Shorty Frank Harris
No history of Death Valley has been written in this century without
mention of the Short Man—Frank (Shorty) Harris—and none can be. Previous
pages have given most of his story. After his death at least two hurried
writers who never saw him have stated that Shorty discovered no mines,
knew little of the country.
From a page of notes made before I had ever met him, I find this record:
“Stopped at Independence to see George Naylor, early Inyo county sheriff
and now its treasurer. We talked of early prospectors. Naylor said: ‘I
have known all of the old time burro men and have the records. Shorty
Harris has put more towns on the map and more taxable property on the
assessors’ books than any of them.’”
I first met Shorty at Shoshone. Entering the store one day, Charles
Brown told me there was a fellow outside I ought to know, and in a
moment I was looking into keen steady eyes—blue as water in a canyon
pool—and in another Shorty Harris was telling me how to sneak up on
$10,000,000. Thus began an acquaintance which was to lead me through
many years from one end of Death Valley to the other, with Shorty,
mentor, friend, and guide.
Of course I had heard of him. Who hadn’t? In the gold country of western
deserts one could find a few who had never heard of Cecil Rhodes or John
Hays Hammond, but none who had not heard of Shorty Harris. Wherever
mining men gathered, the mention of his name evoked the familiar, “That
reminds me,” and the air thickened with history, laughter, and lies.
He was five feet tall, quick of motion. Hands and feet small. Skin soft
and surprisingly fair. Muscles hard as bull quartz. With a mask of
ignorance he concealed a fine intelligence reserved for intimate friends
in moments of repose.
It is regrettable that since Shorty’s death, writers who never saw him
have given pictures of him which by no stretch of the imagination can be
recognized by those who had even a slight acquaintance with him. Authors
of books properly examine the material of those who have written other
books. In the case of Shorty this was eagerly done—so eagerly in fact,
that each portrayal is the original picture altered according to the
ability of the one who tailors the tale. All are interesting but few
have any relation to truth.
Shorty Harris was so widely publicized by writers in the early part of
the century that when the radio was invented, he was a “natural” for
playlets and columnists. It was natural also that the iconoclast appear
to set the world right. He employed Shorty to guide him through Death
Valley. “I want to write a book,” he explained, “and I have only three
weeks to gather material.”
The trip ended sooner. “What happened?” I asked Shorty when I read the
book and was startled to see in it a statement that Shorty became lost;
had never found a mine; and never even looked for one.
“Did he say that?” Shorty laughed.
“And more of the same,” I said.
“Well, let’s let it go for what it’s worth.... He bellyached from the
minute we set out.”
Those who knew Shorty best—Dad Fairbanks, Charles Brown, Bob Montgomery,
George Naylor, H. W. Eichbaum, and the old timers on the trails had
entirely different impressions. There was, however, around the barrooms
of Beatty and other border villages a breed of later
comers—“professional” old timers always waiting and often succeeding in
exchanging “history” for free drinks. Though they may have never known
Shorty in person, they were not lacking in yarns about him and rarely
failed to get an audience.
There were also among Shorty’s friends a few who had another attitude.
“What has he ever done that I haven’t?” the answer being that nothing
had been written about them.
With variations the original pattern became the pattern for the
succeeding writer. In the interest of accuracy it is not amiss to say
that Shorty Harris was not buried standing up. The writer saw him
buried. It is not true that he ever protested the removal of the road
from the site of the place where he wished to be buried, because he
never knew that he would be buried there. Nor did he have the remotest
idea that a monument would be erected to him, because the idea of the
monument was born after his death, as related elsewhere.
He did not leave Harrisburg on July 4, 1905 to get drunk at Ballarat.
Instead, he went to Rhyolite to find Wild Bill Corcoran, his grubstaker.
He did enjoy the yarns attributed to him and their publication in
important periodicals. But he was also painfully shy and ill at ease
away from his home. Even at the annual Death Valley picnics held at
Wilmington, near Los Angeles, he could never be persuaded to face the
crowds.
