wild berry or two, stripped a wand of young hazel she had broken off,
and switching it at her side, skipped along on the outskirts of the
wood and ambled after the wagon. Seen in the full, merciless glare of a
Californian sky, she justified her father's description; thin and bony,
her lank frame outstripped the body of her ragged calico dress, which
was only kept on her shoulders by straps,--possibly her father's
cast-off braces. A boy's soft felt hat covered her head, and shadowed
her only notable feature, a pair of large dark eyes, looking larger for
the hollow temples which narrowed the frame in which they were set.
So long as the wagon crawled up the ascent the girl knew she could
easily keep up with it, or even distance the tired horses. She made one
or two incursions into the wood, returning like an animal from quest of
food, with something in her mouth, which she was tentatively chewing,
and once only with some inedible mandrono berries, plucked solely for
their brilliant coloring. It was very hot and singularly close; the
higher current of air had subsided, and, looking up, a singular haze
seemed to have taken its place between the treetops. Suddenly she heard
a strange, rumbling sound; an odd giddiness overtook her, and she was
obliged to clutch at a sapling to support herself; she laughed vacantly,
though a little frightened, and looked vaguely towards the summit of the
road; but the wagon had already disappeared. A strange feeling of
nausea then overcame her; she spat out the leaves she had been chewing,
disgustedly. But the sensation as quickly passed, and she once more
sought the trail and began slowly to follow the tracks of the wagon. The
air blew freshly, the treetops began again to rock over her head, and
the incident was forgotten.
Presently she paused; she must have missed the trail, for the wagon
tracks had ended abruptly before a large boulder that lay across the
mountain trail. She dipped into the woods again; here there were other
wagon tracks that confused her. It was like her dogged, stupid father
to miss the trail; she felt a gleam of malicious satisfaction at his
discomfiture. Sooner or later, he would have to retrace his steps and
virtually come back for her! She took up a position where two rough
wheel ruts and tracks intersected each other, one of which must be
the missing trail. She noticed, too, the broader hoof-prints of cattle
without the following wheel ruts, and instead of traces, the long smooth
trails made by the dragging of logs, and knew by these tokens that she
must be near the highway or some woodman's hut or ranch. She began to be
thirsty, and was glad, presently, when her quick, rustic ear caught
the tinkling of water. Yet it was not so easy to discover, and she was
getting footsore and tired again before she found it, some distance
away, in a gully coming from a fissure in a dislocated piece of outcrop.
It was beautifully clear, cold, and sparkling, with a slightly sweetish
taste, yet unlike the brackish “alkali” of the plains. It refreshed and
soothed her greatly, so much that, reclining against a tree, but where
she would be quite visible from the trail, her eyes closed dreamily, and
presently she slept.
When she awoke, the shafts of sunlight were striking almost level into
her eyes. She must have slept two hours. Her father had not returned;
she knew the passage of the wagon would have awakened her. She began to
feel strange, but not yet alarmed; it was only the uncertainty that made
her uneasy. Had her father really gone on by some other trail? Or had he
really hurried on and left her, as he said he would? The thought
brought an odd excitement to her rather than any fear. A sudden sense of
freedom, as if some galling chain had dropped from her, sent a singular
thrill through her frame. Yet she felt confused with her independence,
not knowing what to do with it, and momentarily dazzled with the
possible gift.
At this moment she heard voices, and the figures of two men appeared on
the trail.
They were talking earnestly, and walking as if familiar with the spot,
yet gazing around them as if at some novelty of the aspect.
“And look there,” said one; “there has been some serious disturbance of
that outcrop,” pointing in the direction of the spring; “the lower
part has distinctly subsided.” He spoke with a certain authority, and
dominance of position, and was evidently the superior, as he was the
elder of the two, although both were roughly dressed.
“Yes, it does kinder look as if it had lost its holt, like the ledge
yonder.”
“And you see I am right; the movement was from east to west,” continued
the elder man.
The girl could not comprehend what they said, and even thought them
a little silly. But she advanced towards them; at which they stopped
short, staring at her. With feminine instinct she addressed the more
important one:--
“Ye ain't passed no wagon nor team goin' on, hev ye?”
“What sort of wagon?” said the man.
“Em'grant wagon, two yaller hosses. Old man--my dad--drivin'.” She added
the latter kinship as a protecting influence against strangers, in spite
of her previous independence.
The men glanced at each other.
“How long ago?”
The girl suddenly remembered that she had slept two hours.
“Sens noon,” she said hesitatingly.
“Since the earthquake?”
“Wot's that?”
The man came impatiently towards her. “How did you come here?”
“Got outer the wagon to walk. I reckon dad missed the trail, and hez got
off somewhere where I can't find him.”
“What trail was he on,--where was he going?”
“Sank Hozay,* I reckon. He was goin' up the grade--side o' the hill; he
must hev turned off where there's a big rock hangin' over.”
* San Jose.
“Did you SEE him turn off?”
“No.”
The second man, who was in hearing distance, had turned away, and was
ostentatiously examining the sky and the treetops; the man who had
spoken to her joined him, and they said something in a low voice. They
turned again and came slowly towards her. She, from some obscure sense
of imitation, stared at the treetops and the sky as the second man had
done. But the first man now laid his hand kindly on her shoulder and
said, “Sit down.”
Then they told her there had been an earthquake so strong that it had
thrown down a part of the hillside, including the wagon trail. That a
wagon team and driver, such as she had described, had been carried down
with it, crushed to fragments, and buried under a hundred feet of rock
in the gulch below. A party had gone down to examine, but it would be
weeks perhaps before they found it, and she must be prepared for the
worst. She looked at them vaguely and with tearless eyes.
“Then ye reckon dad's dead?”
“We fear it.”
“Then wot's a-goin' to become o' me?” she said simply.
They glanced again at each other. “Have you no friends in California?”
said the elder man.
“Nary one.”
“What was your father going to do?”
“Dunno. I reckon HE didn't either.”
“You may stay here for the present,” said the elder man meditatively.
“Can you milk?”
The girl nodded. “And I suppose you know something about looking after
stock?” he continued.
The girl remembered that her father thought she didn't, but this was no
time for criticism, and she again nodded.
“Come with me,” said the older man, rising. “I suppose,” he added,
glancing at her ragged frock, “everything you have is in the wagon.”
She nodded, adding with the same cold naivete, “It ain't much!”
They walked on, the girl following; at times straying furtively on
either side, as if meditating an escape in the woods,--which indeed
had once or twice been vaguely in her thoughts,--but chiefly to avoid
further questioning and not to hear what the men said to each other. For
they were evidently speaking of her, and she could not help hearing
the younger repeat her words, “Wot's agoin' to become o' me?” with
considerable amusement, and the addition: “She'll take care of herself,
you bet! I call that remark o' hers the richest thing out.”
“And I call the state of things that provoked it--monstrous!” said the
elder man grimly. “You don't know the lives of these people.”
Presently they came to an open clearing in the forest, yet so incomplete
that many of the felled trees, partly lopped of their boughs, still
lay where they had fallen. There was a cabin or dwelling of unplaned,
unpainted boards; very simple in structure, yet made in a workmanlike
fashion, quite unlike the usual log cabin she had seen. This made her
think that the elder man was a “towny,” and not a frontiersman like the
other.
As they approached the cabin the elder man stopped, and turning to her,
said:--
“Do you know Indians?”
The girl started, and then recovering herself with a quick laugh:
“G'lang!--there ain't any Injins here!”
“Not the kind YOU mean; these are very peaceful. There's a squaw here
whom you will”--he stopped, hesitated as he looked critically at the
girl, and then corrected himself--“who will help you.”
He pushed open the cabin door and showed an interior, equally simple but
well joined and fitted,--a marvel of neatness and finish to the frontier
girl's eye. There were shelves and cupboards and other conveniences, yet
with no ostentation of refinement to frighten her rustic sensibilities.
Then he pushed open another door leading into a shed and called “Waya.”
A stout, undersized Indian woman, fitted with a coarse cotton gown, but
cleaner and more presentable than the girl's one frock, appeared in the
doorway. “This is Waya, who attends to the cooking and cleaning,” he
said; “and by the way, what is your name?”
“Libby Jones.”
He took a small memorandum book and a “stub” of pencil from his pocket.
“Elizabeth Jones,” he said, writing it down. The girl interposed a long
red hand.
“No,” she interrupted sharply, “not Elizabeth, but Libby, short for
Lib'rty.”
“Liberty?”
“Yes.”
“Liberty Jones, then. Well, Waya, this is Miss Jones, who will look
after the cows and calves--and the dairy.” Then glancing at her torn
dress, he added: “You'll find some clean things in there, until I can
send up something from San Jose. Waya will show you.”
Without further speech he turned away with the other man. When they were
some distance from the cabin, the younger remarked:--
“More like a boy than a girl, ain't she?”
“So much the better for her work,” returned the elder grimly.
“I reckon! I was only thinkin' she didn't han'some much either as a boy
or girl, eh, doctor?” he pursued.
“Well! as THAT won't make much difference to the cows, calves, or the
dairy, it needn't trouble US,” returned the doctor dryly. But here a
sudden outburst of laughter from the cabin made them both turn in that
direction. They were in time to see Liberty Jones dancing out of the
cabin door in a large cotton pinafore, evidently belonging to the
squaw, who was following her with half-laughing, half-frightened
expostulations. The two men stopped and gazed at the spectacle.
“Don't seem to be takin' the old man's death very pow'fully,” said the
younger, with a laugh.
“Quite as much as he deserved, I daresay,” said the doctor curtly. “If
the accident had happened to HER, he would have whined and whimpered to
us for the sake of getting something, but have been as much relieved,
you may be certain. SHE'S too young and too natural to be a hypocrite
yet.”
Suddenly the laughter ceased and Liberty Jones's voice arose, shrill
but masterful: “Thar, that'll do! Quit now! You jest get back to your
scrubbin'--d'ye hear? I'm boss o' this shanty, you bet!”
The doctor turned with a grim smile to his companion. “That's the only
thing that bothered me, and I've been waiting for. She's settled it.
She'll do. Come.”
They turned away briskly through the wood. At the end of half an hour's
walk they found the team that had brought them there in waiting, and
drove towards San Jose. It was nearly ten miles before they passed
another habitation or trace of clearing. And by this time night had
fallen upon the cabin they had left, and upon the newly made orphan and
her Indian companion, alone and contented in that trackless solitude.
*****
Liberty Jones had been a year at the cabin. In that time she had learned
that her employer's name was Doctor Ruysdael, that he had a lucrative
practice in San Jose, but had also “taken up” a league or two of wild
forest land in the Santa Cruz range, which he preserved and held after
a fashion of his own, which gave him the reputation of being a “crank”
among the very few neighbors his vast possessions permitted, and the
equally few friends his singular tastes allowed him. It was believed
that a man owning such an enormous quantity of timber land, who should
refuse to set up a sawmill and absolutely forbid the felling of trees;
who should decline to connect it with the highway to Santa Cruz, and
close it against improvement and speculation, had given sufficient
evidence of his insanity; but when to this was added the rumor that he
himself was not only devoid of the human instinct of hunting the wild
animals with which his domain abounded, but that he held it so sacred to
their use as to forbid the firing of a gun within his limits, and that
these restrictions were further preserved and “policed” by the scattered
remnants of a band of aborigines,--known as “digger Injins,”--it was
seriously hinted that his eccentricity had acquired a political and
moral significance, and demanded legislative interference. But the
doctor was a rich man, a necessity to his patients, a good marksman,
and, it was rumored, did not include his fellow men among the animals he
had a distaste for killing.
Of all this, however, Liberty knew little and cared less. The solitude
appealed to her sense of freedom; she did not “hanker” after a society
she had never known. At the end of the first week, when the doctor
communicated to her briefly, by letter, the convincing proofs of the
death of her father and his entombment beneath the sunken cliff, she
accepted the fact without comment or apparent emotion. Two months
later, when her only surviving relative, “Aunt Marty,” of Missouri,
acknowledged the news--communicated by Doctor Ruysdael--with Scriptural
quotations and the cheerful hope that it “would be a lesson to her”
and she would “profit in her new place,” she left her aunt's letter
unanswered.
She looked after the cows and calves with an interest that was almost
possessory, patronized and played with the squaw,--yet made her feel
her inferiority,--and moved among the peaceful aborigines with
the domination of a white woman and a superior. She tolerated the
half-monthly visits of “Jim Hoskins,” the young companion of the doctor,
who she learned was the doctor's factor and overseer of the property,
who lived seven miles away on an agricultural clearing, and whose
control of her actions was evidently limited by the doctor,--for the
doctor's sake alone. Nor was Mr. Hoskins inclined to exceed those
limits. He looked upon her as something abnormal,--a “crank” as
remarkable in her way as her patron was in his, neuter of sex and vague
of race, and he simply restricted his supervision to the bringing
and taking of messages. She remained sole queen of the domain. A rare
straggler from the main road, penetrating this seclusion, might have
scarcely distinguished her from Waya, in her coarse cotton gown and
slouched hat, except for the free stride which contrasted with her
companion's waddle. Once, in following an estrayed calf, she had
crossed the highway and been saluted by a passing teamster in the digger
dialect; yet the mistake left no sting in her memory. And, like the
digger, she shrank from that civilization which had only proved a hard
taskmaster.
The sole touch of human interest she had in her surroundings was in the
rare visits of the doctor and his brief but sincere commendation of
her rude and rustic work. It is possible that the strange, middle-aged,
gray-haired, intellectual man, whose very language was at times
mysterious and unintelligible to her, and whose suggestion of power awed
her, might have touched some untried filial chord in her being. Although
she felt that, save for absolute freedom, she was little more to him
than she had been to her father, yet he had never told her she had
“no sense,” that she was “a hindrance,” and he had even praised her
performance of her duties. Eagerly as she looked for his coming, in
his actual presence she felt a singular uneasiness of which she was not
entirely ashamed, and if she was relieved at his departure, it none
the less left her to a delightful memory of him, a warm sense of his
approval, and a fierce ambition to be worthy of it, for which she would
have sacrificed herself or the other miserable retainers about her, as a
matter of course. She had driven Waya and the other squaws far along
the sparse tableland pasture in search of missing stock; she herself
had lain out all night on the rocks beside an ailing heifer. Yet, while
satisfied to earn his praise for the performance of her duty, for some
feminine reason she thought more frequently of a casual remark he had
made on his last visit: “You are stronger and more healthy in this
air,” he had said, looking critically into her face. “We have got that
abominable alkali out of your system, and wholesome food will do the
rest.” She was not sure she had quite understood him, but she remembered
that she had felt her face grow hot when he spoke,--perhaps because she
had not understood him.
