I was too much disgusted with his treatment of that Rattler to be at all
amiable, but as his business was profitable, I promised to attend to
it, and he left. A few weeks passed. The return steamer arrived, and a
terrible incident occupied the papers for days afterward. People in all
parts of the State conned eagerly the details of an awful shipwreck, and
those who had friends aboard went away by themselves, and read the long
list of the lost under their breath. I read of the gifted, the gallant,
the noble, and loved ones who had perished, and among them I think I was
the first to read the name of David Fagg. For the "man of no account"
had "gone home!"




MLISS


CHAPTER I

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 mountainside. 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