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Bret Harte
Complete Poetical Works
III. IN DIALECT
"JIM"
Say there! P'r'aps
Some on you chaps
Might know Jim Wild?
Well,—no offense:
Thar ain't no sense
In gittin' riled!
Jim was my chum
Up on the Bar:
That's why I come
Down from up yar,
Lookin' for Jim.
Thank ye, sir! YOU
Ain't of that crew,—
Blest if you are!
Money? Not much:
That ain't my kind;
I ain't no such.
Rum? I don't mind,
Seein' it's you.
Well, this yer Jim,—
Did you know him?
Jes' 'bout your size;
Same kind of eyes;—
Well, that is strange:
Why, it's two year
Since he came here,
Sick, for a change.
Well, here's to us:
Eh?
The h– you say!
Dead?
That little cuss?
What makes you star',
You over thar?
Can't a man drop
's glass in yer shop
But you must r'ar?
It wouldn't take
D–d much to break
You and your bar.
Dead!
Poor—little—Jim!
Why, thar was me,
Jones, and Bob Lee,
Harry and Ben,—
No-account men:
Then to take HIM!
Well, thar— Good-by—
No more, sir—I—
Eh?
What's that you say?
Why, dern it!—sho!—
No? Yes! By Joe!
Sold!
Sold! Why, you limb,
You ornery,
Derned old
Long-legged Jim.
CHIQUITA
Beautiful! Sir, you may say so. Thar isn't her match in the county;
Is thar, old gal,—Chiquita, my darling, my beauty?
Feel of that neck, sir,—thar's velvet! Whoa! steady,—ah, will you,
you vixen!
Whoa! I say. Jack, trot her out; let the gentleman look at her paces.
Morgan!—she ain't nothing else, and I've got the papers to prove it.
Sired by Chippewa Chief, and twelve hundred dollars won't buy her.
Briggs of Tuolumne owned her. Did you know Briggs of Tuolumne?
Busted hisself in White Pine, and blew out his brains down in 'Frisco?
Hedn't no savey, hed Briggs. Thar, Jack! that'll do,—quit that
foolin'!
Nothin' to what she kin do, when she's got her work cut out before her.
Hosses is hosses, you know, and likewise, too, jockeys is jockeys:
And 'tain't ev'ry man as can ride as knows what a hoss has got in him.
Know the old ford on the Fork, that nearly got Flanigan's leaders?
Nasty in daylight, you bet, and a mighty rough ford in low water!
Well, it ain't six weeks ago that me and the Jedge and his nevey
Struck for that ford in the night, in the rain, and the water all
round us;
Up to our flanks in the gulch, and Rattlesnake Creek just a-bilin',
Not a plank left in the dam, and nary a bridge on the river.
I had the gray, and the Jedge had his roan, and his nevey, Chiquita;
And after us trundled the rocks jest loosed from the top of the
canyon.
Lickity, lickity, switch, we came to the ford, and Chiquita
Buckled right down to her work, and, a fore I could yell to her rider,
Took water jest at the ford, and there was the Jedge and me standing,
And twelve hundred dollars of hoss-flesh afloat, and a-driftin' to
thunder!
Would ye b'lieve it? That night, that hoss, that 'ar filly, Chiquita,
Walked herself into her stall, and stood there, all quiet and dripping:
Clean as a beaver or rat, with nary a buckle of harness,
Just as she swam the Fork,—that hoss, that 'ar filly, Chiquita.
That's what I call a hoss! and— What did you say?– Oh, the nevey?
Drownded, I reckon,—leastways, he never kem beck to deny it.
Ye see the derned fool had no seat, ye couldn't have made him a
rider;
And then, ye know, boys will be boys, and hosses—well, hosses is
hosses!
DOW'S FLAT
(1856)
Dow's Flat. That's its name;
And I reckon that you
Are a stranger? The same?
Well, I thought it was true,—
For thar isn't a man on the river as can't spot the place at first
view.
It was called after Dow,—
Which the same was an ass,—
And as to the how
Thet the thing kem to pass,—
Jest tie up your hoss to that buckeye, and sit ye down here in the
grass.
You see this 'yer Dow
Hed the worst kind of luck;
He slipped up somehow
On each thing thet he struck.
