Flip: A California Romance

CHAPTER II.

He awoke with the aroma of the woods still steeping his senses. His first instinct was that of all young animals; he seized a few of the young, tender green leaves of the yerba buena vine that crept over his mossy pillow and ate them, being rewarded by a half berry-like flavor that seemed to soothe the cravings of his appetite. The languor of sleep being still upon him, he lazily watched the quivering of a sunbeam that was caught in the canopying boughs above. Then he dozed again. Hovering between sleeping and waking, he became conscious of a slight movement among the dead leaves on the bank beside the hollow in which he lay. The movement appeared to be intelligent, and directed toward his revolver, which glittered on the bank. Amused at this evident return of his larcenous friend of the previous day, he lay perfectly still. The movement and rustle continued, but it now seemed long and undulating. Lance's eyes suddenly became set; he was intensely, keenly awake. It was 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 was small, 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, the struggling 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 and lithe, with a boyish flatness of breast and back. Her flushed face and bare 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 they were shot through in pupil and cornea with tiny spots like powdered allspice. Her hair was even more remarkable in its tawny, deer-skin color, full of lighter shades, and bleached to the faintest of blondes on the crown of her head, as if by the action of the sun. She had evidently outgrown her dress, which was made for a smaller child, and the too brief skirt disclosed a bare, freckled, and sandy desert of shapely limb, for which the darned stockings were equally too scant. Lance let his grasp slip from her thin wrist to her hand, and then with a good-humored gesture tossed it lightly back to her.

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

“I ain't a bit frightened,” she said; “I'm not going to run away,—don't you fear.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Lance, with unmistakable satisfaction, “but why did you go for my revolver?”

She flushed again and was silent. Presently she began to kick the earth at 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 was discreetly silent.

“I didn't know what you were hiding there for,” she went on, still addressing the tree, “and,” looking at him sideways under her white lashes, “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 a moment confused him. He coughed. “So you thought you'd freeze on to that six-shooter of mine until you saw my hand?”

She nodded. Then she picked up a broken hazel branch, fitted it into the small of her back, threw her tanned bare arms over the ends of it, and expanded her chest and her biceps at the same moment. This simple action was 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 the proffered weapon and its suggestion. “Dad has one, and my brother had two derringers before he was half as big as me.”

She stopped to observe in her companion the effect of this capacity of her family to bear arms. Lance only regarded her amusedly. Presently she again 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 silver into 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 a rule he's down on tramps ever since they run off his chickens. Ye might try.”

“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 was a charming hesitation between bashfulness and impudence, said: “So you ARE 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 declaring truthfully that he was not one of a notorious band of mountain freebooters 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 as he had indulged in had not been physical, and had been with other men's wives.

There was a moment's further hesitation on the part of the girl. Then she 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's all right,” she continued. “I'll make it all right with Dad.”

“But suppose I reckon I'd rather stay here,” persisted Lance, with a perfect consciousness, however, of affectation in his caution.

“Stay away then,” said the girl coolly; “only as Dad perempted this yer woods”—

“PRE-empted,” suggested Lance.

“Per-empted or pre-emp-ted, as you like,” continued the girl scornfully,—“ez he's got a holt on this yer woods, ye might ez well see him down thar ez here. For here he's like to come any minit. You can bet your life on that.”

She must have read Lance's amusement in his eyes, for she again dropped her own with a frown of brusque embarrassment. “Come along, then; I'm your man,” said Lance, gayly, extending his hand.

She would not accept it, eying it, however, furtively, like a horse about to shy. “Hand me your pistol first,” she said.

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

“You go first,” she said.

Lance stepped promptly out, with a broad grin. “Looks kinder as if I was a 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 the facetious idea of appearing to rush frantically away, “just to see what the girl would do,” but abandoned it. “It's an even thing if she wouldn'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 an opposite direction to the valley where he had heard the voices, one of which he now recognized as hers. They skirted the thicket for a few moments, and then turned sharply into a trail which began to dip toward a 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 into the 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 some moments. 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. Lance looked up, and noticed they were almost directly beneath the bay thicket and the plateau that towered far above them. The trail here showed signs of 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 the corners 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 the sudden fluttering and cackle of poultry welcomed the return of the evident mistress of this sylvan retreat. It was scarcely imposing. Further on, a cooking stove under a tree, a saddle and bridle, a few household implements scattered about, indicated the “ranch.” Like most pioneer clearings, it was simply a disorganized raid upon nature that had left behind a desolate battlefield strewn with waste and decay. The fallen trees, the crushed thicket, the splintered limbs, the rudely torn-up soil, were made hideous by their grotesque juxtaposition with the wrecked fragments of civilization, in empty cans, broken bottles, battered hats, soleless boots, frayed stockings, cast-off rags, and the crowning absurdity of the twisted-wire skeleton of a hooped skirt hanging from a branch. The wildest defile, the densest thicket, the most virgin solitude, was less dreary and forlorn than this first footprint of man. The only redeeming feature of this prolonged bivouac was the cabin itself. Built of the half-cylindrical strips of pine bark, and thatched with the same material, it had a certain picturesque rusticity. But this was an accident of economy rather than taste, for which Flip apologized by saying that the bark of the pine was “no good” for charcoal.

“I reckon Dad's in the woods,” she added, pausing before the open door of the cabin. “Oh, Dad!” Her voice, clear and high, seemed to fill the whole long canyon, and echoed from the green plateau above. The monotonous strokes of an axe were suddenly pretermitted, and somewhere from the depths of the close-set pines a voice answered “Flip.” There was a pause of a few moments, with some muttering, stumbling, and crackling in the underbrush, and then the sudden appearance of “Dad.”

Had Lance first met him in the thicket, he would have been puzzled to assign his race to Mongolian, Indian, or Ethiopian origin. Perfunctory but 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 Christy minstrel with the briefest of intervals between his performances. There were black rims in the orbits of his eyes, as if he gazed feebly out of unglazed spectacles, which heightened his simian resemblance, already grotesquely exaggerated by what appeared to be repeated and spasmodic experiments in dyeing his gray hair. Without the slightest notice of Lance, he inflicted his protesting and querulous presence entirely on his daughter.

“Well, what's up now? Yer ye are calling me from work an hour before noon. 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 with an air of supreme indifference, and when “Dad” had relapsed into an unintelligible, 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 some breakfast and some grub to take with him. He's one of them San Francisco sports out here trout fishing in the branch. He's got adrift from his party, has lost his rod and fixins, and had to camp out last night in the 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 without looking at Lance. “Why in blazes don't he go up to that there blamed hotel on the summit? Why in thunder—” But here he caught his daughter's large, freckled eyes full in his own. He blinked feebly, his voice fell into a tone of whining entreaty. “Now, look yer, Flip, it's playing it rather low down on the old man, this yer running' in o' tramps and desarted emigrants and cast-ashore sailors and forlorn widders and ravin' lunatics, on this yer ranch. I put it to you, Mister,” he said abruptly, turning to Lance for the first time, but as if he had already taken an active part in the conversation,—“I put it as a gentleman yourself, 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'ye reckon, being a sportin' man and an A 1 feller, he's goin' to waltz down inter that hotel, rigged out ez he is? D'ye reckon he's goin' to let his partners get the laugh outer him? D'ye reckon he's goin' to show his head 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 a stump and sat down, wiping his forehead with his sleeve, and imparting to 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've only got a blank check on Wells, Fargo & Co. for a hundred dollars, and you'd like me to give you the difference?”

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

“I want ter know how ye knew I was making diamonds,” he asked, with a certain bashful pettishness not unlike his daughter's.

“Heard it in 'Frisco,” replied Lance, with glib mendacity, glancing at the 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 come down. It's only a question of the price of charcoal. I suppose they didn't tell you how I made the discovery?”

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

“Ye see, one night about two years ago I had a pit o' charcoal burning out there, and tho' it had been a smouldering and a smoking and a blazing 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 hidyus and frightful; ye couldn't stand within a hundred yards of it, and they could feel it on the stage road three miles over yon, t'other side the mountain. There was nights when me and Flip had to take our blankets up the ravine and camp out all night, and the back of this yer hut shriveled up like that bacon. It was about as nigh on to hell as any sample 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 were resolutely averted.

“Thet's whar you'd be lyin'! That yar heat kem out of the bowels of the yearth,—kem up like out of a chimbley or a blast, and kep up that yar fire. 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' water pourin' out of it ez big as your waist. And right in the middle of it was this yer.” He rose with the instinct of a skillful raconteur, and whisked from under his bunk a chamois leather bag, which he emptied on the table before them. It contained a small fragment of native rock crystal, half-fused upon a petrified bit of pine. It was so glaringly truthful, so really what it purported to be, that the most unscientific woodman or pioneer would have understood it at a glance. Lance raised his 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 old man clutched his coat. “That's it, ye see. The carbon's just turning to di'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 in the woods ez hez been burning six months; it hain't, in course, got the advantages o' the old one, for it's nat'ral heat. But I'm keeping that heat up. I've got a hole where I kin watch it every four hours. When the time comes, I'm thar! Don't you see? That's me! that's David Fairley,—that's the old man,—you bet!”

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

“Ther's a deerskin jacket yer,” said the old man, “that one o' them vaqueros left for the price of a bottle of whiskey.”

“I reckon it wouldn't suit the stranger,” said Flip, dubiously producing a much-worn, slashed, and braided vaquero's jacket. But it did suit Lance, who found it warm, and also had suddenly found a certain satisfaction in opposing Flip. When he had put it on, and nodded coldly to 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 cut to it,” said Flip, with a certain kind of shy civility.

The paternal Fairley groaned. “That's it; let the chickens and the ranch go to thunder, as long as there's a stranger to trapse round with; go on!”

Lance would have made some savage reply, but Flip interrupted. “You know yourself, Dad, it's a blind trail, and as that 'ere constable that kem out here hunting French Pete, couldn't find it, and had to go round by the canyon, like ez not the stranger would lose his way, and have to come back!” This dangerous prospect silenced the old man, and Flip and Lance stepped into the road together. They walked on for some moments without 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 serves out to you regularly?” continued Lance, becoming more slangy in his ill temper.

“I don't know that it's any consarn o' yours what I think,” replied Flip, hopping from boulder to boulder, as they crossed the bed of a dry watercourse.

“And I suppose you've piloted round and dry-nussed every tramp and dead beat you've met since you came here,” continued Lance, with unmistakable ill humor. “How many have you helped over this road?”

“It's a year since there was a Chinaman chased by some Irishmen from the Crossing 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 start him on the mountain, for you couldn't get him back to the road. He was the last one but YOU.”

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

Flip stopped short. “Look! if you're goin' to talk like Dad, I'll go back.”

The ridiculousness of such a resemblance struck him more keenly than a consciousness of his own ingratitude. He hastened to assure Flip that he was joking. When he had made his peace they fell into talk again, Lance becoming unselfish enough to inquire into one or two facts concerning her life which did not immediately affect him. Her mother had died on the plains when she was a baby, and her brother had run away from home at twelve. She fully expected to see him again, and thought he might sometime stray into their canyon. “That is why, then, you take so much stock in tramps,” said Lance. “You expect to recognize HIM?”

“Well,” replied Flip, gravely, “there is suthing in THAT, and there's suthing in THIS: some o' these chaps might run across brother and do him a 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 was half-conscious of an irritating sense of jealousy, as he asked if any of her proteges had ever returned.

“No,” said Flip, “no one ever did. It shows,” she added with sublime simplicity, “I had done 'em good, and they could get on alone. Don't it?”

“It does,” responded Lance grimly. “Have you any other friends that come?”

“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 at Lance with swimming mottled eyes, that seemed a piquant incarnation of everything 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, which seemed, 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 get into the fog. Good-by.”

“Good-by.” Lance took her hand and drew her beside him. She was still redolent of the spices of the thicket, and to the young man's excited fancy seemed at that moment to personify the perfume and intoxication of her 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 thrilled him, and left him standing confused and astounded as she ran away. He watched her lithe, nymph-like figure disappear in the checkered shadows of the wood, and then he turned briskly down the half-hidden trail. His eyesight was keen, he made good progress, and was soon well on his way toward the distant ridge.

But Flip's return had not been as rapid. When she reached the wood she crept to its beetling verge, and, looking across the canyon, watched Lance's figure as it vanished and reappeared in the shadows and sinuosities of the ascent. When he reached the ridge the outlying fog crept across the summit, caught him in its embrace, and wrapped him from her gaze. Flip sighed, raised herself, put her alternate foot on a stump, and took a long pull at her too-brief stockings. When she had pulled down her skirt and endeavored once more to renew the intimacy that had existed in previous years between the edge of her petticoat and the top of her stockings, she sighed again, and went home.