



Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Carol David and PG Distributed Proofreaders




THE COLLECTED
WORKS OF
AMBROSE BIERCE

VOLUME II


IN THE MIDST OF LIFE

TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS



Originally Published 1909


PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION


Denied existence by the chief publishing houses of the country, this
book owes itself to Mr. E.L.G. Steele, merchant, of this city. In
attesting Mr. Steele's faith in his judgment and his friend, it will
serve its author's main and best ambition.

A.B.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 4, 1891.




CONTENTS


A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY                                                 15
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE                                     27
CHICKAMAUGA                                                           46
A SON OF THE GODS                                                     58
ONE OF THE MISSING                                                    71
KILLED AT RESACA                                                      93
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH                                        105
THE COUP DE GRACE                                                    122
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER                                         133
AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS                                                146
THE STORY OF A CONSCIENCE                                            165
ONE KIND OF OFFICER                                                  178
ONE OFFICER, ONE MAN                                                 197
GEORGE THURSTON                                                      209
THE MOCKING-BIRD                                                     218

CIVILIANS

THE MAN OUT OF THE NOSE                                              233
AN ADVENTURE AT BROWNVILLE                                           247
THE FAMOUS GILSON BEQUEST                                            266
THE APPLICANT                                                        281
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD                                                290
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE                                                311
A HOLY TERROR                                                        324
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS                                            350
THE BOARDED WINDOW                                                   364
A LADY FROM RED HORSE                                                373
THE EYES OF THE PANTHER                                              385





SOLDIERS




A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

I

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, death 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 door-yard, 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 somehow 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 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 more than a thousand feet below.

No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theatre 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 <DW72> of