Frontier Stories | Page 6

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 cañon, and echoed from the green plateau above. The
monotonous strokes of an axe were suddenly intermitted, 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 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 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,