Editor’s note: The following short
story is from the public domain. It was
written by American writer Bret Harte (1836-1902) from his Selected Stories
first published in 1869. It was produced
by Project Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org Project Gutenberg offers over 49,000 free
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The Outcasts of
Poker Flat
By Bret Harte
As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped
into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of
November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the
preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he
approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the
air which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
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| Saloon in Poker Flats |
Mr.
Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these indications.
Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause was another question.
"I reckon they're after somebody," he reflected; "likely it's
me." He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had been whipping
away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his
mind of any further conjecture.
In point of fact, Poker Flat was
"after somebody." It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand
dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a
spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the
acts that had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of
all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then
hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the
banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to say that some
of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their
impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established
standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment.
 |
| Bret Harte |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Francis Bret Harte, right, was an American author and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush
Mr. Oakhurst
was right in supposing that he was included in this category. A few of the
committee had urged hanging him as a possible example, and a sure method of
reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the sums he had won from them.
"It's agin justice," said Jim Wheeler, "to let this yer young
man from Roaring Camp—an entire stranger—carry away our money." But a crude
sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate
enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice.
Mr. Oakhurst
received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the less coolly that he
was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler not to
accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the
usual percentage in favor of the dealer.
A body of
armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of
the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly desperate
man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was intended, the expatriated
party consisted of a young woman familiarly known as the "Duchess";
another, who had won the title of "Mother Shipton"; and "Uncle
Billy," a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard.
The cavalcade provoked no comments from the
spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch which
marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly
and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their
lives.
As the
escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears
from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley
of expletives from Uncle Billy.
The
philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother
Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements of the
Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed
to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good humor
characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own riding horse,
"Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this
act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted
her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed
the possessor of "Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy
included the whole party in one sweeping anathema.
The road to
Sandy Bar—a camp that, not having as yet experienced the regenerating
influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some invitation to the
emigrants—lay over a steep mountain range. It was distant a day's severe
travel. In that advanced season, the party soon passed out of the moist,
temperate regions of the foothills into the dry, cold, bracing air of the
Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out
of her saddle upon the ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and
the party halted.
The spot was
singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater, surrounded on three
sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of
another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most
suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew
that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and the party
were not equipped or provisioned for delay.
This fact he
pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary on the
folly of "throwing up their hand before the game was played out." But
they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency stood them in place of
food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of his remonstrances, it was not
long before they were more or less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed
rapidly from a bellicose state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin,
and Mother Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a
rock, calmly surveying them.
Mr. Oakhurst
did not drink. It interfered with a profession which required coolness,
impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own language, he
"couldn't afford it." As he gazed at his recumbent fellow exiles, the
loneliness begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life, his very vices,
for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself in dusting his
black clothes, washing his hands and face, and other acts characteristic of his
studiously neat habits, and for a moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of
deserting his weaker and more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to
him. Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement which,
singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was
notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above
the circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley
below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard his own
name called.
A horseman
slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the newcomer Mr. Oakhurst
recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as the "Innocent" of Sandy
Bar. He had met him some months before over a "little game," and had,
with perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune—amounting to some forty
dollars—of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew
the youthful speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy,
you're a good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over
again." He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the
room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.
There was a
remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting of Mr. Oakhurst. He
had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his fortune.
"Alone?" No, not exactly alone; in fact (a giggle), he had run away
with Piney Woods. Didn't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She that used to wait on
the table at the Temperance House? They had been engaged a long time, but old
Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and were going to Poker Flat
to be married, and here they were. And they were tired out, and how lucky it
was they had found a place to camp and company. All this the Innocent delivered
rapidly, while Piney, a stout, comely damsel of 15, emerged from behind the
pine tree, where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her
lover.
Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still
less with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not
fortunate. He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick
Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough
to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would not bear
trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further, but
in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there was no provision, nor means of
making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met this objection by assuring the
party that he was provided with an extra mule loaded with provisions and by the
discovery of a rude attempt at a log house near the trail. "Piney can stay
with Mrs. Oakhurst," said the Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, "and
I can shift for myself."
Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle
Billy from bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to
retire up the canyon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the
joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of his
face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them
seated by a fire—for the air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast—in
apparently amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive,
girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and
animation she had not shown for many days.
The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal
effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into
amiability. "Is this yer a damned picnic?" said Uncle Billy with
inward scorn as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the
tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic
fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he
felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist into his mouth.
As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze
rocked the tops of the pine trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy
aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart
for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so
honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The
frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to
remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to
the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a
few minutes were asleep.
Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke
benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now
blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave
it—snow!
He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the
sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had
been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to
his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they were no
longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.
The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the
fire with his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered
peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin Piney
slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended by celestial
guardians; and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his shoulders, stroked
his mustaches and waited for the dawn. It came slowly in a whirling mist of
snowflakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What could be seen of the
landscape appeared magically changed. He looked over the valley, and summed up
the present and future in two words—"snowed in!"
