The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

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 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.