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 one who at that
supreme moment was weakly incapable.
Such was the reputation and such the antecedents of the man who, on the
15th of March, 1856, found himself adrift in a swollen tributary of the
Minyo. A spring freshet of unusual volume had flooded the adjacent river
until, bursting its bounds, it escaped through the narrow, wedge-shaped
valley that held Redwood Camp.
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