A SON OF THE GODS

and

A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

By Ambrose Bierce

Including an Introduction by W. C. Morrow

Western Classics No. Four

The Photogravure Frontispiece After A Painting by Will Jenkins

The Introduction

Brilliant and magnetic as are these two studies by Ambrose Bierce, andespecially significant as coming from one who was a boy soldier in theCivil War, they merely reflect one side of his original and many-facetedgenius. Poet, critic, satirist, fun-maker, incomparable writer of fablesand masterly prose sketches, a seer of startling insight, a reasonermercilessly logical, with the delicate wit and keenness of an Irving oran Addison, the dramatic quality of a Hugo, --all of these, and still inthe prime of his powers; yet so restricted has been his output and solittle exploited that only the judicious few have been impressed. 

Although an American, he formed his bent years ago in London, wherehe was associated with the younger Hood on Fun. There he laid thefoundation for that reputation which he today enjoys: the distinction ofbeing the last of the scholarly satirists. With that training he cameto San Francisco, where, in an environment equally as genial, his talentgrew and mellowed through the years. Then he was summoned to New York toassist a newspaper fight against a great railroad, since the conclusionof which brilliant campaign eastern journalism and magazine work haveclaimed his attention. 

Two volumes, "The Fiend's Delight" and "Cobwebs from an Empty Skull"titles that would damn modern books--were collections published yearsago from his work on London Fun. Their appearance made him at once thechief wit and humorist of England, and, combined with his satiricalwork on Fun, led to his engagement by friends of the exiled Eugénieto conduct a periodical against her enemies, who purposed to make herrefuge in England untenable by means of newspaper attacks. It is easyto imagine the zest with which the chivalrous Bierce plunged intopreparations for the fight. But the struggle never came; it wassufficient to learn that Bierce would be the Richmond; the attack uponthe stricken ex-empress was abandoned. 

When he was urged in San Francisco, years afterward, to write more ofthe inimitable things that filled those two volumes, he said that it wasonly fun, a boy's work. Only fun! There has never been such deliciousfun since the beginning of literature, and there is nothing better thanfun. Yet it held his own peculiar quality, which is not that of Americanfun, --quality of a brilliant intellectuality: the keenness of a rapier, a teasing subtlety, a contempt for pharisaism and squeamishness, andabove all a fine philosophy. While he has never lost his sense of thewhimsical, the grotesque, the unusual, he--unfortunately, perhaps--cameoftener to give it the form of pure wit rather than of cajoling humor. Few Americans know him as a humorist, because his humor is not builton the broad, rough lines that are typically American. It belongs to anolder civilization, yet it is jollier than the English and bolder thanthe French. 

At all times his incomparable wit and satire has appealed rather to thecultured, and even the emotional quality of his fiction is frequently soprofound and unusual as to be fully enjoyed only by the intellectuallyuntrammelled. His writing was never for those who could only read andfeel, not think. 

Another factor against his wider acceptance has been the infrequency andfragmentary character of his work, particularly his satire. No sustainedfort in that field has come from him. His satire was born largely ofa transient stimulus, and was evanescent. Even his short stories are, generally, but blinding flashes of a moment in a life. He laughinglyascribes the meagerness of his output to indolence; but there may be adeeper reason, of which he is unconscious. What is more dampening thana seeming lack of appreciation? "Tales of Soldiers and Civilians" hada disheartening search for an established publisher, and finally wasbrought out by an admiring merchant of San Francisco. It attracted somuch critical attention that its re-publication was soon undertaken by aregular house. 

Had Bierce never produced anything but these prose tales, his right to aplace high in American letters would nevertheless be secure, and of allhis work, serious or otherwise, here is his greatest claim to popularand permanent recognition. No stories for which the Civil War hasfurnished such dramatic setting surpass these masterpieces of shortfiction, either in power of description, subtlety of touch or literaryfinish. It is deeply to be regretted that he has not given us more suchprose. 

