Barker's Luck Page #3

"Barker's Luck" is a short story by Bret Harte, set in the American West during the Gold Rush era. The narrative follows the character of Jim Barker, a down-and-out miner who experiences a series of misadventures while trying to strike it rich. With Harte's signature blend of humor and poignant insights into human nature, the story explores themes of luck, perseverance, and the complexities of fortune. As Barker navigates the challenges of life in a boomtown, he ultimately learns important lessons about failure, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of luck.

• Short story

								

said Demorest almost fiercely. "There will be knaves and fools enough
who will try and put the idea of our using him into his simple heart
without that. No! Let him do as he likes with it--but let him be
himself. I'd rather have him come back to us even after he's lost the
money--his old self and empty-handed--than try to change the stuff God
put into him and make him more like others."

The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity that
Stacy was silent. After a pause he said: "Well! we shall miss him on the
hillside--won't we?"

Demorest did not reply. Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he wrenched
off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly to pull the
leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone. Then he switched it in
the air, struck his bootleg smartly with it, said roughly: "Come, let's
get to work!" and strode away.

Meantime Barker on his way to Boomville was no less singular in his
manner. He kept up his slightly affected attitude until he had lost
sight of the cabin. But, being of a simple nature, his emotions were
less complex. If he had not seen the undoubted look of affection in the
eyes of his partners he would have imagined that they were jealous of
his good fortune. Yet why had they refused his offer to share it with
him? Why had they so strangely assumed that their partnership with him
had closed? Why had they declined to go with him? Why had this
money--of which he had thought so little, and for which he had cared
so little--changed them toward him? It had not changed HIM--HE was
the same! He remembered how they had often talked and laughed over
a prospective "strike" in mining and speculated what THEY would do
together with the money! And now that "luck" had occurred to one of
them, individually, the effect was only to alienate them! He could not
make it out. He was hurt, wounded--yet oddly enough he was conscious now
of a certain power within him to hurt and wound in retribution. He was
rich: he would let them see HE could do without them. He was quite free
now to think only of himself and Kitty.

For it must be recorded that with all this young gentleman's simplicity
and unselfishness, with all his loyal attitude to his partners, his
FIRST thought at the moment he grasped the fact of his wealth was of
a young lady. It was Kitty Carter, the daughter of the hotelkeeper at
Boomville, who owned the claim that the partners had mutually coveted.
That a pretty girl's face should flash upon him with his conviction that
he was now a rich man meant perhaps no disloyalty to his partners,
whom he would still have helped. But it occurred to him now, in his
half-hurt, half-vengeful state, that they had often joked him about
Kitty, and perhaps further confidence with them was debarred. And it was
only due to his dignity that he should now see Kitty at once.

This was easy enough, for in the naive simplicity of Boomville and the
economic arrangements of her father, she occasionally waited upon the
hotel table. Half the town was always actively in love with her; the
other half HAD BEEN, and was silent, cynical, but hopeless in defeat.
For Kitty was one of those singularly pretty girls occasionally met
with in Southwestern frontier civilization whose distinct and original
refinement of face and figure were so remarkable and original as to cast
a doubt on the sagacity and prescience of one parent and the morality of
the other, yet no doubt with equal injustice. But the fact remained
that she was slight, graceful, and self-contained, and moved beside her
stumpy, commonplace father, and her faded, commonplace mother in the
dining-room of the Boomville Hotel like some distinguished alien. The
three partners, by virtue, perhaps, of their college education and
refined manners, had been exceptionally noticed by Kitty. And for some
occult reason--the more serious, perhaps, because it had no obvious
or logical presumption to the world generally--Barker was particularly
favored.

He quickened his pace, and as the flagstaff of the Boomville Hotel rose
before him in the little hollow, he seriously debated whether he had not
better go to the bank first, deposit his shares, and get a small advance
on them to buy a new necktie or a "boiled shirt" in which to present
himself to Miss Kitty; but, remembering that he had partly given his
word to Demorest that he would keep his shares intact for the present,
he abandoned this project, probably from the fact that his projected
confidence with Kitty was already a violation of Demorest's injunctions
of secrecy, and his conscience was sufficiently burdened with that
breach of faith.

But when he reached the hotel, a strange trepidation overcame him. The
dining-room was at its slack water, between the ebb of breakfast and
before the flow of the preparation for the midday meal. He could not
have his interview with Kitty in that dreary waste of reversed chairs
and bare trestlelike tables, and she was possibly engaged in her
household duties. But Miss Kitty had already seen him cross the road,
and had lounged into the dining-room with an artfully simulated air of
casually examining it. At the unexpected vision of his hopes, arrayed in
the sweetest and freshest of rosebud-sprigged print, his heart faltered.
Then, partly with the desperation of a timid man, and partly through
the working of a half-formed resolution, he met her bright smile with
a simple inquiry for her father. Miss Kitty bit her pretty lip, smiled
slightly, and preceded him with great formality to the office. Opening
the door, without raising her lashes to either her father or the
visitor, she said, with a mischievous accenting of the professional
manner, "Mr. Barker to see you on business," and tripped sweetly away.

And this slight incident precipitated the crisis. For Barker instantly
made up his mind that he must purchase the next claim for his partners
of this man Carter, and that he would be obliged to confide to him the
details of his good fortune, and as a proof of his sincerity and his
ability to pay for it, he did so bluntly. Carter was a shrewd business
man, and the well-known simplicity of Barker was a proof of his
truthfulness, to say nothing of the shares that were shown to him. His
selling price for his claim had been two hundred dollars, but here was
a rich customer who, from a mere foolish sentiment, would be no doubt
willing to pay more. He hesitated with a bland but superior smile. "Ah,
that was my price at my last offer, Mr. Barker," he said suavely; "but,
you see, things are going up since then."

The keenest duplicity is apt to fail before absolute simplicity. Barker,
thoroughly believing him, and already a little frightened at his own
presumption--not for the amount of the money involved, but from the
possibility of his partners refusing his gift utterly--quickly took
advantage of this LOCUS PENITENTIAE. "No matter, then," he said
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