One cannot laugh aside the part he played nor the monument that honors
one of God’s humblest. His strike at Rhyolite brought two railroads
across the desert, gave profitable employment to thousands of men, added
extra shifts in steel mills and factories making heavy machinery and
those of tool makers. The building trades felt it, banks, security
exchanges, and scores of other industries over the nation—all because
Shorty Harris went up a canyon. And it is not amiss to ask if these
historians did their jobs as well.
At my home it was difficult to get Shorty to accept invitations to
dinners to which he was often invited by service clubs, but in the
Ballarat cabin he was as sure of himself as the MacGregor with a foot
upon his native heath and an eye on Ben Lomond.
His passion for prospecting was fanatical. I asked him once if he would
choose prospecting as a career if he had his life to live over.
“I wouldn’t change places with the President of the United States. My
only regret is that I didn’t start sooner. When I go out, every time my
foot touches the ground, I think ‘before the sun goes down I’ll be worth
$10,000,000.’”
“But you don’t get it,” I reminded him.
He stared at me with a sort of “you’re-too-dumb” look. “Who in the hell
wants $10,000,000? It’s the game, man—the game.”
Nor is the picture of his profligacy altogether true. Despite Shorty’s
disregard for money he had a canniness that made him cache something
against the rainy day. At Lone Pine Charlie Brown was packing Shorty’s
suit case before taking him to a doctor. “Shorty, what’s this lump in
the lining of your vest?”
“Oh, there was a hole in it. Poor job of mending I guess,” Shorty
answered guilelessly.
“I’ll see,” Charlie said and ripping a few stitches removed $600 in
currency.
Shorty’s last years furnish a story of a man too tough to die. He had
had three major operations, when in 1933 I received the following
telegram: “Wall fell on me. Hurry. Bring doctor. Shorty Harris.” It had
been sent by Fred Gray from Trona, 27 miles from Ballarat, nearest
telegraph station.
My wife and I hurried through rain, snow, sleet; over washed out desert
and mountain roads. Outside the cabin in the dusk, shivering in a cold
wind, we found two or three of Shorty’s friends and Charles and Mrs.
Brown, who had also made a mad dash of 150 miles over roads—some of
which hadn’t been traveled in 30 years.
Puttering around his cabin, Shorty had jerked at a wire anchored in the
walls and brought tons of adobe down upon himself. He was literally dug
out, his ribs crushed, face black with abrasions. With rapidly
developing pneumonia he had lain for 60 hours without medical attention
and with nothing to relieve pain. We learned later from Dr. Walter
Johnson, who had preceded us, that if a hospital had been within a block
it would have been fatal to move him. All agreed that Death sat on
Shorty’s bedside.
“A cat has only nine lives,” Fred Gray said gravely, and outside in the
gathering gloom we planned his funeral. Because of the isolation of
Ballarat and lack of communication we arranged that when the end came,
Fred Gray would notify Brown and bring the body down into Death Valley
for burial. There we would meet the hearse.
Because bodies decompose quickly in that climate, time was important.
While we planned these details, my wife, who had been at Shorty’s
bedside, joined us. “Shorty’s not going to die,” she said. “He’s
planning that trip up Signal Mountain you and he have been talking
about.”
I tiptoed into the room. He was staring at the ceiling, seeing faraway
canyons; the yellow fleck in a broken rock. Suddenly he spoke: “I’m
losing a thousand dollars a day lying here. Why, that ledge—”
A week after returning to our home we received another telegram from
Trona asking that we come for him. He had insisted upon being laid in
the bed of a pickup truck and taken across the Slate Range to Trona,
where we met him.
At our home he lay on his back for weeks, fed with a spoon. Always
talking of putting another town on the map. Always losing a million
dollars a day. He was miraculously but slowly recovering when an
Associated Press dispatch bearing a Lone Pine date made front page
headlines with an announcement of his death.
Though the report was quickly corrected, his presence at our house
brought reporters, photographers, old friends, and the merely curious.
At the time the Pacific Coast Borax Company’s N.B.C. program was
featuring stories based on his experiences over a nation-wide hook-up.
Among the callers also were moguls of mining and tycoons of industry who
had stopped at the Ballarat cabin to fall under the spell of his ever
ready yarns.
Among these guests, one stands out.
It was a hot summer day when I saw on the lawn what appeared to be a big
bear, because the squat, bulky figure was enclosed in fur. Answering the
door bell I looked into twinkling eyes and an ingratiating smile. “They
told me in Ballarat that Shorty Harris was here.” I invited him in.
“I’ll just shed this coat,” he said, stripping off the bearskin garment.
“... sorta heavy for a man going on 80.” He laid it aside. “It’s double
lined. Fur inside and out. You see, I sleep in it. Crossed three
mountain ranges in that coat before I got here. May as well take this
other one off too.” He removed another heavy overcoat, revealing a cord
around his waist. “Keep this one tied close. Less bulky....”
Under a shorter coat was a heavy woolen shirt and his overalls concealed
two pairs of pants. He went on: “I was with Shorty at Leadville. My
name’s Pete Harmon. We ought to be rich—both of us. Why, I sold a hole
for $2500 in 1878. Thought I was smart. They’ve got over $100,000,000
outa that hole. I was at Bridgeport when I heard Shorty was sick, so I
says, ‘I’ll just step down to Ballarat and see him.’ (The ‘step’ was 298
miles.) When I got there Bob Warnack tells me he’s in Los Angeles. When
I get there they tell me he’s with you. So I just stepped out here.”
He had “stepped” 481 miles to see his friend.
I ushered him in and left them alone. After an hour I noticed Pete
outside, smoking. I went out and urged him to return and smoke inside,
but he refused. “It’s not manners,” he insisted.
Later I happened to look out the window and saw him empty the contents
of a small canvas sack into his hand. There were a few dimes and nickels
and two bills. He unfolded the currency. One was a twenty. The other, a
one. He put the coins in the sack and came inside. A few moments later,
from an adjacent room I heard his soft, lowered voice: “Shorty, I’m
eatin’ reg’lar now and got a little besides. I reckon you’re kinda shy.
You take this.”
“No—no, Pete. I’m getting along fine....”
I fancy there was a scurry among the angels to make that credit for Pete
Harmon.
Late in the afternoon Pete donned his coats. “I’d better be going. I’ve
got a lotta things on hand. A claim in the Argus. When the money comes
in, well—I always said I was going to build a scenic railroad right on
the crest of Panamint Range. Best view of Death Valley. It’ll pay. How
far is it to San Diego?”
“A hundred and forty miles....”
“Well, since I’m this far along I’ll just step down and see my old
partner. Take care of Shorty....” And down the road he went.
With humility I watched his passage, hoping that the good God would go
with him and somehow I felt that of all those with fame and wealth or of
high degree who had gone from that house, none had left so much in my
heart as Pete.
During this period of convalescence Shorty was often guest in homes of
luxury and when at last I took him to Ballarat I was curious to see what
his reaction would be to the squalor of the crumbling cabin.
When we stepped from the car, he noticed Camel, the blind burro drowsing
in the shade of a roofless dobe. “Old fellow,” he said, “it’s dam’ good
to see _you_ again....” I unloaded the car, brought water from the well
and sat down to rest. Shorty sat in a rickety rocker braced with baling
wire. I regarded with amusement the old underwear which he’d stuffed
into broken panes; the bare splintered floor; the cracked iron stove
that served both for cooking and heating. The wood box beside it. The
tin wash pan on a bench at the door.
Then I noticed Shorty was also appraising the things about—the hole in
the roof; the box nailed to the wall that served as a cupboard. A
half-burned candle by his sagging bed. For a long time he glanced
affectionately from one familiar object to another and finally spoke:
“Will, haven’t I got a dam’ fine home?”
For ages poets have sung, orators have lauded, but so far as I’m
concerned, Shorty said it better.
The last orders from the surgeon had been, “Complete rest for three
months.”
In the late afternoon we moved our chairs outside. The sun still shone
in the canyons and after he had seen that all his peaks were in place,
he turned to me: “I’m losing $5,000,000 a day sitting here. Soon as
you’re rested, we’ll start. You’ll be in shape by day after tomorrow,
won’t you?”
I restrained a gasp as he pointed to the side of a gorge 8000 feet up on
Signal Mountain. “No trip at all....”
No argument could convince him that the trip was foolhardy and on the
third day we started through Hall’s Canyon opposite the Indian Ranch.
