The Outcasts of Poker Flat

“‘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.”

Justice in Poker Flat renders itself as an arbitrary concept. Its inhabitants rely on gambling as revenue yet denounce an outsider for winning their money. Only those who have won money from Oakhurst speak up on his behalf. The hypocrisy tacitly announces that no one is safe in a town with such a capricious governing body.

“Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer.”

Mr. Oakhurst’s life as a gambler enables him to read other people’s expressions and demeanors. He recognizes the judges’ “hesitation” during his sentencing but knows that this situation is not one in which he can throw the dice and hope that luck lands in his favor. Mr. Oakhurst’s view of life as “an uncertain game” in which he is “too much of a gambler not to accept Fate” further demonstrates his cognizance of when it is time to fold his cards. However, there is irony in this passage, as Oakhurst’s eventual death will result from his refusal to die on anyone’s terms but his own.

“The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary on the folly of ‘throwing up their hand before the game was played out.”

The surrounding natural area seems a logical place to rest and set up camp. However, Oakhurst’s skill in staying one step ahead of his opponent—a skill honed throughout his gambling life—surfaces as he realizes that they have neither the time nor the means to stop. In his attempt to urge them onward, Oakhurst compares their standstill to “throwing up their hand before the game was played out”; the metaphor reveals he intuits that death awaits them if they delay for long.

“Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and in his own language, he ‘couldn’t afford it.’ As he gazed at his recumbent fellow exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him.”

Oakhurst’s abstinence from alcohol emphasizes his awareness of his limits, particularly regarding his gambling profession: He always needs to be levelheaded, and his winnings do not sufficiently cover the expense of alcohol. However, his commitment to “coolness, impassivity, and presence of mind” has often left him emotionally isolated, as he now feels separate from his fellow outcasts. The text offers a glimpse of Oakhurst’s regret as he painfully realizes that his “pariah trade” and other “vices” have “begotten” this loneliness.

“After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful spectator behind the door and thus addressed him: ‘Tommy, you’re a good little man, but you can’t gamble worth a cent. Don’t try it over again.’ He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.”

Oakhurst’s initial encounter with Tom occurred while gambling, before the events of the story. Though Oakhurst is exiled for his alleged lawlessness, this scene shows he has both a firm moral code and capacity for mercy as he refuses to keep his winnings from Tom. Oakhurst also conscientiously advises Tom to never gamble again, as the young man is so unskilled at gambling that such a profession would likely end poorly for him. It is with irony that gambling, for which the committee banishes Oakhurst, enables him to mentor and protect Tom.

“They had been engaged a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout, comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine tree, where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover. Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate.”

Tom once again involves himself in a risky situation in his desire to elope. Oakhurst recognizes that Tom is in over his head again and that nothing about their situation should be considered “fortunate,” yet Tom does not understand the severity of the outcasts’ predicament. This contrast highlights the irony of their travels: Tom and Piney’s journey toward Poker Flat involves hope, while the outcasts’ banishment from the same town involves despair.

“Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave it—snow!”

The arrival of snow at the camp heightens Oakhurst’s sense of dread when he realizes what it means: Their luck continues to dwindle. The descriptions of the fire as “dying” foreshadows death, as does the blood leaving Oakhurst’s cheeks. The snow’s unexpected arrival magnifies that foreshadowing.

“Luck, continued the gambler, reflectively, is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it’s bound to change. And it’s finding out when it’s going to change that makes you. We’ve had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat—you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along you’re all right.”

The narrator does not use Oakhurst’s name in this passage while Oakhurst confides to Tom; instead, Oakhurst is called “the gambler.” This subtle shift in name emphasizes that Oakhurst’s core philosophy revolves around luck. Luck deals the cards, and how he responds to that hand defines his character.

“The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past.”

The sun is personified as a celestial being looking down from the heavens, watching the outcasts. The entire valley is covered in a harsh, all-consuming snowfall, yet the sun spreads its rays, offering a glimmer of light in an otherwise starkly barren landscape. As the sun illuminates the outcasts’ charitable act of rationing their food, the imagery symbolically underscores the characters’ growing integrity.

“Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the fate of ‘Ash-heels,’ as the Innocent persisted in denominating the ‘swift-footed Achilles.’”

Achilles, the legend from the ancient Greek epic the Iliad, fascinates and resonates with Oakhurst. When Achilles is an infant, his goddess mother fortifies his body by dipping it into magical water—except for his one heel, leaving that heel vulnerable. Achilles meets his downfall when his heel becomes injured in battle, hence the term “Achilles heel.” This allusion to Achilles foreshadows a similar downfall for Oakhurst, who is vulnerable in his sense of fatedness: Believing himself fated to death, he will shoot himself.

“The sun again forsook them, and again from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white that towered twenty feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in the drifts. And yet no one complained.”

The words “forsook,” “leaden,” and “prison” connote abandonment and create a mood of bleakness as the outcasts’ survival appears increasingly impossible. However, the outcasts have become stoic; this is an especially marked development for the Duchess, who once freely expressed her dismay.

“Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.”

As Piney and Duchess meet their deaths in the snowstorm, the idea of snow as a purification comes into play, but that purification extends the story’s irony. This passage, which describes a fatal snowfall upon the two women, is among the most lyrical and ironic in the story, emphasizing Harte’s critique of moralist postures. The word “stain” connotes an iniquity at odds with the women’s loving treatment of one another, and the word “mercifully” is inconsistent with the nature of their death, which has resulted from a wrongful punishment and exile. Yet the exile’s hardship also put pressure on the outcasts’ ethical integrity, and as most of them embraced some form of self-sacrifice, those actions resembled purgation—the Christian theological concept of the soul’s purification through acts of selfless love. The diction in this passage reinforces the religious connotation.

“And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other’s arms.”

This is also among the narrative’s most pointedly ironic passages. As rescuers from Poker Flat find the frozen bodies of Piney and the Duchess, the narrator remarks with mock wonder that “you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned.” This line sardonically states an absurd idea as though it is reasonable—the idea that outward appearances would reliably indicate someone’s moral character. Yet such pietistic illogic is exactly what defines “the law of Poker Flat,” whose condemnation of the outcasts was based on hasty, hollow moral judgment: Because the Duchess was a sex worker, the committee grasped onto that outward reality and presumed to know the state of her “soul.” However, even while the narrator derides the vigilantes’ perspective, this passage reveals the rescuers aren’t wholly callous, as the sight of the two women moves “the law of Poker Flat” to compassion for the suffering both women endured in their final act to protect each other. The vigilantes’ empathy—however limited, and however late it appears in the story—furthers the theme of Purity and Corruption: The Moral Ambivalence of Humanity.