Flip: A California Romance | Page 3

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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