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