In the Tules Page #4

"In the Tules" is a short story by Bret Harte that captures the rugged and often harsh life of those living in the California wilderness during the Gold Rush era. Set amid the picturesque yet challenging landscape of the tule marshes, the narrative follows the life of a lone prospector who encounters various characters that reveal the complexities of human nature and survival. Through Harte's vivid descriptions and insightful character portrayals, the story explores themes of isolation, resilience, and the search for both fortune and companionship in a harshly beautiful setting.

• Short story

								

questioned.

"Your name's Martin Morse, ain't it?" said the drover, with business
brusqueness; "and I reckon there ain't no other man o' that name around
here?"

"No," said Morse.

"Well, then, they're YOURS."

"But who sent them?" insisted Morse. "What was his name, and where does
he live?"

"I didn't know ez I was called upon to give the pedigree o' buyers,"
said the drover dryly; "but the horses is 'Morgan,' you can bet your
life." He grinned as he rode away.

That Captain Jack sent them, and that it was a natural prelude to his
again visiting him, Morse did not doubt, and for a few days he lived
in that dream. But Captain Jack did not come. The animals were of great
service to him in "rounding up" the stock he now easily took in for
pasturage, and saved him the necessity of having a partner or a hired
man. The idea that this superior gentleman in fine clothes might ever
appear to him in the former capacity had even flitted through his brain,
but he had rejected it with a sigh. But the thought that, with luck and
industry, he himself might, in course of time, approximate to Captain
Jack's evident station, DID occur to him, and was an incentive to
energy. Yet it was quite distinct from the ordinary working man's
ambition of wealth and state. It was only that it might make him more
worthy of his friend. The great world was still as it had appeared
to him in the passing boat--a thing to wonder at--to be above--and to
criticize.

For all that, he prospered in his occupation. But one day he woke with
listless limbs and feet that scarcely carried him through his daily
labors. At night his listlessness changed to active pain and a
feverishness that seemed to impel him toward the fateful river, as if
his one aim in life was to drink up its waters and bathe in its yellow
stream. But whenever he seemed to attempt it, strange dreams assailed
him of dead bodies arising with swollen and distorted lips to touch his
own as he strove to drink, or of his mysterious guest battling with him
in its current, and driving him ashore. Again, when he essayed to bathe
his parched and crackling limbs in its flood, he would be confronted
with the dazzling lights of the motionless steamboat and the glare of
stony eyes--until he fled in aimless terror. How long this lasted he
knew not, until one morning he awoke in his new cabin with a strange man
sitting by his bed and a Negress in the doorway.

"You've had a sharp attack of 'tule fever,'" said the stranger, dropping
Morse's listless wrist and answering his questioning eyes, "but you're
all right now, and will pull through."

"Who are you?" stammered Morse feebly.

"Dr. Duchesne, of Sacramento."

"How did you come here?"

"I was ordered to come to you and bring a nurse, as you were alone.
There she is." He pointed to the smiling Negress.

"WHO ordered you?"

The doctor smiled with professional tolerance. "One of your friends, of
course."

"But what was his name?"

"Really, I don't remember. But don't distress yourself. He has settled
for everything right royally. You have only to get strong now. My duty
is ended, and I can safely leave you with the nurse. Only when you are
strong again, I say--and HE says--keep back farther from the river."

And that was all he knew. For even the nurse who attended him through
the first days of his brief convalescence would tell him nothing more.
He quickly got rid of her and resumed his work, for a new and strange
phase of his simple, childish affection for his benefactor, partly
superinduced by his illness, was affecting him. He was beginning to
feel the pain of an unequal friendship; he was dimly conscious that his
mysterious guest was only coldly returning his hospitality and benefits,
while holding aloof from any association with him--and indicating the
immeasurable distance that separated their future intercourse. He had
withheld any kind message or sympathetic greeting; he had kept back even
his NAME. The shy, proud, ignorant heart of the frontiersman swelled
beneath the fancied slight, which left him helpless alike of reproach
or resentment. He could not return the horses, although in a fit of
childish indignation he had resolved not to use them; he could not
reimburse him for the doctor's bill, although he had sent away the
nurse.

He took a foolish satisfaction in not moving back from the river, with a
faint hope that his ignoring of Captain Jack's advice might mysteriously
be conveyed to him. He even thought of selling out his location and
abandoning it, that he might escape the cold surveillance of his
heartless friend. All this was undoubtedly childish--but there is an
irrepressible simplicity of youth in all deep feeling, and the worldly
inexperience of the frontiersman left him as innocent as a child. In
this phase of his unrequited affection he even went so far as to seek
some news of Captain Jack at Sacramento, and, following out his foolish
quest, even to take the steamboat from thence to Stockton.

What happened to him then was perhaps the common experience of such
natures. Once upon the boat the illusion of the great world it contained
for him utterly vanished. He found it noisy, formal, insincere, and--had
he ever understood or used the word in his limited vocabulary--VULGAR.
Rather, perhaps, it seemed to him that the prevailing sentiment and
action of those who frequented it--and for whom it was built--were of a
lower grade than his own. And, strangely enough, this gave him none of
his former sense of critical superiority, but only of his own utter and
complete isolation. He wandered in his rough frontiersman's clothes from
deck to cabin, from airy galleries to long saloons, alone, unchallenged,
unrecognized, as if he were again haunting it only in spirit, as he had
so often done in his dreams.

His presence on the fringe of some voluble crowd caused no interruption;
to him their speech was almost foreign in its allusions to things he did
not understand, or, worse, seemed inconsistent with their eagerness and
excitement. How different from all this were his old recollections of
slowly oncoming teams, uplifted above the level horizon of the plains in
his former wanderings; the few sauntering figures that met him as man
to man, and exchanged the chronicle of the road; the record of Indian
tracks; the finding of a spring; the discovery of pasturage, with
the lazy, restful hospitality of the night! And how fierce here this
continual struggle for dominance and existence, even in this lull of
passage. For above all and through all he was conscious of the feverish
haste of speed and exertion.

The boat trembled, vibrated, and shook with every stroke of the
ponderous piston. The laughter of the crowd, the exchange of gossip and
news, the banquet at the long table, the newspapers and books in the
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