Suspense.
And the producer of radio's outstanding theater of thrills, the master of mystery and adventure,
William M. Robeson.
Every year, thousands of short stories roll out from a multitude of typewriters and march
across the pages of our magazines and books toward well-deserved oblivion.
Few are memorable.
Fewer still are classics.
They pass the time and are forgotten even before the paper in which they are written
is reduced to black and ash.
But occasionally a story is written that is a true classic, an unforgettable tale.
Listen to such a one now.
As Victor Jorry stars in Ambrose Bierce's weird and wonderful story of the Civil War,
an occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, a tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down through the ties at
the swift water 20 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.
He watched a piece of dancing driftwood racing down the current beneath his feet.
He thought, if I could free my hands, I might throw off this noose and dive into the creek.
If I swam underwater, I would be safe from their bullets.
If my wind held out, I could make the southern bank take to the woods and get away home.
Peyton Farquhar, Alabama planter, stood at the end of a plank.
A captain of the Union Army and a sergeant stood at the other end.
When they stepped aside, the plank would tip upward, and Peyton Farquhar, Confederate spy,
would slip between the ties to hang until dead above the muddy water of Owl Creek.
Even in this far outpost of Sherman's march to the sea, the formalities of death are observed
by men most familiar with him.
The captain's company is drawn stiffly at attention along the tracks on the northern
side of the bridge.
The lieutenant stands stiffly on the bank of the stream, the point of his bared saber
scraping the gravel of the road bend.
Peyton Farquhar is being ushered into the Confederate beyond with every Union amenity.
The captain steps aside.
Now, only the weight of the bulky sergeant counterbalances Peyton Farquhar at the end
of his thin board.
They say this is the moment when all the past events of your life tumble into your memory.
But how could anyone know who has come back from the dead to tell us what dying is like?
I don't recall any childhood memories.
The past doesn't engulf me in this naked moment.
I'm only aware of what is here now.
Those damn Yankees lined up on the bank, the captain's tired eyes, that turkey buzzard
circling up there waiting for me, and that noise, that beating driving sound like a distant
engine, a pump, the roll of thunder on a summer evening coming closer, getting louder, choking
me.
It's your heart, of course, that you hear stepping up its cadence, pounding under the
forced draft of fear.
Now you can see nothing, remember nothing, sense nothing but the strangling suffocating
beat of your own heart throbbing its final protest.
You stand there erect.
The work is nearly at an end now.
The captain draws his sword, flourishes it to a carry, sings out a command.
Company!
Ready!
Rest!
The men on the bank smartly spread their legs, thrust hands forward over their rifle barrels.
The sergeant on the end of the plank takes one step to the left.
The plank tips forward, and Peyton Farquhar drops between the timbers of Owl Creek Bridge.
It takes longer to tell it.
As you drop down, when you lose consciousness, you are as one already dead.
Then you awaken sharply in pain to feel, not to think, just to feel the cutting pressure
on your throat, the agonies of pulsating fire shooting from your neck downward, to feel
the fullness, the congestion, the head bursting with suffocation.
Distantly beyond, outside of yourself, you hear a splash.
Remotely you sense cool, wet, green darkness.
The rope has broken.
You have fallen into the stream.
Now thinking returns, slowly.
You know for the moment you are safe from drowning because the rope around your neck
tightly keeps the water from your lungs.
Again, I shall die of hanging at the bottom of a river.
And that's absurd.
If I can get my hands free, I've got to get my hands free.
Come, Peyton, they can't let you.
Try again.
Once more.
Good boy, the rope's given.
Again.
Try once more.
That doesn't work, boy.
Now, the rope around your neck.
You must breathe when you come to the service, you must breathe quickly.
For if they haven't hanged you and they fail to drown you, can't let them shoot you.
Loosen the rope around your neck, you must get it loose.
Now.
There he is, down there at the fence.
Ready, aim.
You dive deeply, but above the ringing in your ear is the sound of all the other rifles.
And as you rise toward the surface, you meet shining bits of metal singularly flattened
with distorted and spent bullets oscillating slowly downward past you.
One catches in your collar and it feels uncomfortably warm.
You snatch it out, and this gray piece of Yankee lead reminds you of the gray uniform
of the soldier who was responsible for your being here.
You recall that it was only night before last when the soldier had ridden up to the driveway
as you and your wife sat under the magnolia trees in the cool twilight.
