The year: 1861. The place: A cliff overlooking a forested valley in the western part of Virginia. The event: The American Civil War. A Union Soldier named Carter Druse is posted at his sentry site on this particularly sunny afternoon. It is the kind of summer day in Dixie that can easily send a siren song to anyone, anywhere, serving any duty to lie down and rest. So restful is Druse that anyone observing him prostrate as he was would have assumed—considering the circumstances—that he was dead. It was much worse than that, of course. He had committed a crime far worse than death: falling asleep on guard duty. Had he been so discovered, he would soon know both the sin and the punishment since a breach of regulations could only justifiably be disciplined through execution.
The story is divided into sections and Part I is primarily descriptive prose outlining the topographical features of the setting and how those features are essential to the dramatic tension marking the narrative trek. The central element of this narrative trek is the strategic implementation by the Union forces to send somewhere between five and ten thousand men currently hidden from sight by the Confederate forces occupying the ridges bordering either side of the forest valley. Victory is almost assured provided the Union troops can maintain the element of surprise: it’s a simple ambush. The tricky part is that maintenance of the surprise element. And a sentry falling asleep on duty is most assuredly not a helpful tactic.
Part II takes the narrative away from its forward trek so that it moves backward in time to situate context explaining the dramatic tension of the present circumstances of Carter Druse. Like many families in Virginia during this period—indeed, like the state itself—allegiances often split among friends and families as easily as among enemies and strangers. For the Druse clan, the fissure is especially tough: Carter enlisted on the side of the Union, freedom and preservation of the country. His father went in the opposite direction, choosing Confederate protection of slavery and secession. Because the topographical layout of this particular area of Virginia is so essential to successfully pulling off the planned ambush, Druse is given the responsibilities of sentry duty as a result of his familiarity with the region. Back in the present, the narrative stages the scene which will drive the story to its climax: Druse spots a breathtaking sight on a cliff across the way: a statue of a man and horse, bound together in exquisite dignity. The man almost appears to have been a god of ancient Greek carved out of a block of marble. The narrator goes into great detail of the statue as keenly appreciated by the sentry who, for a brief moment, thinks his little nap must have taken him straight through to the end of the war. What else could account for such a magnificent work of art in such a strange location? Only one thing, of course. What he is looking at is not a statue at all. The man on the horse is obviously a Confederate scout and his position on the cliff likely can mean just one thing: the Union forces currently enjoying the advantage of not having yet been discovered either just have been or are just about to be. Druse picks up his rifle and aims his sight on figure across the distance.
Part III opens by tossing the reader into a jarring dislocation of time and space. Another Union soldier—an officer—is described making his way through the valley and wondering the purpose of pushing any further. He stops, looks up to a rocky cliff one-quarter of a mile in the distance and gasps at spectacle which plays out seemingly for his eyes only: a man astride a horse…both falling helplessly yet almost beautifully through the air to the unforgiving ground waiting below. The narrator describes the officer’s reactions upon seeing this extraordinary thing and conveys his reaction through apocalyptic imagery and the stunning loudness which sudden absolute silence can bring.
The opening line of Part IV provides the necessary missing context without which the entirety of Part III seems to co-exist with the earlier narrative, but also simultaneously to exist apart from it. Almost as if Part III chose to occupy one side of the story in opposition to Part I and II. The weirdness of what the officer saw—the absolutely improbability and implausibility of a man on a horse almost gliding through the air in their downward trajectory is connected to the story of Carter Druse by virtue of it having been the trajectory of the bullet from Druse’s rifle which stimulated the otherworldly apparition seen in its entirety only by the officer. Ten minutes after firing the fatal shot, a Union sergeant crawls quietly and with great caution toward Druse who had been trained, of course, to recognize the approach of another soldier without betraying his position by seeming to have noticed anything at all. The sergeant whispered query to Druse about whether it was he who fired his rifle. Druse confirms and then answers the follow-up question: “At what?”
Druse is the very model of discipline and duty and betrays little hint of the emotional toll that this shot has taken on him aside from one very curious and very evident change in his physical appearance. Druse’s face, the sergeant notices, seems to have been drained of every ounce of blood within. Aside from the fact that his face is now paler than pale, whiter than white, however, the sergeant can detect nothing else out of the ordinary. Still, the way Druse simply and quietly turns away from the sergeant after his almost rote answering the necessary inquiries is off; something is not quite right, but the sergeant is at a loss to understand why. He presses the young man further and then finally orders him to fully report: “Was there anybody on the horse” which Druse has just described as having been on the cliff but, clearly, is not any longer. Druse replies to the affirmative, but still offers no explanation for his bizarre appearance:
“Well?”
“My father.”
The sergeant, stunned and a bit dazed himself, can think of nothing else to do but rise from his kneeling position, mutter “Good God!” and leave.
