“What?” said Flip, trying to disengage herself.

“My coat and trousers.”

Flip laughed, which encouraged Lance to another attempt to kiss her. 
She evaded it by diving her head into his waistcoat, and saying,
“There’s father.”

“But he’s gone to clear away that tree,” suggested Lance.

One of Flip’s significant silences followed.

“Oh, I see,” he laughed.  “That was a plan to get him away!  Ah!” She had released herself.

“Why did you come like that?” she said, pointing to his wig and blanket.

“To see if you’d know me,” he responded.

“No,” said Flip, dropping her eyes.  “It’s to keep other people from knowing you.  You’re hidin’ agin.”

“I am,” returned Lance; “but,” he interrupted, “it’s only the same old thing.”

“But you wrote from Monterey that it was all over,” she persisted.

“So it would have been,” he said gloomily, “but for some dog down here who is hunting up an old scent.  I’ll spot him yet, and”—­He stopped suddenly, with such utter abstraction of hatred in his fixed and glittering eyes that she almost feared him.  She laid her hand quite unconsciously on his arm.  He grasped it; his face changed.

“I couldn’t wait any longer to see you, Flip, so I came here anyway,” he went on.  “I thought to hang round and get a chance to speak to you first, when I fell afoul of the old man.  He didn’t know me, and tumbled right in my little game.  Why, do you believe he wants to hire me for my grub and liquor, to act as a sort of sentry over you and the ranch?” And here he related with great gusto the substance of his interview.  “I reckon as he’s that suspicious,” he concluded, “I’d better play it out now as I’ve begun, only it’s mighty hard I can’t see you here before the fire in your fancy toggery, Flip, but must dodge in and out of the wet underbrush in these yer duds of yours that I picked up in the old place in the Gin and Ginger Woods.”

“Then you came here just to see me?” asked Flip.

“I did.”

“For only that?”

“Only that.”

Flip dropped her eyes.  Lance had got his other arm around her waist, but her resisting little hand was still potent.

“Listen,” she said at last without looking up, but apparently talking to the intruding arm, “when Dad comes I’ll get him to send you to watch the diamond pit.  It isn’t far; it’s warm, and”—­

“What?”

“I’ll come, after a bit, and see you.  Quit foolin’ now.  If you’d only have come here like yourself—­like—­like—­a white man.”

“The old man,” interrupted Lance, “would have just passed me on to the summit.  I couldn’t have played the lost fisherman on him at this time of year.”

“Ye could have been stopped at the Crossing by high water, you silly,” said the girl.  “It was.”  This grammatical obscurity referred to the stage-coach.

“Yes, but I might have been tracked to this cabin.  And look here, Flip,” he said, suddenly straightening himself, and lifting the girl’s face to a level with his own, “I don’t want you to lie any more for me.  It ain’t right.”