Why, ef he'd a straddled thet fence-rail, the derned thing'd get up
and buck.
He mined on the bar
Till he couldn't pay rates;
He was smashed by a car
When he tunneled with Bates;
And right on the top of his trouble kem his wife and five kids from
the States.
It was rough,—mighty rough;
But the boys they stood by,
And they brought him the stuff
For a house, on the sly;
And the old woman,—well, she did washing, and took on when no one
was nigh.
But this 'yer luck of Dow's
Was so powerful mean
That the spring near his house
Dried right up on the green;
And he sunk forty feet down for water, but nary a drop to be seen.
Then the bar petered out,
And the boys wouldn't stay;
And the chills got about,
And his wife fell away;
But Dow in his well kept a peggin' in his usual ridikilous way.
One day,—it was June,
And a year ago, jest—
This Dow kem at noon
To his work like the rest,
With a shovel and pick on his shoulder, and derringer hid in his
breast.
He goes to the well,
And he stands on the brink,
And stops for a spell
Jest to listen and think:
For the sun in his eyes (jest like this, sir!), you see, kinder made
the cuss blink.
His two ragged gals
In the gulch were at play,
And a gownd that was Sal's
Kinder flapped on a bay:
Not much for a man to be leavin', but his all,—as I've heer'd the
folks say.
And—That's a peart hoss
Thet you've got,—ain't it now?
What might be her cost?
Eh? Oh!—Well, then, Dow—
Let's see,—well, that forty-foot grave wasn't his, sir, that day,
anyhow.
For a blow of his pick
Sorter caved in the side,
And he looked and turned sick,
Then he trembled and cried.
For you see the dern cuss had struck—"Water?"—Beg your parding,
young man,—there you lied!
It was GOLD,—in the quartz,
And it ran all alike;
And I reckon five oughts
Was the worth of that strike;
And that house with the coopilow's his'n,—which the same isn't bad
for a Pike.
Thet's why it's Dow's Flat;
And the thing of it is
That he kinder got that
Through sheer contrairiness:
For 'twas WATER the derned cuss was seekin', and his luck made him
certain to miss.
Thet's so! Thar's your way,
To the left of yon tree;
But—a—look h'yur, say?
Won't you come up to tea?
No? Well, then the next time you're passin'; and ask after Dow,—
and thet's ME.
IN THE TUNNEL
Didn't know Flynn,—
Flynn of Virginia,—
Long as he's been 'yar?
Look 'ee here, stranger,
Whar HEV you been?
Here in this tunnel
He was my pardner,
That same Tom Flynn,—
Working together,
In wind and weather,
Day out and in.
Didn't know Flynn!
Well, that IS queer;
Why, it's a sin
To think of Tom Flynn,—
Tom with his cheer,
Tom without fear,—
Stranger, look 'yar!
Thar in the drift,
Back to the wall,
He held the timbers
Ready to fall;
Then in the darkness
I heard him call:
"Run for your life, Jake!
Run for your wife's sake!
Don't wait for me."
And that was all
Heard in the din,
Heard of Tom Flynn,—
Flynn of Virginia.
That's all about
Flynn of Virginia.
That lets me out.
Here in the damp,—
Out of the sun,—
That 'ar derned lamp
Makes my eyes run.
Well, there,—I'm done!
But, sir, when you'll
Hear the next fool
Asking of Flynn,—
Flynn of Virginia,—
Just you chip in,
Say you knew Flynn;
Say that you've been 'yar.
"CICELY"
(ALKALI STATION)
Cicely says you're a poet; maybe,—I ain't much on rhyme:
I reckon you'd give me a hundred, and beat me every time.
Poetry!—that's the way some chaps puts up an idee,
But I takes mine "straight without sugar," and that's what's the
matter with me.
Poetry!—just look round you,—alkali, rock, and sage;
Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; ain't it a pretty page!
Sun in the east at mornin', sun in the west at night,
And the shadow of this 'yer station the on'y thing moves in sight.
Poetry!—Well now—Polly! Polly, run to your mam;
Run right away, my pooty! By-by! Ain't she a lamb?
Poetry!—that reminds me o' suthin' right in that suit:
Jest shet that door thar, will yer?—for Cicely's ears is cute.
