EBOOK A DRIFT FROM REDWOOD CAMP ***
Produced by Donald Lainson
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.
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