Found at Blazing Star

"Found at Blazing Star" is a story by Bret Harte that illustrates themes of gold rush-era life in the American West, exploring the complexities of human relationships amidst the backdrop of adventure and fortune-seeking. The narrative intertwines elements of humor and poignancy, showcasing the interactions between diverse characters in a mining camp. Through vivid storytelling, Harte captures the essence of frontier life, revealing both the challenges and camaraderie that arise in the pursuit of dreams.

• Short story

								
The rain had only ceased with the gray streaks of morning at Blazing
Star, and the settlement awoke to a moral sense of cleanliness, and the
finding of forgotten knives, tin cups, and smaller camp utensils, where
the heavy showers had washed away the débris and dust heaps before the
cabin-doors. Indeed, it was recorded in Blazing Star that a fortunate
early riser had once picked up on the highway a solid chunk of gold
quartz which the rain had freed from its incumbering soil, and washed
into immediate and glittering popularity. Possibly this may have been
the reason why early risers in that locality, during the rainy season,
adopted a thoughtful habit of body, and seldom lifted their eyes to the
rifted or india-ink washed skies above them.

"Cass" Beard had risen early that morning, but not with a view to
discovery. A leak in his cabin roof--quite consistent with his
careless, improvident habits--had roused him at 4 A.M., with a flooded
"bunk" and wet blankets. The chips from his wood pile refused to kindle
a fire to dry his bedclothes, and he had recourse to a more provident
neighbor's to supply the deficiency. This was nearly opposite. Mr.
Cassius crossed the highway, and stopped suddenly. Something glittered
in the nearest red pool before him. Gold, surely! But, wonderful to
relate, not an irregular, shapeless fragment of crude ore, fresh from
Nature's crucible, but a bit of jeweler's handicraft in the form of a
plain gold ring. Looking at it more attentively, he saw that it bore
the inscription, "May to Cass."

Like most of his fellow gold-seekers, Cass was superstitious. "Cass!"
His own name! He tried the ring. It fitted his little finger closely.
It was evidently a woman's ring. He looked up and down the highway. No
one was yet stirring. Little pools of water in the red road were
beginning to glitter and grow rosy from the far-flushing east, but
there was no trace of the owner of the shining waif. He knew that there
was no woman in camp, and among his few comrades in the settlement he
remembered to have seen none wearing an ornament like that. Again, the
coincidence of the inscription to his rather peculiar nickname would
have been a perennial source of playful comment in a camp that made no
allowance for sentimental memories. He slipped the glittering little
hoop into his pocket, and thoughtfully returned to his cabin.

Two hours later, when the long, straggling procession, which every
morning wended its way to Blazing Star Gulch,--the seat of mining
operations in the settlement,--began to move, Cass saw fit to
interrogate his fellows.

"Ye didn't none on ye happen to drop anything round yer last night?" he
asked, cautiously.

"I dropped a pocketbook containing government bonds and some other
securities, with between fifty and sixty thousand dollars," responded
Peter Drummond, carelessly; "but no matter, if any man will return a
few autograph letters from foreign potentates that happened to be in
it,--of no value to anybody but the owner,--he can keep the money.
Thar's nothin' mean about me," he concluded, languidly.

This statement, bearing every evidence of the grossest mendacity, was
lightly passed over, and the men walked on with the deepest gravity.

"But hev you?" Cass presently asked of another.

"I lost my pile to Jack Hamlin at draw-poker, over at Wingdam last
night," returned the other, pensively, "but I don't calkilate to find
it lying round loose."

Forced at last by this kind of irony into more detailed explanation,
Cass confided to them his discovery, and produced his treasure. The
result was a dozen vague surmises,--only one of which seemed to be
popular, and to suit the dyspeptic despondency of the party,--a
despondency born of hastily masticated fried pork and flapjacks. The
ring was believed to have been dropped by some passing "road agent"
laden with guilty spoil.

"Ef I was you," said Drummond gloomily, "I wouldn't flourish that yer
ring around much afore folks. I've seen better men nor you strung up a
tree by Vigilantés for having even less than that in their
possession."

"And I wouldn't say much about bein' up so d----d early this morning,"
added an even more pessimistic comrade; "it might look bad before a
jury."

With this the men sadly dispersed, leaving the innocent Cass with the
ring in his hand, and a general impression on his mind that he was
already an object of suspicion to his comrades,--an impression, it is
hardly necessary to say, they fully intended should be left to rankle
in his guileless bosom.

Notwithstanding Cass's first hopeful superstition, the ring did not
seem to bring him nor the camp any luck. Daily the "clean up" brought
the same scant rewards to their labors, and deepened the sardonic
gravity of Blazing Star. But, if Cass found no material result from his
treasure, it stimulated his lazy imagination, and, albeit a dangerous
and seductive stimulant, at least lifted him out of the monotonous
grooves of his half-careless, half-slovenly, but always self-contented
camp life. Heeding the wise caution of his comrades, he took the habit
of wearing the ring only at night. Wrapped in his blanket, he
stealthily slipped the golden circlet over his little finger, and, as
he averred, "slept all the better for it." Whether it ever evoked any
warmer dream or vision during those calm, cold, virgin-like spring
nights, when even the moon and the greater planets retreated into the
icy blue, steel-like firmament, I cannot say. Enough that this
superstition began to be colored a little by fancy, and his fatalism
somewhat mitigated by hope. Dreams of this kind did not tend to promote
his efficiency in the communistic labors of the camp, and brought him a
self-isolation that, however gratifying at first, soon debarred him the
benefits of that hard practical wisdom which underlaid the grumbling of
his fellow-workers.

"I'm dog-goned," said one commentator, "ef I don't believe that Cass is
looney over that yer ring he found. Wears it on a string under his
shirt."

Meantime, the seasons did not wait the discovery of the secret. The red
pools in Blazing Star highway were soon dried up in the fervent June
sun and riotous night winds of those altitudes. The ephemeral grasses
that had quickly supplanted these pools and the chocolate-colored mud,
were as quickly parched and withered. The footprints of spring became
vague and indefinite, and were finally lost in the impalpable dust of
the summer highway.

In one of his long, aimless excursions, Cass had penetrated a thick
undergrowth of buckeye and hazel, and found himself quite unexpectedly
upon the high road to Red Chief's Crossing. Cass knew by the lurid
cloud of dust that hid the distance, that the up coach had passed. He
had already reached that stage of superstition when the most trivial
occurrence seemed to point in some way to an elucidation of the mystery

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