It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. Then he tells the two women he will accompany Tom ‘as far as the canyon.’ Duchess and Piney stay in the cabin and when their fire dies they fall asleep hugging each other. The narrator reveals that Oakhurst shot himself with a pistol in the heart, and calls Oakhurst both the strongest and weakest of the "outcasts of Poker Flat.". His premonition is correct, as a secret committee has determined, in its local prejudice, to rid the community of certain undesirable people. He sends Simson on the difficult journey to Poker Flat in an attempt to get help. A note, printed on the deuce of clubs, is pinned to the tree with a bowie knife. Mr. John Oakhurst notices on November 23, 1850, that there is a change in the moral atmosphere of Poker Flat, a California gold-mining settlement. When the group reaches the … It states that John Oakhurst had a streak of bad luck and handed in his checks on December 7, 1850. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. On the morning of November 23, 1850, a gambler named John Oakhurst walks through Poker Flat, a small mining town in the American West. GradeSaver, Read the Study Guide for The Outcasts of Poker Flat…, How Social Deviancy Shaped the West in Bret Harte’s Fiction, Read the E-Text for The Outcasts of Poker Flat…, View Wikipedia Entries for The Outcasts of Poker Flat…. A roof is made of pine boughs, and the wait for the end of the storm begins. At first, the travelers attempt to entertain themselves by singing and listening to Tom play accordion and tell stories like The Iliad around the campfire. And when officials from the town, the “law of Poker Flat” comes upon their bodies days later, it is unable to tell which one is the sinner, the snow having eliminated all trace of wrongdoing from their bodies, so the search party turns away and let them be. Poker Flat has undergone a recent change. Here, personification collides with allusion to signify the end of a storm meant to cleanse the Earth of sin, an ironic note with which to close the story, as the characters are only entirely purified when the snow has killed them. The search party also happens upon the makeshift grave of John Oakhurst, marked by a playing card upon which Oakhurst has written an epitaph blaming his death on "a streak of bad luck." The others are Uncle Billy, a thief, and the Duchess and Mother Shipton, two prostitutes. That is the way they are discovered by a tardy rescue party several days later. Even Tom’s accordion seems worried by their predicament, producing music in “fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps.” Only when the party has died does Harte compare the ceasing snow to a more peaceful image—“white-winged birds”—therein calling to mind the white dove sent to signify the end of the purifying flood in the Bible. Despite Oakhurst’s protest, the others decide to accept Simson’s offer, and they make camp in the cabin. Oakhurst tries to convince the newcomers not to linger, but Tom cheerfully offers to share his rations and mentions that they can camp at a crudely constructed log cabin that he saw down the path. It has recently lost an important resident, a large fortune, and two horses, catalyzing a “spasm of virtuous reaction.” In an effort to salvage the town’s reputation and reinstate a sense of normalcy, a group of powerful Poker Flat residents form a secret committee that decides who stays and who goes, whether by hanging (a fate to which two men have already been sentenced) or by exile. The group takes Tom up on his offer and makes camp. With the narrator’s final reference to Oakhurst as the “strongest and yet the weakest” of the exiles from Poker Flat, the reader is meant to feel the similar tragedy and inevitability of his death. As he doesn’t drink (it clashes with his profession as a gambler, which requires him to always have clear senses and sharp decision-making skills) Oakhurst remains on the fringes, watching the group quietly. At the start of the story’s second half, Harte builds on the dramatic irony present at the end of its first half, wherein the reader (but none of the characters) knows that Uncle Billy has stranded the party in the a mountain blizzard. For the first time since he became a gambler, he is lonely and depressed. Oakhurst won the youth’s entire fortune, but he returned it with the advice that Simson should never gamble again.
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