The following story is excerpted from ‘Heading for the Hills: A Trip up the Mineral King Wagon Road in the Late Eighteen-Nineties’, written by Alice Crowley Jackson (1894–1969). In the manuscript, Alice retells a story that her mother, Emma Gilliam Crowley (1858–1917), told. The story takes place in about 1880 and features Erastus “Ras” Fenton Warner (1842–1928). Ras was a well borer who came to Tulare County in 1858. At the time of the story, Ras would have been about thirty-seven years old. He stood five feet, ten inches tall, with dark hair, blue eyes, and a deep…

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