A Drift from Redwood Camp

by Bret Harte

was darting its direct rays into the interior, asif searching it with fiery spears. He had slept ten hours. He rosetremblingly to his knees. Everything was quiet without; he might yetescape. He crawled to the opening. The open space before it was empty,but the scaffolding was gone. The clear, keen air revived him. As hesprang out, erect, a shout that nearly stunned him seemed to rise fromthe earth on all sides. He glanced around him in a helpless agony offear. A dozen concentric circles of squatting Indians, whose heads werevisible above the reeds, encompassed the banks around the sunken baseof the sweat-house with successive dusky rings. Every avenue of escapeseemed closed. Perhaps for that reason the attitude of his surroundingcaptors was passive rather than aggressive, and the shrewd, half-Hebraicprofiles nearest him expressed only stoical waiting. There was a strangesimilarity of expression in his own immovable apathy of despair. Hisonly sense of averting his fate was a confused idea of explaining hisintrusion. His desperate memory yielded a few common Indian words. Hepointed automatically to himself and the stream. His white lips moved.

  "I come--from--the river!"

  A guttural cry, as if the whole assembly were clearing their throats,went round the different circles. The nearest rocked themselves toand fro and bent their feathered heads toward him. A hollow-cheeked,decrepit old man arose and said, simply:--

  "It is he! The great chief has come!"

  *****

  He was saved. More than that, he was re-created. For, by signs andintimations he was quickly made aware that since the death of theirlate chief, their medicine-men had prophesied that his perfect successorshould appear miraculously before them, borne noiselessly on the riverFROM THE SEA, in the plumes and insignia of his predecessor. This merecoincidence of appearance and costume might not have been convincing tothe braves had not Elijah Martin's actual deficiencies contributed totheir unquestioned faith in him. Not only his inert possession of thesweat-house and his apathetic attitude in their presence, but his utterand complete unlikeness to the white frontiersmen of their knowledge andtradition--creatures of fire and sword and malevolent activity--as wellas his manifest dissimilarity to themselves, settled their convictionof his supernatural origin. His gentle, submissive voice, his yieldingwill, his lazy helplessness, the absence of strange weapons and fierceexplosives in his possession, his unwonted sobriety--all proved him anexception to his apparent race that was in itself miraculous. For itmust be confessed that, in spite of the cherished theories of mostromances and all statesmen and commanders, that FEAR is the greatcivilizer of the savage barbarian, and that he is supposed to regardthe prowess of the white man and his mysterious death-dealing weaponsas evidence of his supernatural origin and superior creation, the factshave generally pointed to the reverse. Elijah Martin was not long indiscovering that when the Minyo hunter, with his obsolete bow, droppeddead by a bullet from a viewless and apparently noiseless space, itwas NOT considered the lightnings of an avenging Deity, but was traceddirectly to the ambushed rifle of Kansas Joe, swayed by a viciousnessquite as human as their own; the spectacle of Blizzard Dick, vergingon delirium tremens, and riding "amuck" into an Indian village with arevolver in each hand, did NOT impress them as a supernatural act, norexcite their respectful awe as much as the less harmful frenzy of oneof their own medicine-men; they were NOT influenced by implacable whitegods, who relaxed only to drive hard bargains and exchange mildewedflour and shoddy blankets for their fish and furs. I am afraid theyregarded these raids of Christian civilization as they looked upongrasshopper plagues, famines, inundations, and epidemics; while anutterly impassive God washed his hands of the means he had employed, andeven encouraged the faithful to resist and overcome his emissaries--thewhite devils! Had Elijah Martin been a student of theology, hewould have been struck with the singular resemblance of thesetheories--although the application thereof was reversed--to theChristian faith. But Elijah Martin had neither the imagination ofa theologian nor the insight of a politician. He only saw that he,hitherto ignored and despised in a community of half-barbaric men,now translated to a community of men wholly savage, was respected andworshipped!