Ye noticed Polly,—the baby? A month afore she was born,
Cicely—my old woman—was moody-like and forlorn;
Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and trees;
Family man yourself, sir? Well, you know what a woman be's.
Narvous she was, and restless,—said that she "couldn't stay."
Stay!—and the nearest woman seventeen miles away.
But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand,
And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o' land.
One night,—the tenth of October,—I woke with a chill and a fright,
For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn't in sight,
But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that she
"couldn't stay,"
But had gone to visit her neighbor,—seventeen miles away!
When and how she stampeded, I didn't wait for to see,
For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she;
Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is off the
scent,
For there warn't no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went.
I've had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot,—
Lost on the Plains in '50, drownded almost and shot;
But out on this alkali desert, a-hunting a crazy wife,
Was ra'ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life.
"Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" I called, and I held my breath,
And "Cicely!" came from the canyon,—and all was as still as death.
And "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" came from the rocks below,
And jest but a whisper of "Cicely!" down from them peaks of snow.
I ain't what you call religious,—but I jest looked up to the sky,
And—this 'yer's to what I'm coming, and maybe ye think I lie:
But up away to the east'ard, yaller and big and far,
I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star.
Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me:
Yaller and big and dancing, such as you never see:
Big and yaller and dancing,—I never saw such a star,
And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went for it then
and thar.
Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead,
Keeping the star afore me, I went wherever it led.
It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and nigh,
Out of the yearth afore me thar riz up a baby's cry.
Listen! thar's the same music; but her lungs they are stronger now
Than the day I packed her and her mother,—I'm derned if I jest know
how.
But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o' the whole thing is
That Cis never knew what happened from that very night to this!
But Cicely says you're a poet, and maybe you might, some day,
Jest sling her a rhyme 'bout a baby that was born in a curious way,
And see what she says; and, old fellow, when you speak of the star,
don't tell
As how 'twas the doctor's lantern,—for maybe 'twon't sound so well.
PENELOPE
(SIMPSON'S BAR, 1858)
So you've kem 'yer agen,
And one answer won't do?
Well, of all the derned men
That I've struck, it is you.
O Sal! 'yer's that derned fool from Simpson's, cavortin' round 'yer
in the dew.
Kem in, ef you WILL.
Thar,—quit! Take a cheer.
Not that; you can't fill
Them theer cushings this year,—
For that cheer was my old man's, Joe Simpson, and they don't make
such men about 'yer.
He was tall, was my Jack,
And as strong as a tree.
Thar's his gun on the rack,—
Jest you heft it, and see.
And YOU come a courtin' his widder! Lord! where can that critter,
Sal, be!
You'd fill my Jack's place?
And a man of your size,—
With no baird to his face,
Nor a snap to his eyes,
And nary—Sho! thar! I was foolin',—I was, Joe, for sartain,—don't
rise.
Sit down. Law! why, sho!
I'm as weak as a gal.
Sal! Don't you go, Joe,
Or I'll faint,—sure, I shall.
Sit down,—ANYWHEER, where you like, Joe,—in that cheer, if you
choose,—Lord! where's Sal?
PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
(TABLE MOUNTAIN, 1870)
Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.
Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.
It was August the third,
And quite soft was the skies;
Which it might be inferred
That Ah Sin was likewise;
Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.
Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand:
It was Euchre. The same
He did not understand;
But he smiled as he sat by the table,
With the smile that was childlike and bland.
Yet the cards they were stocked
In a way that I grieve,
And my feelings were shocked
At the state of Nye's sleeve,
Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.
But the hands that were played
By that heathen Chinee,
And the points that he made,
Were quite frightful to see,—
Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.
Then I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, "Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"—
And he went for that heathen Chinee.
In the scene that ensued
I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed
Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
In the game "he did not understand."
In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs,—
Which was coming it strong,
Yet I state but the facts;
And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers,—that's wax.
Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,—
Which the same I am free to maintain.
THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS
I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
But first I would remark, that it is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to "put a head" on him.
Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months' proceedings of that same Society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.
Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare;
And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,
Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.
Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault,
It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault;
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.
Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass,—at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.
Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order, when
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage
In a warfare with the remnants of a palaeozoic age;
And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,
Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
And I've told in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
LUKE
(IN THE COLORADO PARK, 1873)
Wot's that you're readin'?—a novel? A novel!—well, darn my skin!
