The Luck of Roaring Camp | Page 5

Samaritan," whose works have lasted eighteen hundred years, and will
remain when the present writer and his generation are forgotten. And
he is conscious of uttering no original doctrine in this, but of only
voicing the beliefs of a few of his literary brethren happily living, and
one gloriously dead, who never made proclamation of this "from the
housetops."
* * * * *
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP, AND
OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES

* * * * *

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight,
for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire
settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but "Tuttle's
grocery" had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered,
calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe
shot each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp
was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing.
Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman
was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the
camp,--"Cherokee Sal."
Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is to be
feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman
in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when she
most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned,
and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to
bear even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible
in her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original
isolation which must have made the punishment of the first
transgression so dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her
sin that, at a moment when she most lacked her sex's intuitive
tenderness and care, she met only the half-contemptuous faces of her
masculine associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched
by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and, in
the contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the
fact that he had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.
It will be seen also that the situation was novel. Deaths were by no
means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing.
People had been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no
possibility of return; but this was the first time that anybody had been
introduced ab initio. Hence the excitement.

"You go in there, Stumpy," said a prominent citizen known as
"Kentuck," addressing one of the loungers. "Go in there, and see what
you kin do. You've had experience in them things."
Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in other climes,
had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was owing to
some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp--a city
of refuge--was indebted to his company. The crowd approved the
choice, and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door
closed on the extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat
down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.
The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these
were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were
reckless. Physically they exhibited no indication of their past lives and
character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of
blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and
intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous
man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an
embarrassed, timid manner. The term "roughs" applied to them was a
distinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of
fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these
slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The
strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had
but one eye.
Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around the
cabin. The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills and a river.
The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced the
cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might
have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,--seen it winding like
a silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.
A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering. By
degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely
offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that "Sal