W. C. Morrow. 

A SON OF THE GODS

A breezy day and a sunny landscape. An open country to right and leftand forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this wood, facing the openbut not venturing into it, long lines of troops halted. The wood isalive with them, and full of confused noises: the occasional rattleof wheels as a battery of artillery goes into position to coverthe advance; the hum and murmur of the soldiers talking; a sound ofinnumerable feet in the dry leaves that strew the interspaces among thetrees; hoarse commands of officers. Detached groups of horsemen are wellin front--not altogether exposed--many of them intently regarding thecrest of a hill a mile away in the direction of the interrupted advance. For this powerful army, moving in battle order through a forest, has metwith a formidable obstacle--the open country. The crest of that gentlehill a mile away has a sinister look; it says, Beware! Along it runs astone wall extending to left and right a great distance. Behind thewall is a hedge; behind the hedge are seen the tops of trees in ratherstraggling order. Among the trees--what? It is necessary to know. 

Yesterday, and for many days and nights previously, we were fightingsomewhere; always there was cannonading, with occasional keen rattlingsof musketry, mingled with cheers, our own or the enemy's, we seldomknew, attesting some temporary advantage. This morning at daybreak theenemy was gone. We have moved forward across his earthworks, acrosswhich we have so often vainly attempted to move before, through thedebris of his abandoned camps, among the graves of his fallen, into thewoods beyond. 

How curiously we regarded everything! How odd it all seemed! Nothingappeared quite familiar; the most commonplace objects--an old saddle, a splintered wheel, a forgotten canteen everything related something ofthe mysterious personality of those strange men who had been killingus. The soldier never becomes wholly familiar with the conception of hisfoes as men like himself; he cannot divest himself of the feelingthat they are another order of beings, differently conditioned, in anenvironment not altogether of the earth. The smallest vestiges ofthem rivet his attention and engage his interest. He thinks of them asinaccessible; and, catching an unexpected glimpse of them, they appearfarther away, and therefore larger, than they really are--like objectsin a fog. He is somewhat in awe of them. 

From the edge of the wood leading up the acclivity are the tracks ofhorses and wheels--the wheels of cannon. The yellow grass is beaten downby the feet of infantry. Clearly they have passed this way in thousands;they have not withdrawn by the country roads. This is significant--it isthe difference between retiring and retreating. 

That group of horsemen is our commander, his staff, and escort. He isfacing the distant crest, holding his field-glass against his eyes withboth hands, his elbows needlessly elevated. It is a fashion; it seems todignify the act; we are all addicted to it. Suddenly he lowers theglass and says a few words to those about him. Two or three aides detachthemselves from the group and canter away into the woods, along thelines in each direction. We did not hear his words, but we knew them:"Tell General X. To send forward the skirmish line. " Those of us whohave been out of place resume our positions; the men resting at easestraighten themselves, and the ranks are reformed without a command. Some of us staff officers dismount and look at our saddle-girths; thosealready on the ground remount. 

Galloping rapidly along in the edge of the open ground comes a youngofficer on a snow-white horse. His saddle-blanket is scarlet. What afool! No one who has ever been in battle but remembers how naturallyevery rifle turns toward the man on a white horse; no one but hasobserved how a bit of red enrages the bull of battle. That suchcolors are fashionable in military life must be accepted as the mostastonishing of all the phenomena of human vanity. They would seem tohave been devised to increase the death-rate. 

This young officer is in full uniform, as if on parade. He is all agleamwith bullion, a blue-and-gold edition of the Poetry of War. A waveof derisive laughter runs abreast of him all along the line. But howhandsome he is! With what careless grace he sits his horse!

He reins up within a respectful distance of the corps commander andsalutes. The old soldier nods familiarly; he evidently knows him. Abrief colloquy between them is going on; the young man seems to bepreferring some request which the elder one is indisposed to grant. Letus ride a little nearer. Ah! too late--it is ended. The young officersalutes again, wheels his horse, and rides straight toward the crest ofthe hill. He is deadly pale. 

A thin line of skirmishers, the men deployed at six paces or so apart, now pushes from the wood into the open. The commander speaks to hisbugler, who claps his instrument to his lips. Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la! Theskirmishers halt in their tracks. 

