows. It may well be that his
fixity of attention - Druse turned his head and looked through the
deeps of 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 men and horses - some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers
of his escort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a
hundred summits!
Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley and fixed them again upon the
group of 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 memory, as
if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at their
parting: "Whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty." He
was calm now. His teeth were firmly but not rigidly closed; his nerves
were as tranquil as a sleeping babe's - not a tremor affected any muscle
of his body; his breathing, until suspended in the act of taking aim,
was regular and slow. Duty had conquered; the spirit had said to the
body: "Peace, be still." He fired.
An officer of the Federal force, who, in a spirit of adventure or in
quest of knowledge, had left the hidden bivouac in the valley, and, with
aimless feet, had made his way to the lower edge of a small open space
near the foot of the cliff, was considering what he had to gain by
pushing his exploration further. At a distance of a quarter-mile before
him, but apparently at a stone's throw, rose from its fringe of pines
the gigantic face of rock, towering to so great a height above him that
it made him giddy to look up to where its edge cut a sharp, rugged line
against the sky. At some distance away to his right it presented a
clean, vertical profile against a background of blue sky to a point half
the way down, and of distant hills hardly less blue, thence to the tops
of the trees at its base. Lifting his eyes to the dizzy altitude of its
summit, the officer saw an astonishing sight - a man on horseback riding
down into the valley through the air!
Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in
the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from too
impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward,
waving like a plume. His hands were concealed in the cloud of the
horse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level as if every
hoof-stroke encountered the resistant earth. Its motions were those of a
wild gallop, but even as the officer looked they ceased, with all the
legs thrown sharply forward as in the act of alighting from a leap. But
this was a flight!
Filled with amazement and terror by this apparition of a horseman in the
sky-half believing himself the chosen scribe of some new apocalypse, the
officer was overcome by the intensity of his emotions; his legs failed
him and he fell. Almost at the same instant he heard a crashing sound in
the trees - a sound that died without an echo - and all was still.
The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The familiar sensation of an
abraded 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 naturally
failed. In the fleeting instant of his vision his imagination had been
so wrought upon by the apparent grace and ease and intention of the
marvelous performance that it did not occur to him that the line of
march of aerial cavalry is directly downward, and that he could find the
objects of his search at the very foot of the cliff. A half-hour later
he returned to camp.
This officer was a wise man; he knew better than to tell an incredible
truth. He said nothing of what he had seen. But when the commander asked
him if in his scout he had learned anything of advantage to the
expedition, he answered:
"Yes, sir; there is no road leading down into this valley from the
southward."
The commander, knowing better, smiled.
After firing his shot, Private Carter Druse reloaded his rifle and
resumed his watch. Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Federal sergeant
crept cautiously to him on hands and knees. Druse neither turned his
head 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 is
no longer there. It went over the cliff."
The man's face was white, but he showed no other sign of emotion. Having
answered, he turned away his eyes and said no more. The sergeant did not
understand.
"See here, Druse," he said, after a moment's silence, "it's no use
making a mystery. I order you to report. Was there anybody on the
horse?"
"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 Gods
and A Horseman in the Sky by Ambrose Bierce with an introduction by W.
C. Morrow and a photogravure frontispiece after a painting by Will
Jenkins. Of this first edition one thousand copies have been issued
printed on Frabriano handmade paper the typography designed by J. H.
Nash published by Paul Elder and Company and done into a book for them
at the Tomoye Press in the city of New York MCMVII
THE END.
A Son of the Gods and A Horseman in the Sky, by Ambrose Bierce. _
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