1. CHAPTER I.
SMITH'S POCKET.
Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside
in gentler undulations, and the river grows less
rapid and yellow, on the side of a great red
mountain stands “Smith's Pocket.” Seen from
the red road at sunset, in the red light and the
red dust its white houses look like the outcroppings
of quartz on the mountain-side. The red
stage topped with red-shirted passengers is lost
to view half a dozen times in the tortuous descent,
turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way
places, and vanishing altogether within a hundred
yards of the town. It is probably owing
to this sudden twist in the road that the advent
of a stranger at Smith's Pocket is usually attended
with a peculiar circumstance. Dismounting
from the vehicle at the stage office the too-confident
traveler is apt to walk straight out of
town under the impression that it lies in quite
another direction. It is related that one of the
tunnel men, two miles from town, met one of
these self-reliant passengers with a carpet-bag,
umbrella, New York Mercury, and other evidences
of civilization and refinement, plodding
along over the road he had just ridden, vainly
endeavoring to find the settlement of Smith's
Pocket.
The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its
origin to the finding of a “pocket” on its site
by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars
were taken out of it in one-half hour by Smith.
Three thousand dollars were expended by Smith
and others in erecting a flume and in tunneling.
And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only
a pocket, and subject like all other pockets to
depletion. Although Smith pierced the bowels
of the great red mountain, that five thousand
dollars was the first and last return of his labor.
Then Smith went into quartz mining. Then
into quartz milling. Then into hydraulics and
ditching, and then by easy degrees into saloon-keeping.
Presently it was whispered that Smith
was drinking a great deal; then it was known
that Smith was a habitual drunkard, and then
people began to think, as they are apt to, that
he had never been anything else. But the settlement
of Smith's Pocket, like that of most
discoveries, was happily not dependent on the
fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected
tunnels and found pockets. So Smith's
Pocket became a settlement with its two fancy
stores, its two hotels, its one express-office and
its two first families. Occasionally its one long
straggling street was overawed by the assumption
of the latest San Francisco fashions, imported
per express, exclusively to the first families;
making outraged nature in the ragged outline
of her furrowed surface look still more homely,
and putting personal insult on that greater portion
of the population to whom the Sabbath
with a change of linen brought merely the necessity
of cleanliness without the luxury of
adornment. Then there was a Methodist church,
and hard by a monte-bank, and a little beyond
on the mountain side, a graveyard; and then a
little school-house.
“The Master,” as he was known to his little
flock, sat alone one night in the school-house,
with some open copy-books before him, carefully
making those bold and full characters which are
supposed to combine the extremes of chirographical
and moral excellence, and had got as
far as “Riches are deceitful,” and was elaborating
the noun with an insincerity of flourish
that was quite in the spirit of his touch, when
he heard a gentle tapping. The woodpeckers
had been busy about the roof during the day
and the noise did not disturb his work.
But the opening of the door and the tapping
continued from the inside, caused him to look
up. He was slightly startled by the figure of a
young girl, dirty and shabbily clad. Still her
great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed, lustreless
black hair falling over her sunburned face,
her arms and feet streaked with the red soil,
were all familiar to him. It was Melissa Smith
—Smith's motherless child.
What can she want here, thought the master.
Everybody knew “Mliss,” as she was called,
throughout the length and height of Red Mountain.
Everybody knew her as an incorrigible
girl. Her fierce, ungovernable disposition, her
mad freaks and lawless character, were in their
way as proverbial as the story of her father's
weaknesses, and as philosophically accepted by
the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought
the schoolboys, with keener invective and quite
as powerful arm. She followed the trails with a
woodman's craft, and the master had met her
before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless and
bareheaded on the mountain road. The miners'
camps along the stream supplied her with subsistence
during these voluntary pilgrimages, in
freely offered alms. Not but that a larger protection
had been previously extended to Mliss.
The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, “stated” preacher,
had placed her in the hotel as a servant, by way
of preliminary refinement, and had introduced
her to his scholars at Sunday-school. But she
threw plates occasionally at the landlord, and
quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the
guests, and created in the Sabbath-school a sensation
that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness
and placidity of that institution, that, with
a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished
morals of the two pink-and-white
faced children of the first families,the reverend
gentleman had her ignominiously expelled.
Such were the antecedents, and such the character
of Mliss, as she stood before the master. It
was shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt
hair, and bleeding feet, and asked his pity. It
flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and commanded
his respect.
“I come here to-night,” she said rapidly and
boldly, “because I knew you was alone. I
wouldn't come here when them gals was here.
I hate 'em, and they hates me. That's why.
You keep school—don't you? I want to be
teached!”
