Pale Rider
The author Robert Penn Warren said "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" was “at the top level, you know, in that collection of the world’s short novels.” The book also includes the stories "Noon Wine" and "Old Mortality." The title comes from an African-American spiritual that the story references, which begins "Pale horse, pale rider, done took my lover away." The spiritual in turn is Biblical, coming from Revelation 6:1-8. There, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are the Conqueror on a white horse, War on a red horse, Famine on a black horse, and Death on a pale horse.