Meantime the young horseman has advanced a hundred yards. He is ridingat a walk, straight up the long slope, with never a turn of the head. How glorious! Gods! what would we not give to be in his place--with hissoul! He does not draw his sabre; his right hand hangs easily at hisside. The breeze catches the plume in his hat and flutters it smartly. The sunshine rests upon his shoulder-straps, lovingly, like a visiblebenediction. Straight on he rides. Ten thousand pairs of eyes are fixedupon him with an intensity that he can hardly fail to feel; ten thousandhearts keep quick time to the inaudible hoof-beats of his snowy steed. He is not alone--he draws all souls after him; we are but "dead menall. " But we remember that we laughed! On and on, straight for thehedge-lined wall, he rides. Not a look backward. Oh, if he would butturn--if he could but see the love, the adoration, the atonement!

Not a word is spoken; the populous depths of the forest still murmurwith their unseen and unseeing swarm, but all along the fringe thereis silence absolute. The burly commander is an equestrian statueof himself. The mounted staff officers, their field-glasses up, aremotionless all. The line of battle in the edge of the wood stands at anew kind of "attention, " each man in the attitude in which he wascaught by the consciousness of what is going on. All these hardened andimpenitent man-killers, to whom death in its awfulest forms is a factfamiliar to their every-day observation; who sleep on hills tremblingwith the thunder of great guns, dine in the midst of streaming missiles, and play at cards among the dead faces of their dearest friends, --allare watching with suspended breath and beating hearts the outcome of anact involving the life of one man. Such is the magnetism of courage anddevotion. 

If now you should turn your head you would see a simultaneous movementamong the spectators a start, as if they had received an electricshock--and looking forward again to the now distant horseman you wouldsee that he has in that instant altered his direction and is ridingat an angle to his former course. The spectators suppose the suddendeflection to be caused by a shot, perhaps a wound; but take thisfield-glass and you will observe that he is riding toward a break in thewall and hedge. He means, if not killed, to ride through and overlookthe country beyond. 

You are not to forget the nature of this man's act; it is not permittedto you to think of it as an instance of bravado, nor, on the other hand, a needless sacrifice of self. If the enemy has not retreated, he is inforce on that ridge. The investigator will encounter nothing less thana line of battle; there is no need of pickets, videttes, skirmishers, to give warning of our approach; our attacking lines will be visible, conspicuous, exposed to an artillery fire that will shave the ground themoment they break from cover, and for half the distance to a sheetof rifle bullets in which nothing can live. In short, if the enemy isthere, it would be madness to attack him in front; he must be maneuveredout by the immemorial plan of threatening his line of communication, asnecessary to his existence as to the diver at the bottom of the sea hisair-tube. But how ascertain if the enemy is there? There is but one way:somebody must go and see. The natural and customary thing to do is tosend forward a line of skirmishers. But in this case they will answerin the affirmative with all their lives; the enemy, crouching in doubleranks behind the stone wall and in cover of the hedge, will wait untilit is possible to count each assailant's teeth. At the first volley ahalf of the questioning line will fall, the other half before it canaccomplish the predestined retreat. What a price to pay for gratifiedcuriosity! At what a dear rate an army must sometimes purchaseknowledge! "Let me pay all, " says this gallant man--this militaryChrist!

There is no hope except the hope against hope that the crest is clear. True, he might prefer capture to death. So long as he advances, the linewill not fire, --why should it? He can safely ride into the hostile ranksand become a prisoner of war. But this would defeat his object. It wouldnot answer our question; it is necessary either that he return unharmedor be shot to death before our eyes. Only so shall we know how to act. If captured--why, that might have been done by a half-dozen stragglers. 

