PRESENT AT A HANGING
by Ambrose Bierce
An old man named Daniel Baker, living near
Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected by his neighbors
of having murdered a peddler who had obtained
permission to pass the night at his house. This
was in 1853, when peddling was more common in
the Western country than it is now, and was
attended with considerable danger. The peddler
with his pack traversed the country by all
manner of lonely roads, and was compelled to
rely upon the country people for hospitality.
This brought him into relation with queer
characters, some of whom were not altogether
scrupulous in their methods of making a living,
murder being an acceptable means to that end.
It occasionally occurred that a peddler with
diminished pack and swollen purse would be
traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough
character and never could be traced beyond.
This was so in the case of "old man Baker," as
he was always called. (Such names are given
in the Western "settlements" only to elderly
persons who are not esteemed; to the general
disrepute of social unworth is affixed the
special reproach of age.) A peddler came to
his house and none went away--that is all
that anybody knew.
Seven years later the Rev. Mr. Cummings, a
Baptist minister well known in that part of
the country, was driving by Baker's farm one
night. It was not very dark: there was a bit
of moon somewhere above the light veil of
mist that lay along the earth. Mr. Cummings,
who was at all times a cheerful person, was
whistling a tune, which he would occasionally
interrupt to speak a word of friendly
encouragement to his horse. As he came to a
little bridge across a dry ravine he saw the
figure of a man standing upon it, clearly
outlined against the gray background of a
misty forest. The man had something strapped
on his back and carried a heavy stick--obviously
an itinerant peddler. His attitude had in it
a suggestion of abstraction, like that of a
sleepwalker. Mr. Cummings reined in his horse
when he arrived in front of him, gave him a
pleasant salutation and invited him to a seat
in the vehicle--"if you are going my way," he
added. The man raised his head, looked him
full in the face, but neither answered nor
made any further movement. The minister, with
good-natured persistence, repeated his invitation.
At this the man threw his right hand forward
from his side and pointed downward as he stood
on the extreme edge of the bridge. Mr. Cummings
looked past him, over into the ravine, saw
nothing unusual and withdrew his eyes to
address the man again. He had disappeared. The
horse, which all this time had been uncommonly
restless, gave at the same moment a snort of
terror and started to run away. Before he had
regained control of the animal the minister
was at the crest of the hill a hundred yards
along. He looked back and saw the figure again,
at the same place and in the same attitude as
when he had first observed it. Then for the
first time he was conscious of a sense of the
supernatural and drove home as rapidly as his
willing horse would go.
On arriving at home he related his adventure
to his family, and early the next morning,
accompanied by two neighbors, John White
Corwell and Abner Raiser, returned to the
spot. They found the body of old man Baker
hanging by the neck from one of the beams of
the bridge, immediately beneath the spot
where the apparition had stood. A thick
coating of dust, slightly dampened by the
mist, covered the floor of the bridge, but
the only footprints were those of Mr.
Cummings' horse.
In taking down the body the men disturbed
the loose, friable earth of the slope below
it, disclosing human bones already nearly
uncovered by the action of water and frost.
They were identified as those of the lost
peddler. At the double inquest the coroner's
jury found that Daniel Baker died by his
own hand while suffering from temporary
insanity, and that Samuel Morritz was murdered
by some person or persons to the jury unknown.
~~~~~~~ THE END of Present at a Hanging ~~~~~~~
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