August 17, 2025 • 10 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Stranger by Ambrose Bierce. A man stepped out of
the darkness into the little illuminated circle about our failing
camp fire, and seated himself upon a rock. You are
not the first to explore this region, he said gravely.
Nobody controverted his statement. He was himself proof of its truth,
for he was not of our party and must have
(00:22):
been somewhere near when we camped. Moreover, he must have companions,
not far away. It was not a place where one
would be living or traveling alone for more than a week.
We had seen, besides ourselves and our animals, only such
living things as rattlesnakes, and horned toads. In an Arizona desert.
One does not long co exist with only such creatures
(00:42):
as these. One must have pack animals, supplies, arms, an outfit,
and all these imply comrades. It was perhaps a doubt
as to what manner of men, these unceremonious strangers comrades
might be together with something in his words, interpretable as
a challenge, that caused every man of our half dozen
gentlemen adventurers to rise to a sitting posture and lay
(01:05):
his hand upon a weapon and act signifying in that
time and place a policy of expectation. The stranger gave
the matter no attention and began again to speak in
the same deliberate, uninflected monotone in which he had delivered
his first sentence thirty years ago. Ramon Galagos, William Shaw,
George W. Kent, and Barry Davis, all of Tucson, crossed
(01:27):
the Santa Catalina Mountains and traveled due west as nearly
as the configuration of the country permitted. We were prospecting,
and it was our intention if we found nothing, to
push through to the heel of river at some point
near Big Bend, where we understood there was a settlement.
We had a good outfit, but no guide. Just Ramon Galagos,
(01:47):
William Shaw, George W. Kent, and Barry Davis. The man
repeated the name slowly and distinctly, as if to fix
them in the memories of his audience, every member of
which was now attentively of deserving him, but with a
slackened apprehension regarding his possible companions. Somewhere in the darkness
that seemed to enclose us like a black wall. In
the manner of this voluntary historian, was no suggestion of
(02:10):
an unfriendly purpose. His act was rather that of a
harmless lunatic than an enemy. We were not so new
to the country as not to know that the solitary
life of many a plainsman had a tendency to develop
eccentricities of conduct and character, not always easily distinguishable from
mental aberration. A man is like a tree in a
forest of his fellows. He will grow as straight as
(02:31):
his generic and individual nature permits. Alone, in the open,
he yields to the deforming stresses and torsions that environ him.
Some such thoughts were in my mind as I watched
the man from the shadow of my hat, pulled low
to shut out the firelight. A witless fellow, no doubt,
But what could he be doing here in the heart
of a desert. Having undertaken to tell this story, I
(02:51):
wish that I could describe the man's appearance. That would
be a natural thing to do. Unfortunately, and somewhat strangely,
I find myself unable to do so with any degree
of confidence. For afterwards, not two of us agreed as
to what he wore and how he looked. And when
I try to set down my own impressions, they elude me.
Anyone can tell some kind of story. Narration is one
(03:12):
of the elemental powers of the race, but the talent
for description is a gift nobody. Having broken silence, the
visitor went on to say, this country was not then
what it is now. There was not a ranch between
the Hila and the gulf. There was a little game
here and there in the mountains, and near the infrequent
water holes, grasped enough to keep our animals from starvation.
(03:33):
If we should be so fortunate as to encounter no Indians,
we might get through. But within a week the purposes
of the expedition had altered from discovery of wealth to
preservation of life. We had gone too far to go back,
for what was a head could be no worse than
what was behind. So we pushed on, writing by night
to avoid Indians in the intolerable heat, and concealing ourselves
(03:53):
by day as best we could. Sometimes, having exhausted our
supply of wild meat, it emptied at our casks. Days
without food or drink. Then a water hole or a
shallow pool in the bottom of an areo so restored
our strength and sanity that we were able to shoot
some of the wild animals that sought it also, sometimes
it was a bear, sometimes an antelope, a coyote, a cougar.
(04:16):
That was all, as God pleased, all were food. One morning,
as we skirted a mountain range, seeking a practicable pass,
we were attacked by a band of apaches who had
followed our trail up a gulch it is not far
from here. Knowing that they outnumbered us ten to one,
they took none of their usual cowardly precautions, but dashed
upon us at a gallop, firing and yelling. Fighting was
(04:39):
out of the question. We urged our feeble animals up
the gulch as far as there was footing for a hoof,
then threw ourselves out of our saddles and took to
the chaparal on one of the slopes, abandoning our entire
outfit to the enemy. But we retained our rifles. Every man, Ramon, Gallegos,
William Shaw, George W. Kent, and Barry Davis, same old crowd,
(05:03):
said the humorist of our party. He was an Eastern man,
unfamiliar with the decent observances of social intercourse. A gesture
of disapproval from our lever silenced him, and the stranger
proceeded with his tail. The savages dismounted also, and some
of them ran up the gults beyond the point at
which we had left it, cutting off further retreat in
that direction, forcing us up on the side. Unfortunately, the
(05:26):
chaparale extended only a short distance up the slope, and
as we came into the open ground above, we took
the fire of a dozen rifles, but apache shoot badly
when in a hurry, and God so wil died that
none of us fell. Twenty yards up the slope, beyond
the edge of the brush were vertical cliffs, in which
directly in front of us was a narrow opening into
(05:47):
that we ran, finding ourselves in a cavern about as
large as an ordinary room in a house. Here, for
a time we were safe. A single man with a
repeating rifle could defend the entrance against all the apaches
in the land. But against hunger and thirst we had
no defense. Courage we still had, but hope was a memory.