If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness
of her tangled hair and dirty face
she had added the humility of tears, the master
would have extended to her the usual moiety of
pity, and nothing more. But with the natural,
though illogical instincts of his species, her
boldness awakened in him something of that respect
which all original natures pay unconsciously
to one another in any grade. And
he gazed at her the more fixedly as she went on
still rapidly, her hand on the door-latch, and
her eyes on his:
“My name's Mliss—Mliss Smith! You can
bet your life on that. My father's Old Smith—
Old Bummer Smith—that's what's the matter
with him. Mliss Smith—and I'm coming to
school!”
“Well?” said the master.
Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often
wantonly and cruelly, for no other purpose than
to excite the violent impulses of her nature, the
master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise.
She stopped; she began to twist a lock of her
hair between her fingers; and the rigid line of
upper lip drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed
and quivered slightly. Then her eyes
dropped, and something like a blush struggled
up to her cheek, and tried to assert itself
through the splashes of redder soil, and the sunburn
of years. Suddenly she threw herself forward,
calling on God to strike her dead, and fell
quite weak and helpless, with her face on the
master's desk, crying and sobbing as if her
heart would break.
The master lifted her gently and waited for
the paroxysm to pass. When with face still
averted, she was repeating between her sobs the
mea culpa of childish penitence—that `she'd be
good, she didn't mean to,” etc., it came to him
to ask her why she had left Sabbath-school.
Why had she left the Sabbath-school? Why?
O, yes. What did he (McSnagley) want to tell
her she was wicked for? What did he tell her
that God hated her for? If God hated her, what
did she want to go to Sabbath-school for? She
didn't want to be “beholden” to anybody who
hated her.
Had she told McSnagley this?
Yes, she had.
The master laughed. It was a hearty laugh
and echoed so oddly in the little school-house,
and seemed so inconsistent and discordant with
the sighing of the pines without, that he shortly
corrected himself with a sigh. The sigh was
quite as sincere in its way, however, and after
a moment of serious silence he asked about her
father.
Her father? What father? Whose father?
What had he ever done for her? Why did the
girls hate her? Come, now! What made the
folks say, “Old Bummer Smith's Mliss” when
she passed? Yes, O, yes. She wished he was
dead—she was dead—everybody was dead—and
her sobs broke forth anew.
The master then leaning over her, told her as
well as he could, what you or I might have said
after hearing such unnatural theories from childish
lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better
than you or I, the unnatural facts of her ragged
dress, her bleeding feet, and the omnipresent
shadow of her drunken father. Then raising
her to her feet he wrapped his shawl around her,
and bidding her come early in the morning he
walked with her down the road. There he bade
her “good-night.” The moon shone brightly on
the narrow path before them. He stood and
watched the bent little figure as it staggered
down the road, and waited until it had passed
the little graveyard and reached the curve of the
hill, where it turned and stood for a moment,
a mere atom of suffering outlined against the
far-off patient stars. Then he went back to his
work. But the lines of the copy-book thereafter
faded into long parallels of never-ending
road, over which childish figures seemed to pass,
sobbing and crying to the night. Then the little
school-house seeming lonelier than before,
he shut the door and went home.
The next morning Mliss come to school. Her
face had been washed, and her coarse black hair
bore evidence of recent struggles with the comb
in which both had evidently suffered.
The old defiant look shone occasionally in her
eyes, but her manner was tamer and more subdued.
Then began a series of little trials and
self-sacrifices in which master and pupil bore
an equal part, and which increased the confidence
and sympathy between them. Although
obedient under the master's eye, at times during
recess, if thwarted or stung by a fancied
slight, Mliss would rage in ungovernable fury,
and many a palpitating young savage, finding
himself matched with his own weapons of torment,
would seek the master with torn jacket
and scratched face, and complaints of the dreadful
Mliss. There was a serious division among
the towns-people on the subject; some threatening
to withdraw their children from such evil
companionship, and others as warmly upholding
the course of the master in his work of reclamation.
Meanwhile, with a steady persistence that
seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back
afterward, the master drew Mliss gradually out
of the shadow of her past life, as though it were
but her natural progress down the narrow path
on which he had set her feet the moonlit night
of their first meeting. Remembering the experience
of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully
avoided that Rock of Ages on which that
unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.
But if in the course of her reading she chanced
to stumble upon those few words which have
lifted such as she above the level of the older,
the wiser, and the more prudent—if she learned
something of a faith that is symbolized by suffering,
and the old light softened in her eyes,
it did not take the shape of a lesson. A few of
the plainer people had made up a little sum by
which the ragged Mliss was enabled to assume
the garments of respect and civilization, and
often a rough shake of the hand, and words of
homely commendation from a red-shirted and
burly figure, sent a glow to the cheek of the
young master, and set him to thinking if it was
altogether deserved.
