While many Western stories have the protagonists battling outlaws, Harte introduces his characters battling the law itself. It is a “change in moral atmosphere” of the townspeople, not bad guys in black hats, that sentence the titular outcasts to death. Even more deadly than the townspeople, nature is the force that actually kills the outcasts—there is no dramatic shootout or rough-and-tumble fight. Through his depiction of how unforgiving life can be in Old West towns, and the even more unforgiving natural landscape, Harte punctures the romanticized myth of the Old West as idyllic and full of opportunity and adventure.
Far from being a stable, supportive community, the Old West settlement of Poker Flat is immediately revealed to be a dangerous place, governed by the whims of a powerful few. From the outset, Poker Flat is in a precarious state: the town has recently “suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen.” In the wake of this emotional and financial loss—which perhaps came as a blow to the town’s ego as well—a “secret committee” decides to cleanse the town of all of its residents that it deems “improper.” The town is “after somebody,” and they don’t seem too particular about who they get. In their desperation to regain a sense of stability and normalcy, the townspeople find themselves whipped up in a “spasm of virtuous reaction.” In this frenzied state, the townspeople are “lawless and ungovernable”—perhaps, the story implies, even more so than the “improper” outcasts that they plan to exile. The sinister secret committee has already hung two people before the outcasts are banished, making it clear that the townspeople are ruthless and a genuine threat. It’s not just a matter of being run out of town—the outcasts risk being killed by the townspeople if they stay.
Furthermore, it’s not clear that secret committee is really concerned about morality. Several members of the committee want to take back money they have lost to Oakhurst gambling and are willing to hang him (though are talked into merely exiling him) in retaliation. This paints Poker Flat, and Old West towns more broadly, as corrupt and fueled by petty grudges and revenge. Poker Flat’s isolation also makes it a dangerous place. The closest town is through the treacherous mountain pass, and this isolation and insularity seems to give the town an added level of power over its residents, as they must either comply with the town’s rules and whims or face a dangerous journey that could end in death.
Exiled from their homes, the outcasts are forced to make the deadly trip through the mountains to the next town over. However, nature proves itself more severe than the unfeeling townspeople, as at least three out the outcasts die in a snowstorm. At first, most of the outcasts seem to act as if they are on a camping trip. Ignoring Oakhurst’s advice that they carry on for their own safety, the group drinks too much and stops to make camp in a beautiful spot by a cliff, playing into the myth of the Old West as being one big adventure in a stunning “wooded amphitheater surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite.” Later, Tom and Piney are even more heedless of the danger, as they can’t conceive that the beautiful natural surroundings are far more dangerous than a picnic ground. Failing to internalize the gravity of the situation, Tom is delighted when the group is snowed in, suggesting happily that they’ll “have a good camp for a week, and then the snow’ll melt, and we’ll all go back together.” Like several of the other outcasts, they, too, underestimate the power of the West’s natural landscape.
Throughout the story, nature does seem beautiful. Near the end of the story, Harte writes, “the wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine-boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and settled about them as they slept.” However, nature’s grace and beauty in this moment is hiding an ominous reality. Trapped beneath dozens of feet of snow, the remaining outcasts lie dead, no match for nature’s brutal power. But from the outside, “all human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.” With this, the myth of the Old West gives way to a deadlier reality for the outcasts of Poker Flat. There is no high-spirited frontier or adventure in a majestic wilderness for them. They are crushed between the dangers of a corrupt town and uncaring nature, a bleak situation that reveals the brutal reality of life in the Old West. Townspeople threaten to kill the outcasts, and nature finishes the job without sentiment or mercy.
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The Brutality of the Old West Quotes in The Outcasts of Poker Flat
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 judgement.
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.
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 he usual percentage in favor of the dealer.
[…] 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.” But they were furnished with liquor […] In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less under its influence.
He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.
The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers.
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. But it revealed drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut,—a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung.
Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope’s ingenious translation of the Iliad. He now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that poem—having thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words—in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in the cañon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially he was interested in the fate of “Ash-heels,” as the Innocent persisted in denominating the “swift-footed Achilles.”
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. […] The lovers turned from the dreary prospect and looked into each other’s eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton—once the strongest of the party—seemed to sicken and fade.