You a man grown and bearded and histin' such stuff ez that in—
Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you're thin ez a
knife.
Look at me—clar two hundred—and never read one in my life!
That's my opinion o' novels. And ez to their lyin' round here,
They belong to the Jedge's daughter—the Jedge who came up last year
On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o' pine and
fir;
And his daughter—well, she read novels, and that's what's the
matter with her.
Yet she was sweet on the Jedge, and stuck by him day and night,
Alone in the cabin up 'yer—till she grew like a ghost, all white.
She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away
Ez rifle smoke blown through the woods, but she wasn't my kind—no
way!
Speakin' o' gals, d'ye mind that house ez you rise the hill,
A mile and a half from White's, and jist above Mattingly's mill?
You do? Well now THAR's a gal! What! you saw her? Oh, come now,
thar! quit!
She was only bedevlin' you boys, for to me she don't cotton one bit.
Now she's what I call a gal—ez pretty and plump ez a quail;
Teeth ez white ez a hound's, and they'd go through a ten-penny nail;
Eyes that kin snap like a cap. So she asked to know "whar I was hid?"
She did! Oh, it's jist like her sass, for she's peart ez a Katydid.
But what was I talking of?—Oh! the Jedge and his daughter—she read
Novels the whole day long, and I reckon she read them abed;
And sometimes she read them out loud to the Jedge on the porch where
he sat,
And 'twas how "Lord Augustus" said this, and how "Lady Blanche" she
said that.
But the sickest of all that I heerd was a yarn thet they read 'bout
a chap,
"Leather-stocking" by name, and a hunter chock full o' the greenest
o' sap;
And they asked me to hear, but I says, "Miss Mabel, not any for me;
When I likes I kin sling my own lies, and thet chap and I shouldn't
agree."
Yet somehow or other that gal allus said that I brought her to mind
Of folks about whom she had read, or suthin belike of thet kind,
And thar warn't no end o' the names that she give me thet summer up
here—
"Robin Hood," "Leather-stocking" "Rob Roy,"—Oh, I tell you, the
critter was queer!
And yet, ef she hadn't been spiled, she was harmless enough in her
way;
She could jabber in French to her dad, and they said that she knew
how to play;
And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar, which the man doesn't
live ez kin use;
And slippers—you see 'em down 'yer—ez would cradle an Injin's
papoose.
Yet along o' them novels, you see, she was wastin' and mopin' away,
And then she got shy with her tongue, and at last she had nothin' to
say;
And whenever I happened around, her face it was hid by a book,
And it warn't till the day she left that she give me ez much ez a
look.
And this was the way it was. It was night when I kem up here
To say to 'em all "good-by," for I reckoned to go for deer
At "sun up" the day they left. So I shook 'em all round by the hand,
'Cept Mabel, and she was sick, ez they give me to understand.
But jist ez I passed the house next morning at dawn, some one,
Like a little waver o' mist got up on the hill with the sun;
Miss Mabel it was, alone—all wrapped in a mantle o' lace—
And she stood there straight in the road, with a touch o' the sun in
her face.
And she looked me right in the eye—I'd seen suthin' like it before
When I hunted a wounded doe to the edge o' the Clear Lake Shore,
And I had my knee on its neck, and I jist was raisin' my knife,
When it give me a look like that, and—well, it got off with its life.
"We are going to-day," she said, "and I thought I would say good-by
To you in your own house, Luke—these woods and the bright blue sky!
You've always been kind to us, Luke, and papa has found you still
As good as the air he breathes, and wholesome as Laurel Tree Hill.
"And we'll always think of you, Luke, as the thing we could not take
away,—
The balsam that dwells in the woods, the rainbow that lives in the
spray.
And you'll sometimes think of ME, Luke, as you know you once used to
say,
A rifle smoke blown through the woods, a moment, but never to stay."
And then we shook hands. She turned, but a-suddent she tottered and
fell,
And I caught her sharp by the waist, and held her a minit. Well,
It was only a minit, you know, thet ez cold and ez white she lay
Ez a snowflake here on my breast, and then—well, she melted away—
And was gone.... And thar are her books; but I says not any for me;
Good enough may be for some, but them and I mightn't agree.
They spiled a decent gal ez might hev made some chap a wife,
And look at me!—clar two hundred—and never read one in my life!