Now begins an extraordinary contest of intellect between a man andan army. Our horseman, now within a quarter of a mile of the crest, suddenly wheels to the left and gallops in a direction parallel toit. He has caught sight of his antagonist; he knows all. Some slightadvantage of ground has enabled him to overlook a part of the line. Ifhe were here, he could tell us in words. But that is now hopeless; hemust make the best use of the few minutes of life remaining to him, by compelling the enemy himself to tell us as much and as plainly aspossible--which, naturally, that discreet power is reluctant to do. Nota rifleman in those crouching ranks, not a cannoneer at those masked andshotted guns, but knows the needs of the situation, the imperative dutyof forbearance. Besides, there has been time enough to forbid themall to fire. True, a single rifle-shot might drop him and be no greatdisclosure. But firing is infectious--and see how rapidly he moves, with never a pause except as he whirls his horse about to take a newdirection, never directly backward toward us, never directly forwardtoward his executioners. All this is visible through the glass; it seemsoccurring within pistol-shot; we see all but the enemy, whose presence, whose thoughts, whose motives we infer. To the unaided eye there isnothing but a black figure on a white horse, tracing slow zigzagsagainst the slope of a distant hill--so slowly they seem almost tocreep. 

Now--the glass again--he has tired of his failure, or sees his error, orhas gone mad; he is dashing directly forward at the wall, as if to takeit at a leap, hedge and all! One moment only and he wheels right aboutand is speeding like the wind straight down the slope--toward hisfriends, toward his death! Instantly the wall is topped with a fierceroll of smoke for a distance of hundreds of yards to, right and left. This is as instantly dissipated by the wind, and before the rattle ofthe rifles reaches us, he is down. No, he recovers his seat; he has butpulled his horse upon its haunches. They are up and away! A tremendouscheer bursts from our ranks, relieving the insupportable tension of ourfeelings. And the horse and its rider? Yes, they are up and away. Away, indeed--they are making directly to our left, parallel to thenow steadily blazing and smoking wall. The rattle of the musketry iscontinuous, and every bullet's target is that courageous heart. 

Suddenly a great bank of white smoke pushes upward from behind thewall. Another and another--a dozen roll up before the thunder of theexplosions and the humming of the missiles reach our ears, and themissiles themselves come bounding through clouds of dust into ourcovert, knocking over here and there a man and causing a temporarydistraction, a passing thought of self. 

The dust drifts away. Incredible!--that enchanted horse and riderhave passed a ravine and are climbing another slope to unveil anotherconspiracy of silence, to thwart the will of another armed host. Anothermoment and that crest too is in eruption. The horse rears and strikesthe air with its forefeet. They are down at last. But look again--theman has detached himself from the dead animal. He stands erect, motionless, holding his sabre in his right hand straight above his head. His face is toward us. Now he lowers his hand to a level with his faceand moves it outward, the blade of the sabre describing a downwardcurve. It is a sign to us, to the world, to posterity. It is a hero'ssalute to death and history. 

Again the spell is broken; our men attempt to cheer; they are chokingwith emotion; they utter hoarse, discordant cries; they clutch theirweapons and press tumultuously forward into the open. The skirmishers, without orders, against orders, are going forward at a keen run, likehounds unleashed. Our cannon speak and the enemy's now open in fullchorus; to right and left as far as we can see, the distant crest, seeming now so near, erects its towers of cloud, and the great shotpitch roaring down among our moving masses. Flag after flag of oursemerges from the wood, line after line sweeps forth, catching thesunlight on its burnished arms. The rear battalions alone are inobedience; they preserve their proper distance from the insurgent front. 

The commander has not moved. He now removes his field-glass from hiseyes and glances to the right and left. He sees the human currentflowing on either side of him and his huddled escort, like tide wavesparted by a rock. Not a sign of feeling in his face; he is thinking. Again he directs his eyes forward; they slowly traverse that malignand awful crest. He addresses a calm word to his bugler. Tra-la-la!Tra-la-la! The injunction has an imperiousness which enforces it. It isrepeated by all the bugles of all the subordinate commanders; the sharpmetallic notes assert themselves above the hum of the advance, andpenetrate the sound of the cannon. To halt is to withdraw. The colorsmove slowly back, the lines face about and sullenly follow, bearingtheir wounded; the skirmishers return, gathering up the dead. 

Ah, those many, many needless dead! That great soul whose beautiful bodyis lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside--could itnot have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion?Would one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of thedivine, eternal plan?

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 carted 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 his 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