Not one of those Indians did we afterwards see, but
(06:09):
by the smoke and glare of their fires in the gulch,
we knew that by day and night they watched with
ready rifles at the edge of the bush. Knew that
if we made a sorte, not a man of us
would live to take three steps out into the open
for three days watching. In turn, we held out before
our suffering became insupportable. Then it was on the morning
of the fourth day. Ramon Galagos said, Signors, I know
(06:33):
not well the Good God what pleases him. I have
lived without religion, and I am not acquaint with that
of you. Pardon Signors if I shock you, But for
me it is time to come to beat the game
of the Apache. He knelt upon the rock floor of
the cave and pressed his pistol against his temple. Madre
de Dios. He said, comes now the soul of Ramon Galegos,
(06:55):
And so he left us. William Shaw, George W. Kent,
and Burry Davis. I was the leader. It was for
me to speak. He was a brave man, I said.
He knew when to die, and how it is foolish
to go mad from thirst and fall by Apache bullets,
or be skinned alive. It is in bad taste. Let
(07:16):
us join Ramon Galagos. That is right, said William Shaw.
That is right, said George W. Kent. I straightened the
limbs of Ramon Galagos and put a handkerchief over his face.
Then William Shaw said, I should like to look like
that a little while, and George W. Kent said that
he felt that way too. It shall be so, I said,
(07:40):
the red devils will wait a week. William Shaw and
George W. Kent draw and kneel. They did so, and
I stood before them. Almighty God, our Father, said I,
Almighty God, our father, said William Shaw. Almighty God, our Father,
said George W. Kent, forgive us our sin, said I
(08:01):
forgive us our sins, said they, and receive our souls.
And receive our souls. Amen. Amen. I laid them beside
Ramon Gallegos and covered their faces. There was a quick
commotion on the opposite side of the campfire. One of
our party had sprung to his feet pistol in hand.
And you, he shouted, You dared to escape, You dared
(08:25):
to be alive, You cowardly hound. I'll send you to
join them if I hang for it. But with the
leap of a panther, the captain was upon him, grasping
his wrist. Hold it in, sam yancey, hold it in.
We were now all upon our feet, except the stranger,
who sat motionless and apparently inattentive. Someone sees Yancey's other arm. Captain,
(08:47):
I said, there is something wrong here. This fellow is
either a lunatic or merely a liar, just a plain
everyday liar whose Yancey has no call to kill. If
this man was of that party, it had five members,
one of whom probably himself, he is not named. Yes,
said the captain, releasing his insurgent, who sat down. There
is something unusual. Years ago, four dead bodies of white men,
(09:12):
scalped and shamefully mutilated, were found about the mouth of
that cave. They are buried there. I have seen the graves.
We shall all see them tomorrow. The stranger rose, standing
tall in the light of the expiring fire, which, in
our breathless attention to a story we had neglected to
keep going. There are four, he said, Raman Galagos, William Shaw,
(09:33):
George W. Kent, and Burry Davis. With this reiterated roll
call of the dead, he walked into the darkness, and
we saw him no more. At that moment. One of
our party, who had been on guard, strode in among us,
rifle in hand and somewhat excited captain, he said, for
the last half hour three men had been standing out
there on the mesa. He pointed in the direction taken
(09:56):
by the Stranger. I could see them distinctly, for the
moon is up. As they had no guns and I
had them cover with mine. I thought it was their
move they have made none, But damn it, they have
got on my nerves. Go back to your post and
stay till you see them again, said the captain. The
rest of you men lie down, or I'll kick you
all into the fire. The sentinel obediently withdrew, swearing and
(10:19):
did not return. As we were arranging our blankets, the
fiery yachty said, I beg your pardon, Captain, but who
the devil you take them to be? Remaned Galagos, William
Shawl and George W. Kent. But how about Barry Davis.
