Page:The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction Vol. 10.djvu/445

 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

ANDY was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea- bush, in pretty much the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before. How long he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't care ; how long he should lie there was a matter equally indefinite and unconsidered. A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical condition, suf- fused and saturated his moral being.

The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in particular, was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red Gulch to attract attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist had erected a temporary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the inscription, "Effects of MacCorkle's whiskey, — kills at forty rods," with a hand pointing to Mc- Corkle's saloon. But this, I imagine, was, like most local satire, personal ; and was a reflection upon the unfairness of the process rather than a commentary upon the impropriety of the result. With this facetious exception, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wandering mule, released from his pack, had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and sniffed curi- ously at the prostrate man ; a vagabond dog, with that deep sympathy which the species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty boots, and curled himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one eye in the sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious and dog-like in its implied flattery of the unconscious man beside him.

Meanwhile the shadows of the pine-trees had slowly swung around until they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open meadow with gigantic parallels of black and yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted by the plunging hoofs of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower ; and still Published under Special Arrangement zvitli The Houghton, Mifflin Company. Copyright i8g3 and iSgg by Bret Harte. All rights reserved. 411