ackground 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 t