Flip: A California Romance | Page 6

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.