The ascent from the canyon is so steep that in many places we had to
crawl on hands and knees. The three and a half miles were made in seven
hours, but on the return the inevitable happened. Shorty, exhausted,
staggered from the trail and collapsed. When he rose, he wobbled, but
managed to reach a bush and rolled under it. I ran to his side. It
seemed the end. “You go ahead,” he said weakly. “I’m through.”
I had given him all my water and exacting a promise that he would remain
under the bush, I started for help at the Indian Ranch, to bring him
out.
Coming up, I had paid no attention to the trail and was uncertain of my
way—which was further confused by criss-crossed trails of wild burros
and mountain sheep. Coming to a canyon that forked, I was not sure which
to take and panicked with fear took a sudden uncalculated choice and
started up a trail. The desert gods must have guided my feet, for it
proved to be the right one and an hour later I came upon the green
seepage of water.
I dug a hole; let the scum run off then drank slowly and lay down to
rest. In my last conscious moment a huge rattler passed within a few
inches of my face. But rattlers were unimportant then and I went to
sleep.
The swish of brush awoke me and I saw Shorty staggering down the trail.
He fell beside the water and was instantly asleep. Time I knew, was the
measure of life and I allowed him twenty minutes to rest, then awoke him
and made him go in front. On a ledge, he slumped again, his body hanging
over the cliff with a 1000 foot fall to rocks below.
I managed to catch him by the seat of his trousers as he began to slip,
and dragged him back on the trail. Somehow I got him to the bottom.
There the canyon widens upon a level area covered with dense growth.
Walking ahead I suddenly missed him. He had crawled from the trail and
it required an hour to find him and this I did by the noise of his
rattly breathing.
I half carried, half dragged him to the car and lifted him in. He was
asleep before I could close the door and remained unconscious for the
entire 11 miles of corduroy road to Ballarat. There Fred Gray and Bob
Warnack lifted him from the car and laid him on his bed. None of us
believed that Shorty Harris would ever leave that bed alive.
The next morning I tiptoed softly out of the room, went over to the old
saloon and had breakfast with Tom, the caretaker. Afterward we sat
outside smoking and talking of Hungry Hattie’s feuding and her sister’s
mining deals, when we heard steady thumping sounds coming from Shorty’s
place. We looked. Bareheaded, Shorty Harris was chopping wood.
Shorty was born near Providence, Rhode Island, July 2, 1856. He had only
a hazy memory of his parents. His father, a shoemaker, died impoverished
when Shorty was six years old. “... I went to live with my aunt. If she
couldn’t catch me doing something, she figured I’d outsmarted her and
beat me up on general principles.”
At nine he ran away and obtained work in the textile mills of Governor
William Sprague, dipping calico. The village priest taught him to read
and write and apart from this, his only school was the alley. The
curriculum of the alley is hunger, tears, and pain but somehow in that
alley he found time to play and learned that with play came laughter.
Thenceforth life to Shorty Harris was just one long playday.
In 1876 he started West and crawled out of a boxcar in Dodge City,
Kansas. About were stacks of buffalo hides, bellowing cattle,
“chippies,” gamblers, cow hands, and a chance for youngsters who had
come out of alleys.
“... Among those I remember at Dodge City were my friends Wyatt Earp and
a thin fellow with a cough. If he liked you he’d go to hell for you. He
was Doc Holliday—the coldest killer in the West. I had a job in a livery
stable. Job was all right, but too much gunplay. Cowboys shooting up the
town. Gamblers shooting cowboys.”
Flushed with his pay check, Shorty wandered into a saloon and met one of
the percentage girls—a lovely creature, not altogether bad. They danced
and Shorty suggested a stroll in the moonlight. And soon Shorty was in
love.
“Shorty,” she asked, “why be a sucker? Why don’t you go to Leadville?
You might find a good claim.”
“I’m broke,” he told her.
“I’ve got some money,” she said, and reached into her purse.
“I’m no mac,” he snapped.
Finally she thrust the bills into his pocket.
At Leadville he went up a gulch. Luck was kind. He found a good claim
and going into Leadville sold it for $15,000. Later it produced
millions. Within a week he was penniless. “Why, all I’ve got to do is to
go up another gulch,” he told sympathetic friends.