  It might have turned a stronger head than Elijah's. He was at firstfrightened, fearful lest his reception concealed some hidden irony,or that, like the flower-crowned victim of ancient sacrifice, he wasexalted and sustained to give importance and majesty to some impendingmartyrdom. Then he began to dread that his innocent deceit--if deceit itwas--should be discovered; at last, partly from meekness and partly fromthe animal contentment of present security, he accepted the situation.Fortunately for him it was purely passive. The Great Chief of the Minyotribe was simply an expressionless idol of flesh and blood. The previousincumbent of that office had been an old man, impotent and senselessof late years through age and disease. The chieftains and braves hadconsulted in council before him, and perfunctorily submitted theirdecisions, like offerings, to his unresponsive shrine. In the same way,all material events--expeditions, trophies, industries--were supposedto pass before the dull, impassive eyes of the great chief, for directacceptance. On the second day of Elijah's accession, two of the bravesbrought a bleeding human scalp before him. Elijah turned pale, trembled,and averted his head, and then, remembering the danger of giving wayto his weakness, grew still more ghastly. The warriors watched him withimpassioned faces. A grunt--but whether of astonishment, dissent, orapproval, he would not tell--went round the circle. But the scalp wastaken away and never again appeared in his presence.

  An incident still more alarming quickly followed. Two captives, whitemen, securely bound, were one day brought before him on their way tothe stake, followed by a crowd of old and young squaws and children. Theunhappy Elijah recognized in the prisoners two packers from a distantsettlement who sometimes passed through Redwood Camp. An agony ofterror, shame, and remorse shook the pseudo chief to his crest of highfeathers, and blanched his face beneath its paint and yellow ochre. Tointerfere to save them from the torture they were evidently to receiveat the hands of those squaws and children, according to custom, would beexposure and death to him as well as themselves; while to assist by hispassive presence at the horrible sacrifice of his countrymen was toomuch for even his weak selfishness. Scarcely knowing what he did as thelugubrious procession passed before him, he hurriedly hid his facein his blanket and turned his back upon the scene. There was a deadsilence. The warriors were evidently unprepared for this extraordinaryconduct of their chief. What might have been their action it wasimpossible to conjecture, for at that moment a little squaw, perhapsimpatient for the sport and partly emboldened by the fact that shehad been selected, only a few days before, as the betrothed of the newchief, approached him slyly from the other side. The horrified eyes ofElijah, momentarily raised from his blanket, saw and recognized her. Thefeebleness of a weak nature, that dared not measure itself directly withthe real cause, vented its rage on a secondary object. He darted a quickglance of indignation and hatred at the young girl. She ran back instartled terror to her companions, a hurried consultation followed, andin another moment the whole bevy of girls, old women, and children wereon the wing, shrieking and crying, to their wigwams.

  "You see," said one of the prisoners coolly to the other, in English,"I was right. They never intended to do anything to us. It was only abluff. These Minyos are a different sort from the other tribes. Theynever kill anybody if they can help it."

  "You're wrong," said the other, excitedly. "It was that big chief there,with his head in a blanket, that sent those dogs to the right about.Hell! did you see them run at just a look from him? He's a high andmighty feller, you bet. Look at his dignity!"

  "That's so--he ain't no slouch," said the other, gazing at Elijah'smuffled head, critically. "D----d if he ain't a born king."

  The sudden conflict and utter revulsion of emotion that those simplewords caused in Elijah's breast was almost incredible. He had been atfirst astounded by the revelation of the peaceful reputation ofthe unknown tribe he had been called upon to govern; but even thiscomforting assurance was as nothing c
ompared to the greater revelationsimplied in the speaker's praise of himself. He, Elijah Martin!the despised, the rejected, the worthless outcast of Redwood Camp,recognized as a "born king," a leader; his power felt by the very menwho had scorned him! And he had done nothing--stop! had he actually doneNOTHING? Was it not possible that he was REALLY what they thought him?His brain reeled under the strong, unaccustomed wine of praise; actingupon his weak selfishness, it exalted him for a moment to their measureof his strength, even as their former belief in his inefficiency hadkept him down. Courage is too often only the memory of past success.This was his first effort; he forgot he had not earned it, even ashe now ignored the danger of earning it. The few words of unconsciouspraise had fallen like the blade of knighthood on his coweringshoulders; he had risen ennobled from the contact. Though his