Evening, sir.
Good evening, Corporal.
I wonder if I might trouble you for a glass of water, sir?
Of course, I'll...
Don't disturb yourself, Peyton.
I'll go fetch him.
You're most kind, ma'am, if you just indicate the well.
Nonsense.
You just said a spell with my husband.
You look as if you could do with some rest.
Yes, ma'am.
I reckon I could.
I'll be back in a jiffy.
Thank you, ma'am.
Whose command are you with, Corporal?
Colonel Tolliver, sir.
13th North Carolina.
We get some little news down here.
How are things going at the front?
Not good, sir.
The damn Yankees are getting ready for another advance.
They're repairing the railroad.
Got it in shape.
Almost to Owl Creek Bridge.
And they got an outpost there.
Once they can run trains beyond the bridge, there's nothing to stop them between here
and Atlanta.
Then why hasn't the bridge been destroyed?
The military couldn't get near it, sir.
A civilian might.
Owl Creek Bridge.
That's not far from here, is it?
Less than 20 miles.
You say they have an outpost there?
On which side?
Tother side.
Nothing on this side but a couple of pickets half mile out on the railroad.
And a single sentinel at this end of the bridge.
And that bridge is important.
Sure is.
What if it were destroyed?
Hold up the Yankees for several weeks.
Well, suppose a man, a civilian like myself, should elude the picket post and get the better
of the sentinel.
What could he accomplish?
Well, I was there a week ago.
Just before we had to pull out.
There's a heap of driftwood come down in last winter's flood caught on the trestle at this
end.
It looked mighty dry and tindery to me.
I see.
A fellow with enough gumption might get through and set fire to it.
Or to burn like toe.
Yes, it should.
Of course.
A fellow would have to have plenty of gumption.
The Union commanders promised to hang any civilian caught fooling around the railroad.
Here's your water, Colonel.
Oh, thank you kindly, ma'am.
Right out of the spring house.
Ah, this is cool and nice.
And here's a packet of cornbread.
I thought you might be hungry.
Mighty grateful, ma'am.
It's ladies like you that keeps the South together and fighting these days.
Oh, what a pretty compliment.
Well, reckon I better hit the leather.
I've got a lot of riding ahead of me tonight.
Good luck to you, Corporal, and thank you for the information.
You'll be taking a chance, sir, but you couldn't do a greater service for your country.
I remember that, Corporal.
Goodbye, ma'am.
Goodbye, Corporal.
Bye, sir.
Many thanks.
Bye.
Peyton, what was he talking about?
What, my dear?
With a corporal, what do you mean by service to your country and taking a chance?
Oh, nothing.
Peyton, tell me.
It was nothing really, my dear.
Peyton Farquhar, if you're fixing to take any chances for our country, I want to know
about it.
Now, you just speak your piece.
There's nothing to say except I should be going away for a day or two on a little trip.
Is it dangerous, Peyton?
Not very.
You'll be back.
Yes, my dear, I promise you.
I'll be back.
You break the surface of Owl Creek for a second time.
Now you are much further downstream, further away from the Union soldiers on the bridge,
reloading their guns, the ramrods flashing in the morning sun.
That captain won't make the same mistake again.
He'll order them to fire at will and heaven help me, I can't dodge them all.
Another more terrible sound, cannon.
They've trained cannon on you.
In close.
Next time they'll use a charge of grape.
Rifles and grape covering the water from bank to bank.
I'm done for then.
Then something seems to grab you and your world round and round, spinning like a waterlogged
top.
You're caught in a vortex, a whirlpool.
The water, the banks, the distant bridge, the soldiers become indistinct blurs.
And again you're helpless.
You feel dizzy and sick.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You're tired.
You feel dizzy and sick to your stomach, just as you felt last night when you crept up the
bank towards the lone sentinel at the south end of the bridge and discovered the sentinel
was not alone.
There he is.
Let go.
You can't.
Go to him, Sergeant.
Well, well, Mr. Pate and Farquhar, we've been expecting you.
How do you know my...
We got ways.
Look here, I'm a civilian.
I was...
Save your breath.
And thank your maker we didn't shoot you in the back.
We don't do things like that up north.
You'll get at trial everything fair and square.
Bring him along, men.
The whirlpool spins faster and faster.
