gin."

"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."

"All right. Ye needn't go to the pit, then, and I won't come."

"Flip!"

"And here's Dad coming. Quick!"

Lance chose to put his own in