long-lived, seemingly, as any characters in nineteenth century
fiction.... What gives these characters their lasting power? Why
does that highly melodramatic tragedy in the hills above Poker
Flat, with its stagy reformations, and contrasts of black sinner
and white innocent, hold you spellbound at the thirtieth as at
the first reading? Why does Tennessee’s Partner make you wish to
grasp him by the hand? Bret Harte believed, apparently, that it
was his realism which did it.... But we do not wait to be told by
Californians, who still remember the red-shirt period, that Roaring
Camp is not realism.... Not the realism, but the idealization, of
this life of the Argonauts was the prize Bret Harte gained.--HENRY
S. CANBY, _The Short Story in English_.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON HARTE
_Early Recollections of Bret Harte_, C. W. Stoddard, _Atlantic
Monthly_, vol. 78; _Bret Harte in California_, Noah Brooks, _Century
Magazine_, vol. 58; _American Humor and Bret Harte_, G. K. Chesterton,
_Critic_, vol. 41; _Life of Bret Harte_, T. E. Pemberton (1903); _Bret
Harte_, H. W. Boynton, in _Contemporary Men of Letters_ series (1905);
_Life of Bret Harte_, H. C. Merwin (1911).
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
BY BRET HARTE
[Sidenote: Central character.]
[Sidenote: Crisis at once forecasted.]
[Sidenote: Preliminary setting.]
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.
[Sidenote: Physical delineation interwoven with the progress of the
story.]
[Sidenote: Summary of tone of the fundamental situation. FOUNDATION
CRISIS.]
2. Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern of 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.
[Sidenote: Situation explained.]
[Sidenote: FOUNDATION PLOT INCIDENT.]
[Sidenote: Euphemism.]
3. 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 to 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.
[Sidenote: Note the author’s slight ironic tone, which later gives way
to simple pathos.]
4. 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.
[Sidenote: Character delineation.]
5. 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.
[Sidenote: First group of characters.]
[Sidenote: First group of characters.]
[Sidenote: Climax of first crisis.]
[Sidenote: End of Introduction and groundwork.]
6. 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 gained the
infelicitous 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.
[Sidenote: THIRD STAGE OF FIRST PLOT INCIDENT.]
[Sidenote: Is “their” well used?]
[Sidenote: Paragraph of character delineation.]
7. 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.
[Sidenote: Second preliminary setting.]
[Sidenote: FOUNDATION FOR MAIN CRISIS.]
8. 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 journey. 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 further, and the party
halted.
[Sidenote: MAIN SETTING.]
[Sidenote: Character contrasts.]
9. The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheatre,
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.
[Sidenote: Setting in harmony with tone of story.]
10. 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.
[Sidenote: Second group of characters.]
[Sidenote: OPENING OF MAIN PLOT SITUATION.]
11. 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.
[Sidenote: Character Contrasts.]
12. 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 ran 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 fifteen, emerged from behind the
pine-tree, where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of
her lover.
[Sidenote: First effect of the newcomers on the tone of the first group
of characters. This furnishes the _motif_ for the story.]
13. Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less
with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not
felicitous. 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.”
[Sidenote: Further effect.]
[Sidenote: FOUNDATION FOR MAIN CRISIS--NOT YET APPARENT.]
14. 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 cañon 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
d--d 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.
[Sidenote: Local color.]
15. 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 parting 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.
[Sidenote: Change--approach of main crisis.]
16. 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!
[Sidenote: Forecasted in ¶14.]
17. 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.
[Sidenote: Tone of character.]
[Sidenote: Contrast with crisis. Note casual physical description.]
[Sidenote: MAIN PLOT INCIDENT--What follows is its outgrowth.]
[Sidenote: Crisis acute.]
18. 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 snow-flakes, that dazzled and confused the
eye. What could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed. He
looked over the valley, and summoned up the present and future in two
words,--“snowed in!”
[Sidenote: As the story progresses note how the physical crises and the
moral crises keep pace.]
19. 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.”
[Sidenote: Lull in crisis.]
[Sidenote: From this point the story develops gradually and by closely
knit incidents in direct succession, all growing out of the setting,
which furnishes the physical crisis.]
[Sidenote: Pseudo crisis.]
[Sidenote: Resolution of pseudo crisis.]
20. 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 gayety 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 cheek 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 whiskey, which he had
prudently _cachéd_. “And yet it don’t somehow sound like whiskey,”
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.”
[Sidenote: Contrast with the actual danger.]
[Sidenote: Contrast is the author’s main reliance in this story.]
[Sidenote: Contrast with character-habits. A hint of character change.]
[Sidenote: Is “Covenanter’s” well used?]
21. Whether Mr. Oakhurst had _cachéd_ his cards with the whiskey
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 the 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
his 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.”
22. 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.
[Sidenote: Hope.]
[Sidenote: Character revelation.]
23. 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’.”
[Sidenote: Note the union of setting with the progress of the story.]
[Sidenote: Contrast.]
[Sidenote: KEY TO SETTING.]
[Sidenote: Character change--a key passage.]
[Sidenote: Contributory incident.]
24. 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 cast-aways still clung. Through the
marvellously 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 ingenious theory of the pair thus to account for
the fact that she didn’t swear and wasn’t improper.
[Sidenote: Developing or contributory incident.]
25. 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 camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching
void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by
Piney,--story-telling. 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 cañon
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.”
[Sidenote: Note upward and downward movement--alternations of hope and
despair, but a gradual deepening of the crisis.]
[Sidenote: Note the contrast between the epithet “outcasts” and the
feeling with which they are now invested.]
[Sidenote: Character progress.]
[Sidenote: Hint of later character revelation.]
[Sidenote: FIRST CHARACTER CLIMAX.]