A sharp piece of driftwood tears at your coat.
The churning brown water chokes you.
You know there is nothing you can do as you had known it last night when they shoved you
into a tent near the bridge to face the infantry captain with the tired eyes.
Here he is, sir, right on schedule.
Good work, Sergeant.
Is this the man, Lieutenant?
That's him.
Why, you...
You're the corporal who stopped at my plantation last night.
That is right, Mr. Farquhar.
But not of the 13th North Carolina Volunteers.
Mr. Farquhar, this is Lieutenant Saltinstall, intelligence officer, 5th Massachusetts Regulers.
You've trapped me.
You deliberately led me into a trap.
I'm a civilian, a planter.
And also a southern patriot, caught in the act of sabotage.
You can't prove it.
We don't have to.
This is the most despicable, the most...
It proves once more that honor is a stranger than the North.
Oh, please, I'm too tired to listen to a recital of the code of a southern gentleman, Mr. Farquhar.
I'm afraid the distinction between your ethics and my lack of them would escape me this evening.
But why have you done this?
Why have you deliberately trapped me?
It's so much easier to eliminate civilian resistance by luring it into the open.
You fell for the bait.
Too bad.
Now look here.
It is my constitutional right.
Which constitution?
The Constitution of the United States of America or Jeff Davis's?
You insult me, I...
Remember your manners, sir.
I demand a trial.
You've just had it.
Post a guard over him, Sergeant.
Yes, sir.
I'll hang him in the morning.
In just a moment, we continue with...
Suspense.
In mid-December, we're planning to present a program of the big news of 1956.
This year, though, we want you to help choose which news events our ace reporters will recreate
for you.
We want your opinion on what you consider to be the top 10 news stories of the year.
Start thinking back.
On the international scene, there were conflicts in the Middle East, Poland, and Hungary, as
well as the controversy over Secretary of State Dulles' statement that we were at the
brink of war.
Here at home, President Eisenhower won a decisive victory at the polls, but lost Congress
to the Democrats.
Pick your top 10.
Then send your choices to the big news in care of CBS News, 485 Madison Avenue, New
York 22.
That's the big news in care of CBS News, 485 Madison Avenue, New York 22.
And now, we continue with Victor Jorry in an occurrence at Howell Creek Bridge, a tale
well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Something tears at your face, scratching, and you realize the whirling has stopped.
You open your eyes.
You're lying on the southern bank of a stream out of sight of your enemies, safe.
The gravel which has scratched your cheek now seems soft as new picatin.
The forest around you is a garden of luscious beauty, reeking with heavy perfume of freedom.
Beyond the whiz and rattle of the final charge of grapes screaming through the treetops seems
a benediction from the baffled cannoneer.
You leap to your feet and run into the woods south towards home.
Your neck is swollen and throbbing with pain.
You carry it cocked toward your left shoulder as you push through the matted brush.
All morning, you tear your way through the undergrowth.
The jacket isn't tattered, your face crisscrossed with bloody scratches from the brambles.
Every few moments you stop to listen for the sound of dogs, but all you hear is the sleepy
buzz of the forest.
And the blood throbbing through your heated brain brings another thought which is an insult.
No dogs.
You are not even important enough to the damn Yankees for dogs.
It is nearly noon now, and for half an hour you have been plunging through a swamp waist
deep in green ooze.
Your neck hurts constantly, your head throbs and your tongue is thick.
It tastes like brown, linsy, woozy.
Gnats swarm before your eyes, catching your eyelids.
Mosquitos buzz in your ears, drill deep in your hands and swollen neck.
You can't go on any longer.
You slow down, you stop.
You reach towards a palmetto root for support, and it slithers from your grasp and slides
softly into the water.
Water moccasin.
Fear finds you at last.
Terror, which stood aloof when you fled the executioner's bullets, now embraces you with
a clammy unction.
A water moccasin, the deadly cottonmouth.
Now each branch and root seems to writhe under your glance.
The swamp is undulating with certain death.
You plunge on through the dark, stinking ooze, on and on, tripping, stumbling, never stopping.
For terror rides your back, flogging you with a whiplash of fear.
Oh, Jethro gonna have Mosquitos quite fit as a fiddle in jig time.
Now you just drink this here yob tea, Mosquitos.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Jethro.
Yaza, Mosquitos.
What are you doing here?
Well, I lives here.
