Flip: A California Romance Read online

  CHAPTER II.

  He awoke with the aroma of the woods still steeping his senses. Hisfirst instinct was that of all young animals; he seized a few of theyoung, tender green leaves of the yerba buena vine that crept over hismossy pillow and ate them, being rewarded by a half berry-like flavorthat seemed to soothe the cravings of his appetite. The languor of sleepbeing still upon him, he lazily watched the quivering of a sunbeam thatwas caught in the canopying boughs above. Then he dozed again. Hoveringbetween sleeping and waking, he became conscious of a slight movementamong the dead leaves on the bank beside the hollow in which he lay. Themovement appeared to be intelligent, and directed toward his revolver,which glittered on the bank. Amused at this evident return of hislarcenous friend of the previous day, he lay perfectly still. Themovement and rustle continued, but it now seemed long and undulating.Lance's eyes suddenly became set; he was intensely, keenly awake. Itwas not a snake, but the hand of a human arm, half hidden in the moss,groping for the weapon. In that flash of perception he saw that it wassmall, bare, and deeply freckled. In an instant he grasped it firmly,and rose to his feet, dragging to his own level as he did so, thestruggling figure of a young girl.

  "Leave me go!" she said, more ashamed than frightened.

  Lance looked at her. She was scarcely more than fifteen, slight andlithe, with a boyish flatness of breast and back. Her flushed face andbare throat were absolutely peppered with minute brown freckles,like grains of spent gunpowder. Her eyes, which were large and gray,presented the singular spectacle of being also freckled,--at least theywere shot through in pupil and cornea with tiny spots like powderedallspice. Her hair was even more remarkable in its tawny, deer-skincolor, full of lighter shades, and bleached to the faintest of blondeson the crown of her head, as if by the action of the sun. She hadevidently outgrown her dress, which was made for a smaller child, andthe too brief skirt disclosed a bare, freckled, and sandy desert ofshapely limb, for which the darned stockings were equally too scant.Lance let his grasp slip from her thin wrist to her hand, and then witha good-humored gesture tossed it lightly back to her.

  She did not retreat, but continued looking at him in a half-surlyembarrassment.

  "I ain't a bit frightened," she said; "I'm not going to run away,--don'tyou fear."

  "Glad to hear it," said Lance, with unmistakable satisfaction, "but whydid you go for my revolver?"

  She flushed again and was silent. Presently she began to kick the earthat the roots of the tree, and said, as if confidentially to her foot,--

  "I wanted to get hold of it before you did."

  "You did?--and why?"

  "Oh, you know why."

  Every tooth in Lance's head showed that he did, perfectly. But he wasdiscreetly silent.

  "I didn't know what you were hiding there for," she went on, stilladdressing the tree, "and," looking at him sideways under her whitelashes, "I didn't see your face."

  This subtle compliment was the first suggestion of her artful sex.It actually sent the blood into the careless rascal's face, and for amoment confused him. He coughed. "So you thought you'd freeze on to thatsix-shooter of mine until you saw my hand?"

  She nodded. Then she picked up a broken hazel branch, fitted it into thesmall of her back, threw her tanned bare arms over the ends of it, andexpanded her chest and her biceps at the same moment. This simple actionwas supposed to convey an impression at once of ease and muscular force.

  "Perhaps you'd like to take it now," said Lance, handing her the pistol.

  "I've seen six-shooters before now," said the girl, evading theproffered weapon and its suggestion. "Dad has one, and my brother hadtwo derringers before he was half as big as me."

  She stopped to observe in her companion the effect of this capacity ofher family to bear arms. Lance only regarded her amusedly. Presently sheagain spoke abruptly:--

  "What made you eat that grass, just now?"

  "Grass!" echoed Lance.

  "Yes, there," pointing to the yerba buena.

  Lance laughed. "I was hungry. Look!" he said, gayly tossing some silverinto the air. "Do you think you could get me some breakfast for that,and have enough left to buy something for yourself?"

  The girl eyed the money and the man with half-bashful curiosity.

  "I reckon Dad might give ye suthing if he had a mind ter, though ez arule he's down on tramps ever since they run off his chickens. Ye mighttry."

  "But I want YOU to try. You can bring it to me here."

  The girl retreated a step, dropped her eyes, and, with a smile that wasa charming hesitation between bashfulness and impudence, said: "So youARE hidin', are ye?"

  "That's just it. Your head's level. I am," laughed Lance unconcernedly.

  "Yur ain't one o' the McCarty gang--are ye?"

  Mr. Lance Harriott felt a momentary moral exaltation in declaringtruthfully that he was not one of a notorious band of mountainfreebooters known in the district under that name.

  "Nor ye ain't one of them chicken lifters that raided Henderson's ranch?We don't go much on that kind o' cattle yer."

  "No," said Lance, cheerfully.

  "Nor ye ain't that chap ez beat his wife unto death at Santa Clara?"

  Lance honestly scorned the imputation. Such conjugal ill treatment ashe had indulged in had not been physical, and had been with other men'swives.

  There was a moment's further hesitation on the part of the girl. Thenshe said shortly:

  "Well, then, I reckon you kin come along with me."

  "Where?" asked Lance.

  "To the ranch," she replied simply.

  "Then you won't bring me anything to eat here?"

  "What for? You kin get it down there." Lance hesitated. "I tell you it'sall right," she continued. "I'll make it all right with Dad."

  "But suppose I reckon I'd rather stay here," persisted Lance, with aperfect consciousness, however, of affectation in his caution.

  "Stay away then," said the girl coolly; "only as Dad perempted this yerwoods"--

  "PRE-empted," suggested Lance.

  "Per-empted or pre-emp-ted, as you like," continued the girlscornfully,--"ez he's got a holt on this yer woods, ye might ez well seehim down thar ez here. For here he's like to come any minit. You can betyour life on that."

  She must have read Lance's amusement in his eyes, for she again droppedher own with a frown of brusque embarrassment. "Come along, then; I'myour man," said Lance, gayly, extending his hand.

  She would not accept it, eying it, however, furtively, like a horseabout to shy. "Hand me your pistol first," she said.

  He handed it to her with an assumption of gayety. She received it on herpart with unfeigned seriousness, and threw it over her shoulder likea gun. This combined action of the child and heroine, it is quiteunnecessary to say, afforded Lance undiluted joy.

  "You go first," she said.

  Lance stepped promptly out, with a broad grin. "Looks kinder as if I wasa prisoner, don't it?" he suggested.

  "Go on, and don't fool," she replied.

  The two fared onward through the wood. For one moment he entertained thefacetious idea of appearing to rush frantically away, "just to seewhat the girl would do," but abandoned it. "It's an even thing if shewouldn't spot me the first pop," he reflected admiringly.

  When they had reached the open hillside, Lance stopped inquiringly."This way," she said, pointing toward the summit, and in quite anopposite direction to the valley where he had heard the voices, oneof which he now recognized as hers. They skirted the thicket for a fewmoments, and then turned sharply into a trail which began to dip towarda ravine leading to the valley.

  "Why do you have to go all the way round?" he asked.

  "WE don't," the girl replied with emphasis; "there's a shorter cut."

  "Where?"

  "That's telling," she answered shortly.

  "What's your name?" asked Lance, after a steep scramble and a drop intothe ravine.

  "Flip."

  "What?"

  "Flip."

/>   "I mean your first name,--your front name."

  "Flip."

  "Flip! Oh, short for Felipa!"

  "It ain't Flipper,--it's Flip." And she relapsed into silence.

  "You don't ask me mine?" suggested Lance.

  She did not vouchsafe a reply.

  "Then you don't want to know?"

  "Maybe Dad will. You can lie to HIM."

  This direct answer apparently sustained the agreeable homicide for somemoments. He moved onward, silently exuding admiration.

  "Only," added Flip, with a sudden caution, "you'd better agree with me."

  The trail here turned again abruptly and re-entered the canyon. Lancelooked up, and noticed they were almost directly beneath the bay thicketand the plateau that towered far above them. The trail here showed signsof clearing, and the way was marked by felled trees and stumps of pines.

  "What does your father do here?" he finally asked. Flip remained silent,swinging the revolver. Lance repeated his question.

  "Burns charcoal and makes diamonds," said Flip, looking at him from thecorners of her eyes.

  "Makes diamonds?" echoed Lance.

  Flip nodded her head.

  "Many of 'em?" he continued carelessly.

  "Lots. But they're not big," she returned, with a sidelong glance.

  "Oh, they're not big?" said Lance gravely.

  They had by this time reached a small staked inclosure, whence thesudden fluttering and cackle of poultry welcomed the return of theevident mistress of this sylvan retreat. It was scarcely imposing.Further on, a cooking stove under a tree, a saddle and bridle, a fewhousehold implements scattered about, indicated the "ranch." Like mostpioneer clearings, it was simply a disorganized raid upon nature thathad left behind a desolate battlefield strewn with waste and decay.The fallen trees, the crushed thicket, the splintered limbs, the rudelytorn-up soil, were made hideous by their grotesque juxtaposition withthe wrecked fragments of civilization, in empty cans, broken bottles,battered hats, soleless boots, frayed stockings, cast-off rags, andthe crowning absurdity of the twisted-wire skeleton of a hooped skirthanging from a branch. The wildest defile, the densest thicket, the mostvirgin solitude, was less dreary and forlorn than this first footprintof man. The only redeeming feature of this prolonged bivouac was thecabin itself. Built of the half-cylindrical strips of pine bark, andthatched with the same material, it had a certain picturesque rusticity.But this was an accident of economy rather than taste, for whichFlip apologized by saying that the bark of the pine was "no good" forcharcoal.

  "I reckon Dad's in the woods," she added, pausing before the open doorof the cabin. "Oh, Dad!" Her voice, clear and high, seemed to fillthe whole long canyon, and echoed from the green plateau above. Themonotonous strokes of an axe were suddenly pretermitted, and somewherefrom the depths of the close-set pines a voice answered "Flip." Therewas a pause of a few moments, with some muttering, stumbling, andcrackling in the underbrush, and then the sudden appearance of "Dad."

  Had Lance first met him in the thicket, he would have been puzzled toassign his race to Mongolian, Indian, or Ethiopian origin. Perfunctorybut incomplete washings of his hands and face, after charcoal burning,had gradually ground into his skin a grayish slate-pencil pallor,grotesquely relieved at the edges, where the washing had left off,with a border of a darker color. He looked like an overworked Christyminstrel with the briefest of intervals between his performances. Therewere black rims in the orbits of his eyes, as if he gazed feebly out ofunglazed spectacles, which heightened his simian resemblance, alreadygrotesquely exaggerated by what appeared to be repeated and spasmodicexperiments in dyeing his gray hair. Without the slightest notice ofLance, he inflicted his protesting and querulous presence entirely onhis daughter.

  "Well, what's up now? Yer ye are calling me from work an hour beforenoon. Dog my skin, ef I ever get fairly limbered up afore it's 'Dad!'and 'Oh, Dad!'"

  To Lance's intense satisfaction the girl received this harangue withan air of supreme indifference, and when "Dad" had relapsed into anunintelligible, and, as it seemed to Lance, a half-frightened muttering,she said coolly,--

  "Ye'd better drop that axe and scoot round getten' this stranger somebreakfast and some grub to take with him. He's one of them San Franciscosports out here trout fishing in the branch. He's got adrift from hisparty, has lost his rod and fixins, and had to camp out last night inthe Gin and Ginger Woods."

  "That's just it; it's allers suthin like that," screamed the old man,dashing his fist on his leg in a feeble, impotent passion, but withoutlooking at Lance. "Why in blazes don't he go up to that there blamedhotel on the summit? Why in thunder--" But here he caught his daughter'slarge, freckled eyes full in his own. He blinked feebly, his voice fellinto a tone of whining entreaty. "Now, look yer, Flip, it's playingit rather low down on the old man, this yer running' in o' tramps anddesarted emigrants and cast-ashore sailors and forlorn widders andravin' lunatics, on this yer ranch. I put it to you, Mister," he saidabruptly, turning to Lance for the first time, but as if he had alreadytaken an active part in the conversation,--"I put it as a gentlemanyourself, and a fair-minded sportin' man, if this is the square thing?"

  Before Lance could reply, Flip had already begun. "That's just it! D'yereckon, being a sportin' man and an A 1 feller, he's goin' to waltz downinter that hotel, rigged out ez he is? D'ye reckon he's goin' to lethis partners get the laugh outer him? D'ye reckon he's goin' to show hishead outer this yer ranch till he can do it square? Not much! Go 'long.Dad, you're talking silly!"

  The old man weakened. He feebly trailed his axe between his legs to astump and sat down, wiping his forehead with his sleeve, and impartingto it the appearance of a slate with a difficult sum partly rubbed out.He looked despairingly at Lance. "In course," he said, with a deep sigh,"you naturally ain't got any money. In course you left your pocketbook,containing fifty dollars, under a stone, and can't find it. In course,"he continued, as he observed Lance put his hand to his pocket, "you'veonly got a blank check on Wells, Fargo & Co. for a hundred dollars, andyou'd like me to give you the difference?"

  Amused as Lance evidently was at this, his absolute admiration for Flipabsorbed everything else. With his eyes fixed upon the girl, he brieflyassured the old man that he would pay for everything he wanted. He didthis with a manner quite different from the careless, easy attitude hehad assumed toward Flip; at least the quick-witted girl noticed it, andwondered if he was angry. It was quite true that ever since his eye hadfallen upon another of his own sex, its glance had been less frank andcareless. Certain traits of possible impatience, which might developinto man-slaying, were coming to the fore. Yet a word or a gesture ofFlip's was sufficient to change that manner, and when, with the fretfulassistance of her father, she had prepared a somewhat sketchy andprimitive repast, he questioned the old man about diamond-making. Theeye of Dad kindled.

  "I want ter know how ye knew I was making diamonds," he asked, with acertain bashful pettishness not unlike his daughter's.

  "Heard it in 'Frisco," replied Lance, with glib mendacity, glancing atthe girl.

  "I reckon they're gettin' sort of skeert down there--them jewelers,"chuckled Dad, "yet it's in nater that their figgers will have to comedown. It's only a question of the price of charcoal. I suppose theydidn't tell you how I made the discovery?"

  Lance would have stopped the old man's narrative by saying that heknew the story, but he wished to see how far Flip lent herself to herfather's delusion.

  "Ye see, one night about two years ago I had a pit o' charcoal burningout there, and tho' it had been a smouldering and a smoking and ablazing for nigh unto a month, somehow it didn't charcoal worth a cent.And yet, dog my skin, but the heat o' that er pit was suthin hidyusand frightful; ye couldn't stand within a hundred yards of it, and theycould feel it on the stage road three miles over yon, t'other side themountain. There was nights when me and Flip had to take our blanketsup the ravine and camp out all night, and the back of this yer hutshriveled up like that bacon. It was about as ni
gh on to hell as anysample ye kin get here. Now, mebbe you think I built that air fire?Mebbe you'll allow the heat was just the nat'ral burning of that pit?"

  "Certainly," said Lance, trying to see Flip's eyes, which wereresolutely averted.

  "Thet's whar you'd be lyin'! That yar heat kem out of the bowels of theyearth,--kem up like out of a chimbley or a blast, and kep up that yarfire. And when she cools down a month after, and I got to strip her,there was a hole in the yearth, and a spring o' bilin', scaldin' waterpourin' out of it ez big as your waist. And right in the middle of itwas this yer." He rose with the instinct of a skillful raconteur, andwhisked from under his bunk a chamois leather bag, which he emptiedon the table before them. It contained a small fragment of native rockcrystal, half-fused upon a petrified bit of pine. It was so glaringlytruthful, so really what it purported to be, that the most unscientificwoodman or pioneer would have understood it at a glance. Lance raisedhis mirthful eyes to Flip.

  "It was cooled suddint,--stunted by the water," said the girl, eagerly.She stopped, and as abruptly turned away her eyes and her reddened face.

  "That's it, that's just it," continued the old man. "Thar's Flip, thar,knows it; she ain't no fool!" Lance did not speak, but turned a hard,unsympathizing look upon the old man, and rose almost roughly. The oldman clutched his coat. "That's it, ye see. The carbon's just turning todi'mens. And stunted. And why? 'Cos the heat wasn't kep up long enough.Mebbe yer think I stopped thar? That ain't me. Thar's a pit out yar inthe woods ez hez been burning six months; it hain't, in course, got theadvantages o' the old one, for it's nat'ral heat. But I'm keeping thatheat up. I've got a hole where I kin watch it every four hours. Whenthe time comes, I'm thar! Don't you see? That's me! that's DavidFairley,--that's the old man,--you bet!"

  "That's so," said Lance, curtly. "And now, Mr. Fairley, if you'llhand me over a coat or a jacket till I can get past these fogs on theMonterey road, I won't keep you from your diamond pit." He threw down ahandful of silver on the table.

  "Ther's a deerskin jacket yer," said the old man, "that one o' themvaqueros left for the price of a bottle of whiskey."

  "I reckon it wouldn't suit the stranger," said Flip, dubiously producinga much-worn, slashed, and braided vaquero's jacket. But it did suitLance, who found it warm, and also had suddenly found a certainsatisfaction in opposing Flip. When he had put it on, and nodded coldlyto the old man, and carelessly to Flip, he walked to the door.

  "If you're going to take the Monterey road, I can show you a short cutto it," said Flip, with a certain kind of shy civility.

  The paternal Fairley groaned. "That's it; let the chickens and the ranchgo to thunder, as long as there's a stranger to trapse round with; goon!"

  Lance would have made some savage reply, but Flip interrupted. "You knowyourself, Dad, it's a blind trail, and as that 'ere constable that kemout here hunting French Pete, couldn't find it, and had to go round bythe canyon, like ez not the stranger would lose his way, and have tocome back!" This dangerous prospect silenced the old man, and Flip andLance stepped into the road together. They walked on for some momentswithout speaking. Suddenly Lance turned upon his companion.

  "You didn't swallow all that rot about the diamond, did you?" he asked,crossly.

  Flip ran a little ahead, as if to avoid a reply.

  "You don't mean to say that's the sort of hog wash the old man servesout to you regularly?" continued Lance, becoming more slangy in his illtemper.

  "I don't know that it's any consarn o' yours what I think," repliedFlip, hopping from boulder to boulder, as they crossed the bed of a drywatercourse.

  "And I suppose you've piloted round and dry-nussed every tramp and deadbeat you've met since you came here," continued Lance, with unmistakableill humor. "How many have you helped over this road?"

  "It's a year since there was a Chinaman chased by some Irishmen from theCrossing into the brush about yer, and he was too afeered to come out,and nigh most starved to death in thar. I had to drag him out and starthim on the mountain, for you couldn't get him back to the road. He wasthe last one but YOU."

  "Do you reckon it's the right thing for a girl like you to run aboutwith trash of this kind, and mix herself up with all sorts of rough andbad company?" said Lance.

  Flip stopped short. "Look! if you're goin' to talk like Dad, I'll goback."

  The ridiculousness of such a resemblance struck him more keenly than aconsciousness of his own ingratitude. He hastened to assure Flip that hewas joking. When he had made his peace they fell into talk again, Lancebecoming unselfish enough to inquire into one or two facts concerningher life which did not immediately affect him. Her mother had died onthe plains when she was a baby, and her brother had run away from homeat twelve. She fully expected to see him again, and thought he mightsometime stray into their canyon. "That is why, then, you take so muchstock in tramps," said Lance. "You expect to recognize HIM?"

  "Well," replied Flip, gravely, "there is suthing in THAT, and there'ssuthing in THIS: some o' these chaps might run across brother and do hima good turn for the sake of me."

  "Like me, for instance?" suggested Lance.

  "Like you. You'd do him a good turn, wouldn't you?"

  "You bet!" said Lance, with a sudden emotion that quite startled him;"only don't you go to throwing yourself round promiscuously." He washalf-conscious of an irritating sense of jealousy, as he asked if any ofher proteges had ever returned.

  "No," said Flip, "no one ever did. It shows," she added with sublimesimplicity, "I had done 'em good, and they could get on alone. Don'tit?"

  "It does," responded Lance grimly. "Have you any other friends thatcome?"

  "Only the Postmaster at the Crossing."

  "The Postmaster?"

  "Yes; he's reckonin' to marry me next year, if I'm big enough."

  "And what do you reckon?" asked Lance earnestly.

  Flip began a series of distortions with her shoulders, ran on ahead,picked up a few pebbles and threw them into the wood, glanced back atLance with swimming mottled eyes, that seemed a piquant incarnation ofeverything suggestive and tantalizing, and said,

  "That's telling."

  They had by this time reached the spot where they were to separate."Look," said Flip, pointing to a faint deflection of their path, whichseemed, however, to lose itself in the underbrush a dozen yards away,"ther's your trail. It gets plainer and broader the further you get on,but you must use your eyes here, and get to know it well afore you getinto the fog. Good-by."

  "Good-by." Lance took her hand and drew her beside him. She was stillredolent of the spices of the thicket, and to the young man's excitedfancy seemed at that moment to personify the perfume and intoxication ofher native woods. Half laughingly, half earnestly, he tried to kiss her;she struggled for some time strongly, but at the last moment yielded,with a slight return and the exchange of a subtle fire that thrilledhim, and left him standing confused and astounded as she ran away. Hewatched her lithe, nymph-like figure disappear in the checkered shadowsof the wood, and then he turned briskly down the half-hidden trail. Hiseyesight was keen, he made good progress, and was soon well on his waytoward the distant ridge.

  But Flip's return had not been as rapid. When she reached the wood shecrept to its beetling verge, and, looking across the canyon, watchedLance's figure as it vanished and reappeared in the shadows andsinuosities of the ascent. When he reached the ridge the outlying fogcrept across the summit, caught him in its embrace, and wrapped himfrom her gaze. Flip sighed, raised herself, put her alternate foot ona stump, and took a long pull at her too-brief stockings. When she hadpulled down her skirt and endeavored once more to renew the intimacythat had existed in previous years between the edge of her petticoat andthe top of her stockings, she sighed again, and went home.