The Outcasts of Poker Flat

The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches by Bret Hart.

Chapter two, The Outcasts of Poker Flat.

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, eighteen fifty, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night.

Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached and exchanged significant glances.

But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife.

It bore the following, written in pencil in a firm hand.

"Beneath this tree lies the body of John Oakhurst, who struck a streak of bad luck on the twenty-third of November, 1850, and handed in his checks on the seventh December, 1850." And pulseless and cold, with a derringer by his side and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.

End of chapter two.

Almost all of his films were silent, and many or most have been lost.

Finally, Bret Harte is one of those short story writers, a contemporary and frenemy of Twain's, who you might have read in school via the stories The Luck of Roaring Camp or The Outcast of Poker Flat, which are quite good.

I'm not in a great position to evaluate the rest of his output, but he had a long career and was very well-known in his time.

So back to John McGraw, the Dickensian waif who seemed, at least according to the ill-fated I, Sparky, to be fit company for Mark Twain and these other luminaries, or semi-luminaries.

The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches by Bret Hart.

Chapter two, The Outcasts of Poker Flat.

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the 23rd of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night.

Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached and exchanged significant glances.

There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences looked ominous.

I reckon they're after somebody, he reflected.

Likely it's me.

He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.