he first of the four sections of "A Horseman in the Sky" establish the action of the story during the opening months of the American Civil War, in the early autumn of 1861. The location of the story is the countryside of West Virginia. The action of the story is described by an omniscient narrator who first calls attention to a single Federal (that is, Union or Northern) soldier who has been posted as a sentry. He is lying in hiding, as concealed by a grove of laurel trees, and has fallen asleep at his post. The narrator points out that this is a capital crime under military law, meriting the death penalty, and also offers the opinion that the man's execution, if he were to be found out and tried, would be just. Despite this notice, as Donald T. Blume points out in his book Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and Soldiers in Context: A Critical Study, a casual reader unfamiliar with military life might feel a natural sympathy for a soldier who is so exhausted that he falls asleep on duty. Once a reader has formed such an opinion of the matter, he or she may well fail to take to heart the later and more technical description of how the sentry is putting the lives of thousands of his comrades at risk. The sleeping sentry is meant to be guarding a Federal force of five regiments (about five to ten thousand men) hidden in a forest in a valley between two high ridges (approximately one thousand feet high). This force is waiting for nightfall to launch an ambush on a larger Confederate force atop one of the ridges. This plan has a good chance of success if the element of surprise can be maintained, but if the Federal force is discovered, its position in a valley with only a few outlets would doom it to complete destruction. Such a precise description of the relation of terrain and position to warfare would have been informed not only by Bierce's service in combat but also by his later experience during the war serving as a topographer.