Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)

American poet, novelist, and short story writer, best known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage.

Horses – One Dash, written in 1895, first published in a newspaper in 1896 and then in the collection The Open Boat and Other Stories in 1898. Also known as One Dash – Horses or simply Horses.

Available to read online here.

This is the second of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “Some authors comment openly on the characters and the action, perhaps even correcting the perspective of the characters; others make their point only through selection, arrangement, and phrasing.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

Horses – One Dash

Richardson, a New Yorker, and his servant, José, ride their horses through the mesquite-strewn hills of Mexico. Needing somewhere to shelter for the night, José arranges for them to stay at a house in a remote village. All is peaceful until the noise of rowdy, drunken men outside the house wakes them in the middle of the night. It quickly becomes clear the men plan to break in, steal their goods and doubtless murder them in the process. Both men are terrified, but Richardson maintains an outward show of calm. Fortunately the men are diverted by the arrival of a group of women, and they turn their attention to singing, dancing, drinking and fraternising with the women.

The next morning Richardson and José make their escape. José is keen to rush ahead as quickly as possible, but Richardson holds back, much to his servant’s fury and frustration. They can see figures on the horizon behind them, and they know they are being pursued by the men from the night before. Fortunately, José heads down a hill to discover a group of rurales, a Mexican army cavalry corps policing the plain; José convinces them that Richardson is an influential and rich American, so the rurales are determined to protect him. When the marauding men start hurtling down the hill in pursuit of Richardson, the last thing they expect is to be met by the cavalry.

This fascinating little tale recounts the activities of maybe no more than twelve hours, but which have a profound effect on everyone involved; Richardson and José, the marauders, the rurales, even their horses. Crane makes it clear that, despite his outward show of calm, Richardson is wholly scared by the men and the danger in which he finds himself; whilst José never conceals that fact. The reader can never predict how the story will resolve itself; and its sudden ending emphasises its lack of sentimentality or indeed any future interest in the two main characters.

Crane’s writing style is fluid and full; each sentence holds your attention with its unexpected observations and delicious descriptions. Even from the very start, Crane loves to concentrate on colour and sensuousness. For example, the first paragraph includes references to crimson, blue and green, painting, and the notion of sun-shot water, a memorable description of what one sees when sun beats down on a river. He emphasises the blackness of the blanket and of José’s horse, a lemon-coloured patch of sky, red spears of fire, the greenness of the fat Mexican’s face. This all paints a very vivid picture for the reader’s imagination. Elsewhere he shows his mastery of alliteration; consider the use of d, f, w, and s in this sentence: “José rolled and shuddered in his saddle, persistently disturbing the stride of the black horse, fretting and worrying him until the white foam flew and the great shoulders shone like satin from the sweat.”

This is an excellent example of the type of narration described in the introduction by Moffett and McElheny, where the narrator comments on the action and the characters. Crane breaks away from his narration to address the reader directly: “My friend, take my advice, and never be executed by a hangman who doesn’t talk the English language”; or “the man who said that spurs jingled was insane”, a good example of Crane’s occasionally unexpected flashes of humour in a deadly situation. Others are “José’s moans and cries amounted to a university course in theology” and “if toboggans half-way down a hill should suddenly make up their minds to turn round and go back, there would be an effect something like that produced by the drunken horsemen.”

And, of course, Crane asks the most direct question about his main character, a question posed via the thoughts of his horse, and which is never truly resolved: “At the approach of their menacing company, why did not this American cry out and turn pale, or run, or pray them mercy? The animal merely sat still, and stared, and waited for them to begin. Well, evidently he was a great fighter! Or perhaps he was an idiot? Indeed, this was an embarrassing situation, for who was going forward to discover whether he was a great fighter or an idiot?”

A gripping narrative and exquisite use of language; Horses – One Dash is one of the highlights of the Points of View collection.

The next story in the anthology is the third to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, The Prison by Bernard Malamud.