A Horseman in the Sky

“A Horseman in the Sky” is a widely anthologized short story by Ambrose Bierce (1842-c. 1914)—who is also famously known for the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890)—set during the Civil War. It concerns a Union soldier who must choose between shooting his father, a Confederate scout, and endangering thousands of his comrades. It was first published on April 14, 1889, in William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, where Bierce was a staff writer, and later collected in Bierce’s book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians in 1891. This guide refers to the version of “A Horseman in the Sky” presented in the Library of America’s Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs, edited by S. T. Joshi (2011).

The story is divided into four parts. In the first, a Union soldier is asleep on the side of a road in Virginia in 1861. The soldier is neglecting his watch—a crime the narrator indicates would be punishable by death if discovered. The soldier is positioned above a deep valley that appears, the narrator says, “entirely shut in” by cliffs (4). He can also see a large flat rock further along the ridge where he lies.