In one story by this man, Kentuck drowns in a mining camp flood while attempting to save the titular son of Cherokee Sal, while in another of his stories, Tom Simson and Piney Woods encounter a group of "immoral" people led by the gambler John Oakhurst.
G.K. Chesterton claimed that this author's second-greatest character was the lawyer Colonel Starbottle. Thompson's head is caved in with a mammoth skull during a fossil-throwing fight described in a poem by this author which is narrated by the same character as a parody of Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon" in which this man satirized anti-Chinese racism. This author of "Society on the Stanislaus" created the gambler Ah (*) Sin in his "Plain Language from Truthful James". In one story by this man, Kentuck drowns in a mining camp flood while attempting to save the titular son of Cherokee Sal, while in another of his stories, Tom Simson and Piney Woods encounter a group of "immoral" people led by the gambler John Oakhurst. For 10 points, name this author of "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat".
G.K. Chesterton claimed that this author's second-greatest character was the lawyer Colonel Starbottle.
Bret Harte [or Francis Bret Harte]