Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler undulations,
and the rivers grow 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 tunnelmen, two miles from town, met one of these
self-reliant passengers with a carpet-bag, umbrella, _Harper's
Magazine_, 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.
[Footnote 65: From M'Liss, one of the stories in "The Luck of Roaring
Camp" volume. Copyright, 1871, 1899. Houghton, Mifflin Company.]
An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were huge
fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil,
resembling more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than the
work of man; while, half-way down, a long flume straddled its narrow
body and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil
of some forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed
the road, hiding in their sallow depths unlovely streams that crept
away to a clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below, and
here and there were the ruins of some cabin with the chimney alone
left intact and the hearthstone open to the skies.
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 tunnelling.
And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and subject,
like other pockets, to depletion. Altho Smith pierced the bowels of
the great red mountain, that five thousand dollars was the first and
last return of his labor. The mountain grew reticent of its golden
secrets, and the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's
fortune. 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 schoolhouse.
"The Master," as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one night
in the schoolhouse, 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 text, 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 continuing 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, lusterless black hair falling over her sun-burned
face, her red 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 "M'liss,"
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
M'liss. The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, had placed her
in the hotel as 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 dulness 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 M'liss,
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, keeping her hard
glance on his, "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, tho 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 that
door-latch and her eyes on his:
"My name's M'liss--M'liss Smith! You can bet your life on that. My
father's Old Smith--Old Bummer Smith--that's what's the matter with
him. M'liss 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 surprize. She stopt; 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 dropt, 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.