“Where?”

“That’s telling,” she answered shortly.

“What’s your name?” asked Lance, after a steep scramble and a drop into the ravine.

“Flip.”

“What?”

“Flip.”

“I mean your first name,—­your front name.”

“Flip.”

“Flip!  Oh, short for Felipa!”

“It ain’t Flipper,—­it’s Flip.”  And she relapsed into silence.

“You don’t ask me mine?” suggested Lance.

She did not vouchsafe a reply.

“Then you don’t want to know?”

“Maybe Dad will.  You can lie to him.”

This direct answer apparently sustained the agreeable homicide for some moments.  He moved onward, silently exuding admiration.

“Only,” added Flip, with a sudden caution, “you’d better agree with me.”

The trail here turned again abruptly and reentered the canon.  Lance looked up, and noticed they were almost directly beneath the bay thicket and the plateau that towered far above them.  The trail here showed signs of clearing, and the way was marked by felled trees and stumps of pines.

“What does your father do here?” he finally asked.  Flip remained silent, swinging the revolver.  Lance repeated his question.

“Burns charcoal and makes diamonds,” said Flip, looking at him from the corners of her eyes.

“Makes diamonds?” echoed Lance.

Flip nodded her head.

“Many of ’em?” he continued carelessly.

“Lots.  But they’re not big,” she returned, with a sidelong glance.

“Oh, they’re not big?” said Lance gravely.

They had by this time reached a small staked inclosure, whence the sudden fluttering and cackle of poultry welcomed the return of the evident mistress of this sylvan retreat.  It was scarcely imposing.  Further on, a cooking stove under a tree, a saddle and bridle, a few household implements scattered about, indicated the “ranch.”  Like most pioneer clearings, it was simply a disorganized raid upon nature that had left behind a desolate battlefield strewn with waste and decay.  The fallen trees, the crushed thicket, the splintered limbs, the rudely torn-up soil, were made hideous by their grotesque juxtaposition with the wrecked fragments of civilization, in empty cans, broken bottles, battered hats, soleless boots, frayed stockings, cast-off rags, and the crowning absurdity of the twisted-wire skeleton of a hooped skirt hanging from a branch.  The wildest defile, the densest thicket, the most virgin solitude, was less dreary and forlorn than this first footprint of man.  The only redeeming feature of this prolonged bivouac was the cabin itself.  Built of the half-cylindrical strips of pine bark, and thatched with the same material, it had a certain picturesque rusticity.  But this was an accident of economy rather than taste, for which Flip apologized by saying that the bark of the pine was “no good” for charcoal.