Flip: a California Romance Page #2

"Flip: A California Romance" by Bret Harte is a charming novella set during the California Gold Rush era. The story centers around Flip, a young and spirited protagonist who navigates the complexities of love and ambition in the rugged landscape of the American West. With Harte's signature blend of humor and keen observation, the narrative explores themes of friendship, societal expectations, and the pursuit of happiness, all while showcasing the vibrant characters and rich tapestry of life during this transformative period in California's history. It captures the essence of romance and adventure, making it a delightful read for fans of classic literature.

• Short story

								

a shower of spray and leaped to the bank, he seemed to have accepted
his felonious 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 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. In that flash of
perception he saw that it was small, bare, and deeply freckled. In an
instant he grasped it firmly, and rose to his feet, dragging to his own
level as he did so, the struggling figure of a young girl.

"Leave me go!" she said, more ashamed than frightened.

Lance looked at her. She was scarcely more than fifteen, slight and
lithe, with a boyish flatness of breast and back. Her flushed face and
bare throat were absolutely peppered with minute brown freckles, like
grains of spent gunpowder. Her eyes, which were large and gray,
presented the singular spectacle of being also freckled,--at least they
were shot through in pupil and cornea with tiny spots like powdered
allspice. Her hair was even more remarkable in its tawny deer-skin
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