AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE

by Ambrose Bierce
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama,

looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The
man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a

cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to
a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack feel to the

level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties
supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for

him and his executioners -- two private soldiers of the
Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may

have been a deputysheriff. At a short remove upon the same
temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank,

armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the
bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as

"support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left
shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight

across the chest -- a formal and unnatural position,
enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear

to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at
the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends

of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad

ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then,
curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost

farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground
-- a gentle slope topped with a stockade of vertical tree

trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure
through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon

commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the
bridge and fort were the spectators -- a single company of

infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of their rifles
on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward

against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock.
A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point

of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his
right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the

bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge,
staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the

banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the
bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent,

observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign.
Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be

received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those
most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette

silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about

thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might
judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His

features were good -- a straight nose, firm mouth, broad
forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight

back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well
fitting frock coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard,

but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a
kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one

whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar
assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for

hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not
excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers
stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had

been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted
and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in

turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the
condemned man and the sergeantstanding on the two ends of

the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the
bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but

not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in
place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that

of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter
would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man

go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself
to his judgement as simple and effective. His face had not

been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at
his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the

swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet.
A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his

eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared
to move! What a sluggishstream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his
wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early

sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down
the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift -- all

had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new
disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear

ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand,
a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a

blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing
quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably

distant or near by -- it seemed both. Its recurrence was
regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He

awaited each new stroke with impatience and -- he knew not
why -- apprehension. The intervals of silence grew

progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With
their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength

and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the trust of a knife;
he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of

his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If

I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the
noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade

the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take
to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as

yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still
beyond the invader's farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words,
were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved

from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant
stepped aside.

II
Peyton Fahrquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and

highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and
like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an

original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern
cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is

unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking
service with that gallant army which had fought the

disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he
chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the

release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the
opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt,

would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he
did what he could. No service was too humble for him to

perform in the aid of the South, no adventure to perilous for
him to undertake if consistent with the character of a

civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith
and without too much qualification assented to at least a

part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in
love and war.

One evening while Fahrquhar and his wife were sitting on a
rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad