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.
Bret Harte in 1872 |
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 from the start. 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 supposed 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 rascal 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 total 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 thin
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 would get through with it;" even that
the child would survive; side bets as to the sex and complexion of the coming
stranger. In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those
nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning
of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a
sharp, irritable cry,—a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp.
The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle.
It seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too… (Párrafos de The Luck of
Roaring Camp)
Vocabulario reemplazado
ab initio putative
scamp aggregate withered
querulous
El
cuento
The Luck of
Roaring Camp es un cuento de Bret Harte (1836-1902). Fue
publicado en 1868. Se trata del nacimiento de un bebé en un campo de búsqueda
de oro. La madre muere en el parto y los hombres deben criarlo entre todos.
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