It had been raining in the valley of the Sacramento. The North Fork had overflowed its banks and Rattlesnake Creek was impassable. The few boulders that had marked the summer ford at Simpson's Crossing were obliterated by a vast sheet of water stretching to the foothills. The up stage was stopped at Grangers; the last mail had been abandoned in the tules, the rider swimming for his life. “An area,” remarked the “Sierra Avalanche,” with pensive local pride, “as large as the State of Massachusetts is now under water.” Nor was the weather any better in the foothills. The mud lay deep on the mountain road; wagons that neither physical force nor moral objurgation could move from the evil ways into which they had fallen, encumbered the track, and the way to Simpson's Bar was indicated by broken-down teams and hard swearing. And farther on, cut off and inaccessible, rained upon and bedraggled, smitten by high winds and threatened by high water, Simpson's Bar, on the eve of Christmas day, 1862, clung like a swallow's nest to the rocky entablature and splintered capitals of Table Mountain, and shook in the blast.
från "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar"
Young Girl Reading, 1868
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Ännu en julaftonsberättelse — men inte av den gulliga sorten. Jag är inte så mycket för äventyrsberättelser från vilda västern, med guldgrävare och cowboys, men det händer att jag läser en och annan novell av Bret Hart, eftersom jag uppskattar hans skriverier. "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar" som ingår i novellsamlingen "Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories" utspelar sig i norra Kalifornien, och jag får lära mig att Taffelbergen finns på fler ställen än i Sydafrika. Persongalleriet består av idel råbarkade män, som förefaller leva av whisky. En riktigt spännande novell (med lyckligt slut — på sätt och vis).
