For six months the sea fogs monotonously came and went along the
Monterey coast; for six months they beleaguered the Coast Range with
afternoon sorties of white hosts that regularly swept over the mountain
crest, and were as regularly beaten back again by the leveled lances of
the morning sun. For six months that white veil which had once hidden
Lance Harriott in its folds returned without him. For that amiable
outlaw no longer needed disguise or hiding-place. The swift wave of
pursuit that had dashed him on the summit had fallen back, and the next
day was broken and scattered. Before the week had passed, a regular
judicial inquiry relieved his crime of premeditation, and showed it to
be a rude duel of two armed and equally desperate men. From a secure
vantage in a seacoast town Lance challenged a trial by his peers, and,
as an already prejudged man escaping from his executioners, obtained a
change of venue. Regular justice, seated by the calm Pacific, found
the action of an interior, irregular jury rash and hasty. Lance was
liberated on bail.
The Postmaster at Fisher's Crossing had just received the weekly mail
and express from San Francisco, and was engaged in examining it. It
consisted of five letters and two parcels. Of these, three of the
letters and the two parcels were directed to Flip. It was not the
first time during the last six months that this extraordinary event had
occurred, and the curiosity of the Crossing was duly excited. As Flip
had never called personally for the letters or parcels, but had sent one
of her wild, irregular scouts or henchmen to bring them, and as she was
seldom seen at the Crossing or on the stage road, that curiosity was
never satisfied. The disappointment to the Postmaster--a man past the
middle age--partook of a sentimental nature. He looked at the letters
and parcels; he looked at his watch; it was yet early, he could
return by noon. He again examined the addresses; they were in the same
handwriting as the previous letters. His mind was made up, he would
deliver them himself. The poetic, soulful side of his mission was
delicately indicated by a pale blue necktie, a clean shirt, and a small
package of gingernuts, of which Flip was extravagantly fond.
The common road to Fairley's Ranch was by the stage turnpike to a point
below the Gin and Ginger Woods, where the prudent horseman usually left
his beast and followed the intersecting trail afoot. It was here that
the Postmaster suddenly observed on the edge of the wood the figure of
an elegantly-dressed woman; she was walking slowly, and apparently at
her ease; one hand held her skirts lightly gathered between her gloved
fingers, the other slowly swung a riding whip. Was it a picnic of some
people from Monterey or Santa Cruz? The spectacle was novel enough to
justify his coming nearer. Suddenly she withdrew into the wood; he lost
sight of her; she was gone. He remembered, however, that Flip was
still to be seen, and as the steep trail was beginning to tax all his
energies, he was fain to hurry forward. The sun was nearly vertical when
he turned into the canyon, and saw the bark roof of the cabin beyond. At
almost the same moment Flip appeared, flushed and panting, in the road
before him.
“You've got something for me,” she said, pointing to the parcel and
letters. Completely taken by surprise, the Postmaster mechanically
yielded them up, and as instantly regretted it. “They're paid for,”
continued Flip, observing his hesitation.
“That's so,” stammered the official of the Crossing, seeing his last
chance of knowing the contents of the parcel vanish; “but I thought ez
it's a valooable package, maybe ye might want to examine it to see that
it was all right afore ye receipted for it.”
“I'll risk it,” said Flip, coolly, “and if it ain't right I'll let ye
know.”
As the girl seemed inclined to retire with her property, the Postmaster
was driven to other conversation. “We ain't had the pleasure of seeing
you down at the Crossing for a month o' Sundays,” he began, with airy
yet pronounced gallantry. “Some folks let on you was keepin' company
with some feller like Bijah Brown, and you were getting a little too
set up for the Crossing.” The individual here mentioned being the county
butcher, and supposed to exhibit his hopeless affection for Flip by
making a long and useless divergence from his weekly route to enter the
canyon for “orders,” Flip did not deem it necessary to reply. “Then I
allowed how ez you might have company,” he continued; “I reckon there's
some city folks up at the summit. I saw a mighty smart, fash'n'ble gal
cavorting round. Had no end o' style and fancy fixin's. That's my kind,
I tell you. I just weaken on that sort o' gal,” he continued, in the
firm belief that he had awakened Flip's jealousy, as he glanced at her
well-worn homespun frock, and found her eyes suddenly fixed on his own.
“Strange I ain't got to see her yet,” she replied coolly, shouldering
her parcel, and quite ignoring any sense of obligation to him for his
extra-official act.
“But you might get to see her at the edge of the Gin and Ginger Woods,”
he persisted feebly, in a last effort to detain her; “if you'll take a
pasear there with me.” Flip's only response was to walk on toward the
cabin, whence, with a vague complimentary suggestion of “droppin' in to
pass the time o' day” with her father, the Postmaster meekly followed.
The paternal Fairley, once convinced that his daughter's new companion
required no pecuniary or material assistance from his hands, relaxed
to the extent of entering into a querulous confidence with him, during
which Flip took the opportunity of slipping away. As Fairley had that
infelicitous tendency of most weak natures, to unconsciously exaggerate
unimportant details in their talk, the Postmaster presently became
convinced that the butcher was a constant and assiduous suitor of
Flip's. The absurdity of his sending parcels and letters by post when he
might bring them himself did not strike the official. On the contrary,
he believed it to be a master stroke of cunning. Fired by jealousy and
Flip's indifference, he “deemed it his duty”--using that facile form of
cowardly offensiveness--to betray Flip.
Of which she was happily oblivious. Once away from the cabin, she
plunged into the woods, with the parcel swung behind her like a
knapsack. Leaving the trail, she presently struck off in a straight line
through cover and underbrush with the unerring instinct of an animal,
climbing hand over hand the steepest ascent, or fluttering like a bird
from branch to branch down the deepest declivity. She soon reached
that part of the trail where the susceptible Postmaster had seen the
fascinating unknown. Assuring herself she was not followed, she crept
through the thicket until she reached a little waterfall and basin that
had served the fugitive Lance for a bath. The spot bore signs of later
and more frequent occupancy, and when Flip carefully removed some bark
and brushwood from a cavity in the rock and drew forth various folded
garments, it was evident she had used it as a sylvan dressing-room. Here
she opened the parcel; it contained a small and delicate shawl of yellow
China crepe. Flip instantly threw it over her shoulders and stepped
hurriedly toward the edge of the wood. Then she began to pass backward
and forward before the trunk of a tree. At first nothing was visible on
the tree, but a closer inspection showed a large pane of ordinary window
glass stuck in the fork of the branches. It was placed at such a cunning
angle against the darkness of the forest opening that it made a soft and
mysterious mirror, not unlike a Claude Lorraine glass, wherein not only
the passing figure of the young girl was seen, but the dazzling green
and gold of the hillside, and the far-off silhouetted crests of the
Coast Range.
But this was evidently only a prelude to a severer rehearsal. When she
returned to the waterfall she unearthed from her stores a large piece
of yellow soap and some yards of rough cotton “sheeting.” These she
deposited beside the basin and again crept to the edge of the wood to
assure herself that she was alone. Satisfied that no intruding foot
had invaded that virgin bower, she returned to her bath and began
to undress. A slight wind followed her, and seemed to whisper to the
circumjacent trees. It appeared to waken her sister naiads and nymphs,
who, joining their leafy fingers, softly drew around her a gently moving
band of trembling lights and shadows, of flecked sprays and inextricably
mingled branches, and involved her in a chaste sylvan obscurity, veiled
alike from pursuing god or stumbling shepherd. Within these hallowed
precincts was the musical ripple of laughter and falling water, and at
times the glimpse of a lithe brier-caught limb, or a ray of sunlight
trembling over bright flanks, or the white austere outline of a childish
bosom.
When she drew again the leafy curtain, and once more stepped out of
the wood, she was completely transformed. It was the figure that had
appeared to the Postmaster; the slight, erect, graceful form of a
young woman modishly attired. It was Flip, but Flip made taller by the
lengthened skirt and clinging habiliments of fashion. Flip freckled,
but, through the cunning of a relief of yellow color in her gown, her
piquant brown-shot face and eyes brightened and intensified until she
seemed like a spicy odor made visible. I cannot affirm that the judgment
of Flip's mysterious modiste was infallible, or that the taste of
Mr. Lance Harriott, her patron, was fastidious; enough that it was
picturesque, and perhaps not more glaring and extravagant than the color
in which Spring herself had once clothed the sere hillside where Flip
was now seated. The phantom mirror in the tree fork caught and held her
with the sky, the green leaves, the sunlight and all the graciousness
of her surroundings, and the wind gently tossed her hair and the gay
ribbons of her gypsy hat. Suddenly she started. Some remote sound in
the trail below, inaudible to any ear less fine than hers, arrested her
breathing. She rose swiftly and darted into cover.
Ten minutes passed. The sun was declining; the white fog was beginning
to creep over the Coast Range. From the edge of the wood Cinderella
appeared, disenchanted, and in her homespun garments. The clock had
struck--the spell was past. As she disappeared down the trail even
the magic mirror, moved by the wind, slipped from the tree top to the
ground, and became a piece of common glass.