Flip: A California Romance
by
Bret Harte
This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
FLIP: A CALIFORNIA ROMANCE
by Bret Harte
CHAPTER I
Just where the track of the Los Gatos road streams on and upward
like the sinuous trail of a fiery rocket until it is extinguished
in the blue shadows 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 eye rested upon it wistfully; all along the flank of
the mountain, which seemed to pant and quiver in the oven-like air,
through rising dust, the slow creaking of dragging wheels, the
monotonous cry of tired springs, and the muffled beat of plunging
hoofs, it held out a promise of sheltered coolness and green
silences beyond. Sunburned and anxious faces 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 weigh down
the scrambling, sweating animals beneath. But it would seem that
the hope was vain, the promise illusive. When the terrace was
reached it appeared not only to have caught and gathered all the
heat of the valley below, but to have evolved a fire of its own
from some hidden crater-like source unknown. Nevertheless, instead
of prostrating and enervating man and beast, it was said to have
induced the wildest exaltation. The heated air was filled and
stifling with resinous exhalations. The delirious spices of balm,
bay, spruce, juniper, yerba buena, wild syringa, and strange
aromatic herbs as yet unclassified, distilled and evaporated in
that mighty heat, and seemed to fire with a midsummer madness all
who breathed their fumes. They stung, smarted, stimulated,
intoxicated. It was said that the most jaded and foot-sore horses
became furious and ungovernable under their influence; wearied
teamsters and muleteers, who had exhausted their profanity in the
ascent, drank fresh draughts of inspiration in this fiery air,
extended their vocabulary, and created new and startling forms of
objurgation. It is recorded that one bibulous stage-driver
exhausted description and condensed its virtues in a single phrase:
"Gin and ginger." This felicitous epithet, flung out in a generous
comparison with his favorite drink, "rum and gum," clung to it ever
after.
Such was the current comment on this vale of spices. Like most
human criticism it was hasty and superficial. No one yet had been
known to have penetrated deeply its mysterious recesses. It was
still far below the summit and its wayside inn. It had escaped the
intruding foot of hunter and prospector; and the inquisitive patrol
of the county surveyor had only skirted its boundary. It remained
for Mr. Lance Harriott to complete its exploration. His reasons
for so doing were simple. He had made the journey thither
underneath the stage-coach, and clinging to its axle. He had
chosen this hazardous mode of conveyance at night, as the coach
crept by his place of concealment in the wayside brush, to elude
the sheriff of Monterey County and his posse, who were after him.
He had not made himself known to his fellow-passengers as they
already knew him as a gambler, an outlaw, and a desperado; he
deemed it unwise to present himself in a newer reputation of a man
who had just slain a brother gambler in a quarrel, and for whom a
reward was offered. He slipped from the axle as the stage-coach
swirled past the brushing branches of fir, and for an instant lay
unnoticed, a scarcely distinguishable 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 the steaming underbrush. Here he lay
still until the clatter of harness and 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 any semblance to a known form
or figure. A hideous reddish mask of dust and clay obliterated his
face; his hands were shapeless stumps exaggerated in his trailing
sleeves. And when he rose, staggering like a drunken man, and
plunged wildly into the recesses of the wood, a cloud of dust
followed him, and pieces and patches of his frayed and rotten
garments clung to the impeding branches. Twice he fell, but,
maddened and upheld by the smarting spices and stimulating aroma
of the air, he kept on his course.
Gradually the heat became less oppressive; once when he stopped and
leaned exhaustedly against a sapling, he fancied he saw the zephyr
he could not yet feel in the glittering and trembling of leaves in
the distance before him. Again the deep stillness was moved with a
faint sighing 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 musical interruption--the glassy tinkle of water! A
step further his foot trembled on the verge of a slight ravine,
still closely canopied by the interlacing boughs overhead. A tiny
stream that he could have dammed with his hand yet lingered in
this parched red gash in the hillside and trickled into a deep,
irregular, well-like cavity, that again overflowed and sent its
slight surplus on. It had been the luxurious retreat of many a
spotted trout; it was to be the bath of Lance Harriott. Without a
moment's hesitation, without removing a single garment, he slipped
cautiously into it, as if fearful of losing a single drop. His
head disappeared from the level of the bank; the solitude was again
unbroken. Only two objects remained upon the edge of the ravine,--
his revolver and tobacco pouch.
A few minutes elapsed. A fearless blue jay alighted on the bank
and made a prospecting peck at the tobacco pouch. It yielded in
favor of a gopher, who endeavored to draw it toward his hole, but
in turn gave way to a red squirrel, whose attention was divided,
however, between the pouch and the revolver, which he regarded with
mischievous fascination. Then there was a splash, a grunt, a
sudden dispersion of animated nature, and the head of Mr. Lance
Harriott appeared above the bank. It was a startling transformation.
Not only that he had, by this wholesale process, washed himself and
his light "drill" garments entirely clean, but that he had,
apparently by the same operation, morally cleansed HIMSELF, and left
every stain and ugly blot of his late misdeeds and reputation in his
bath. His face, albeit scratched here and there, was rosy, round,
shining with irrepressible good humor and youthful levity. His
large blue eyes were infantine in their innocent surprise and
thoughtlessness. Dripping yet with water, and panting, he rested
his elbows lazily on the bank, and became instantly absorbed with a
boy's delight in the movements of the gopher, who, after the first
alarm, returned cautiously to abduct the tobacco pouch. If any
familiar had failed to detect Lance Harriott in this hideous
masquerade of dust and grime and tatters, still less would any
passing stranger have recognized in this blond faun the possible
outcast and murderer. And, when with a swirl of his spattering
sleeve, he drove back the gopher in a shower of spray and leaped to
the bank, he seemed to have accepted his felonious hiding-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 toward it. As he went on, the wood became lighter and
lighter; branches, and presently leaves, were painted against the
vivid blue of the sky. He knew he must be near the summit,
stopped, felt for his revolver, and then lightly put the few
remaining branches aside.
The full glare of the noonday sun at first blinded him. When he
could see more clearly, he found himself on the open western slope
of the mountain, which in the Coast Range was seldom wooded. The
spiced thicket stretched between him and the summit, and again
between him and the stage road that plunges from the terrace, like
forked lightning into the valley 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 then filled and lighted his pipe,
and stretched himself full-length on the open hillside, as if to
bleach in the fierce sun. While smoking he carelessly perused the
fragment of a newspaper which had enveloped his tobacco, and being
struck with some amusing paragraph, read it half aloud again to some
imaginary auditor, emphasizing its humor with an hilarious slap upon
his leg.
Possibly from the relaxation of fatigue and the bath, which had
become a vapor one as he alternately rolled and dried himself in
the baking grass, his eyes closed dreamily. He was awakened by
the sound of voices. They were distant; they were vague; they
approached no nearer. He rolled himself to the verge of the first
precipitous grassy descent. There was another bank or plateau
below him, and then a confused depth of olive shadows, pierced here
and there by the spiked helmets of pines.
There was no trace of habitation, yet the voices were those of some
monotonous occupation, and Lance distinctly heard through them the
click of crockery and the ring of some household utensil. It
appeared to be the interjectional, half listless, half perfunctory,
domestic dialogue of an old man and a girl, of which the words were
unintelligible. Their voices indicated the solitude of the
mountain, but without sadness; they were mysterious without being
awe-inspiring. They might have uttered the dreariest commonplaces,
but, in their vast isolation, they seemed musical and eloquent.
Lance drew his first sigh,--they had suggested dinner.
Careless as his nature was, he was too cautious to risk detection
in broad daylight. He contented himself for the present with
endeavoring to locate that particular part of the depths from which
the voices seemed to rise. It was more difficult, however, to
select some other way of penetrating it than by the stage road.
"They're bound to have a fire or show a light when it's dark," he
reasoned, and, satisfied with that reflection, lay down again.
Presently he began to amuse himself by tossing some silver coins in
the air. Then his attention was directed to a spur of the Coast
Range which had been sharply silhouetted against the cloudless
western sky. Something intensely white, something so small that it
was scarcely larger than the silver coin in his hand, was appearing
in a slight cleft of the range.
While he looked it gradually filled and obliterated the cleft. In
another moment the whole serrated line of mountain had disappeared.
The dense, dazzling white, encompassing host began to pour over and
down every ravine and pass of the coast. Lance recognized the sea-
fog, and knew that scarcely twenty miles away lay the ocean--and
safety! The drooping sun was now caught and hidden in its soft
embraces. A sudden chill breathed over the mountain. He shivered,
rose, and plunged again for very warmth into the spice-laden
thicket. The heated balsamic air began to affect him like a
powerful sedative; his hunger was forgotten in the languor of
fatigue; he slumbered. When he awoke it was dark. He groped his
way through the thicket. A few stars were shining directly above
him, but beyond and below, everything was lost in the soft, white,
fleecy veil of fog. Whatever light or fire might have betokened
human habitation was hidden. To push on blindly would be madness;
he could only wait for morning. It suited the outcast's lazy
philosophy. He crept back again to his bed in the hollow and
slept. In that profound silence and shadow, shut out from human
association and sympathy by the ghostly fog, what torturing visions
conjured up by remorse and fear should have pursued him? What
spirit passed before him, or slowly shaped itself out of the
infinite blackness of the wood? None. As he slipped gently into
that blackness he remembered with a slight regret, some biscuits
that were dropped from the coach by a careless luncheon-consuming
passenger. That pang over, he slept as sweetly, as profoundly, as
divinely, as a child.
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.
CHAPTER III.
For six months the sea fogs monotonously came and went along the
Monterey coast; for six months they beleaguered the Coast Range
with afternoon sorties of white hosts that regularly swept over the
mountain crest, and were as regularly beaten back again by the
leveled lances of the morning sun. For six months that white veil
which had once hidden Lance Harriott in its folds returned without
him. For that amiable outlaw no longer needed disguise or hiding-
place. The swift wave of pursuit that had dashed him on the summit
had fallen back, and the next day was broken and scattered. Before
the week had passed, a regular judicial inquiry relieved his crime
of premeditation, and showed it to be a rude duel of two armed and
equally desperate men. From a secure vantage in a seacoast town
Lance challenged a trial by his peers, and, as an already prejudged
man escaping from his executioners, obtained a change of venue.
Regular justice, seated by the calm Pacific, found the action of an
interior, irregular jury rash and hasty. Lance was liberated on
bail.
The Postmaster at Fisher's Crossing had just received the weekly
mail and express from San Francisco, and was engaged in examining
it. It consisted of five letters and two parcels. Of these, three
of the letters and the two parcels were directed to Flip. It was
not the first time during the last six months that this extraordinary
event had occurred, and the curiosity of the Crossing was duly
excited. As Flip had never called personally for the letters or
parcels, but had sent one of her wild, irregular scouts or henchmen
to bring them, and as she was seldom seen at the Crossing or on the
stage road, that curiosity was never satisfied. The disappointment
to the Postmaster--a man past the middle age--partook of a
sentimental nature. He looked at the letters and parcels; he looked
at his watch; it was yet early, he could return by noon. He again
examined the addresses; they were in the same handwriting as the
previous letters. His mind was made up, he would deliver them
himself. The poetic, soulful side of his mission was delicately
indicated by a pale blue necktie, a clean shirt, and a small package
of gingernuts, of which Flip was extravagantly fond.
The common road to Fairley's Ranch was by the stage turnpike to a
point below the Gin and Ginger Woods, where the prudent horseman
usually left his beast and followed the intersecting trail afoot.
It was here that the Postmaster suddenly observed on the edge of
the wood the figure of an elegantly-dressed woman; she was walking
slowly, and apparently at her ease; one hand held her skirts
lightly gathered between her gloved fingers, the other slowly swung
a riding whip. Was it a picnic of some people from Monterey or
Santa Cruz? The spectacle was novel enough to justify his coming
nearer. Suddenly she withdrew into the wood; he lost sight of her;
she was gone. He remembered, however, that Flip was still to be
seen, and as the steep trail was beginning to tax all his energies,
he was fain to hurry forward. The sun was nearly vertical when he
turned into the canyon, and saw the bark roof of the cabin beyond.
At almost the same moment Flip appeared, flushed and panting, in
the road before him.
"You've got something for me," she said, pointing to the parcel and
letters. Completely taken by surprise, the Postmaster mechanically
yielded them up, and as instantly regretted it. "They're paid
for," continued Flip, observing his hesitation.
"That's so," stammered the official of the Crossing, seeing his
last chance of knowing the contents of the parcel vanish; "but I
thought ez it's a valooable package, maybe ye might want to examine
it to see that it was all right afore ye receipted for it."
"I'll risk it," said Flip, coolly, "and if it ain't right I'll let
ye know."
As the girl seemed inclined to retire with her property, the
Postmaster was driven to other conversation. "We ain't had the
pleasure of seeing you down at the Crossing for a month o'
Sundays," he began, with airy yet pronounced gallantry. "Some
folks let on you was keepin' company with some feller like Bijah
Brown, and you were getting a little too set up for the Crossing."
The individual here mentioned being the county butcher, and
supposed to exhibit his hopeless affection for Flip by making a
long and useless divergence from his weekly route to enter the
canyon for "orders," Flip did not deem it necessary to reply.
"Then I allowed how ez you might have company," he continued; "I
reckon there's some city folks up at the summit. I saw a mighty
smart, fash'n'ble gal cavorting round. Had no end o' style and
fancy fixin's. That's my kind, I tell you. I just weaken on that
sort o' gal," he continued, in the firm belief that he had awakened
Flip's jealousy, as he glanced at her well-worn homespun frock, and
found her eyes suddenly fixed on his own.
"Strange I ain't got to see her yet," she replied coolly,
shouldering her parcel, and quite ignoring any sense of obligation
to him for his extra-official act.
"But you might get to see her at the edge of the Gin and Ginger
Woods," he persisted feebly, in a last effort to detain her; "if
you'll take a pasear there with me." Flip's only response was to
walk on toward the cabin, whence, with a vague complimentary
suggestion of "droppin' in to pass the time o' day" with her
father, the Postmaster meekly followed.
The paternal Fairley, once convinced that his daughter's new
companion required no pecuniary or material assistance from his
hands, relaxed to the extent of entering into a querulous
confidence with him, during which Flip took the opportunity of
slipping away. As Fairley had that infelicitous tendency of most
weak natures, to unconsciously exaggerate unimportant details in
their talk, the Postmaster presently became convinced that the
butcher was a constant and assiduous suitor of Flip's. The
absurdity of his sending parcels and letters by post when he might
bring them himself did not strike the official. On the contrary,
he believed it to be a master stroke of cunning. Fired by jealousy
and Flip's indifference, he "deemed it his duty"--using that facile
form of cowardly offensiveness--to betray Flip.
Of which she was happily oblivious. Once away from the cabin, she
plunged into the woods, with the parcel swung behind her like a
knapsack. Leaving the trail, she presently struck off in a
straight line through cover and underbrush with the unerring
instinct of an animal, climbing hand over hand the steepest ascent,
or fluttering like a bird from branch to branch down the deepest
declivity. She soon reached that part of the trail where the
susceptible Postmaster had seen the fascinating unknown. Assuring
herself she was not followed, she crept through the thicket until
she reached a little waterfall and basin that had served the
fugitive Lance for a bath. The spot bore signs of later and more
frequent occupancy, and when Flip carefully removed some bark and
brushwood from a cavity in the rock and drew forth various folded
garments, it was evident she had used it as a sylvan dressing-room.
Here she opened the parcel; it contained a small and delicate shawl
of yellow China crepe. Flip instantly threw it over her shoulders
and stepped hurriedly toward the edge of the wood. Then she began
to pass backward and forward before the trunk of a tree. At first
nothing was visible on the tree, but a closer inspection showed a
large pane of ordinary window glass stuck in the fork of the
branches. It was placed at such a cunning angle against the
darkness of the forest opening that it made a soft and mysterious
mirror, not unlike a Claude Lorraine glass, wherein not only the
passing figure of the young girl was seen, but the dazzling green
and gold of the hillside, and the far-off silhouetted crests of the
Coast Range.
But this was evidently only a prelude to a severer rehearsal. When
she returned to the waterfall she unearthed from her stores a large
piece of yellow soap and some yards of rough cotton "sheeting."
These she deposited beside the basin and again crept to the edge of
the wood to assure herself that she was alone. Satisfied that no
intruding foot had invaded that virgin bower, she returned to her
bath and began to undress. A slight wind followed her, and seemed
to whisper to the circumjacent trees. It appeared to waken her
sister naiads and nymphs, who, joining their leafy fingers, softly
drew around her a gently moving band of trembling lights and
shadows, of flecked sprays and inextricably mingled branches, and
involved her in a chaste sylvan obscurity, veiled alike from
pursuing god or stumbling shepherd. Within these hallowed
precincts was the musical ripple of laughter and falling water, and
at times the glimpse of a lithe brier-caught limb, or a ray of
sunlight trembling over bright flanks, or the white austere outline
of a childish bosom.
When she drew again the leafy curtain, and once more stepped out of
the wood, she was completely transformed. It was the figure that
had appeared to the Postmaster; the slight, erect, graceful form of
a young woman modishly attired. It was Flip, but Flip made taller
by the lengthened skirt and clinging habiliments of fashion. Flip
freckled, but, through the cunning of a relief of yellow color in
her gown, her piquant brown-shot face and eyes brightened and
intensified until she seemed like a spicy odor made visible. I
cannot affirm that the judgment of Flip's mysterious modiste was
infallible, or that the taste of Mr. Lance Harriott, her patron,
was fastidious; enough that it was picturesque, and perhaps not
more glaring and extravagant than the color in which Spring herself
had once clothed the sere hillside where Flip was now seated. The
phantom mirror in the tree fork caught and held her with the sky,
the green leaves, the sunlight and all the graciousness of her
surroundings, and the wind gently tossed her hair and the gay
ribbons of her gypsy hat. Suddenly she started. Some remote sound
in the trail below, inaudible to any ear less fine than hers,
arrested her breathing. She rose swiftly and darted into cover.
Ten minutes passed. The sun was declining; the white fog was
beginning to creep over the Coast Range. From the edge of the wood
Cinderella appeared, disenchanted, and in her homespun garments.
The clock had struck--the spell was past. As she disappeared down
the trail even the magic mirror, moved by the wind, slipped from
the tree top to the ground, and became a piece of common glass.
CHAPTER IV.
The events of the day had produced a remarkable impression on the
facial aspect of the charcoal-burning Fairley. Extraordinary
processes of thought, indicated by repeated rubbing of his forehead,
had produced a high light in the middle and a corresponding
deepening of shadow at the sides, until it bore the appearance of a
perfect sphere. It was this forehead that confronted Flip
reproachfully as became a deceived comrade, menacingly as became an
outraged parent in the presence of a third party and--a Postmaster!
"Fine doin's this, yer receivin' clandecent bundles and letters,
eh?" he began. Flip sent one swift, withering look of contempt at
the Postmaster, who at once becoming invertebrate and groveling,
mumbled that he must "get on" to the Crossing, and rose to go. But
the old man, who had counted on his presence for moral support, and
was clearly beginning to hate him for precipitating this scene with
his daughter, whom he feared, violently protested.
"Sit down, can't ye? Don't you see you're a witness?" he screamed
hysterically.
It was a fatal suggestion. "Witness," repeated Flip, scornfully.
"Yes, a witness! He gave ye letters and bundles."
"Weren't they directed to me?" asked Flip.
"Yes," said the Postmaster, hesitatingly; "in course, yes."
"Do YOU lay claim to them?" she said, turning to her father.
"No," responded the old man.
"Do you?" sharply, to the Postmaster.
"No," he replied.
"Then," said Flip, coolly, "if you're not claimin' 'em for
yourself, and you hear father say they ain't his, I reckon the less
you have to say about 'em the better."
"Thar's suthin' in that," said the old man, shamelessly abandoning
the Postmaster.
"Then why don't she say who sent 'em, and what they are like," said
the Postmaster, "if there's nothin' in it?"
"Yes," echoed Dad. "Flip, why don't you?"
Without answering the direct question, Flip turned upon her father.
"Maybe you forget how you used to row and tear round here because
tramps and such like came to the ranch for suthin', and I gave it
to 'em? Maybe you'll quit tearin' round and letting yourself be
made a fool of now by that man, just because one of those tramps
gets up and sends us some presents back in turn?"
"'Twasn't me, Flip," said the old man, deprecatingly, but glaring
at the astonished Postmaster. "Twasn't my doin'. I allus said if
you cast your bread on the waters it would come back to you by
return mail. The fact is, the Gov'ment is gettin' too high-handed!
Some o' these bloated officials had better climb down before next
leckshen."
"Maybe," continued Flip to her father, without looking at her
discomfited visitor, "ye'd better find out whether one of those
officials comes up to this yer ranch to steal away a gal about my
own size, or to get points about diamond-making. I reckon he don't
travel round to find out who writes all the letters that go through
the Post Office."
The Postmaster had seemingly miscalculated the old man's infirm
temper and the daughter's skillful use of it. He was unprepared
for Flip's boldness and audacity, and when he saw that both barrels
of the accusation had taken effect on the charcoal burner, who was
rising with epileptic rage, he fairly turned and fled. The old man
would have followed him with objurgation beyond the door, but for
the restraining hand of Flip.
Baffled and beaten, nevertheless Fate was not wholly unkind to the
retreating suitor. Near the Gin and Ginger Woods he picked up a
letter which had fallen from Flip's pocket. He recognized the
writing, and did not scruple to read it. It was not a love
epistle,--at least, not such a one as he would have written,--it
did not give the address nor the name of the correspondent; but he
read the following with greedy eyes:--
"Perhaps it's just as well that you don't rig yourself out for the
benefit of those dead beats at the Crossing, or any tramp that
might hang round the ranch. Keep all your style for me when I
come. I can't tell you when, it's mighty uncertain before the
rainy season. But I'm coming soon. Don't go back on your promise
about lettin up on the tramps, and being a little more high-toned.
And don't you give 'em so much. It's true I sent you hats TWICE.
I clean forgot all about the first; but I wouldn't have given a
ten-dollar hat to a nigger woman who had a sick baby because I had
an extra hat. I'd have let that baby slide. I forgot to ask
whether the skirt is worn separately; I must see the dressmaking
sharp about it; but I think you'll want something on besides a
jacket and skirt; at least, it looks like it up here. I don't
think you could manage a piano down there without the old man
knowing it, and raisin' the devil generally. I promised you I'd
let up on him. Mind you keep all your promises to me. I'm glad
you're gettin' on with the six-shooter; tin cans are good at
fifteen yards, but try it on suthin' that MOVES! I forgot to say
that I am on the track of your big brother. It's a three years'
old track, and he was in Arizona. The friend who told me didn't
expatiate much on what he did there, but I reckon they had a high
old time. If he's above the earth I'll find him, you bet. The
yerba buena and the southern wood came all right,--they smelt like
you. Say, Flip, do you remember the last--the VERY last--thing
that happened when you said 'Good-by' on the trail? Don't let me
ever find out that you've let anybody else kiss--"
But here the virtuous indignation of the Postmaster found vent in
an oath. He threw the letter away. He retained of it only two
facts,--Flip HAD a brother who was missing; she had a lover present
in the flesh.
How much of the substance of this and previous letters Flip had
confided to her father I cannot say. If she suppressed anything it
was probably that which affected Lance's secret alone, and it was
doubtful how much of that she herself knew. In her own affairs she
was frank without being communicative, and never lost her shy
obstinacy even with her father. Governing the old man as
completely as she did, she appeared most embarrassed when she was
most dominant; she had her own way without lifting her voice or her
eyes; she seemed oppressed by mauvaise honte when she was most
triumphant; she would end a discussion with a shy murmur addressed
to herself, or a single gesture of self-consciousness.
The disclosure of her strange relations with an unknown man and the
exchange of presents and confidences seemed to suddenly awake
Fairley to a vague, uneasy sense of some unfulfilled duties as a
parent. The first effect of this on his weak nature was a peevish
antagonism to the cause of it. He had long, fretful monologues on
the vanity of diamond-making, if accompanied with a "pestering" by
"interlopers;" on the wickedness of concealment and conspiracy, and
their effects on charcoal-burning; on the nurturing of spies and
"adders" in the family circle, and on the seditiousness of dark and
mysterious councils in which a gray-haired father was left out. It
was true that a word or look from Flip generally brought these
monologues to an inglorious and abrupt termination, but they were
none the less lugubrious as long as they lasted. In time they were
succeeded by an affectation of contrite apology and self-
depreciation. "Don't go out o' the way to ask the old man," he
would say, referring to the quantity of bacon to be ordered; "it's
nat'ral a young gal should have her own advisers." The state of
the flour barrel would also produce a like self-abasement. "Unless
ye're already in correspondence about more flour, ye might take the
opinion o' the first tramp ye meet ez to whether Santa Cruz Mills
is a good brand, but don't ask the old man." If Flip was in
conversation with the butcher, Fairley would obtrusively retire
with the hope "he wasn't intrudin' on their secrets."
These phases of her father's weakness were not frequent enough to
excite her alarm, but she could not help noticing they were
accompanied with a seriousness unusual to him. He began to be
tremulously watchful of her, returning often from work at an
earlier hour, and lingering by the cabin in the morning. He
brought absurd and useless presents for her, and presented them
with a nervous anxiety, poorly concealed by an assumption of
careless, paternal generosity. "Suthin' I picked up at the
Crossin' for ye to-day," he would say, airily, and retire to watch
the effect of a pair of shoes two sizes too large, or a fur cap in
September. He would have hired a cheap parlor organ for her, but
for the apparently unexpected revelation that she couldn't play.
He had received the news of a clue to his long-lost son without
emotion, but lately he seemed to look upon it as a foregone
conclusion, and one that necessarily solved the question of
companionship for Flip. "In course, when you've got your own flesh
and blood with ye, ye can't go foolin' around with strangers."
These autumnal blossoms of affection, I fear, came too late for any
effect upon Flip, precociously matured by her father's indifference
and selfishness. But she was good humored, and, seeing him
seriously concerned, gave him more of her time, even visited him in
the sacred seclusion of the "diamond pit," and listened with far-
off eyes to his fitful indictment of all things outside his grimy
laboratory. Much of this patient indifference came with a
capricious change in her own habits; she no longer indulged in the
rehearsal of dress, she packed away her most treasured garments,
and her leafy boudoir knew her no more. She sometimes walked on
the hillside, and often followed the trail she had taken with Lance
when she led him to the ranch. She once or twice extended her walk
to the spot where she had parted from him, and as often came shyly
away, her eyes downcast and her face warm with color. Perhaps
because these experiences and some mysterious instinct of maturing
womanhood had left a story in her eyes, which her two adorers, the
Postmaster and the Butcher, read with passion, she became famous
without knowing it. Extravagant stories of her fascinations
brought strangers into the valley. The effect upon her father may
be imagined. Lance could not have desired a more effective
guardian than he proved to be in this emergency. Those who had
been told of this hidden pearl were surprised to find it so
jealously protected.
CHAPTER V.
The long, parched summer had drawn to its dusty close. Much of it
was already blown abroad and dissipated on trail and turnpike, or
crackled in harsh, unelastic fibres on hillside and meadow. Some
of it had disappeared in the palpable smoke by day and fiery crests
by night of burning forests. The besieging fogs on the Coast Range
daily thinned their hosts, and at last vanished. The wind changed
from northwest to southwest. The salt breath of the sea was on the
summit. And then one day the staring, unchanged sky was faintly
touched with remote mysterious clouds, and grew tremulous in
expression. The next morning dawned upon a newer face in the
heavens, on changed woods, on altered outlines, on vanished crests,
on forgotten distances. It was raining!
Four weeks of this change, with broken spaces of sunlight and
intense blue aerial islands, and then a storm set in. All day the
summit pines and redwoods rocked in the blast. At times the onset
of the rain seemed to be held back by the fury of the gale, or was
visibly seen in sharp waves on the hillside. Unknown and concealed
watercourses suddenly overflowed the trails, pools became lakes and
brooks rivers. Hidden from the storm, the sylvan silence of
sheltered valleys was broken by the impetuous rush of waters; even
the tiny streamlet that traversed Flip's retreat in the Gin and
Ginger Woods became a cascade.
The storm drove Fairley from his couch early. The falling of a
large tree across the trail, and the sudden overflow of a small
stream beside it, hastened his steps. But he was doomed to
encounter what was to him a more disagreeable object--a human
figure. By the bedraggled drapery that flapped and fluttered in
the wind, by the long, unkempt hair that hid the face and eyes, and
by the grotesquely misplaced bonnet, the old man recognized one of
his old trespassers,--an Indian squaw.
"Clear out 'er that! Come, make tracks, will ye?" the old man
screamed; but here the wind stopped his voice, and drove him
against a hazel bush.
"Me heap sick," answered the squaw, shivering through her muddy
shawl.
"I'll make ye a heap sicker if ye don't vamose the ranch,"
continued Fairley, advancing.
"Me wantee Wangee girl. Wangee girl give me heap grub," said the
squaw, without moving.
"You bet your life," groaned the old man to himself. Nevertheless
an idea struck him. "Ye ain't brought no presents, hev ye?" he
asked cautiously. "Ye ain't got no pooty things for poor Wangee
girl?" he continued, insinuatingly.
"Me got heap cache nuts and berries," said the squaw.
"Oh, in course! in course! That's just it," screamed Fairley;
"you've got 'em cached only two mile from yer, and you'll go and
get 'em for a half dollar, cash down."
"Me bring Wangee girl to cache," replied the Indian, pointing to
the wood. "Honest Injin."
Another bright idea struck Mr. Fairley. But it required some
elaboration. Hurrying the squaw with him through the pelting rain,
he reached the shelter of the corral. Vainly the shivering
aborigine drew her tightly bandaged papoose closer to her square,
flat breast, and looked longingly toward the cabin; the old man
backed her against the palisade. Here he cautiously imparted his
dark intentions to employ her to keep watch and ward over the
ranch, and especially over its young mistress--"clear out all the
tramps 'ceptin' yourself, and I'll keep ye in grub and rum." Many
and deliberate repetitions of this offer in various forms at last
seemed to affect the squaw; she nodded violently, and echoed the
last word "rum." "Now," she added. The old man hesitated; she was
in possession of his secret; he groaned, and, promising an
immediate installment of liquor, led her to the cabin.
The door was so securely fastened against the impact of the storm
that some moments elapsed before the bar was drawn, and the old man
had become impatient and profane. When it was partly opened by
Flip he hastily slipped in, dragging the squaw after him, and cast
one single suspicious glance around the rude apartment which served
as a sitting-room. Flip had apparently been writing. A small
inkstand was still on the board table, but her paper had evidently
been concealed before she allowed them to enter. The squaw
instantly squatted before the adobe hearth, warmed her bundled
baby, and left the ceremony of introduction to her companion. Flip
regarded the two with calm preoccupation and indifference. The
only thing that touched her interest was the old squaw's draggled
skirt and limp neckerchief. They were Flip's own, long since
abandoned and cast off in the Gin and Ginger Woods. "Secrets
again," whined Fairley, still eying Flip furtively. "Secrets
again, in course--in course--jiss so. Secrets that must be kep
from the ole man. Dark doin's by one's own flesh and blood. Go
on! go on! Don't mind me." Flip did not reply. She had even lost
the interest in her old dress. Perhaps it had only touched some
note in unison with her revery.
"Can't ye get the poor critter some whiskey?" he queried, fretfully.
"Ye used to be peart enuff before." As Flip turned to the corner to
lift the demijohn, Fairley took occasion to kick the squaw with his
foot, and indicate by extravagant pantomime that the bargain was not
to be alluded to before the girl. Flip poured out some whiskey in a
tin cup, and, approaching the squaw, handed it to her. "It's like
ez not," continued Fairley to his daughter, but looking at the
squaw, "that she'll be huntin' the woods off and on, and kinder
looking after the last pit near the Madronos; ye'll give her grub
and licker ez she likes. Well, d'ye hear, Flip? Are ye moonin'
agin with yer secrets? What's gone with ye?"
If the child were dreaming, it was a delicious dream. Her magnetic
eyes were suffused by a strange light, as though the eye itself had
blushed; her full pulse showed itself more in the rounding outline
of her cheek than in any deepening of color; indeed, if there was
any heightening of tint, it was in her freckles, which fairly
glistened like tiny spangles. Her eyes were downcast, her
shoulders slightly bent, but her voice was low and clear and
thoughtful as ever.
"One o' the big pines above the Madrono pit has blown over into the
run," she said. "It's choked up the water, and it's risin' fast.
Like ez not it's pourin' over into the pit by this time."
The old man rose with a fretful cry. "And why in blames didn't you
say so first?" he screamed, catching up his axe and rushing to the
door.
"Ye didn't give me a chance," said Flip, raising her eyes for the
first time. With an impatient imprecation, Fairley darted by her
and rushed into the wood. In an instant she had shut the door and
bolted it. In the same instant the squaw arose, dashed the long
hair not only from her eyes, but from her head, tore away her shawl
and blanket, and revealed the square shoulders of Lance Harriott!
Flip remained leaning against the door; but the young man in rising
dropped the bandaged papoose, which rolled from his lap into the
fire. Flip, with a cry, sprang toward it; but Lance caught her by
the waist with one arm, as with the other he dragged the bundle
from the flames.
"Don't be alarmed," he said, gayly, "it's only--"
"What?" said Flip, trying to disengage herself.
"My coat and trousers."
Flip laughed, which encouraged Lance to another attempt to kiss
her. She evaded it by diving her head into his waistcoat, and
saying, "There's father."
"But he's gone to clear away that tree?" suggested Lance.
One of Flip's significant silences followed.
"Oh, I see," he laughed. "That was a plan to get him away! Ah!"
She had released herself.
"Why did you come like that?" she said, pointing to his wig and
blanket.
"To see if you'd know me," he responded.
"No," said Flip, dropping her eyes. "It's to keep other people
from knowing you. You're hidin' agin."
"I am," returned Lance; "but," he interrupted, "it's only the same
old thing."
"But you wrote from Monterey that it was all over," she persisted.
"So it would have been," he said gloomily, "but for some dog down
here who is hunting up an old scent. I'll spot him yet, and--" He
stopped suddenly, with such utter abstraction of hatred in his
fixed and glittering eyes that she almost feared him. She laid her
hand quite unconsciously on his arm. He grasped it; his face
changed.
"I couldn't wait any longer to see you, Flip, so I came here
anyway," he went on. "I thought to hang round and get a chance to
speak to you first, when I fell afoul of the old man. He didn't
know me, and tumbled right in my little game. Why, do you believe
he wants to hire me for my grub and liquor, to act as a sort of
sentry over you and the ranch?" And here he related with great
gusto the substance of his interview. "I reckon as he's that
suspicious," he concluded, "I'd better play it out now as I've
begun, only it's mighty hard I can't see you here before the fire
in your fancy toggery, Flip, but must dodge in and out of the wet
underbrush in these yer duds of yours that I picked up in the old
place in the Gin and Ginger Woods."
"Then you came here just to see me?" asked Flip.
"I did."
"For only that?"
"Only that."
Flip dropped her eyes. Lance had got his other arm around her
waist, but her resisting little hand was still potent.
"Listen," she said at last without looking up, but apparently
talking to the intruding arm, "when Dad comes I'll get him to send
you to watch the diamond pit. It isn't far; it's warm, and"--
"What?"
"I'll come, after a bit, and see you. Quit foolin' now. If you'd
only have come here like yourself--like--like--a white man."
"The old man," interrupted Lance, "would have just passed me on to
the summit. I couldn't have played the lost fisherman on him at
this time of year."
"Ye could have been stopped at the Crossing by high water, you
silly," said the girl. "It was." This grammatical obscurity
referred to the stage coach.
"Yes, but I might have been tracked to this cabin. And look here,
Flip," he said, suddenly straightening himself, and lifting the
girl's face to a level with his own, "I don't want you to lie any
more for me. It ain't right."
"All right. Ye needn't go to the pit, then, and I won't come."
"Flip!"
"And here's Dad coming. Quick!"
Lance chose to put his own interpretation on this last adjuration.
The resisting little hand was now lying quite limp on his shoulder,
He drew her brown, bright face near his own, felt her spiced breath
on his lips, his cheeks, his hot eyelids, his swimming eyes, kissed
her, hurriedly replaced his wig and blanket, and dropped beside the
fire with the tremulous laugh of youth and innocent first passion.
Flip had withdrawn to the window, and was looking out upon the
rocking pines.
"He don't seem to be coming," said Lance, with a half-shy laugh.
"No," responded Flip demurely, pressing her hot oval cheek against
the wet panes; "I reckon I was mistaken. You're sure," she added,
looking resolutely another way, but still trembling like a magnetic
needle toward Lance, as he moved slightly before the fire, "you're
SURE you'd like me to come to you?"
"Sure, Flip?"
"Hush!" said Flip, as this reassuring query of reproachful
astonishment appeared about to be emphasized by a forward amatory
dash of Lance's; "hush! he's coming this time, sure."
It was, indeed, Fairley, exceedingly wet, exceedingly bedraggled,
exceedingly sponged out as to color, and exceedingly profane. It
appeared that there was, indeed, a tree that had fallen in the
"run," but that, far from diverting the overflow into the pit, it
had established "back water," which had forced another outlet. All
this might have been detected at once by any human intellect not
distracted by correspondence with strangers, and enfeebled by
habitually scorning the intellect of its own progenitor. This
reckless selfishness had further only resulted in giving
"rheumatics" to that progenitor, who now required the external
administration of opodeldoc to his limbs, and the internal
administration of whiskey. Having thus spoken, Mr. Fairley, with
great promptitude and infantine simplicity, at once bared two legs
of entirely different colors and mutely waited for his daughter to
rub them. If Flip did this all unconsciously, and with the
mechanical dexterity of previous habit, it was because she did not
quite understand the savage eyes and impatient gestures of Lance in
his encompassing wig and blanket, and because it helped her to
voice her thought.
"Ye'll never be able to take yer watch at the diamond pit to-night,
Dad," she said; "and I've been reck'nin' you might set the squaw
there instead. I can show her what to do."
But to Flip's momentary discomfiture, her father promptly objected.
"Mebbee I've got suthin' else for her to do. Mebbee I may have my
secrets, too--eh?" he said, with dark significance, at the same
time administering a significant nudge to Lance, which kept up the
young man's exasperation. "No, she'll rest yer a bit just now.
I'll set her to watchin' suthin' else, like as not, when I want
her." Flip fell into one of her suggestive silences. Lance
watched her earnestly, mollified by a single furtive glance from
her significant eyes; the rain dashed against the windows, and
occasionally spattered and hissed in the hearth of the broad
chimney, and Mr. David Fairley, somewhat assuaged by the internal
administration of whiskey, grew more loquacious. The genius of
incongruity and inconsistency which generally ruled his conduct
came out with freshened vigor under the gentle stimulation of
spirit. "On an evening like this," he began, comfortably settling
himself on the floor beside the chimney, "ye might rig yerself out
in them new duds and fancy fixin's that that Sacramento shrimp sent
ye, and let your own flesh and blood see ye. If that's too much to
do for your old dad, ye might do it to please that digger squaw as
a Christian act." Whether in the hidden depths of the old man's
consciousness there was a feeling of paternal vanity in showing
this wretched aborigine the value and importance of the treasure
she was about to guard, I cannot say. Flip darted an interrogatory
look at Lance, who nodded a quiet assent, and she flew into the
inner room. She did not linger on the details of her toilet, but
reappeared almost the next moment in her new finery; buttoning the
neck of her gown as she entered the room, and chastely stopping at
the window to characteristically pull up her stocking. The
peculiarity of her situation increased her usual shyness; she
played with the black and gold beads of a handsome necklace,--
Lance's last gift,--as the merest child might; her unbuckled shoe
gave the squaw a natural opportunity of showing her admiration and
devotion by insisting upon buckling it, and gave Lance, under that
disguise, an opportunity of covertly kissing the little foot and
ankle in the shadow of the chimney; an event which provoked slight
hysterical symptoms in Flip, and caused her to sit suddenly down in
spite of the remonstrances of her parent. "Ef you can't quit
gigglin' and squirmin' like an Injin baby yourself, ye'd better git
rid o' them duds," he ejaculated with peevish scorn.
Yet, under this perfunctory rebuke, his weak vanity could not be
hidden, and he enjoyed the evident admiration of a creature whom he
believed to be half-witted and degraded all the more keenly because
it did not make him jealous. She could not take Flip from him.
Rendered garrulous by liquor, he went to voice his contempt for
those who might attempt it. Taking advantage of his daughter's
absence to resume her homely garments, he whispered confidentially
to Lance,--
"Ye see these yer fine dresses, ye might think is presents. Pr'aps
Flip lets on they are? Pr'aps she don't know any better. But they
ain't presents. They're only samples o' dressmaking and jewelry
that a vain, conceited shrimp of a feller up in Sacramento sends
down here to get customers for. In course I'm to pay for 'em. In
course he reckons I'm to do it. In course I calkilate to do it;
but he needn't try to play 'em off as presents. He talks suthin'
o' coming down here, sportin' hisself off on Flip as a fancy buck!
Not ez long ez the old man's here, you bet." Thoroughly carried
away by his fancied wrongs, it was perhaps fortunate that he did
not observe the flashing eyes of Lance behind his lank and
lustreless wig; but seeing only the figure of Lance, as he had
conjured him, he went on: "That's why I want you to hang around
her. Hang around her ontil my boy,--him that's comin' home on a
visit,--gets here, and I reckon he'll clear out that yar Sacramento
counter-jumper. Only let me get a sight o' him afore Flip does.
eh? D'ye hear? Dog my skin if I don't believe the d----d Injin's
drunk." It was fortunate that at that moment Flip reappeared, and,
dropping on the hearth between her father and the infuriated Lance,
let her hand slip in his with a warning pressure. The light touch
momentarily recalled him to himself and her, but not until the
quick-witted girl had had revealed to her in one startled wave of
consciousness the full extent of Lance's infirmity of temper. With
the instinct of awakened tenderness came a sense of responsibility,
and a vague premonition of danger. The coy blossom of her heart
was scarce unfolded before it was chilled by approaching shadows.
Fearful of, she knew not what, she hesitated. Every moment of
Lance's stay was imperiled by a single word that might spring from
his suppressed white lips; beyond and above the suspicions his
sudden withdrawal might awaken in her father's breast, she was
dimly conscious of some mysterious terror without that awaited him.
She listened to the furious onslaught of the wind upon the
sycamores beside their cabin, and thought she heard it there; she
listened to the sharp fusillade of rain upon roof and pane, and the
turbulent roar and rush of leaping mountain torrents at their very
feet, and fancied it was there. She suddenly sprang to the window,
and, pressing her eyes to the pane, saw through the misty turmoil
of tossing boughs and swaying branches the scintillating
intermittent flames of torches moving on the trail above, and KNEW
it was there!
In an instant she was collected and calm. "Dad," she said, in her
ordinary indifferent tone, "there's torches movin' up toward the
diamond pit. Likely it's tramps. I'll take the squaw and see."
And before the old man could stagger to his feet she had dragged
Lance with her into the road.
CHAPTER VI.
The wind charged down upon them, slamming the door at their backs,
extinguishing the broad shaft of light that had momentarily shot
out into the darkness, and swept them a dozen yards away. Gaining
the lee of a madrono tree, Lance opened his blanketed arms,
enfolded the girl, and felt her for one brief moment tremble and
nestle in his bosom like some frightened animal. "Well," he said,
gayly, "what next?" Flip recovered herself. "You're safe now
anywhere outside the house. But did you expect them tonight?"
Lance shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?" "Hush!" returned the
girl; "they're coming this way."
The four flickering, scattered lights presently dropped into line.
The trail had been found; they were coming nearer. Flip breathed
quickly; the spiced aroma of her presence filled the blanket as he
drew her tightly beside him. He had forgotten the storm that raged
around them, the mysterious foe that was approaching, until Flip
caught his sleeve with a slight laugh. "Why, it's Kennedy and
Bijah?"
"Who's Kennedy and Bijah?" asked Lance, curtly.
"Kennedy's the Postmaster and Bijah's the Butcher."
"What do they want?" continued Lance.
"Me," said Flip, coyly.
"You?"
"Yes; let's run away."
Half leading, half dragging her friend, Flip made her way with
unerring woodcraft down the ravine. The sound of voices and even
the tumult of the storm became fainter, an acrid smell of burning
green wood smarted Lance's lips and eyes; in the midst of the
darkness beneath him gradually a faint, gigantic nimbus like a
lurid eye glowed and sank, quivered and faded with the spent breath
of the gale as it penetrated their retreat. "The pit," whispered
Flip; "it's safe on the other side," she added, cautiously skirting
the orbit of the great eye, and leading him to a sheltered nest of
bark and sawdust. It was warm and odorous. Nevertheless, they
both deemed it necessary to enwrap themselves in the single
blanket. The eye beamed fitfully upon them, occasionally a wave of
lambent tremulousness passed across it; its weirdness was an excuse
for their drawing nearer each other in playful terror.
"Flip."
"Well?"
"What did the other two want? To see you, TOO?"
"Likely," said Flip, without the least trace of coquetry. "There's
been a lot of strangers yer, off and on."
"Perhaps you'd like to go back and see them?"
"Do you want me to?"
Lance's reply was a kiss. Nevertheless he was vaguely uneasy.
"Looks a little as if I were running away, don't it?" he suggested.
"No," said Flip; "they think you're only a squaw; it's me they're
after." Lance smarted a little at this infelicitous speech. A
strange and irritating sensation had been creeping over him--it was
his first experience of shame and remorse. "I reckon I'll go back
and see," he said, rising abruptly.
Flip was silent. She was thinking. Believing that the men were
seeking her only, she knew that their attention would be directed
from her companion when it was found out he was no longer with her,
and she dreaded to meet them in his irritable presence.
"Go," she said, "tell Dad something's gone wrong in the diamond
pit, and say I'm watching it for him here."
"And you?"
"I'll go there and wait for him. If he can't get rid of them, and
they follow him there, I'll come back here and meet you. Anyhow,
I'll manage to have Dad wait there a spell."
She took his hand and led him back by a different path to the
trail. He was surprised to find that the cabin, its window glowing
from the fire, was only a hundred yards away. "Go in the back way,
by the shed. Don't go in the room, nor near the light, if you can.
Don't talk inside, but call or beckon to Dad. Remember," she said,
with a laugh, "you're keeping watch of me for him. Pull your hair
down on your eyes so." This operation, like most feminine
embellishments of the masculine toilet was attended by a kiss, and
Flip, stepping back into the shadow, vanished in the storm.
Lance's first movements were inconsistent with his assumed sex. He
picked up his draggled skirt, and drew a bowie knife from his boot.
From his bosom he took a revolver, turning the chambers noiselessly
as he felt the caps. He then crept toward the cabin softly and
gained the shed. It was quite dark but for a pencil of light
piercing a crack of the rude, ill-fitting door that opened on the
sitting-room. A single voice not unfamiliar to him, raised in
half-brutal triumph, greeted his ears.
A name was mentioned--his own! His angry hand was on the latch.
One moment more and he would have burst the door, but in that
instant another name was uttered--a name that dropped his hand from
the latch and the blood from his cheeks. He staggered backward,
passed his hand swiftly across his forehead, recovered himself with
a gesture of mingled rage and despair, and, sinking on his knees
beside the door, pressed his hot temples against the crack.
"Do I know Lance Harriott?" said the voice. "Do I know the d----d
ruffian? Didn't I hunt him a year ago into the brush three miles
from the Crossing? Didn't we lose sight of him the very day he
turned up yer at this ranch, and got smuggled over into Monterey?
Ain't it the same man as killed Arkansaw Bob--Bob Ridley--the name
he went by in Sonora? And who was Bob Ridley, eh? Who? Why, you
d----d old fool, it was Bob Fairley--YOUR SON!"
The old man's voice rose querulous and indistinct.
"What are ye talkin' about?" interrupted the first speaker. "I
tell you I KNOW. Look at these pictures. I found 'em on his body.
Look at 'em. Pictures of you and your girl. Pr'aps you'll deny
them. Pr'aps you'll tell me I lie when I tell you HE told me he
was your son; told me how he ran away from you; how you were livin'
somewhere in the mountains makin' gold, or suthin' else, outer
charcoal. He told me who he was as a secret. He never let on he
told it to any one else. And when I found that the man who killed
him, Lance Harriott, had been hidin' here, had been sendin' spies
all around to find out all about your son, had been foolin' you and
tryin' to ruin your gal as he had killed your boy, I knew that HE
knew it, too."
"LIAR!"
The door fell in with a crash. There was the sudden apparition of
a demoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks
of hair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror
filled the room. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled
precipitately. The man who had spoken sprang toward his rifle in
the chimney corner. But the movement was his last; a blinding
flash and shattering report interposed between him and his weapon.
The impulse carried him forward headlong into the fire, that hissed
and spluttered with his blood, and Lance Harriott with his smoking
pistol, strode past him to the door. Already far down the trail
there were hurried voices, the crack and crackling of impending
branches growing fainter and fainter in the distance. Lance turned
back to the solitary living figure--the old man.
Yet he might have been dead, too, he sat so rigid and motionless,
his fixed eyes staring vacantly at the body on the hearth. Before
him on the table lay the cheap photographs, one evidently of
himself, taken in some remote epoch of complexion, one of a child
which Lance recognized as Flip.
"Tell me," said Lance hoarsely, laying his quivering hand on the
table, "was Bob Ridley your son?"
"My son," echoed the old man in a strange, far-off voice, without
turning his eyes from the corpse--"My son--is--is--is there!"
pointing to the dead man. "Hush! Didn't he tell you so? Didn't
you hear him say it? Dead--dead--shot--shot!"
"Silence! are you crazy, man?" repeated Lance, tremblingly; "that
is not Bob Ridley, but a dog, a coward, a liar gone to his
reckoning. Hear me! If your son WAS Bob Ridley, I swear to God I
never knew it, now or--or--THEN. Do you hear me? Tell me! Do you
believe me? Speak! You shall speak."
He laid his hand almost menacingly on the old man's shoulder.
Fairley slowly raised his head. Lance fell back with a groan of
horror. The weak lips were wreathed with a feeble imploring smile,
but the eyes wherein the fretful, peevish, suspicious spirit had
dwelt were blank and tenantless; the flickering intellect that had
lit them was blown out and vanished.
Lance walked toward the door and remained motionless for a moment,
gazing into the night. When he turned back again toward the fire
his face was as colorless as the dead man's on the hearth; the fire
of passion was gone from his beaten eyes; his step was hesitating
and slow. He went up to the table.
"I say, old man," he said, with a strange smile and an odd,
premature suggestion of the infinite weariness of death in his
voice, "you wouldn't mind giving me this, would you?" and he took
up the picture of Flip. The old man nodded repeatedly. "Thank
you," said Lance. He went to the door, paused a moment, and
returned. "Good-by, old man," he said, holding out his hand.
Fairley took it with a childish smile. "He's dead," said the old
man softly, holding Lance's hand, but pointing to the hearth.
"Yes," said Lance, with the faintest of smiles on the palest of
faces. "You feel sorry for any one that's dead, don't you?"
Fairley nodded again. Lance looked at him with eyes as remote as
his own, shook his head, and turned away. When he reached the door
he laid his revolver carefully, and, indeed, somewhat ostentatiously,
upon a chair. But when he stepped from the threshold he stopped a
moment in the light of the open door to examine the lock of a small
derringer which he drew from his pocket. He then shut the door
carefully, and with the same slow, hesitating step, felt his way
into the night.
He had but one idea in his mind, to find some lonely spot; some
spot where the footsteps of man would never penetrate, some spot
that would yield him rest, sleep, obliteration, forgetfulness, and,
above all, where HE would be forgotten. He had seen such places;
surely there were many,--where bones were picked up of dead men who
had faded from the earth and had left no other record. If he could
only keep his senses now he might find such a spot, but he must be
careful, for her little feet went everywhere, and she must never
see him again alive or dead. And in the midst of his thoughts, and
the darkness, and the storm, he heard a voice at his side, "Lance,
how long you have been!"
. . . . . .
Left to himself, the old man again fell into a vacant contemplation
of the dead body before him, until a stronger blast swept down like
an avalanche upon the cabin, burst through the ill-fastened door
and broken chimney, and, dashing the ashes and living embers over
the floor, filled the room with blinding smoke and flame. Fairley
rose with a feeble cry, and then, as if acted upon by some dominant
memory, groped under the bed until he found his buckskin bag and
his precious crystal, and fled precipitately from the room. Lifted
by this second shock from his apathy, he returned to the fixed idea
of his life,--the discovery and creation of the diamond,--and
forgot all else. The feeble grasp that his shaken intellect kept
of the events of the night relaxed, the disguised Lance, the story
of his son, the murder, slipped into nothingness; there remained
only the one idea, his nightly watch by the diamond pit. The
instinct of long habit was stronger than the darkness or the onset
of the storm, and he kept his tottering way over stream and fallen
timber until he reached the spot. A sudden tremor seemed to shake
the lambent flame that had lured him on. He thought he heard the
sound of voices; there were signs of recent disturbance,--
footprints in the sawdust! With a cry of rage and suspicion,
Fairley slipped into the pit and sprang toward the nearest opening.
To his frenzied fancy it had been tampered with, his secret
discovered, the fruit of his long labors stolen from him that very
night. With superhuman strength he began to open the pit,
scattering the half-charred logs right and left, and giving vent to
the suffocating gases that rose from the now incandescent charcoal.
At times the fury of the gale would drive it back and hold it
against the sides of the pit, leaving the opening free; at times,
following the blind instinct of habit, the demented man would fall
upon his face and bury his nose and mouth in the wet bark and
sawdust. At last, the paroxysm past, he sank back again in his old
apathetic attitude of watching, the attitude he had so often kept
beside his sylvan crucible. In this attitude and in silence he
waited for the dawn.
It came with a hush in the storm; it came with blue openings in the
broken up and tumbled heavens; it came with stars that glistened
first, and then paled, and at last sank drowning in those deep
cerulean lakes; it came with those cerulean lakes broadening into
vaster seas, whose shores expanded at last into one illimitable
ocean, cerulean no more, but flecked with crimson and opal dyes; it
came with the lightly lifted misty curtain of the day, torn and
rent on crag and pine top, but always lifting, lifting. It came
with the sparkle of emerald in the grasses, and the flash of
diamonds in every spray, with a whisper in the awakening woods, and
voices in the traveled roads and trails.
The sound of these voices stopped before the pit, and seemed to
interrogate the old man. He came, and, putting his finger on his
lips, made a sign of caution. When three or four men had descended
he bade them follow him, saying, weakly and disjointedly, but
persistently: "My boy--my son Robert--came home--came home at last--
here with Flip--both of them--come and see!"
He had reached a little niche or nest in the hillside, and stopped
and suddenly drew aside a blanket. Beneath it, side by side, lay
Flip and Lance, dead, with their cold hands clasped in each
other's.
"Suffocated!" said two or three, turning with horror toward the
broken up and still smouldering pit.
"Asleep!" said the old man. "Asleep! I've seen 'em lying that way
when they were babies together. Don't tell me! Don't say I don't
know my own flesh and blood! So! so! So, my pretty ones!" He
stooped and kissed them. Then, drawing the blanket over them
gently, he rose and said softly, "Good night!"
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