I ought to have shot em quite needless. You couldn't
have made him any debtor, Go to sleep. End of
(10:43):
the Stranger by Ambrose Biers
The Stranger by Ambrose Bierce. A man stepped out of
the darkness into the little illuminated circle about our failing
camp fire, and seated himself upon a rock. You are
not the first to explore this region, he said gravely.
Nobody controverted his statement. He was himself proof of its truth,
for he was not of our party and must have
(00:22):
been somewhere near when we camped. Moreover, he must have companions,
not far away. It was not a place where one
would be living or traveling alone for more than a week.
We had seen, besides ourselves and our animals, only such
living things as rattlesnakes, and horned toads. In an Arizona desert.
One does not long co exist with only such creatures
(00:42):
as these. One must have pack animals, supplies, arms, an outfit,
and all these imply comrades. It was perhaps a doubt
as to what manner of men, these unceremonious strangers comrades
might be together with something in his words, interpretable as
a challenge, that caused every man of our half dozen
gentlemen adventurers to rise to a sitting posture and lay
(01:05):
his hand upon a weapon and act signifying in that
time and place a policy of expectation. The stranger gave
the matter no attention and began again to speak in
the same deliberate, uninflected monotone in which he had delivered
his first sentence thirty years ago. Ramon Galagos, William Shaw,
George W. Kent, and Barry Davis, all of Tucson, crossed
(01:27):
the Santa Catalina Mountains and traveled due west as nearly
as the configuration of the country permitted. We were prospecting,
and it was our intention if we found nothing, to
push through to the heel of river at some point
near Big Bend, where we understood there was a settlement.
We had a good outfit, but no guide. Just Ramon Galagos,
(01:47):
William Shaw, George W. Kent, and Barry Davis. The man
repeated the name slowly and distinctly, as if to fix
them in the memories of his audience, every member of
which was now attentively of deserving him, but with a
slackened apprehension regarding his possible companions. Somewhere in the darkness
that seemed to enclose us like a black wall. In
the manner of this voluntary historian, was no suggestion of
(02:10):
an unfriendly purpose. His act was rather that of a
harmless lunatic than an enemy. We were not so new
to the country as not to know that the solitary
life of many a plainsman had a tendency to develop
eccentricities of conduct and character, not always easily distinguishable from
mental aberration. A man is like a tree in a
forest of his fellows. He will grow as straight as
(02:31):
his generic and individual nature permits. Alone, in the open,
he yields to the deforming stresses and torsions that environ him.
Some such thoughts were in my mind as I watched
the man from the shadow of my hat, pulled low
to shut out the firelight. A witless fellow, no doubt,
But what could he be doing here in the heart
of a desert. Having undertaken to tell this story, I
(02:51):
wish that I could describe the man's appearance. That would
be a natural thing to do. Unfortunately, and somewhat strangely,
I find myself unable to do so with any degree
of confidence. For afterwards, not two of us agreed as
to what he wore and how he looked. And when
I try to set down my own impressions, they elude me.
Anyone can tell some kind of story. Narration is one
(03:12):
of the elemental powers of the race, but the talent
for description is a gift nobody. Having broken silence, the
visitor went on to say, this country was not then
what it is now. There was not a ranch between
the Hila and the gulf. There was a little game
here and there in the mountains, and near the infrequent
water holes, grasped enough to keep our animals from starvation.
(03:33):
If we should be so fortunate as to encounter no Indians,
we might get through. But within a week the purposes
of the expedition had altered from discovery of wealth to
preservation of life. We had gone too far to go back,
for what was a head could be no worse than
what was behind. So we pushed on, writing by night
to avoid Indians in the intolerable heat, and concealing ourselves
(03:53):
by day as best we could. Sometimes, having exhausted our
supply of wild meat, it emptied at our casks. Days
without food or drink. Then a water hole or a
shallow pool in the bottom of an areo so restored
our strength and sanity that we were able to shoot
some of the wild animals that sought it also, sometimes
it was a bear, sometimes an antelope, a coyote, a cougar.
(04:16):
That was all, as God pleased, all were food. One morning,
as we skirted a mountain range, seeking a practicable pass,
we were attacked by a band of apaches who had
followed our trail up a gulch it is not far
from here. Knowing that they outnumbered us ten to one,
they took none of their usual cowardly precautions, but dashed
upon us at a gallop, firing and yelling. Fighting was
(04:39):
out of the question. We urged our feeble animals up
the gulch as far as there was footing for a hoof,
then threw ourselves out of our saddles and took to
the chaparal on one of the slopes, abandoning our entire
outfit to the enemy. But we retained our rifles. Every man, Ramon, Gallegos,
William Shaw, George W. Kent, and Barry Davis, same old crowd,
(05:03):
said the humorist of our party. He was an Eastern man,
unfamiliar with the decent observances of social intercourse. A gesture
of disapproval from our lever silenced him, and the stranger
proceeded with his tail. The savages dismounted also, and some
of them ran up the gults beyond the point at
which we had left it, cutting off further retreat in
that direction, forcing us up on the side. Unfortunately, the
(05:26):
chaparale extended only a short distance up the slope, and
as we came into the open ground above, we took
the fire of a dozen rifles, but apache shoot badly
when in a hurry, and God so wil died that
none of us fell. Twenty yards up the slope, beyond
the edge of the brush were vertical cliffs, in which
directly in front of us was a narrow opening into
(05:47):
that we ran, finding ourselves in a cavern about as
large as an ordinary room in a house. Here, for
a time we were safe. A single man with a
repeating rifle could defend the entrance against all the apaches
in the land. But against hunger and thirst we had
no defense. Courage we still had, but hope was a memory.
