Harte, Bret: The Three Partners. v1. 11 Dec 2014
 

Francis Bret Harte (August 25, 1836 – May 5, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, fiction, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern U.S. to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but his Gold Rush tales have been most often reprinted, adapted, and admired.

Bret Harte's witty, sometimes heart-rending tales of frontier California, earned him acclaim during the 1860s as the new prophet of American letters. His books, The Luck of Roaring Camp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat and M'liss, helped establish the foundations of western American fiction. An excerpt from the book reads: There was something in the speaker's tone which seemed to touch a common chord in their natures, and this was voiced by Barker with sudden and almost pathetic earnestness. I tell you what, boys, we ought to swear here tonight to always stand by each other.