The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce | Page 2

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.
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 aërial 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