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, that
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 from the ridge
to the 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 enclosing 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 out point of observation it seemed entirely shut in, and one could not 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 two 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 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.
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 and 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: "Go, Carter, 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 which 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 have ever 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
grey costume harmonised 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 to the left, 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
commanding 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 oneself and comrades - an enemy more formidable
for his knowledge than all his army for its numbers? Carter Druse grew deathly
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 below, 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 hundred 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.
At
that moment 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 farther. 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. At some distance away
to his right it presented a clean, vertical profile against a background of
blue sky to a point half of 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
right hand was 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 a half-mile 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 marvellous performance that it did
not occur to him that the line of march of aerial cavalry is directed 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.
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 face 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."
"Who?"
"My father."
The sergeant rose
to his feet and walked away. "Good God!" he said.
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