Drift From Redwood Camp

Bret Harte

Description

One of Bret Harte's chief strengths as an author was his ability to focus on the outcasts of society and find a way to make them sympathetic. In this short story, the despised Elijah Martin escapes from a brush with death only to find his whole life transformed.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776597611
• Langue: English

Extrait

A DRIFT FROM REDWOOD CAMP
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BRET HARTE
 
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A Drift From Redwood Camp Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-761-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-762-8 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
A Drift from Redwood Camp
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They had all known him as a shiftless, worthless creature. From thetime he first entered Redwood Camp, carrying his entire effects in ared handkerchief on the end of a long-handled shovel, until he lazilydrifted out of it on a plank in the terrible inundation of '56, theynever expected anything better of him. In a community of strong men withsullen virtues and charmingly fascinating vices, he was tolerated aspossessing neither—not even rising by any dominant human weakness orludicrous quality to the importance of a butt. In the dramatispersonae of Redwood Camp he was a simple "super"—who had only passive,speechless roles in those fierce dramas that were sometimes unrolledbeneath its green-curtained pines. Nameless and penniless, he wasoverlooked by the census and ignored by the tax collector, while in ahotly-contested election for sheriff, when even the head-boards of thescant cemetery were consulted to fill the poll-lists, it was discoveredthat neither candidate had thought fit to avail himself of his actualvote. He was debarred the rude heraldry of a nickname of achievement,and in a camp made up of "Euchre Bills," "Poker Dicks," "Profane Pete,"and "Snap-shot Harry," was known vaguely as "him," "Skeesicks," or "thatcoot." It was remembered long after, with a feeling of superstition,that he had never even met with the dignity of an accident, nor receivedthe fleeting honor of a chance shot meant for somebody else in any ofthe liberal and broadly comprehensive encounters which distinguished thecamp. And the inundation that finally carried him out of it waspartly anticipated by his passive incompetency, for while the othersescaped—or were drowned in escaping—he calmly floated off on his plankwithout an opposing effort.
For all that, Elijah Martin—which was his real name—was far from beingunamiable or repellent. That he was cowardly, untruthful, selfish, andlazy, was undoubtedly the fact; perhaps it was his peculiar misfortunethat, just then, courage, frankness, generosity, and activity were thedominant factors in the life of Redwood Camp. His submissive gentleness,his unquestioned modesty, his half refinement, and his amiable exteriorconsequently availed him nothing against the fact that he was missedduring a raid of the Digger Indians, and lied to account for it; or thathe lost his right to a gold discovery by failing to make it good againsta bully, and selfishly kept this discovery from the knowledge of thecamp. Yet this weakness awakened no animosity in his companions, and itis probable that the indifference of the camp to his fate in this finalcatastrophe came purely from a simple forgetfulness of one who at thatsupreme moment was weakly incapable.
Such was the reputation and such the antecedents of the man who, on the15th of March, 1856, found himself adrift in a swollen tributary of theMinyo. A spring freshet of unusual volume had flooded the adjacent riveruntil, bursting its bounds, it escaped through the narrow, wedge-shapedvalley that held Redwood Camp. For a day and night the surcharged riverpoured half its waters through the straggling camp. At the end of thattime every vestige of the little settlement was swept away; all that wasleft was scattered far and wide in the country, caught in the hangingbranches of water-side willows and alders, embayed in sluggish pools,dragged over submerged meadows, and one fragment—bearing up ElijahMartin—pursuing the devious courses of an unknown tributary fifty milesaway. Had he been a rash, impatient man, he would have been speedilydrowned in some earlier desperate attempt to reach the shore; had hebeen an ordinar