Frontier Stories | Page 3

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 larcenious friend of the previous day, he lay
perfectly still. The movement and rustle continued, and 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.