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The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales

B >> Bret Harte >> The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales



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THE WRITINGS OF BRET HARTE




THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP AND OTHER TALES

WITH CONDENSED NOVELS, SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS, AND EARLIER
PAPERS

By BRET HARTE

_WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR_




PUBLISHERS' NOTE



In 1882, it was felt to be desirable that Mr. Harte's scattered work
should be brought together in convenient form, and the result was a
compact edition of five volumes. After that date, as before, he
continued to produce poems, tales, sketches, and romances in steady
succession, and in 1897 his publishers undertook a uniform and orderly
presentation of the results of more than thirty years of his literary
activity. The fourteen volumes that embodied those results were
enriched by Introductions and a Glossary prepared by Mr. Harte
himself.

The present Riverside Edition is based on the collection made in 1897,
but is enlarged by the inclusion of later work.

Boston, 4 Park Street, Autumn, 1902.




CONTENTS



GENERAL INTRODUCTION

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP AND OTHER SKETCHES. The Luck Of Roaring Camp
The Outcasts Of Poker Flat Miggles Tennessee's Partner The Idyl Of Red
Gulch Brown Of Calaveras

CONDENSED NOVELS. Muck-A-Muck: A Modern Indian Novel Selina Sedilia
The Ninety-Nine Guardsmen Miss Mix Mr. Midshipman Breezy: A Naval
Officer Guy Heavystone; Or, "Entire:" A Muscular Novel John Jenkins;
Or, The Smoker Reformed Fantine. After The French Of Victor Hugo "La
Femme." After The French Of M. Michelet The Dweller Of The Threshold
N. N.: Being A Novel In The French Paragraphic Style No Title Handsome
Is As Handsome Does Lothaw; Or, The Adventures Of A Young Gentleman In
Search Of A Religion The Haunted Man: A Christmas Story Terence
Denville Mary Mcgillup The Hoodlum Band; Or, The Boy Chief, The Infant
Politician, And The Pirate Prodigy

EARLIER SKETCHES. M'liss: An Idyl Of Red Mountain. I. Smith's Pocket
II. Which Contains A Dream Of The Just Aristides III. Under The
Greenwood Tree IV. Which Has A Good Moral Tendency V. "Open Sesame"
VI. The Trials Of Mrs. Morpher VII. The People vs. John Doe Waters
VIII. The Author To The Reader--Explanatory IX. Cleaning Up X. The Red
Rock High-Water Mark A Lonely Ride The Man Of No Account Notes By
Flood And Field Waiting For The Ship: A Fort Point Idyl A Night At
Wingdam

SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS. The Legend Of Monte Del Diablo The
Right Eye Of The Commander The Legend Of Devil's Point The Adventure
Of Padre Vicentio: A Legend Of San Francisco The Devil And The Broker:
A Medieval Legend The Ogress Of Silver Land; Or, The Diverting History
Of Prince Badfellah And Prince Bulleboye The Christmas Gift That Came
To Rupert: A Story For Little Soldiers




GENERAL INTRODUCTION



The opportunity here offered [Footnote: By the appearance in England
several years ago of an edition of the author's writings as then
collected.] to give some account of the genesis of these Californian
sketches, and the conditions under which they were conceived, is
peculiarly tempting to an author who has been obliged to retain a
decent professional reticence under a cloud of ingenious surmise,
theory, and misinterpretation. He very gladly seizes this opportunity
to establish the chronology of the sketches, and incidentally to show
that what are considered the "happy accidents" of literature are very
apt to be the results of quite logical and often prosaic processes.

The author's _first_ volume was published in 1865 in a thin book
of verse, containing, besides the titular poem, "The Lost Galleon,"
various patriotic contributions to the lyrics of the Civil War, then
raging, and certain better known humorous pieces, which have been
hitherto interspersed with his later poems in separate volumes, but
are now restored to their former companionship. This was followed in
1867 by "The Condensed Novels," originally contributed to the "San
Francisco Californian," a journal then edited by the author, and a
number of local sketches entitled "Bohemian Papers," making a single
not very plethoric volume, the author's first book of prose. But he
deems it worthy of consideration that during this period, i.e. from
1862 to 1866, he produced "The Society upon the Stanislaus" and "The
Story of M'liss,"--the first a dialectical poem, the second a
Californian romance,--his first efforts toward indicating a peculiarly
characteristic Western American literature. He would like to offer
these facts as evidence of his very early, half-boyish but very
enthusiastic belief in such a possibility,--a belief which never
deserted him, and which, a few years later, from the better-known
pages of "The Overland Monthly," he was able to demonstrate to a
larger and more cosmopolitan audience in the story of "The Luck of
Roaring Camp" and the poem of the "Heathen Chinee." But it was one of
the anomalies of the very condition of life that he worked amidst, and
endeavored to portray, that these first efforts were rewarded by very
little success; and, as he will presently show, even "The Luck of
Roaring Camp" depended for its recognition in California upon its
success elsewhere. Hence the critical reader will observe that the
bulk of these earlier efforts, as shown in the first two volumes, were
marked by very little flavor of the soil, but were addressed to an
audience half foreign in their sympathies, and still imbued with
Eastern or New England habits and literary traditions. "Home" was
still potent with these voluntary exiles in their moments of
relaxation. Eastern magazines and current Eastern literature formed
their literary recreation, and the sale of the better class of
periodicals was singularly great. Nor was the taste confined to
American literature. The illustrated and satirical English journals
were as frequently seen in California as in Massachusetts; and the
author records that he has experienced more difficulty in procuring a
copy of "Punch" in an English provincial town than was his fortune at
"Red Dog" or "One-Horse Gulch." An audience thus liberally equipped
and familiar with the best modern writers was naturally critical and
exacting, and no one appreciates more than he does the salutary
effects of this severe discipline upon his earlier efforts.

When the first number of "The Overland Monthly" appeared, the author,
then its editor, called the publisher's attention to the lack of any
distinctive Californian romance in its pages, and averred that, should
no other contribution come in, he himself would supply the omission in
the next number. No other contribution was offered, and the author,
having the plot and general idea already in his mind, in a few days
sent the manuscript of "The Luck of Roaring Camp" to the printer. He
had not yet received the proof-sheets when he was suddenly summoned to
the office of the publisher, whom he found standing the picture of
dismay and anxiety with the proof before him. The indignation and
stupefaction of the author can be well understood when he was told
that the printer, instead of returning the proofs to him, submitted
them to the publisher, with the emphatic declaration that the matter
thereof was so indecent, irreligious, and improper that his proof-
reader--a young lady--had with difficulty been induced to continue its
perusal, and that he, as a friend of the publisher and a well-wisher
of the magazine, was impelled to present to him personally this
shameless evidence of the manner in which the editor was imperilling
the future of that enterprise. It should be premised that the critic
was a man of character and standing, the head of a large printing
establishment, a church member, and, the author thinks, a deacon. In
which circumstances the publisher frankly admitted to the author that,
while he could not agree with all of the printer's criticisms, he
thought the story open to grave objection, and its publication of
doubtful expediency.

Believing only that he was the victim of some extraordinary
typographical blunder, the author at once sat down and read the proof.
In its new dress, with the metamorphosis of type,--that metamorphosis
which every writer so well knows changes his relations to it and makes
it no longer seem a part of himself,--he was able to read it with
something of the freshness of an untold tale. As he read on he found
himself affected, even as he had been affected in the conception and
writing of it--a feeling so incompatible with the charges against it,
that he could only lay it down and declare emphatically, albeit
hopelessly, that he could really see nothing objectionable in it.
Other opinions were sought and given. To the author's surprise, he
found himself in the minority. Finally, the story was submitted to
three gentlemen of culture and experience, friends of publisher and
author,--who were unable, however, to come to any clear decision. It
was, however, suggested to the author that, assuming the natural
hypothesis that his editorial reasoning might be warped by his
literary predilections in a consideration of one of his own
productions, a personal sacrifice would at this juncture be in the
last degree heroic. This last suggestion had the effect of ending all
further discussion, for he at once informed the publisher that the
question of the propriety of the story was no longer at issue: the
only question was of his capacity to exercise the proper editorial
judgment; and that unless he was permitted to test that capacity by
the publication of the story, and abide squarely by the result, he
must resign his editorial position. The publisher, possibly struck
with the author's confidence, possibly from kindliness of disposition
to a younger man, yielded, and "The Luck of Roaring Camp" was
published in the current number of the magazine for which it was
written, as it was written, without emendation, omission, alteration,
or apology. A not inconsiderable part of the grotesqueness of the
situation was the feeling, which the author retained throughout the
whole affair, of the perfect sincerity, good faith, and seriousness of
his friend's--the printer's--objection, and for many days thereafter
he was haunted by a consideration of the sufferings of this
conscientious man, obliged to assist materially in disseminating the
dangerous and subversive doctrines contained in this baleful fiction.
What solemn protests must have been laid with the ink on the rollers
and impressed upon those wicked sheets! what pious warnings must have
been secretly folded and stitched in that number of "The Overland
Monthly"! Across the chasm of years and distance the author stretches
forth the hand of sympathy and forgiveness, not forgetting the gentle
proof-reader, that chaste and unknown nymph, whose mantling cheeks and
downcast eyes gave the first indications of warning.

But the troubles of the "Luck" were far from ended. It had secured an
entrance into the world, but, like its own hero, it was born with an
evil reputation, and to a community that had yet to learn to love it.
The secular press, with one or two exceptions, received it coolly, and
referred to its "singularity;" the religious press frantically
excommunicated it, and anathematized it as the offspring of evil; the
high promise of "The Overland Monthly" was said to have been ruined by
its birth; Christians were cautioned against pollution by its contact;
practical business men were gravely urged to condemn and frown upon
this picture of Californian society that was not conducive to Eastern
immigration; its hapless author was held up to obloquy as a man who
had abused a sacred trust. If its life and reputation had depended on
its reception in California, this edition and explanation would alike
have been needless. But, fortunately, the young "Overland Monthly" had
in its first number secured a hearing and position throughout the
American Union, and the author waited the larger verdict. The
publisher, albeit his worst fears were confirmed, was not a man to
weakly regret a position he had once taken, and waited also. The
return mail from the East brought a letter addressed to the "Editor of
the 'Overland Monthly,'" enclosing a letter from Fields, Osgood & Co.,
the publishers of "The Atlantic Monthly," addressed to the--to them--
unknown "Author of 'The Luck of Roaring Camp.'" This the author
opened, and found to be a request, upon the most flattering terms, for
a story for the "Atlantic" similar to the "Luck." The same mail
brought newspapers and reviews welcoming the little foundling of
Californian literature with an enthusiasm that half frightened its
author; but with the placing of that letter in the hands of the
publisher, who chanced to be standing by his side, and who during
those dark days had, without the author's faith, sustained the
author's position, he felt that his compensation was full and
complete.

Thus encouraged, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" was followed by "The
Outcasts of Poker Flat," "Miggles," "Tennessee's Partner," and those
various other characters who had impressed the author when, a mere
truant schoolboy, he had lived among them. It is hardly necessary to
say to any observer of human nature that at this time he was advised
by kind and well-meaning friends to content himself with the success
of the "Luck," and not tempt criticism again; or that from that moment
ever after he was in receipt of that equally sincere contemporaneous
criticism which assured him gravely that each successive story was a
falling off from the last. Howbeit, by reinvigorated confidence in
himself and some conscientious industry, he managed to get together in
a year six or eight of these sketches, which, in a volume called "The
Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches," gave him that encouragement
in America and England that has since seemed to justify him in
swelling these records of a picturesque passing civilization into the
compass of the present edition.

A few words regarding the peculiar conditions of life and society that
are here rudely sketched, and often but barely outlined. The author is
aware that, partly from a habit of thought and expression, partly
from the exigencies of brevity in his narratives, and partly from the
habit of addressing an audience familar with the local scenery, he
often assumes, as premises already granted by the reader, the
existence of a peculiar and romantic state of civilization, the like
of which few English readers are inclined to accept without
corroborative facts and figures. These he could only give by referring
to the ephemeral records of Californian journals of that date, and the
testimony of far-scattered witnesses, survivors of the exodus of
1849. He must beg the reader to bear in mind that this emigration was
either across a continent almost unexplored, or by the way of a long
and dangerous voyage around Cape Horn, and that the promised land
itself presented the singular spectacle of a patriarchal Latin race
who had been left to themselves, forgotten by the world, for nearly
three hundred years. The faith, courage, vigor, youth, and capacity
for adventure necessary to this emigration produced a body of men as
strongly distinctive as the companions of Jason. Unlike most pioneers,
the majority were men of profession and education; all were young, and
all had staked their future in the enterprise. Critics who have taken
large and exhaustive views of mankind and society from club windows in
Pall Mall or the Fifth Avenue can only accept for granted the
turbulent chivalry that thronged the streets of San Francisco in the
gala days of her youth, and must read the blazon of their deeds like
the doubtful quarterings of the shield of Amadis de Gaul. The author
has been frequently asked if such and such incidents were real,--if he
had ever met such and such characters. To this he must return the one
answer, that in only a single instance was he conscious of drawing
purely from his imagination and fancy for a character and a logical
succession of incidents drawn therefrom. A few weeks after his story
was published, he received a letter, authentically signed, _correcting
some of the minor details of his facts_ (!), and enclosing as
corroborative evidence a slip from an old newspaper, wherein the main
incident of his supposed fanciful creation was recorded with a
largeness of statement that far transcended his powers of imagination.

He has been repeatedly cautioned, kindly and unkindly, intelligently
and unintelligently, against his alleged tendency to confuse
recognized standards of morality by extenuating lives of recklessness,
and often criminality, with a single solitary virtue. He might easily
show that he has never written a sermon, that he has never moralized
or commented upon the actions of his heroes, that he has never voiced
a creed or obtrusively demonstrated an ethical opinion. He might
easily allege that this merciful effect of his art arose from the
reader's weak human sympathies, and hold himself irresponsible. But
he would be conscious of a more miserable weakness in thus divorcing
himself from his fellow-men who in the domain of art must ever walk
hand in hand with him. So he prefers to say that, of all the various
forms in which Cant presents itself to suffering humanity, he knows of
none so outrageous, so illogical, so undemonstrable, so marvelously
absurd, as the Cant of "Too Much Mercy." When it shall be proven to
him that communities are degraded and brought to guilt and crime,
suffering or destitution, from a predominance of this quality; when he
shall see pardoned ticket-of-leave men elbowing men of austere lives
out of situation and position, and the repentant Magdalen supplanting
the blameless virgin in society,--then he will lay aside his pen and
extend his hand to the new Draconian discipline in fiction. But until
then he will, without claiming to be a religious man or a moralist,
but simply as an artist, reverently and humbly conform to the rules
laid down by a Great Poet who created the parable of the "Prodigal
Son" and the "Good Samaritan," whose works have lasted eighteen
hundred years, and will remain when the present writer and his
generation are forgotten. And he is conscious of uttering no original
doctrine in this, but of only voicing the beliefs of a few of his
literary brethren happily living, and one gloriously dead, who never
made proclamation of this "from the housetops."


* * * * *


THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP, AND

OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES


* * * * *




THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP


There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight,
for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the
entire settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but
"Tuttle's grocery" had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be
remembered, calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and
Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar in the front room.
The whole camp was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of
the clearing. Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name
of a woman was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in
the camp,--"Cherokee Sal."

Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is
to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only
woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when
she most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned,
and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to
bear even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in
her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original
isolation which must have made the punishment of the first
transgression so dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of
her sin that, at a moment when she most lacked her sex's intuitive
tenderness and care, she met only the half-contemptuous faces of her
masculine associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think,
touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal,"
and, in the contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose superior
to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.

It will be seen also that the situation was novel. Deaths were by no
means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People
had been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no
possibility of return; but this was the first time that anybody had
been introduced _ab initio_. Hence the excitement.

"You go in there, Stumpy," said a prominent citizen known as
"Kentuck," addressing one of the loungers. "Go in there, and see what
you kin do. You've had experience in them things."

Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in other climes,
had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was owing to
some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp--a city
of refuge--was indebted to his company. The crowd approved the choice,
and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on
the extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside,
smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.

The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these were
actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were
reckless. Physically they exhibited no indication of their past lives
and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion
of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and
intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous
man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an
embarrassed, timid manner. The term "roughs" applied to them was a
distinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of
fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these
slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The
strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot
had but one eye.

Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around the
cabin. The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills and a
river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill
that faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The
suffering woman might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she
lay,--seen it winding like a silver thread until it was lost in the
stars above.

A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering. By
degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely
offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that "Sal would
get through with it;" even that the child would survive; side bets as
to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an
excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door,
and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the
pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose
a sharp, querulous cry,--a cry unlike anything heard before in the
camp. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the
fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.

The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a
barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the
mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were
discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some
other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had
climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so
passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever. I do not think
that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as to
the fate of the child. "Can he live now?" was asked of Stumpy. The
answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and
maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some
conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less
problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and
apparently as successful.

When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the
door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already formed
themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Beside the low bunk
or shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below
the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle-box was placed, and
within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the last arrival at
Roaring Camp. Beside the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was soon
indicated. "Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of
authority and _ex officio_ complacency,--"gentlemen will please
pass in at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door.
Them as wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan will find a
hat handy." The first man entered with his hat on; he uncovered,
however, as he looked about him, and so unconsciously set an example
to the next. In such communities good and bad actions are catching. As
the procession filed in comments were audible,--criticisms addressed
perhaps rather to Stumpy in the character of showman: "Is that him?"
"Mighty small specimen;" "Hasn't more'n got the color;" "Ain't bigger
nor a derringer." The contributions were as characteristic: A silver
tobacco box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver mounted; a gold
specimen; a very beautifully embroidered lady's handkerchief (from
Oakhurst the gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring (suggested
by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he "saw that pin and
went two diamonds better"); a slung-shot; a Bible (contributor not
detected); a golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the initials, I regret to
say, were not the giver's); a pair of surgeon's shears; a lancet; a
Bank of England note for L5; and about $200 in loose gold and silver
coin. During these proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as
impassive as the dead on his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of
the newly born on his right. Only one incident occurred to break the
monotony of the curious procession. As Kentuck bent over the candle-
box half curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught
at his groping finger, and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked
foolish and embarrassed. Something like a blush tried to assert itself
in his weather-beaten cheek. "The d--d little cuss!" he said, as he
extricated his finger, with perhaps more tenderness and care than he
might have been deemed capable of showing. He held that finger a
little apart from its fellows as he went out, and examined it
curiously. The examination provoked the same original remark in regard
to the child. In fact, he seemed to enjoy repeating it. "He rastled
with my finger," he remarked to Tipton, holding up the member, "the
d--d little cuss!"

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