



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 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.

II

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 that 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 carved 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 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 to 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 dozen
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.

III

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. 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 rapidly 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.

IV

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.

"Yes."

"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.




AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE

I

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down
into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his
back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck.
It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack
fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers
supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his
executioners--two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a
sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short
remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of
his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge
stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say,
vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the
forearm thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural
position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to
be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of
the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that
traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran