Flip: A California Romance

B >> Bret Harte >> Flip: A California Romance


In an instant she was collected and calm. "Dad," she said, in her
ordinary indifferent tone, "there's torches movin' up toward the diamond
pit. Likely it's tramps. I'll take the squaw and see." And before the
old man could stagger to his feet she had dragged Lance with her into
the road.




CHAPTER VI.


The wind charged down upon them, slamming the door at their backs,
extinguishing the broad shaft of light that had momentarily shot out
into the darkness, and swept them a dozen yards away. Gaining the lee of
a madrono tree, Lance opened his blanketed arms, enfolded the girl, and
felt her for one brief moment tremble and nestle in his bosom like some
frightened animal. "Well," he said, gayly, "what next?" Flip recovered
herself. "You're safe now anywhere outside the house. But did you expect
them tonight?" Lance shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?" "Hush!" returned
the girl; "they're coming this way."

The four flickering, scattered lights presently dropped into line. The
trail had been found; they were coming nearer. Flip breathed quickly;
the spiced aroma of her presence filled the blanket as he drew her
tightly beside him. He had forgotten the storm that raged around them,
the mysterious foe that was approaching, until Flip caught his sleeve
with a slight laugh. "Why, it's Kennedy and Bijah?"

"Who's Kennedy and Bijah?" asked Lance, curtly.

"Kennedy's the Postmaster and Bijah's the Butcher."

"What do they want?" continued Lance.

"Me," said Flip, coyly.

"You?"

"Yes; let's run away."

Half leading, half dragging her friend, Flip made her way with unerring
woodcraft down the ravine. The sound of voices and even the tumult of
the storm became fainter, an acrid smell of burning green wood smarted
Lance's lips and eyes; in the midst of the darkness beneath him
gradually a faint, gigantic nimbus like a lurid eye glowed and sank,
quivered and faded with the spent breath of the gale as it penetrated
their retreat. "The pit," whispered Flip; "it's safe on the other side,"
she added, cautiously skirting the orbit of the great eye, and leading
him to a sheltered nest of bark and sawdust. It was warm and odorous.
Nevertheless, they both deemed it necessary to enwrap themselves in the
single blanket. The eye beamed fitfully upon them, occasionally a wave
of lambent tremulousness passed across it; its weirdness was an excuse
for their drawing nearer each other in playful terror.

"Flip."

"Well?"

"What did the other two want? To see you, TOO?"

"Likely," said Flip, without the least trace of coquetry. "There's been
a lot of strangers yer, off and on."

"Perhaps you'd like to go back and see them?"

"Do you want me to?"

Lance's reply was a kiss. Nevertheless he was vaguely uneasy. "Looks a
little as if I were running away, don't it?" he suggested.

"No," said Flip; "they think you're only a squaw; it's me they're
after." Lance smarted a little at this infelicitous speech. A strange
and irritating sensation had been creeping over him--it was his first
experience of shame and remorse. "I reckon I'll go back and see," he
said, rising abruptly.

Flip was silent. She was thinking. Believing that the men were seeking
her only, she knew that their attention would be directed from her
companion when it was found out he was no longer with her, and she
dreaded to meet them in his irritable presence.

"Go," she said, "tell Dad something's gone wrong in the diamond pit, and
say I'm watching it for him here."

"And you?"

"I'll go there and wait for him. If he can't get rid of them, and they
follow him there, I'll come back here and meet you. Anyhow, I'll manage
to have Dad wait there a spell."

She took his hand and led him back by a different path to the trail. He
was surprised to find that the cabin, its window glowing from the fire,
was only a hundred yards away. "Go in the back way, by the shed. Don't
go in the room, nor near the light, if you can. Don't talk inside,
but call or beckon to Dad. Remember," she said, with a laugh, "you're
keeping watch of me for him. Pull your hair down on your eyes so." This
operation, like most feminine embellishments of the masculine toilet was
attended by a kiss, and Flip, stepping back into the shadow, vanished in
the storm.

Lance's first movements were inconsistent with his assumed sex. He
picked up his draggled skirt, and drew a bowie knife from his boot. From
his bosom he took a revolver, turning the chambers noiselessly as he
felt the caps. He then crept toward the cabin softly and gained the
shed. It was quite dark but for a pencil of light piercing a crack of
the rude, ill-fitting door that opened on the sitting-room. A single
voice not unfamiliar to him, raised in half-brutal triumph, greeted his
ears.

A name was mentioned--his own! His angry hand was on the latch. One
moment more and he would have burst the door, but in that instant
another name was uttered--a name that dropped his hand from the latch
and the blood from his cheeks. He staggered backward, passed his hand
swiftly across his forehead, recovered himself with a gesture of mingled
rage and despair, and, sinking on his knees beside the door, pressed his
hot temples against the crack.

"Do I know Lance Harriott?" said the voice. "Do I know the d----d
ruffian? Didn't I hunt him a year ago into the brush three miles from
the Crossing? Didn't we lose sight of him the very day he turned up yer
at this ranch, and got smuggled over into Monterey? Ain't it the same
man as killed Arkansaw Bob--Bob Ridley--the name he went by in Sonora?
And who was Bob Ridley, eh? Who? Why, you d----d old fool, it was Bob
Fairley--YOUR SON!"

The old man's voice rose querulous and indistinct.

"What are ye talkin' about?" interrupted the first speaker. "I tell you
I KNOW. Look at these pictures. I found 'em on his body. Look at 'em.
Pictures of you and your girl. Pr'aps you'll deny them. Pr'aps you'll
tell me I lie when I tell you HE told me he was your son; told me how he
ran away from you; how you were livin' somewhere in the mountains
makin' gold, or suthin' else, outer charcoal. He told me who he was as
a secret. He never let on he told it to any one else. And when I found
that the man who killed him, Lance Harriott, had been hidin' here, had
been sendin' spies all around to find out all about your son, had been
foolin' you and tryin' to ruin your gal as he had killed your boy, I
knew that HE knew it, too."

"LIAR!"

The door fell in with a crash. There was the sudden apparition of a
demoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks of
hair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror filled the
room. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled precipitately. The
man who had spoken sprang toward his rifle in the chimney corner.
But the movement was his last; a blinding flash and shattering report
interposed between him and his weapon.

The impulse carried him forward headlong into the fire, that hissed and
spluttered with his blood, and Lance Harriott with his smoking pistol,
strode past him to the door. Already far down the trail there were
hurried voices, the crack and crackling of impending branches growing
fainter and fainter in the distance. Lance turned back to the solitary
living figure--the old man.

Yet he might have been dead, too, he sat so rigid and motionless, his
fixed eyes staring vacantly at the body on the hearth. Before him on the
table lay the cheap photographs, one evidently of himself, taken in some
remote epoch of complexion, one of a child which Lance recognized as
Flip.

"Tell me," said Lance hoarsely, laying his quivering hand on the table,
"was Bob Ridley your son?"

"My son," echoed the old man in a strange, far-off voice, without
turning his eyes from the corpse--"My son--is--is--is there!" pointing
to the dead man. "Hush! Didn't he tell you so? Didn't you hear him say
it? Dead--dead--shot--shot!"

"Silence! are you crazy, man?" repeated Lance, tremblingly; "that is not
Bob Ridley, but a dog, a coward, a liar gone to his reckoning. Hear
me! If your son WAS Bob Ridley, I swear to God I never knew it, now
or--or--THEN. Do you hear me? Tell me! Do you believe me? Speak! You
shall speak."

He laid his hand almost menacingly on the old man's shoulder. Fairley
slowly raised his head. Lance fell back with a groan of horror. The weak
lips were wreathed with a feeble imploring smile, but the eyes wherein
the fretful, peevish, suspicious spirit had dwelt were blank and
tenantless; the flickering intellect that had lit them was blown out and
vanished.

Lance walked toward the door and remained motionless for a moment,
gazing into the night. When he turned back again toward the fire his
face was as colorless as the dead man's on the hearth; the fire of
passion was gone from his beaten eyes; his step was hesitating and slow.
He went up to the table.

"I say, old man," he said, with a strange smile and an odd, premature
suggestion of the infinite weariness of death in his voice, "you
wouldn't mind giving me this, would you?" and he took up the picture of
Flip. The old man nodded repeatedly. "Thank you," said Lance. He went
to the door, paused a moment, and returned. "Good-by, old man," he
said, holding out his hand. Fairley took it with a childish smile. "He's
dead," said the old man softly, holding Lance's hand, but pointing to
the hearth. "Yes," said Lance, with the faintest of smiles on the palest
of faces. "You feel sorry for any one that's dead, don't you?" Fairley
nodded again. Lance looked at him with eyes as remote as his own, shook
his head, and turned away. When he reached the door he laid his revolver
carefully, and, indeed, somewhat ostentatiously, upon a chair. But when
he stepped from the threshold he stopped a moment in the light of the
open door to examine the lock of a small derringer which he drew from
his pocket. He then shut the door carefully, and with the same slow,
hesitating step, felt his way into the night.

He had but one idea in his mind, to find some lonely spot; some spot
where the footsteps of man would never penetrate, some spot that would
yield him rest, sleep, obliteration, forgetfulness, and, above all,
where HE would be forgotten. He had seen such places; surely there were
many,--where bones were picked up of dead men who had faded from the
earth and had left no other record. If he could only keep his senses now
he might find such a spot, but he must be careful, for her little feet
went everywhere, and she must never see him again alive or dead. And in
the midst of his thoughts, and the darkness, and the storm, he heard a
voice at his side, "Lance, how long you have been!"

*****

Left to himself, the old man again fell into a vacant contemplation
of the dead body before him, until a stronger blast swept down like an
avalanche upon the cabin, burst through the ill-fastened door and broken
chimney, and, dashing the ashes and living embers over the floor, filled
the room with blinding smoke and flame. Fairley rose with a feeble cry,
and then, as if acted upon by some dominant memory, groped under the
bed until he found his buckskin bag and his precious crystal, and
fled precipitately from the room. Lifted by this second shock from his
apathy, he returned to the fixed idea of his life,--the discovery and
creation of the diamond,--and forgot all else. The feeble grasp that his
shaken intellect kept of the events of the night relaxed, the disguised
Lance, the story of his son, the murder, slipped into nothingness; there
remained only the one idea, his nightly watch by the diamond pit. The
instinct of long habit was stronger than the darkness or the onset of
the storm, and he kept his tottering way over stream and fallen timber
until he reached the spot. A sudden tremor seemed to shake the lambent
flame that had lured him on. He thought he heard the sound of voices;
there were signs of recent disturbance,--footprints in the sawdust! With
a cry of rage and suspicion, Fairley slipped into the pit and sprang
toward the nearest opening. To his frenzied fancy it had been tampered
with, his secret discovered, the fruit of his long labors stolen from
him that very night. With superhuman strength he began to open the pit,
scattering the half-charred logs right and left, and giving vent to the
suffocating gases that rose from the now incandescent charcoal. At times
the fury of the gale would drive it back and hold it against the sides
of the pit, leaving the opening free; at times, following the blind
instinct of habit, the demented man would fall upon his face and bury
his nose and mouth in the wet bark and sawdust. At last, the paroxysm
past, he sank back again in his old apathetic attitude of watching,
the attitude he had so often kept beside his sylvan crucible. In this
attitude and in silence he waited for the dawn.

It came with a hush in the storm; it came with blue openings in the
broken up and tumbled heavens; it came with stars that glistened first,
and then paled, and at last sank drowning in those deep cerulean lakes;
it came with those cerulean lakes broadening into vaster seas, whose
shores expanded at last into one illimitable ocean, cerulean no more,
but flecked with crimson and opal dyes; it came with the lightly lifted
misty curtain of the day, torn and rent on crag and pine top, but always
lifting, lifting. It came with the sparkle of emerald in the grasses,
and the flash of diamonds in every spray, with a whisper in the
awakening woods, and voices in the traveled roads and trails.

The sound of these voices stopped before the pit, and seemed to
interrogate the old man. He came, and, putting his finger on his lips,
made a sign of caution. When three or four men had descended he bade
them follow him, saying, weakly and disjointedly, but persistently: "My
boy--my son Robert--came home--came home at last--here with Flip--both
of them--come and see!"

He had reached a little niche or nest in the hillside, and stopped and
suddenly drew aside a blanket. Beneath it, side by side, lay Flip and
Lance, dead, with their cold hands clasped in each other's.

"Suffocated!" said two or three, turning with horror toward the broken
up and still smouldering pit.

"Asleep!" said the old man. "Asleep! I've seen 'em lying that way when
they were babies together. Don't tell me! Don't say I don't know my
own flesh and blood! So! so! So, my pretty ones!" He stooped and kissed
them. Then, drawing the blanket over them gently, he rose and said
softly, "Good night!"