In the Tules Page #6

"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

								

the moment safe. But the devastation viewed from this height was only
the more appalling. Every sign of his clearing, all evidence of his past
year's industry, had disappeared. He was now conscious for the first
time of the lowing of the few cattle he had kept as, huddled together
on a slight eminence, they one by one slipped over struggling into the
flood. The shining bodies of his dead horses rolled by him as he gazed.
The lower-lying limbs of the sycamore near him were bending with the
burden of the lighter articles from his overturned wagon and cabin which
they had caught and retained, and a rake was securely lodged in a bough.
The habitual solitude of his locality was now strangely invaded by
drifting sheds, agricultural implements, and fence rails from unknown
and remote neighbors, and he could faintly hear the far-off calling
of some unhappy farmer adrift upon a spar of his wrecked and shattered
house. When day broke he was cold and hungry.

Hours passed in hopeless monotony, with no slackening or diminution of
the waters. Even the drifts became less, and a vacant sea at last spread
before him on which nothing moved. An awful silence impressed him. In
the afternoon rain again began to fall on this gray, nebulous expanse,
until the whole world seemed made of aqueous vapor. He had but one idea
now--the coming of the evening boat, and he would reserve his strength
to swim to it. He did not know until later that it could no longer
follow the old channel of the river, and passed far beyond his sight and
hearing. With his disappointment and exposure that night came a return
of his old fever. His limbs were alternately racked with pain or
benumbed and lifeless. He could scarcely retain his position--at times
he scarcely cared to--and speculated upon ending his sufferings by a
quick plunge downward. In other moments of lucid misery he was conscious
of having wandered in his mind; of having seen the dead face of the
murdered sheriff, washed out of his shallow grave by the flood, staring
at him from the water; to this was added the hallucination of noises. He
heard voices, his own name called by a voice he knew--Captain Jack's!

Suddenly he started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance and
plunged downward. But before the water closed above his head he had had
a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light--of the black
hull of a tug not many yards away--of moving figures--the sensation of
a sudden plunge following his own, the grip of a strong hand upon his
collar, and--unconsciousness!

When he came to he was being lifted in a boat from the tug and rowed
through the deserted streets of a large city, until he was taken in
through the second-story window of a half-submerged hotel and cared
for. But all his questions yielded only the information that the
tug--a privately procured one, not belonging to the Public Relief
Association--had been dispatched for him with special directions, by a
man who acted as one of the crew, and who was the one who had plunged in
for him at the last moment. The man had left the boat at Stockton.
There was nothing more? Yes!--he had left a letter. Morse seized it
feverishly. It contained only a few lines:

We are quits now. You are all right. I have saved YOU from drowning, and
shifted the curse to my own shoulders. Good-by.

CAPTAIN JACK.

The astounded man attempted to rise--to utter an exclamation--but fell
back, unconscious.

Weeks passed before he was able to leave his bed--and then only as an
impoverished and physically shattered man. He had no means to restock
the farm left bare by the subsiding water. A kindly train-packer offered
him a situation as muleteer in a pack train going to the mountains--for
he knew tracks and passes and could ride. The mountains gave him back
a little of the vigor he had lost in the river valley, but none of its
dreams and ambitions. One day, while tracking a lost mule, he stopped
to slake his thirst in a waterhole--all that the summer had left of a
lonely mountain torrent. Enlarging the hole to give drink to his beast
also, he was obliged to dislodge and throw out with the red soil some
bits of honeycomb rock, which were so queer-looking and so heavy as to
attract his attention. Two of the largest he took back to camp with
him. They were gold! From the locality he took out a fortune. Nobody
wondered. To the Californian's superstition it was perfectly natural.
It was "n*gger luck"--the luck of the stupid, the ignorant, the
inexperienced, the nonseeker--the irony of the gods!

But the simple, bucolic nature that had sustained itself against
temptation with patient industry and lonely self-concentration succumbed
to rapidly acquired wealth. So it chanced that one day, with a crowd of
excitement-loving spendthrifts and companions, he found himself on
the outskirts of a lawless mountain town. An eager, frantic crowd had
already assembled there--a desperado was to be lynched! Pushing his
way through the crowd for a nearer view of the exciting spectacle, the
changed and reckless Morse was stopped by armed men only at the foot of
a cart, which upheld a quiet, determined man, who, with a rope around
his neck, was scornfully surveying the mob, that held the other end
of the rope drawn across the limb of a tree above him. The eyes of the
doomed man caught those of Morse--his expression changed--a kindly smile
lit his face--he bowed his proud head for the first time, with an easy
gesture of farewell.

And then, with a cry, Morse threw himself upon the nearest armed guard,
and a fierce struggle began. He had overpowered one adversary and seized
another in his hopeless fight toward the cart when the half-astonished
crowd felt that something must be done. It was done with a sharp report,
the upward curl of smoke and the falling back of the guard as Morse
staggered forward FREE--with a bullet in his heart. Yet even then he did
not fall until he reached the cart, when he lapsed forward, dead, with
his arms outstretched and his head at the doomed man's feet.

There was something so supreme and all-powerful in this hopeless act
of devotion that the heart of the multitude thrilled and then recoiled
aghast at its work, and a single word or a gesture from the doomed
man himself would have set him free. But they say--and it is credibly
recorded--that as Captain Jack Despard looked down upon the hopeless
sacrifice at his feet his eyes blazed, and he flung upon the crowd a
curse so awful and sweeping that, hardened as they were, their blood ran
cold, and then leaped furiously to their cheeks.

"And now," he said, coolly tightening the rope around his neck with a
jerk of his head--"Go on, and be damned to you! I'm ready."

They did not hesitate this time. And Martin Morse and Captain Jack
Despard were buried in the same grave.
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes