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Frontier Stories by Bret Harte

B >> Bret Harte >> Frontier Stories




"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 a 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 onter 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 quickwitted 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 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 canon, 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 did n'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 roughs
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 canon. "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 canon 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 sea-coast 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 ginger-nuts, 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 canon, 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
letter. 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 canon 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. Hed 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 "drop-in' 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 masterstroke 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 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 nothing 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 getting too high-handed! Some o' these bloated
officials had better climb down before next leckshen."