THE B(b)IRTH OF A LEGEND

When we were Californians we used regularly to spend our summers in the mountains of Napo County. W In order to reach the Springs we had to stage a distance of twenty miles, from the town of St. Helena. One summer my father suggested that my brother and myself walk instead of riding. Harry was just thirteen and I but eleven, and so we agreed to the proposition in high glee. We decided to perform our pilgrimage on a Sunday, a day that the stage did not run, so in order that all temptation to give up our project would might be removed.

The porter woke us early in the morning and we started out bravely. We carried a shot-gun and a small sag satchel with refreshment. It was a delicious summer morning. The air, fragrant with pine, had that crispness and clearness that I think is peculiar to California mountains. The long cloudless summers remove every particle of moisture from the air. At night the stars have an unearthly brilliancy. In other lands the heavens appear as a surface; here every star hangs down out of the blue behind it and you for the first time realize that each is a world apart.

We soon covered the level ground, and struck up the heavy mountain grade. As we were passing a pond in a canon, we saw a bird that was new to us, resting on what seemed a little island near the bank. My brother raised his gun and fired. The bird fell over dead. We were heartless youngsters then, and were so fonder of our shooting that we had no sympathetic with for our victims. Harry climbed down the bank to get his quarry. He stepped on the seeming island , which was really only a bit of weed and stick, He lost his footing and went down well up to his waist Before I could come to the rescue, he had scrambled out and stood on the shore, a most forlorn and dripping laddie. There was nothing for it but to let the sun dry him. If you have ever been in California you probably were compelled to notice the remarkable dustiness of the roads. Even if you have not been there, please picture to yourself The thick dust the result of fully three months of dry weather on a country road. You can imagine what a picture poor Harry presented, for the dust eager to seize on the only bit of moisture that it had known for many a day, came joyously down and gathered around his moist garments. However we were born Bohemians and we trudged along hopefully.

The sun was now well up in the sky and it was growing exceedingly warm. We picked some large cool madrone leaves, that grew very conveiently for the hot way-farer. They come in groups of three and four in the shape of a fan and are a delightful protection from the glare of the sun, when put just under the hat, shading the face.

The scenery soon began to grow somewhat tedious. We have so little forest country, unless one goes to the Sierra Nevadas, that our walks are apt to be monotonous. Of trees except the madrone and the lordly red-wood, one finds only the low shrub-like manzanita and the deadly poison-oak. The oak is the one leaf that gives our country brilliant coloring, but alas for those that are susceptible to its dread power, even a breath of air wafted from those brilliant red-leaves, means a week of suffering. The streams by the middle of summer are all dried up, and the dust has settled on all the foliage and nature sadly needs a refreshing sprinkle.

Our hunting zeal had not yet entirely abated, although the heat was beginning to tell on us. As we marched along we noticed a little jackrabbit sitting right across the road. His long ears were impudently pointed toward us, saying as plainly as ears could say, “Don’t you wish you had me little boy?” Harry immediately accepted the challenge and commenced began to load his gun in order to give little Johnny rabbit a lesson. Unfortunately the cartridge and stuck and would not go in. It was too large for the gun. Then my brother tried to get it out, but this also was unsuccessful for once half-way in, it was resolved to stay. All this time the little rabbit was watching us with the most tantalizing expression in his intelligent ears. Harry tugged with his teeth, and I hardly dared breathe, I was so afraid the rabbit would go. Harry managed to cut the cartridge out with his knife and just as he was about to put in a good one, master rabbit, with a defiant whish of his stub of a tale tail and a last impudent wink with those long ears ,leaped into the wood.

We plodded on. Our hunting became more successful and we had added two heavy rabbits and a wood-pecker to our baggage. To make progress easier we hung all our goods and chattels on the gun, each taking an end of it, and thus we managed to get along. We were now about five miles on the road. Before this we had refused several offers of a “lift,” by from sympathetic farmers, but now our weary little souls began to yearn for the repetition of offers, that we had hitherto so indignantly refused.

We had not got ten much farther on our journey when we were overtaken by a jolly farmer, who of course urged us to have a ride. We made a feeble protest, as a sop to our pride and then, only too happy to yield to his urgency, we scrambled in. How different the whole land-scape became, when we could see it change before our eyes without being distracted by a fast-increasing weariness.

As we mounted higher and higher into the hills we could see the whole broad Napa Valley below us with the slight haze of the summer’s heat hanging over it. The view was not particularly picturesque. There was a painful sameness and artificiality about those squares of vineyard dotted here and there with cool wine-cellars, However our farmer said the view was fine so we acquiesced, but soon turned our eyes with greater enjoyment to the hills above us, with their madrone and red-wood and their brilliant poison-oak.

Our farmer was very much amused at our project of walking to the Springs. Every few miles he would ask us jocularly, whether we did not want to get out and walk, but our ardor had been so thoroughly dusted, that we were perfectly willing to let him joke while we rode, rather than to be proud and walk. He finally deposited us within a mile of our destination and we gave him a squirrel that we had shot. As he drove off down the road, his jolly laughter rang in our ears.

We once more loaded our gun with our spoils and started. When we had walked about a quarter of a mile, those rabbits began to grow painfully heavy. We decided finally finally that rabbits were not much good anyhow, they were so common, so we dropped just one and then the other by the road side. We arrived at last foot-sore and weary and covered with dust a little after one o’clock As soon as the people heard that we had started to walk without waiting for the rest, they dubbed us the infant prodigies and hurried us into dinner.

We never lost that reputation in spite of all disclaimers. Many years after when we went back to the old place, we heard the legend told, of a tiny boy and girl, who had walked twenty miles up the mountain in half a day. Thus will shall we figure in the future folk-lore of California.