A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately
for the party, had been stored within the hut and so escaped the felonious
fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they
might last ten days longer. "That is," said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce
to the Innocent, "if you're willing to board us. If you ain't—and perhaps
you'd better not—you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with provisions."
For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself
to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had
wandered from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He dropped a
warning to the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew the facts of
their associate's defection.
"They'll find out the truth about us all when they find
out anything," he added, significantly, "and there's no good
frightening them now."
Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the
disposal of Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced
seclusion. "We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt,
and we'll all go back together." The cheerful gaiety of the young man, and
Mr. Oakhurst's calm, infected the others.
The Innocent with the aid of pine boughs extemporized a
thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the
rearrangement of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes
of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. "I reckon now you're
used to fine things at Poker Flat," said Piney. The Duchess turned away
sharply to conceal something that reddened her cheeks through its professional
tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney not to "chatter." But when
Mr. Oakhurst returned from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of
happy laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his
thoughts first naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had prudently cached.
"And yet it don't somehow sound like whisky," said
the gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the
still-blinding storm and the group around it that he settled to the conviction
that it was "square fun."
Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whisky as
something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was
certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say cards once"
during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced
somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack.
Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation
of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies
from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets.
But the crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting
hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and
vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its
chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the
others, who at last joined in the refrain:
"I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in His army."
The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the
miserable group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward as if in token
of the vow.
At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and
the stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose
professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible amount of
sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson somehow managed to take upon
himself the greater part of that duty. He excused himself to the Innocent by
saying that he had "often been a week without sleep."
"Doing
what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst, sententiously;
"when a man gets a streak of luck,—nigger luck—he don't get tired. The
luck gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is
a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to
change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've
had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat—you come along, and slap you
get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along you're all right.
For," added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,
"'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in His army.'"
The third day came, and the sun, looking through the
white-curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store
of provisions for the morning meal.
It was one of the peculiarities of that mountain climate
that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in
regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed drift on drift of snow
piled high around the hut—a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying
below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the marvelously
clear air the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away.
Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled
in that direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt,
and perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity.
It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess.
"Just you go out there and cuss, and see." She then set herself to
the task of amusing "the child," as she and the Duchess were pleased
to call Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a soothing and original theory
of the pair thus to account for the fact that she didn't swear and wasn't
improper.
When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy
notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by
the flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left
by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney—storytelling.
Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal
experiences, this plan would have failed too but for the Innocent.
Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr.
Pope's ingenious translation of the ILIAD. He now proposed to narrate the
principal incidents of that poem—having thoroughly mastered the argument and
fairly forgotten the words—in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for
the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked the earth. Trojan
bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in the canyon
seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with
quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the fate of
"Ash-heels," as the Innocent persisted in denominating the
"swift-footed Achilles."
So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a
week passed over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and
again from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day
closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from their
prison over drifted walls of dazzling white that towered twenty feet above
their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish their fires, even
from the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in the drifts. And yet no
one complained.
The lovers turned from the dreary prospect and looked into
each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to the
losing game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed
the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton—once the strongest of the party—seemed
to sicken and fade.
At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her
side. "I'm going," she said, in a voice of querulous weakness,
"but don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle
from under my head and open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother
Shipton's rations for the last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the
child," she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney.
"You've starved yourself," said the gambler.
"That's what they call it," said the woman, querulously, as she lay
down again and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.
The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and
Homer was forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the
snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of snowshoes,
which he had fashioned from the old pack saddle. "There's one chance in a
hundred to save her yet," he said, pointing to Piney; "but it's
there," he added, pointing toward Poker Flat. "If you can reach there
in two days she's safe." "And you?" asked Tom Simson. "I'll
stay here," was the curt reply.
The lovers parted with a long embrace. "You are not
going, too?" said the Duchess as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting
to accompany him. "As far as the canyon," he replied. He turned
suddenly, and kissed the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame and her
trembling limbs rigid with amazement.
Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again
and the whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that someone
had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer. The
tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into
each other's faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting
the position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the Duchess's
waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That night the storm
reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the protecting pines, invaded
the very hut.
Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the
fire, which gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess
crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney, can
you pray?" "No, dear," said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without
knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's
shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the
head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery
drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds,
and settled about them as they slept.
The moon through the rifted clouds looked down upon what had
been the camp. But all human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden
beneath the spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.
They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken
when voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying
fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told
from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned.
Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away,
leaving them still locked in each other's arms.
But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine
trees, they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife. It
bore the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:
BENEATH
THIS TREE
LIES
THE BODY
OF
JOHN
OAKHURST,
WHO STRUCK A
STREAK OF BAD LUCK
ON THE 23D
OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
AND
HANDED IN
HIS CHECKS
ON THE 7TH
DECEMBER, 1850.
And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a
bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who
was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
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