But if Oakhurst is the dominant character, Piney Woods is, I think, the central character.  She is central in this story just as little Aglaia is central in Tennyson’s “Princess,” or Eppie in George Eliot’s “Silas Marner,” or the baby offspring of Cherokee Sal in “The Luck of Roaring Camp.”  Bret Harte had just written the last-named story when he began the composition of “The Outcasts of Poker Flat.”  The same great theme, the radiating and redeeming power of innocence and purity, was carried over from the first story to the second.  The ministry of the baby and the ministry of the fifteen-year-old bride is the same in both.  Like the Great Stone Face in Hawthorne’s story or like little Pippa in Browning’s poem, they awaken the better nature of those about them.  They restore hopes that had become but memories and memories that had almost ceased to be hopes.]

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night.  Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances.  There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.

Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these indications.  Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause, was another question.  “I reckon they’re after somebody,” he reflected; “likely it’s me.”  He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.

In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody.”  It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen.  It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it.  A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons.  This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other objectionable characters.  I regret to say that some of these were ladies.  It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment.

Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this category.  A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the sums he had won from them.  “It’s agin justice,” said Jim Wheeler, “to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp—­an entire stranger—­carry away our money.”  But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice.