Flip: A California Romance Read online

  Produced by Donald Lainson

  FLIP: A CALIFORNIA ROMANCE

  By Bret Harte

  CHAPTER I

  Just where the track of the Los Gatos road streams on and upward likethe sinuous trail of a fiery rocket until it is extinguished in the blueshadows of the Coast Range, there is an embayed terrace near the summit,hedged by dwarf firs. At every bend of the heat-laden road the eyerested upon it wistfully; all along the flank of the mountain, whichseemed to pant and quiver in the oven-like air, through rising dust, theslow creaking of dragging wheels, the monotonous cry of tired springs,and the muffled beat of plunging hoofs, it held out a promise ofsheltered coolness and green silences beyond. Sunburned and anxiousfaces yearned toward it from the dizzy, swaying tops of stagecoaches,from lagging teams far below, from the blinding white canvas covers of"mountain schooners," and from scorching saddles that seemed to weighdown the scrambling, sweating animals beneath. But it would seem thatthe hope was vain, the promise illusive. When the terrace was reached itappeared not only to have caught and gathered all the heat of thevalley below, but to have evolved a fire of its own from some hiddencrater-like source unknown. Nevertheless, instead of prostrating andenervating man and beast, it was said to have induced the wildestexaltation. The heated air was filled and stifling with resinousexhalations. The delirious spices of balm, bay, spruce, juniper, yerbabuena, wild syringa, and strange aromatic herbs as yet unclassified,distilled and evaporated in that mighty heat, and seemed to fire witha midsummer madness all who breathed their fumes. They stung, smarted,stimulated, intoxicated. It was said that the most jaded and foot-sorehorses became furious and ungovernable under their influence; weariedteamsters and muleteers, who had exhausted their profanity in theascent, drank fresh draughts of inspiration in this fiery air, extendedtheir vocabulary, and created new and startling forms of objurgation.It is recorded that one bibulous stage-driver exhausted descriptionand condensed its virtues in a single phrase: "Gin and ginger." Thisfelicitous epithet, flung out in a generous comparison with his favoritedrink, "rum and gum," clung to it ever after.

  Such was the current comment on this vale of spices. Like most humancriticism it was hasty and superficial. No one yet had been known tohave penetrated deeply its mysterious recesses. It was still far belowthe summit and its wayside inn. It had escaped the intruding foot ofhunter and prospector; and the inquisitive patrol of the county surveyorhad only skirted its boundary. It remained for Mr. Lance Harriott tocomplete its exploration. His reasons for so doing were simple. He hadmade the journey thither underneath the stage-coach, and clinging to itsaxle. He had chosen this hazardous mode of conveyance at night, as thecoach crept by his place of concealment in the wayside brush, to eludethe sheriff of Monterey County and his posse, who were after him.

  He had not made himself known to his fellow-passengers as they alreadyknew him as a gambler, an outlaw, and a desperado; he deemed it unwiseto present himself in a newer reputation of a man who had just slaina brother gambler in a quarrel, and for whom a reward was offered.He slipped from the axle as the stage-coach swirled past the brushingbranches of fir, and for an instant lay unnoticed, a scarcelydistinguishable mound of dust in the broken furrows of the road. Then,more like a beast than a man, he crept on his hands and knees into thesteaming underbrush. Here he lay still until the clatter of harnessand the sound of voices faded in the distance. Had he been followed,it would have been difficult to detect in that inert mass of rags anysemblance to a known form or figure. A hideous reddish mask of dust andclay obliterated his face; his hands were shapeless stumps exaggeratedin his trailing sleeves. And when he rose, staggering like a drunkenman, and plunged wildly into the recesses of the wood, a cloud of dustfollowed him, and pieces and patches of his frayed and rotten garmentsclung to the impeding branches. Twice he fell, but, maddened and upheldby the smarting spices and stimulating aroma of the air, he kept on hiscourse.

  Gradually the heat became less oppressive; once when he stopped andleaned exhaustedly against a sapling, he fancied he saw the zephyr hecould not yet feel in the glittering and trembling of leaves in thedistance before him. Again the deep stillness was moved with a faintsighing rustle, and he knew he must be nearing the edge of the thicket.The spell of silence thus broken was followed by a fainter, more musicalinterruption--the glassy tinkle of water! A step further his foottrembled on the verge of a slight ravine, still closely canopied by theinterlacing boughs overhead. A tiny stream that he could have dammedwith his hand yet lingered in this parched red gash in the hillside andtrickled into a deep, irregular, well-like cavity, that again overflowedand sent its slight surplus on. It had been the luxurious retreat ofmany a spotted trout; it was to be the bath of Lance Harriott. Withouta moment's hesitation, without removing a single garment, he slippedcautiously into it, as if fearful of losing a single drop. His headdisappeared from the level of the bank; the solitude was again unbroken.Only two objects remained upon the edge of the ravine,--his revolver andtobacco pouch.

