Flip: A California Romance | Page 8

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'