excerpt from the book..They had all known him as a shiftless, worthless creature. From thetime he first entered Redwood Camp, carrying his entire effects in ared handkerchief on the end of a long-handled shovel, until he lazilydrifted out of it on a plank in the terrible inundation of '56, theynever expected anything better of him. In a community of strong men withsullen virtues and charmingly fascinating vices, he was tolerated aspossessing neither--not even rising by any dominant human weakness orludicrous quality to the importance of a butt. In the dramatispersonae of Redwood Camp he was a simple "super"--who had only passive,speechless roles in those fierce dramas that were sometimes unrolledbeneath its green-curtained pines. Nameless and penniless, he wasoverlooked by the census and ignored by the tax collector, while in ahotly-contested election for sheriff, when even the head-boards of thescant cemetery were consulted to fill the poll-lists, it was discoveredthat neither candidate had thought fit to avail himself of his actualvote. He was debarred the rude heraldry of a nickname of achievement,and in a camp made up of "Euchre Bills," "Poker Dicks," "Profane Pete,"and "Snap-shot Harry," was known vaguely as "him," "Skeesicks," or "thatcoot." It was remembered long after, with a feeling of superstition,that he had never even met with the dignity of an accident, nor receivedthe fleeting honor of a chance shot meant for somebody else in any ofthe liberal and broadly comprehensive encounters which distinguished thecamp. And the inundation that finally carried him out of it waspartly anticipated by his passive incompetency, for while the othersescaped--or were drowned in escaping--he calmly floated off on his plankwithout an opposing effort.