  A few minutes elapsed. A fearless blue jay alighted on the bank andmade a prospecting peck at the tobacco pouch. It yielded in favor of agopher, who endeavored to draw it toward his hole, but in turn gave wayto a red squirrel, whose attention was divided, however, between thepouch and the revolver, which he regarded with mischievous fascination.Then there was a splash, a grunt, a sudden dispersion of animatednature, and the head of Mr. Lance Harriott appeared above the bank. Itwas a startling transformation. Not only that he had, by this wholesaleprocess, washed himself and his light "drill" garments entirely clean,but that he had, apparently by the same operation, morally cleansedHIMSELF, and left every stain and ugly blot of his late misdeeds andreputation in his bath. His face, albeit scratched here and there, wasrosy, round, shining with irrepressible good humor and youthful levity.His large blue eyes were infantine in their innocent surprise andthoughtlessness. Dripping yet with water, and panting, he rested hiselbows lazily on the bank, and became instantly absorbed with a boy'sdelight in the movements of the gopher, who, after the first alarm,returned cautiously to abduct the tobacco pouch. If any familiar hadfailed to detect Lance Harriott in this hideous masquerade of dust andgrime and tatters, still less would any passing stranger have recognizedin this blond faun the possible outcast and murderer. And, when with aswirl of his spattering sleeve, he drove back the gopher in a shower ofspray and leaped to the bank, he seemed to have accepted his felonioushiding-place as a mere picnicking bower.

  A slight breeze was unmistakably permeating the wood from the west.Looking in that direction, Lance imagined that the shadow was less dark,and although the undergrowth was denser, he struck off carelessly towardit. As he went on, the wood became lighter and lighter; branches, andpresently leaves, were painted against the vivid blue of the sky. Heknew he must be near the summit, stopped, felt for his revolver, andthen lightly put the few remaining branches aside.

  The full glare of the noonday sun at first blinded him. When he couldsee more clearly, he found himself on the open western slope of themountain, which in the Coast Range was seldom wooded. The spiced thicketstretched between him and the summit, and again between him and thestage road that plunges from the terrace, like forked lightning into thevalley below. He could command all the approaches without being seen.Not that this seemed to occupy his thoughts or cause him any anxiety.His first act was to disencumber himself of his tattered coat; he thenfilled and lighted his pipe, and stretched himself full-length on theopen hillside, as if to bleach in the fierce sun. While smoking hecarelessly perused the fragment of a newspaper which had enveloped histobacco, and being struck with some amusing paragraph, read it halfaloud again to some imaginary auditor, emphasizing its humor with anhilarious slap upon his leg.

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bsp; Possibly from the relaxation of fatigue and the bath, which had becomea vapor one as he alternately rolled and dried himself in the bakinggrass, his eyes closed dreamily. He was awakened by the sound of voices.They were distant; they were vague; they approached no nearer. He rolledhimself to the verge of the first precipitous grassy descent. There wasanother bank or plateau below him, and then a confused depth of oliveshadows, pierced here and there by the spiked helmets of pines.

  There was no trace of habitation, yet the voices were those of somemonotonous occupation, and Lance distinctly heard through them the clickof crockery and the ring of some household utensil. It appeared to bethe interjectional, half listless, half perfunctory, domestic dialogueof an old man and a girl, of which the words were unintelligible. Theirvoices indicated the solitude of the mountain, but without sadness; theywere mysterious without being awe-inspiring. They might have utteredthe dreariest commonplaces, but, in their vast isolation, they seemedmusical and eloquent. Lance drew his first sigh,--they had suggesteddinner.

  Careless as his nature was, he was too cautious to risk detection inbroad daylight. He contented himself for the present with endeavoring tolocate that particular part of the depths from which the voices seemedto rise. It was more difficult, however, to select some other way ofpenetrating it than by the stage road. "They're bound to have a fireor show a light when it's dark," he reasoned, and, satisfied with thatreflection, lay down again. Presently he began to amuse himself bytossing some silver coins in the air. Then his attention was directed toa spur of the Coast Range which had been sharply silhouetted againstthe cloudless western sky. Something intensely white, something sosmall that it was scarcely larger than the silver coin in his hand, wasappearing in a slight cleft of the range.

  While he looked it gradually filled and obliterated the cleft. Inanother moment the whole serrated line of mountain had disappeared. Thedense, dazzling white, encompassing host began to pour over and downevery ravine and pass of the coast. Lance recognized the sea-fog, andknew that scarcely twenty miles away lay the ocean--and safety! Thedrooping sun was now caught and hidden in its soft embraces. A suddenchill breathed over the mountain. He shivered, rose, and plunged againfor very warmth into the spice-laden thicket. The heated balsamic airbegan to affect him like a powerful sedative; his hunger was forgottenin the languor of fatigue; he slumbered. When he awoke it was dark. Hegroped his way through the thicket. A few stars were shining directlyabove him, but beyond and below, everything was lost in the soft, white,fleecy veil of fog. Whatever light or fire might have betokened humanhabitation was hidden. To push on blindly would be madness; he couldonly wait for morning. It suited the outcast's lazy philosophy. He creptback again to his bed in the hollow and slept. In that profound silenceand shadow, shut out from human association and sympathy by the ghostlyfog, what torturing visions conjured up by remorse and fear should havepursued him? What spirit passed before him, or slowly shaped itself outof the infinite blackness of the wood? None. As he slipped gently intothat blackness he remembered with a slight regret, some biscuits thatwere dropped from the coach by a careless luncheon-consuming passenger.That pang over, he slept as sweetly, as profoundly, as divinely, as achild.