First published in San Francisco Examiner (1890). This publication features original artwork by Jakob Grim.


NFT with EPUB eBook (for Kindle or Apple books) available at GrimWorld.io.

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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

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 fell 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 deputy sheriff. 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.

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NFT with EPUB eBook (for Kindle or Apple books) available at GrimWorld.io.

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Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce was an American short story writer, journalist, and satirist born in Ohio in 1842. He served in the Civil War and worked as a reporter for various newspapers before moving to San Francisco. He wrote the critically acclaimed collection of short stories "Tales of Soldiers and Civilians" and the satirical "Devil's Dictionary," which defined common words with witty and often dark humor. Bierce disappeared in 1913 while covering the Mexican Revolution and his fate remains unknown.