"BretHarte-ADriftFromRedwoodCamp" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harte Bret)

A Drift from Redwood Camp

by Bret Harte




They had all known him as a shiftless, worthless creature. From
the time he first entered Redwood Camp, carrying his entire effects
in a red handkerchief on the end of a long-handled shovel, until he
lazily drifted out of it on a plank in the terrible inundation of
'56, they never expected anything better of him. In a community of
strong men with sullen virtues and charmingly fascinating vices,
he was tolerated as possessing neither--not even rising by any
dominant human weakness or ludicrous quality to the importance of a
butt. In the dramatis personae of Redwood Camp he was a simple
"super"--who had only passive, speechless roles in those fierce
dramas that were sometimes unrolled beneath its green-curtained
pines. Nameless and penniless, he was overlooked by the census and
ignored by the tax collector, while in a hotly-contested election
for sheriff, when even the head-boards of the scant cemetery were
consulted to fill the poll-lists, it was discovered that neither
candidate had thought fit to avail himself of his actual vote. 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
"that coot." It was remembered long after, with a feeling of
superstition, that he had never even met with the dignity of an
accident, nor received the fleeting honor of a chance shot meant
for somebody else in any of the liberal and broadly comprehensive
encounters which distinguished the camp. And the inundation that
finally carried him out of it was partly anticipated by his passive
incompetency, for while the others escaped--or were drowned in
escaping--he calmly floated off on his plank without an opposing
effort.

For all that, Elijah Martin--which was his real name--was far from
being unamiable or repellent. That he was cowardly, untruthful,
selfish, and lazy, was undoubtedly the fact; perhaps it was his
peculiar misfortune that, just then, courage, frankness,
generosity, and activity were the dominant factors in the life of
Redwood Camp. His submissive gentleness, his unquestioned modesty,
his half refinement, and his amiable exterior consequently availed
him nothing against the fact that he was missed during a raid of
the Digger Indians, and lied to account for it; or that he lost his
right to a gold discovery by failing to make it good against a
bully, and selfishly kept this discovery from the knowledge of the
camp. Yet this weakness awakened no animosity in his companions,
and it is probable that the indifference of the camp to his fate in
this final catastrophe came purely from a simple forgetfulness of