Selected Stories of Bret Harte

The stranger again stared curiously at him. After a pause he said, with a half-pitying, half-humorous smile: “Pike—aren’t you?”

Whether Morse did or did not know that this current California slang for a denizen of the bucolic West implied a certain contempt, he replied simply:

“I’m from Pike County, Mizzouri.”

“Well,” said the stranger, resuming his impatient manner, “you must beg or steal a horse from your neighbors.”

“Thar ain’t any neighbor nearer than fifteen miles.”

“Then send fifteen miles! Stop.” He opened his still clinging shirt and drew out a belt pouch, which he threw to Morse. “There! there’s two hundred and fifty dollars in that. Now, I want a horse. Sabe?”

“Thar ain’t anyone to send,” said Morse, quietly.

“Do you mean to say you are all alone here?”

“Yes.

“And you fished me out—all by yourself?”

“Yes.”

The stranger again examined him curiously. Then he suddenly stretched out his hand and grasped his companion’s.

“All right; if you can’t send, I reckon I can manage to walk over there tomorrow.”

“I was goin’ on to say,” said Morse, simply, “that if you’ll lie by tonight, I’ll start over sunup, after puttin’ out the cattle, and fetch you back a horse afore noon.”

“That’s enough.” He, however, remained looking curiously at Morse. “Did you never hear,” he said, with a singular smile, “that it was about the meanest kind of luck that could happen to you to save a drowning man?”

“No,” said Morse, simply. “I reckon it orter be the meanest if you DIDN’T.”

“That depends upon the man you save,” said the stranger, with the same ambiguous smile, “and whether the SAVING him is only putting things off. Look here,” he added, with an abrupt return to his imperative style, “can’t you give me some dry clothes?”

Morse brought him a pair of overalls and a “hickory shirt,” well worn, but smelling strongly of a recent wash with coarse soap. The stranger put them on while his companion busied himself in collecting a pile of sticks and dry leaves.

“What’s that for?” said the stranger, suddenly.

“A fire to dry your clothes.”

The stranger calmly kicked the pile aside.

“Not any fire tonight if I know it,” he said, brusquely. Before Morse could resent his quickly changing moods he continued, in another tone, dropping to an easy reclining position beneath the tree, “Now, tell me all about yourself, and what you are doing here.”

Thus commanded, Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he had left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for a “location.” He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial bottom and its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he hoped soon to acquire. The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself to a sitting position, and, taking a penknife from his damp clothes, began to clean his nails in the bright moonlight—an occupation which made the simple Morse wander vaguely in his narration.

“And you don’t know that this hole will give you chills and fever till you’ll shake yourself out of your boots?”

Morse had lived before in aguish districts, and had no fear.

“And you never heard that some night the whole river will rise up and walk over you and your cabin and your stock?”

“No. For I reckon to move my shanty farther back.”

The man shut up his penknife with a click and rose.

“If you’ve got to get up at sunrise, we’d better be turning in. I suppose you can give me a pair of blankets?”

Morse pointed to the wagon. “Thar’s a shakedown in the wagon bed; you kin lie there.” Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the inconsequence and abruptness of a shy man, continued the previous conversation.

“I shouldn’t like to move far away, for them steamboats is pow’ful kempany o’ nights. I never seed one afore I kem here,” and then, with the inconsistency of a reserved man, and without a word of further preliminary, he launched into a confidential disclosure of his late experiences. The stranger listened with a singular interest and a quietly searching eye.

“Then you were watching the boat very closely just now when you saw me. What else did you see? Anything before that—before you saw me in the water?”

“No—the boat had got well off before I saw you at all.”

“Ah,” said the stranger. “Well, I’m going to turn in.” He walked to the wagon, mounted it, and by the time that Morse had reached it with his wet clothes he was already wrapped in the blankets. A moment later he seemed to be in a profound slumber.

It was only then, when his guest was lying helplessly at his mercy, that he began to realize his strange experiences. The domination of this man had been so complete that Morse, although by nature independent and self-reliant, had not permitted himself to question his right or to resent his rudeness. He had accepted his guest’s careless or premeditated silence regarding the particulars of his accident as a matter of course, and had never dreamed of questioning him. That it was a natural accident of that great world so apart from his own experiences he did not doubt, and thought no more about it. The advent of the man himself was greater to him than the causes which brought him there. He was as yet quite unconscious of the complete fascination this mysterious stranger held over him, but he found himself shyly pleased with even the slight interest he had displayed in his affairs, and his hand felt yet warm and tingling from his sudden soft but expressive grasp, as if it had been a woman’s. There is a simple intuition of friendship in some lonely, self-abstracted natures that is nearly akin to love at first sight. Even the audacities and insolence of this stranger affected Morse as he might have been touched and captivated by the coquetries or imperiousness of some bucolic virgin. And this reserved and shy frontiersman found himself that night sleepless, and hovering with an abashed timidity and consciousness around the wagon that sheltered his guest, as if he had been a very Corydon watching the moonlit couch of some slumbering Amaryllis.

He was off by daylight—after having placed a rude breakfast by the side of the still sleeping guest—and before midday he had returned with a horse. When he handed the stranger his pouch, less the amount he had paid for the horse, the man said curtly:

“What’s that for?”

“Your change. I paid only fifty dollars for the horse.”

The stranger regarded him with his peculiar smile. Then, replacing the pouch in his belt, he shook Morse’s hand again and mounted the horse.

“So your name’s Martin Morse! Well—goodby, Morsey!”

Morse hesitated. A blush rose to his dark check. “You didn’t tell me your name,” he said. “In case—”

“In case I’m WANTED? Well, you can call me Captain Jack.” He smiled, and, nodding his head, put spurs to his mustang and cantered away.

Morse did not do much work that day, falling into abstracted moods and living over his experiences of the previous night, until he fancied he could almost see his strange guest again. The narrow strip of meadow was haunted by him. There was the tree under which he had first placed him, and that was where he had seen him sitting up in his dripping but well-fitting clothes. In the rough garments he had worn and returned lingered a new scent of some delicate soap, overpowering the strong alkali flavor of his own. He was early by the river side, having a vague hope, he knew not why, that he should again see him and recognize him among the passengers. He was wading out among the reeds, in the faint light of the rising moon, recalling the exact spot where he had first seen the stranger, when he was suddenly startled by the rolling over in the water of some black object that had caught against the bank, but had been dislodged by his movements. To his horror it bore a faint resemblance to his first vision of the preceding night. But a second glance at the helplessly floating hair and bloated outline showed him that it was a DEAD man, and of a type and build far different from his former companion. There was a bruise upon his matted forehead and an enormous wound in his throat already washed bloodless, white, and waxen. An inexplicable fear came upon him, not at the sight of the corpse, for he had been in Indian massacres and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond recognition; but from some moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened and deepened with the far-off pant of the advancing steamboat. Scarcely knowing why, he dragged the body hurriedly ashore, concealing it in the reeds, as if he were disposing of the evidence of his own crime. Then, to his preposterous terror, he noticed that the panting of the steamboat and the beat of its paddles were “slowing” as the vague bulk came in sight, until a huge wave from the suddenly arrested wheels sent a surge like an enormous heartbeat pulsating through the sedge that half submerged him. The flashing of three or four lanterns on deck and the motionless line of lights abreast of him dazzled his eyes, but he knew that the low fringe of willows hid his house and wagon completely from view. A vague murmur of voices from the deck was suddenly overridden by a sharp order, and to his relief the slowly revolving wheels again sent a pulsation through the water, and the great fabric moved solemnly away. A sense of relief came over him, he knew not why, and he was conscious that for the first time he had not cared to look at the boat.

When the moon arose he again examined the body, and took from its clothing a few articles of identification and some papers of formality and precision, which he vaguely conjectured to be some law papers from their resemblance to the phrasing of sheriffs’ and electors’ notices which he had seen in the papers. He then buried the corpse in a shallow trench, which he dug by the light of the moon. He had no question of responsibility; his pioneer training had not included coroners’ inquests in its experience; in giving the body a speedy and secure burial from predatory animals he did what one frontiersman would do for another—what he hoped might be done for him. If his previous unaccountable feelings returned occasionally, it was not from that; but rather from some uneasiness in regard to his late guest’s possible feelings, and a regret that he had not been here at the finding of the body. That it would in some way have explained his own accident he did not doubt.

The boat did not “slow up” the next night, but passed as usual; yet three or four days elapsed before he could look forward to its coming with his old extravagant and half-exalted curiosity—which was his nearest approach to imagination. He was then able to examine it more closely, for the appearance of the stranger whom he now began to call “his friend” in his verbal communings with himself—but whom he did not seem destined to again discover; until one day, to his astonishment, a couple of fine horses were brought to his clearing by a stock-drover. They had been “ordered” to be left there. In vain Morse expostulated and 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.