On this trip his feet were frozen and he was carried out on the back of
his partner. Taken to the hospital, the surgeon told him that only the
amputation of both feet could save his life.
Telling a group of friends about it in the Ballarat cabin later, Shorty
of course had to add a few details of his own: “Dan Driscoll came to see
me and I told him what the sawbones said. ‘Why hell,’ Dan says. ‘Won’t
be nothing left of you. You’ve got to get outa here. When that nurse
goes, I’ll take you to a doc who’ll save them feet.’ And the first thing
I knew I was in the other hospital.
“The doc whetted his meat cleaver, picked up a saw and was about to go
to work, when he found there was nothing to dope me with. ‘I’ll fix it,’
Doc says, and wham—he slapped me stiff. I don’t know what he did, but
when I came to I was good as new.”
After selling a second claim to Haw Tabor, Shorty was again in the money
and remembered the girl in Dodge City. Returning, he looked her up, took
her to dinner. They danced and dined and Shorty toasted her in “bubble
water.” “I reckon everybody in Dodge City thought a caliph had come to
town. No little girl suffered for new toggery. No bum lacked a tip. In a
week I was broke again.
“Going down to the freight yard to steal a ride on the rods I met the
girl and the next I knew, I was begging her to marry me. ‘Shorty, you
don’t know anything about my past, and still you want to marry me?’
“‘You don’t know anything about my past either,’ I said. But it was no
go.”
Years afterward when Shorty and I were camped in Hall Canyon, I asked
him if he would actually have married a girl like her.
“Who am I to count slips?” he bristled. “I did ask her,” and he swabbed
a tear that had dried fifty years ago.
In 1898, after working for a grubstake he started on the trip that led
at last to Death Valley, by way of the San Juan country—one of the
world’s roughest regions. “I walked through Arizona, to Northern
Mexico—every mile of it desert. A labor strike in Colonel Green’s mines
threw me out of a job and I started back. Ran out of water and lived
five days on the juice of a bulbous plant—la Flora Morada. Each bulb has
a few drops.
“On the Mojave I ran out of water again. Finally saw a mangy old camel
drinking at a pool. I had enough sense left to know there were no camels
around and went on till I flopped. A fellow picked me up. I told him I’d
been so goofy I’d seen a camel and water, but I knew it was just a
mirage. ‘You damned fool,’ he said. ‘It was a camel and you saw water.
Hi Jolly turned that camel loose.’”
Shorty reached Tintic, Utah, and from there walked over a waterless
desert to the Johnnie mine, where he was given shelter, food, and
clothing.
Bishop Cannon of the Mormon Church sent him into the Panamint to
monument a gold claim. “I was the only fool they could find to cross
Death Valley in mid summer. I found the claim but it proved to be
patented land.”
Shorty was recuperating from his last operation at my home when he came
into the house one morning with fire in his eyes and a paper in his
hand. “Read that and let’s get going.” (It has been erroneously stated
that Shorty couldn’t read. Though he had little schooling and a cataract
impaired his sight, he could read to the end.)
The paper announced a strike in Tuba Canyon near Ballarat. “Why, I know
a place nobody ever saw but me and a few eagles....” His losses
increased from a thousand to a million dollars a day because he wasn’t
on the job, and in May we started for Ballarat by the longer route
through Death Valley.
When we reached Jim Dayton’s grave, he asked me to stop and getting out
of the car, he walked into the brush, returning with a few yellow and
blue wild flowers, laid them on Dayton’s grave. “God bless you, old
fellow. You’ll have to move over soon and make room for me.”
Then turning to me, he said: “When I die bury me beside old Jim.”
Raising his hand and moving his finger as if he were writing the words,
he added: “Above me write, ‘Here lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket
jackass prospector.’”
It was his way of saying he had played his game—not by riding over the
desert with a deluxe camping outfit, but the hard way—with beans and a
single blanket. He was also saying, I think, goodbye to the Death Valley
that he loved; its golden dunes, its creeping canyons and pots of gold.
About one o’clock in the morning, Sunday, November 11, 1934, the phone
awakened me. At the other end of the line was Charles Brown. Shorty
Harris lay dead at Big Pine. “He just went to sleep and didn’t wake up,”
Charlie said.