Not one of those Indians did we afterwards see, but
(06:09):
by the smoke and glare of their fires in the gulch,
we knew that by day and night they watched with
ready rifles at the edge of the bush. Knew that
if we made a sorte, not a man of us
would live to take three steps out into the open
for three days watching. In turn, we held out before
our suffering became insupportable. Then it was on the morning
of the fourth day. Ramon Galagos said, Signors, I know
(06:33):
not well the Good God what pleases him. I have
lived without religion, and I am not acquaint with that
of you. Pardon Signors if I shock you, But for
me it is time to come to beat the game
of the Apache. He knelt upon the rock floor of
the cave and pressed his pistol against his temple. Madre
de Dios. He said, comes now the soul of Ramon Galegos,
(06:55):
And so he left us. William Shaw, George W. Kent,
and Burry Davis. I was the leader. It was for
me to speak. He was a brave man, I said.
He knew when to die, and how it is foolish
to go mad from thirst and fall by Apache bullets,
or be skinned alive. It is in bad taste. Let
(07:16):
us join Ramon Galagos. That is right, said William Shaw.
That is right, said George W. Kent. I straightened the
limbs of Ramon Galagos and put a handkerchief over his face.
Then William Shaw said, I should like to look like
that a little while, and George W. Kent said that
he felt that way too. It shall be so, I said,
(07:40):
the red devils will wait a week. William Shaw and
George W. Kent draw and kneel. They did so, and
I stood before them. Almighty God, our Father, said I,
Almighty God, our father, said William Shaw. Almighty God, our Father,
said George W. Kent, forgive us our sin, said I
(08:01):
forgive us our sins, said they, and receive our souls.
And receive our souls. Amen. Amen. I laid them beside
Ramon Gallegos and covered their faces. There was a quick
commotion on the opposite side of the campfire. One of
our party had sprung to his feet pistol in hand.
And you, he shouted, You dared to escape, You dared
(08:25):
to be alive, You cowardly hound. I'll send you to
join them if I hang for it. But with the
leap of a panther, the captain was upon him, grasping
his wrist. Hold it in, sam yancey, hold it in.
We were now all upon our feet, except the stranger,
who sat motionless and apparently inattentive. Someone sees Yancey's other arm. Captain,
(08:47):
I said, there is something wrong here. This fellow is
either a lunatic or merely a liar, just a plain
everyday liar whose Yancey has no call to kill. If
this man was of that party, it had five members,
one of whom probably himself, he is not named. Yes,
said the captain, releasing his insurgent, who sat down. There
is something unusual. Years ago, four dead bodies of white men,
(09:12):
scalped and shamefully mutilated, were found about the mouth of
that cave. They are buried there. I have seen the graves.
We shall all see them tomorrow. The stranger rose, standing
tall in the light of the expiring fire, which, in
our breathless attention to a story we had neglected to
keep going. There are four, he said, Raman Galagos, William Shaw,
(09:33):
George W. Kent, and Burry Davis. With this reiterated roll
call of the dead, he walked into the darkness, and
we saw him no more. At that moment. One of
our party, who had been on guard, strode in among us,
rifle in hand and somewhat excited captain, he said, for
the last half hour three men had been standing out
there on the mesa. He pointed in the direction taken
(09:56):
by the Stranger. I could see them distinctly, for the
moon is up. As they had no guns and I
had them cover with mine. I thought it was their
move they have made none, But damn it, they have
got on my nerves. Go back to your post and
stay till you see them again, said the captain. The
rest of you men lie down, or I'll kick you
all into the fire. The sentinel obediently withdrew, swearing and
(10:19):
did not return. As we were arranging our blankets, the
fiery yachty said, I beg your pardon, Captain, but who
the devil you take them to be? Remaned Galagos, William
Shawl and George W. Kent. But how about Barry Davis.
I ought to have shot em quite needless. You couldn't
have made him any debtor, Go to sleep. End of
(10:43):
the Stranger by Ambrose Biers
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