Three months had passed from the time of
their first meeting, and the master was sitting
late one evening over the moral and sententious
copies, when there came a tap at the door, and
again Mliss stood before him. She was neatly
clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing
perhaps but the long black hair and bright black
eyes to remind him of his former apparition.
“Are you busy?” she asked; “can you come
with me?”—and on his signifying his readiness,
in her old willful way, she said, “Come, then,
quick!”
They passed out of the door together, and into
the dark road. As they entered the town the
master asked her whither she was going. She
replied, “To see her father.”
It was the first time he had heard her use
that filial expression, or indeed allude to him
in any other way than “Old Smith,” or the
“Old Man.” It was the first time in many
weeks that she had spoken of him at all. He
had been missed from the settlement for the
past fortnight, and the master had credited the
rumors of the townsfolk that Smith had
“struck something rich” on the “North Fork,”
about ten miles from the village. As they
neared the settlement, the master gathered from
Mliss that the rumor was untrue, and that she
had seen her father that day. As she grew reticent
to further questioning, and as the master
was satisfied from her manner that she had
some definite purpose beyond her usual willfulness,
he passively resigned himself and followed
her.
Through remote groggeries, restaurants and
saloons; in gambling hells and dance houses,
the master, preceded by Mliss, passed and repassed.
In the reeking smoke and blasphemous
outcries of noisome dens, the child, holding
the master's hand, pursued her search with a
strange familiarity, perfect self-possession and
implied protection of himself, that even in his
anxiety seemed ludicrous. Some of the revelers
recognizing Mliss, called to her to sing and
dance for them, and would have forced liquor
upon her but for the master's interference.
Others mutely made way for them. So an hour
slipped by, and as yet their search was fruitless.
The master had yawned once or twice, and
whistled—two fatal signs of failing interest—
and finally came to a full stop.
“It's half-past eleven, Melissa,” said he, consulting
his watch by a broad pencil of light
from an open shutter. “Half-past eleven, and
it strikes me that our old friends, the wood
peckers, must have gone to bed some hours ago,
unless they're waiting up for us. I'm much
obliged to you for the evening's entertainment,
but I'm afraid that even the pretext of looking
for a parent won't excuse further dissipation.
We'd better put this off till to-morrow. What
do you say, Melissa? Why! what ails the
child? What's that noise? Why, a pistol!—
You re not afraid of that?”
Few children brought up in the primeval seclusion
of Smith's Pocket were unfamiliar with
those quick and sharp notes which usually rendered
the evening zephyrs of that locality vocal;
certainly not Mliss—to have started when the
report rang out on the clear night air. The
echoes caught it as usual, and carried it round
and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs to
barking all along the streams. The lights seemed
to dance and move quickly on the outskirts of
the town for a few moments afterward, the
stream suddenly rippled quite audibly behind
them, a few stones loosened themselves from
the hillside and plashed into the stream, a heavy
wind seemed to surge the branches of the
funeral pines, and then the silence fell again
heavier, deadlier than ever.
When the last echo had died away, the master
felt his companion's hand relax its grasp.
Taking advantage of this outward expression of
tractability, he crew her gently with him until
they reached the hote, which—in her newer aspect
of a guest whose board was secured by responsible
parties—had forgivingly opened its
hospitable doors to the vagrant child. Here the
master lingered a moment, to assure her that she
might count upon his assistance to-morrow; and
having satisfied his conscience by this anticipated
duty, bade her good-night. In the darkness
of the road—going astray several times on
his way home, and narrowly escaping the yawning
ditches in the trail—he had reason to commend
his foresight in dissuading Mliss from a
further search that night, and in this pleasant
reflection went to bed and slept soundly.
For some hours after a darkness thick and
heavy brooded over the settlement. The sombre
pines encompassing the village seemed to close
threateningly about it as if to reclaim the wilderness
that had been wrested from them. A low
rustling as of dead leaves, and the damp breath
of forest odors filled the lonely street. Emboldened
by the darkness, other shadows slipped
by, leaving strange footprints in the moist
ditches for people to point at next day, until
the moon, round and full, was lifted above the
crest of the opposite hill, and all was magically
changed.
The shadows shrunk away, leaving the straggling
street sleeping in a beauty it never knew
by day. All that was unlovely, harsh, and repulsive
in its jagged outlines were subdued and
softened by that uncertain light. It smoothed
the rough furrows and unsightly chasms of the
mountain with an ineffable love and tenderness.
It fell upon the face of the sleeping Mliss and
left a tear glittering on her black la hes and a
smile upon her lip—which would have been rare
to her at any other time—and fell also on the
white upturned face of “Old Smith,” with a
pistol in his hand and a bullet in his heart,
lying beside his empty pocket.
