until this moment had escaped me. I ought to have told you of two quiet
elderly gentlemen who, amid all the blackguardism that went on around,
held a discussion on the merits of the English language,--one of the
disputants showing an especial admiration for the word "kindle,"--"fine
old Saxon word as ever was coined." Then there were some childish games
of "first and last letters," to vary such entertainments as that of the
Swearing Club. I should also have mentioned that, on the dissolution of
the Swearing Club, a game at "dumb motions" was started, which presently
led to some talk concerning deaf and dumb people, and their method of
conversing with each other by means of finger-signs; as well as to a
little story that sounded strangely enough coming from the mouth of the
most efficient member of the club. A good memory for details enables me
to repeat this story almost, if not quite, exactly. "They are a rummy
lot, them deaf and dumb," said the story-teller. "I was at the workhouse
at Stepney when I was a young 'un, don't you know; and when I got a
holiday I used to go and see my old woman as lived in the Borough. Well,
one day a woman as was in the house ses to me, ses she, 'Don't you go
past the Deaf and Dumb School as you goes home?' So I ses, 'Yes.' So
ses she, 'Would you mind callin' there and takin' a message to my little
gal as is in there deaf and dumb?' So I ses, 'No.' Well, I goes, and
they lets me in, and I tells the message, and they shows me the kid what
it was for. Pooty little gal! So they tells her the message, and then
she begins making orts and crosses like on her hands. 'What's she a
doin' that for?' I ses. 'She's a talkin' to you,' ses they. 'O,' I ses,
'what's she talkin' about?' 'She says you're a good boy for comin' and
tellin' her about her mother, and she loves you.' Blessed if I could
help laughin'! So I ses, 'There ain't no call for her to say that.'
Pooty little kid she was! I stayed there a goodish bit, and walked about
the garden with her, and what d'ye think? Presently she takes a fancy
for some of my jacket buttons,--brass uns they was, with the name of the
'house' on 'em,--and I cuts four on 'em off and gives her. Well, when I
gave her them blow me if she didn't want one of the brass buckles off my
shoes. Well, you mightn't think it, but I gave her that too." "Didn't
yer get into a row when you got back?" some listener asked. "Rather! Got
kep without dinner and walloped as well, as I wouldn't tell what I'd
done with 'em. Then they was goin' to wallop me again, so I thought I'd
cheek it out; so I up and told the master all about it." "And got it
wuss?" "No, I didn't. The master give me new buttons and a buckle
without saying another word, and my dinner along with my supper as
well."
[Illustration]
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 23d 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.
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.
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 foot-hills, 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 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 hands 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
new-comer 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 fifteen, 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 for 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 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.
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 snow-flakes, 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--we 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 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."
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 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
castinets. 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 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 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 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."
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 snow-flakes 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
snow-shoes, 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 cañon," 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 some one
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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE.