A selection of short stories with macabre endings, some dealing with the Civil War and some with civilians. These are the ones I particularly enjoyed:

• A Horseman in the Sky — A Union sentry sees a lone horseman on top of a cliff overlooking the Union camp. He recognizes the horseman as his father who told him to always do his duty. The sentry fires. The horse lurches off the cliff. A soldier at the bottom of the cliff looks up and sees a horse, with a rider erect on its back, riding through the air.

• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge — A southern planter is arrested as a spy and sentenced to hang from a bridge. When he drops, the rope breaks and he escapes down the river. He flees through the woods and is just on the point of embracing his wife who is running toward him when he is jerked by the rope. He hangs swinging from the bridge; the escape just his imagination.

• One of the Missing — A Union scout is trapped under a collapsed building with the barrel of his rifle pointing between his eyes. The fear of it going off kills him, although it is no longer loaded, having fired when the building fell.

• The Affair at Coulter’s Notch —A vindictive general forces an artillery officer to fire on Confederate positions in the yard of the officer’s own home because the officer’s wife reported the general for making advances to her. The officer obeys and after the battle finds his wife and child dead in the rubble.

• The Boarded Window — A man and his wife build a small cabin in the wilderness and start to farm. The wife grows ill and dies. The man prepares her for burial, dressing her and tying her hands. He falls asleep and is waked by a noise. He sees a panther dragging his wife’s body out the window. He shoots and scares the cat away, then looks at the body. His wife’s hands are gripping car fur and the cat’s ear is in her mouth.

I enjoyed this book. A few of the stories really grabbed me, and there were only a couple that I didn’t care for at all. Bierce certainly had a twisted mind, but in a fun way.