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Page 28
Billy's visits, however, became less frequent, and as Rocky Canyon
underwent the changes incidental to mining settlements, he was
presently forgotten in the invasion of a few Southwestern families,
and the adoption of amusements less practical and turbulent than he
had afforded. It was alleged that he was still seen in the more
secluded fastnesses of the mountains, having reverted to a wild
state, and it was suggested by one or two of the more adventurous
that he might yet become edible, and a fair object of chase. A
traveler through the Upper Pass of the canyon related how he had
seen a savage-looking, hairy animal like a small elk perched upon
inaccessible rocks, but always out of gunshot. But these and other
legends were set at naught and overthrown by an unexpected incident.
The Pioneer Coach was toiling up the long grade towards Skinners
Pass when Yuba Bill suddenly pulled up, with his feet on the brake.
"Jimminy!" he ejaculated, drawing a deep breath.
The startled passenger beside him on the box followed the direction
of his eyes. Through an opening in the wayside pines he could see,
a few hundred yards away, a cuplike hollow in the hillside of the
vividest green. In the centre a young girl of fifteen or sixteen
was dancing and keeping step to the castanet "click" of a pair of
"bones," such as negro minstrels use, held in her hands above her
head. But, more singular still, a few paces before her a large
goat, with its neck roughly wreathed with flowers and vines, was
taking ungainly bounds and leaps in imitation of its companion.
The wild background of the Sierras, the pastoral hollow, the
incongruousness of the figures, and the vivid color of the girl's
red flannel petticoat showing beneath her calico skirt, that had
been pinned around her waist, made a striking picture, which by
this time had attracted all eyes. Perhaps the dancing of the girl
suggested a negro "break-down" rather than any known sylvan
measure; but all this, and even the clatter of the bones, was made
gracious by the distance.
"Esmeralda! by the living Harry!" shouted the excited passenger on
the box.
Yuba Bill took his feet off the brake, and turned a look of deep
scorn upon his companion as he gathered the reins again.
"It's that blanked goat, outer Rocky Canyon beyond, and Polly
Harkness! How did she ever come to take up with HIM?"
Nevertheless, as soon as the coach reached Rocky Canyon, the story
was quickly told by the passengers, corroborated by Yuba Bill, and
highly colored by the observer on the box-seat. Harkness was known
to be a new-comer who lived with his wife and only daughter on the
other side of Skinners Pass. He was a "logger" and charcoal-
burner, who had eaten his way into the serried ranks of pines below
the pass, and established in these efforts an almost insurmountable
cordon of fallen trees, stripped bark, and charcoal pits around the
clearing where his rude log hut stood,--which kept his seclusion
unbroken. He was said to be a half-savage mountaineer from Georgia,
in whose rude fastnesses he had distilled unlawful whiskey, and that
his tastes and habits unfitted him for civilization. His wife
chewed and smoked; he was believed to make a fiery brew of his own
from acorns and pine nuts; he seldom came to Rocky Canyon except for
provisions; his logs were slipped down a "shoot" or slide to the
river, where they voyaged once a month to a distant mill, but HE did
not accompany them. The daughter, seldom seen at Rocky Canyon, was
a half-grown girl, brown as autumn fern, wild-eyed, disheveled, in a
homespun skirt, sunbonnet, and boy's brogans. Such were the plain
facts which skeptical Rocky Canyon opposed to the passengers'
legends. Nevertheless, some of the younger miners found it not out
of their way to go over Skinners Pass on the journey to the river,
but with what success was not told. It was said, however, that a
celebrated New York artist, making a tour of California, was on the
coach one day going through the pass, and preserved the memory of
what he saw there in a well-known picture entitled "Dancing Nymph
and Satyr," said by competent critics to be "replete with the study
of Greek life." This did not affect Rocky Canyon, where the study
of mythology was presumably displaced by an experience of more
wonderful flesh-and-blood people, but later it was remembered with
some significance.
Among the improvements already noted, a zinc and wooden chapel had
been erected in the main street, where a certain popular revivalist
preacher of a peculiar Southwestern sect regularly held exhortatory
services. His rude emotional power over his ignorant fellow-
sectarians was well known, while curiosity drew others. His effect
upon the females of his flock was hysterical and sensational.
Women prematurely aged by frontier drudgery and child-bearing,
girls who had known only the rigors and pains of a half-equipped,
ill-nourished youth in their battling with the hard realities of
nature around them, all found a strange fascination in the
extravagant glories and privileges of the unseen world he pictured
to them, which they might have found in the fairy tales and nursery
legends of civilized children, had they known them. Personally he
was not attractive; his thin pointed face, and bushy hair rising on
either side of his square forehead in two rounded knots, and his
long, straggling, wiry beard dropping from a strong neck and
shoulders, were indeed of a common Southwestern type; yet in him
they suggested something more. This was voiced by a miner who
attended his first service, and as the Reverend Mr. Withholder rose
in the pulpit, the former was heard to audibly ejaculate, "Dod
blasted!--if it ain't Billy!" But when on the following Sunday, to
everybody's astonishment, Polly Harkness, in a new white muslin
frock and broad-brimmed Leghorn hat, appeared before the church
door with the real Billy, and exchanged conversation with the
preacher, the likeness was appalling.
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