Flip: A California Romance | Page 5

hiding-place as a mere picnicking bower.
A slight breeze was unmistakably permeating the wood from the west.
Looking in that direction, Lance imagined that the shadow was less
dark, and although the undergrowth was denser, he struck off carelessly
toward it. As he went on, the wood became lighter and lighter;
branches, and presently leaves, were painted against the vivid blue of
the sky. He knew he must be near the summit, stopped, felt for his
revolver, and then lightly put the few remaining branches aside.
The full glare of the noonday sun at first blinded him. When he could
see more clearly, he found himself on the open western slope of the
mountain, which in the Coast Range was seldom wooded. The spiced
thicket stretched between him and the summit, and again between him
and the stage road that plunges from the terrace, like forked lightning
into the valley below. He could command all the approaches without
being seen. Not that this seemed to occupy his thoughts or cause him
any anxiety. His first act was to disencumber himself of his tattered

coat; he then filled and lighted his pipe, and stretched himself
full-length on the open hillside, as if to bleach in the fierce sun. While
smoking he carelessly perused the fragment of a newspaper which had
enveloped his tobacco, and being struck with some amusing paragraph,
read it half aloud again to some imaginary auditor, emphasizing its
humor with an 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