You live?
Where am I?
What happened?
Well, I was appalling my dugout and coming home through the swamp with a mess of catfish
or see you laying out here on the bank in front of my cabin.
Jethro, I heard...
I thought you were dead.
Who, me?
Dead?
Of course you thought Jethro dead.
You knew he had consumption when you sold him.
You knew he couldn't last long and he wasn't earning his keep.
His wife and daughter carried on some at first, but after a while they calmed down and, well,
last you'd have heard, Jethro was dead.
You thought I was dead, Mosquitos?
Say, you don't mean to tell me you don't know what done happened to me?
I'm free.
I'm free at last.
The news travels fast.
Even in the middle of this backwood swamp, this lonely black man has heard of Abe Lincoln's
traitorous Emancipation Proclamation.
Yes, sir, I'm free.
And I expect pretty soon my woman and my little girl gonna come along and join me.
How is they, Mosquitos?
Is they well?
Yes, yes, indeed.
They're both fine.
Your daughter's grown into a young beauty.
Mrs. Foucault has brought her into the kitchen, began to train her for the house.
Well, well.
Now what you think of that?
And my woman?
She still sang pretty.
Yes, Jethro.
Sunday's a meeting time.
We can hear all the way up to the big house.
That woman's voice is prettier than angels.
Jethro, I don't know how to say this, but I was really sorry about having to sell you,
but there wasn't anything else.
I understand, Mosquitos.
Don't you pay it no mind.
I done forgive you a long time ago.
You have?
Well, sure.
Don't the Lord tell us to forgive those who trespass against us?
And don't the Lord promise us we shall be free?
Don't you worry none about it, Mosquitos.
Get up.
Quiet that spot.
Quiet, sugar.
They must have heard the razor back in the brush.
No.
Ain't no hog.
Look, Mosquitos.
There's a horse coming down the back road.
Why, it's a soldier.
It's one of our soldiers.
Corporal, looks like.
Jethro, you've got to hide me.
How come I got to hide you, Mosquitos?
Don't ask so many questions, you insolent black...
Mosquitos, forgets.
House free.
Well, then, as an old friend of mine, please don't ask any questions.
Just hide me, and don't tell that soldier anything.
Sure.
I reckon I can do that for an old friend.
Here, you get down under this bed chair, and I'll put the covers over the side.
There he is.
Snuggles a chicken or rabbits here.
Remember, don't tell him anything.
Have you come this far just to be turned in by a wool-gathering black who talks crazy?
If Jethro knew this gray-clad corporal was really a Union lieutenant, he'd guarantee
his freedom by turning you in.
Even so, he bears you a big enough grudge to turn you in anyway.
Unless, of course, he's planning to dispose of you himself.
Yes, that's it.
That's why he talks so silly about the Lord and forgiveness.
He's going to do you in himself.
No, sir.
Never heard of him.
Well, if you run into him, don't tell him I was looking for him.
Yes, sir.
I'll remember not telling.
Just keep minding your own business until you'll live longer.
Yes, sir.
Get out!
I'll do this.
You can come on out now.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
Get out.
Mots Farquaad, Lord, I declare I don't understand none of this.
You said not to tell him you was here.
He said not to tell you he'd been here.
What's this year all about, Mots Farquaad?
It's nothing, Jethro, nothing.
I owe this man some money.
I'm not ready to pay it yet.
Oh, I see.
Well, I wouldn't know that.
Money something never bothered me like it bothers some, but me and money had always
been strange. What's the meaning of that? Money never bothered me like it's bothered some.
What's he picking up that knife for? Jethro, what are you going to do with that knife?
Oh, I was just fixing to slit up some of them catfish I got in the dugout. Looked like you
could do with a little food, Maas Farquaad. Oh, no, no thank you, Jethro. I really got
to be on my way. I want to get home by sundown if I can. Sure wouldn't be no bother.
To cut up a couple of catfish. No, thank you, old friend. If you just tell me which way I
should go to get home. Well, I don't rightly know, Maas Farquaad. I reckon from the way the sun's
reclining it'd be down the road that-a-way. Quite a fur-piece down. Yes, that should be about
right. I never been back, you know. Never tried to go back since I've been free. Yes, I know.
Reckon it won't be long till my woman and my little one comes here to me. Of course. If you
get back, Maas Farquaad, if you see them, you tell them I'm here waiting for them. Yes, I'll do that, Jethro. I'll do that.