Shorty had died Saturday morning, November 10, and Charlie had arranged
for the remains to be brought down into Death Valley and buried beside
James Dayton Sunday afternoon.
Out of Los Angeles, out of towns and settlements, canyons, and hills
came the largest crowd that had ever assembled in Death Valley, to wait
at Furnace Creek Ranch for the hearse that would come nearly 200 miles
over the mountains from Big Pine. It was delayed at every village and by
burro-men along the road, who wanted a last look upon the face of
Shorty.
At one o’clock the caravan arrived and then began the procession down
the valley. The sun was setting and the shadows of the Panamint lay
halfway across the valley when the grave was reached. Brown had sent
Ernest Huhn from Shoshone the night previous, a distance of about 60
miles, to dig the grave.
On the desert a man dies and gets his measure of earth—often with not so
much as a tarpaulin. With this in mind Ernie had made the hole to fit
the man, but with the coffin it was a foot too short. While waiting for
the grave to be lengthened, the casket was opened and in the fading
twilight Shorty’s friends passed in file about the casket, while the
Indians, silhouetted against the brush paid silent tribute to him whom
their fathers and now their children knew as “Short Man.”
So began the first funeral ever held in the bottom of Death Valley.
Drama, packed into a few moments of a dying day. No discordant ballyhoo.
No persiflage.... “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want....” A
bugler stepped beside the grave and silvered notes of taps went over the
valley. The casket was lowered into the grave as the stars came out, and
he was covered with the earth he loved. Thoughtful women placed wreaths
of athol and desert holly and, with his face toward his desert stars,
Shorty Harris holed-in forever.
Going back to Shoshone with the Browns, I told Charlie of the time I had
stopped at Jim Dayton’s grave with Shorty. “I made up my mind then that
I would do something about his last wish. There’s no liar like a
tombstone, but Shorty deserves a marker.”
“I’ll join you,” Charlie said.
Charlie consulted Park officials and they approved. Chosen to write the
epitaph, I knew from the moment the task was assigned to me what it
would be. In order to get the reaction of others to the use of the word
“jackass” on the monument, I decided to try it out on the Browns. “This
epitaph,” I said, “may be unconventional, but unless I am mistaken it
will be quoted around the world.”
I read it. “It’s all right,” Mrs. Brown laughed. Charlie approved. The
epitaph, as predicted has been quoted and pictures of the plaque
published around the world.
It has been stated that the Pacific Coast Borax Company paid for the
monument. Actually it was provided by the Park Service. I had the bronze
tablet made in Pomona, California, and Charlie Brown insisted that he
pay for it. “Shorty left a little money,” he said. “Whatever is lacking,
I will pay myself.”
On March 14, 1936, the monument was dedicated. Streamers of dust rolled
along every road that led into the Big Sink trailing cars that were
bringing friends from all walks of life to pay tribute to Shorty. At the
grave the rich and the famous stood beside the tottering prospector, the
husky miner, the silent, stoic Indian. Brown was master of ceremonies.
Telegrams were read from John Hays Hammond and other distinguished
friends. Old timers, whose memories spanned 30 years, one after another
wedged through the crowd to tell a funny story that Shorty had told or
some homely incident of his career.
One was revealing: “We had the no-’countest, low-downest hooch drinking
loafer on the desert at Ballarat. We called him Tarfinger. He came over
to Shorty’s cabin one day and said he was hungry. Shorty loaned him
$5.00. When I heard about it I went over. I said, ‘You know he’s a
no-good loafing thief.’ I figured I was doing Shorty a favor. Instead,
he blew up. ‘Well, he can get as hungry as an honest man, can’t he?’”
They understood what O. Henry meant when he sang:
“Test the man if his heart be
In accord with the ultimate plan,
That he be not to his marring,
Always and utterly man.”
The epitaph Shorty Harris wanted seemed fitting: “_Above me write, ‘Here
lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket jackass prospector.’_”
As I turned away I thought of the monuments erected to dead Caesars who
had left trails of blood and ruin. Shorty Harris simply followed a
jackass into far horizons, and by leaving a smile at every water hole, a
pleasant memory on every trail, attained a fame which will last as long
as the annals of Death Valley.