Bret Harte was at the forefront of western American literature, paving the way for other writers, including Mark Twain. For the first time in one volume, The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings brings together not only Harte's best-known pieces including "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," but also the original transcription of the famous 1882 essay "The Argonauts of '49" as well as a selection of his poetry, lesser-known essays, and three of his Condensed Novels-parodies of James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
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CONTENTS Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands How Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar The Princess Bob and her Friends The Iliad of Sandy Bar Mr. Thompson's Prodigal The Romance of Madrono Hollow The Poet of Sierra Flat The Christmas Gift that came to Rupert"

It was a season of unequalled prosperity in Devil's Ford. The half a dozen cabins scattered along the banks of the North Fork, as if by some overflow of that capricious river, had become augmented during a week of fierce excitement by twenty or thirty others, that were huddled together on the narrow gorge of Devil's Spur, or cast up on its steep sides. So sudden and violent had been the change of fortune, that the dwellers in the older cabins had not had time to change with it, but still kept their old habits, customs, and even their old clothes. The flour pan in which their daily bread was...

It was very dark, and the wind was increasing. The last gust had been preceded by an ominous roaring down the whole mountain-side, which continued for some time after the trees in the little valley had lapsed into silence. The air was filled with a faint, cool, sodden odor, as of stirred forest depths. In those intervals of silence the darkness seemed to increase in proportion and grow almost palpable. Yet out of this sightless and soundless void now came the tinkle of a spur's rowels, the dry crackling of saddle leathers, and the muffled plunge of a hoof in the thick carpet of dust and...

It was a steep trail leading over the Monterey Coast Range. Concho was very tired, Concho was very dusty, Concho was very much disgusted. To Concho's mind there was but one relief for these insurmountable difficulties, and that lay in a leathern bottle slung over the machillas of his saddle. Concho raised the bottle to his lips, took a long draught, made a wry face, and ejaculated: "Carajo!" It appeared that the bottle did not contain aguardiente, but had lately been filled in a tavern near Tres Pinos by an Irishman who sold had American whisky under that pleasing Castilian title....