Selected Stories of Bret Harte | Page 8

abandoned, as having a new
personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to
have a soothing, tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by
"Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor from her Majesty's Australian
colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of
the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor,
ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On
b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The
Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and
crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of
Jack or the length of his song,--it contained ninety stanzas, and was
continued with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end,--the lullaby

generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full
length under the trees in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes
and drinking in the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this
was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp. "This 'ere kind o' think,"
said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, "is
'evingly." It reminded him of Greenwich.
On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch
from whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a
blanket spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were
working in the ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to
decorate this bower with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and
generally some one would bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles,
azaleas, or the painted blossoms of Las Mariposas. The men had
suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and significance
in these trifles, which they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their
feet. A flake of glittering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright
pebble from the bed of the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared
and strengthened, and were invariably pat aside for The Luck. It was
wonderful how many treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that
"would do for Tommy." Surrounded by playthings such as never child
out of fairyland had before, it is to he hoped that Tommy was content.
He appeared to be serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity
about him, a contemplative light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes
worried Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet, and it is recorded
that once, having crept beyond his "corral,"--a hedge of tessellated pine
boughs, which surrounded his bed,--he dropped over the bank on his
head in the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air in
that position for at least five minutes with unflinching gravity. He was
extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other
instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements
of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge of
superstition. "I crep' up the bank just now," said Kentuck one day, in a
breathless state of excitement "and dern my skin if he was a-talking to a
jay bird as was a-sittin' on his lap. There they was, just as free and
sociable as anything you please, a- jawin' at each other just like two
cherrybums." Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine boughs or lying

lazily on his back blinking at the leaves above him, to him the birds
sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed. Nature was his
nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between the leaves
golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send
wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous gum;
to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the
bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.
Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were "flush
times," and the luck was with them. The claims had yielded
enormously. The camp was jealous of its privileges and looked
suspiciously on strangers. No encouragement was given to immigration,
and, to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on either side of the
mountain wall that surrounded the camp they duly preempted. This,
and a reputation for singular proficiency with the revolver, kept the
reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate. The expressman--their only
connecting link with the surrounding world-- sometimes told wonderful
stories of the camp. He would say, "They've a street up there in
'Roaring' that would lay over any street in Red Dog. They've got vines
and flowers round their houses, and they wash themselves twice a day.
But they're mighty rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin
baby."
With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement.
It was proposed to build a hotel in the