You get away from there fast. The shells of the black road crunching under your muddy boots.
That grinning savage standing in the doorway of the shack, the knife in his hands. And each moment
until the road bends and cuts off the cabin from your view, your fury will come after you,
the knife poised to plunge in your back to pay you for the thrust you gave him when you sent him away
to die. But he's still standing, grinning foolishly and waving as you turn the bend. Now you feel safe,
but only for a moment. Then you hear a sound, the sound of a horse, the corporal in gray from the
Massachusetts Fifth Regulars. He's coming back down the road searching for you, hounding you,
coming to take you back to Owl Creek Bridge, back to the rope that won't break under your weight.
You walk faster and faster and always the sound is there, growing louder and louder, and you run as
fast as you can down the shell road which stretches pure to the horizon between the green walls of
scrubby pine. How long have you been running down this endless road? It's dark now. Is it night?
Or has the blood trapped in your head by that suffocating rope at last burst into your congested
eyeballs and blinded you? Will it next pour from your swollen and bruised neck into your brain,
stopping all sensation, instantly bringing to a welcome end this day of agony and flight?
Ridiculous fantasies of fatigue and fear. You can see the darkness is the black of a sudden
summer storm. That lightning flash clearly shows the white road ahead in the black silhouettes of
trees along the sides. And since you were sure you can see, the other senses return. You hear the
rumble of the thunder. You feel that insupportable ache of your straining lungs, the leaden weight of
your tired feet, and now the patter of rain, first washing the stinging sweat from your scratched and
bitten face, now pounding harder, flowing down across your hatless head, matting your hair,
slowing down your headlong gait to a dog trot. Another flash of lightning directly overhead. For
an instant you see the soldiers of Owl Creek Bridge standing at the side of the road, rifles
leveled, their eyes boring down the sights aiming at your heart. Again you're running, and the rain
has turned to hail. Pellets as big as homing grits beat down on you. Pound your swollen bruised neck,
hammer at your countless cuts. Again the lightning. And on the other side of the road the great
cad corporal sits and strides his horse waiting for you. No, no, you can't get me now, no! A
thick bolt of lightning strikes a tree ahead of you, and then the white blinding light stands Jethro,
black and grinning, knife raised in the air. No, no Jethro, forgive me, forgive me! He's gone. And
now you see dangling for each tree along the road a noose swinging in the wind. Wherever you turn,
wherever you look, a noose waiting for you. A noose which wiggles like a water moccasin.
Now you are standing on the green lawn of your plantation before the high-columned entrance.
The storm is over. The clouds are black and menacing all around the horizon, but through
a break overhead, glorious sunlight streams down bathing your garden and your house in heavenly
light. You are home. And now you hear a rustle of crinoline, and down from the wide portico
steps your beloved wife. She walks across the lawn, her arms outstretched. For this moment you've
endured the agonies of this day. And were those agonies multiplied a thousand times,
there would be a small price for the benison of this breast, the sanctuary of these arms,
the security of these lips. You step forward to fold your wife in your embrace. The rope
stretched tight, sang like a bowstring. Peyton Farquhar was dead. His body with a broken neck
swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of Owl Creek Bridge. Suspense. In which Victor
Jorry starred in an occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, adapted by William M. Robeson from the
classic story of Ambrose Beers. Listen. Listen again next week when we return with Howard Duff
in Eye Witness, a brutal tale of prison mutiny, a tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Supporting Mr. Jorry in occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge were Larry Thor, Lou Merrill,
Jack Cruton, Chet Stratton, Julie Bennett, and Roy Glenn. Sound patterns by Tom Hanley and Bill
James. The orchestra was under the direction of Wilbur Hatch. There always seems to be a certain
number of people who would rather use all their cunning to figure out a way to steal the Mona Lisa
than do one lick of honest work. These characters call for even more wit and cunning on the part
of the police and federal agents if their schemes are to be foiled. A CBS radio show that brings you
a fascinating picture of this thrilling counterplay is that perennial favorite, The FBI in Peace and
War, heard every Sunday over most of these same stations. Enjoy another exciting drama of wit
outmatching wit on The FBI in Peace and War a little later in the day today. Stay tuned for
five minutes of CBS News to be followed over most of these same stations by indictment.