His next visit was a day or two delayed, and in her anxiety she had
ventured as far as the highway to earnestly watch for his coming. From
her hiding-place in the underwood she could see the team and Jim Hoskins
already waiting for him. Presently she saw him drive up to the trail
in a carryall with a party of ladies and gentlemen. He alighted, bade
“Good-by” to the party, and the team turned to retrace its course. But
in that single moment she had been struck and bewildered by what
seemed to her the dazzlingly beautiful apparel of the women, and their
prettiness. She felt a sudden consciousness of her own coarse, shapeless
calico gown, her straggling hair, and her felt hat, and a revulsion
of feeling seized her. She crept like a wounded animal out of the
underwood, and then ran swiftly and almost fiercely back towards the
cabin. She ran so fast that for a time she almost kept pace with the
doctor and Hoskins in the wagon on the distant trail. Then she dived
into the underwood again, and making a short cut through the
forest, came at the end of two hours within hailing distance of the
cabin,--footsore and exhausted, in spite of the strange excitement that
had driven her back. Here she thought she heard voices--his voice
among the rest--calling her, but the same singular revulsion of feeling
hurried her vaguely on again, even while she experienced a foolish
savage delight in not answering the summons. In this erratic wandering
she came upon the spring she had found on her first entrance in the
forest a year ago, and drank feverishly a second time at its trickling
source. She could see that since her first visit it had worn a great
hollow below the tree roots and now formed a shining, placid pool. As
she stooped to look at it, she suddenly observed that it reflected her
whole figure as in a cruel mirror,--her slouched hat and loosened
hair, her coarse and shapeless gown, her hollow cheeks and dry yellow
skin,--in all their hopeless, uncompromising details. She uttered a
quick, angry, half-reproachful cry, and turned again to fly. But she had
not gone far before she came upon the hurrying figures and anxious faces
of the doctor and Hoskins. She stopped, trembling and irresolute.
“Ah,” said the doctor, in a tone of frank relief. “Here you are! I was
getting worried about you. Waya said you had been gone since morning!”
He stopped and looked at her attentively. “Is anything the matter?”
His evident concern sent a warm glow over her chilly frame, and yet the
strange sensation remained. “No--no!” she stammered.
Doctor Ruysdael turned to Hoskins. “Go back and tell Waya I've found
her.”
Libby felt that the doctor only wanted to get rid of his companion, and
became awed again.
“Has anybody been bothering you?”
“No.”
“Have the diggers frightened you?”
“No”--with a gesture of contempt.
“Have you and Waya quarreled?”
“Nary”--with a faint, tremulous smile.
He still stared at her, and then dropped his blue eyes musingly. “Are
you lonely here? Would you rather go to San Jose?”
Like a flash the figures of the two smartly dressed women started up
before her again, with every detail of their fresh and wholesome finery
as cruelly distinct as had been her own shapeless ugliness in the mirror
of the spring. “No! NO!” she broke out vehemently and passionately.
“Never!”
He smiled gently. “Look here! I'll send you up some books. You
read--don't you?” She nodded quickly. “Some magazines and papers. Odd I
never thought of it before,” he added half musingly. “Come along to the
cabin. And,” he stopped again and said decisively, “the next time you
want anything, don't wait for me to come, but write.”
A few days after he left she received a package of books,--an odd
collection of novels, magazines, and illustrated journals of the period.
She received them eagerly as an evidence of his concern for her, but it
is to be feared that her youthful nature found little satisfaction in
the gratification of fancy. Many of the people she read of were strange
to her; many of the incidents related seemed to her mere lies; some
tales which treated of people in her own sphere she found profoundly
uninteresting. In one of the cheaper magazines she chanced upon a
fashion plate; she glanced eagerly through all the others for a like
revelation until she got a dozen together, when she promptly relegated
the remaining literature to a corner and oblivion. The text accompanying
the plates was in a jargon not always clear, but her instinct supplied
the rest. She dispatched by Hoskins a note to Doctor Ruysdael: “Please
send me some brite kalikers and things for sewing. You told me to ask.”
A few days later brought the response in a good-sized parcel.
Yet this did not keep her from her care of the stock nor her rambles in
the forest; she was quick to utilize her rediscovery of the spring for
watering the cattle; it was not so far afield as the half-dried creek in
the canyon, and was a quiet sylvan spot. She ate her frugal midday meal
there and drank of its waters, and, secure in her seclusion, bathed
there and made her rude toilet when the cows were driven home. But she
did not again look into its mirrored surface when it was tranquil!
And so a month passed. But when Doctor Ruysdael was again due at the
cabin, a letter was brought by Hoskins, with the news that he was called
away on professional business down the coast, and could not come until
two weeks later. In the disappointment that overcame her, she did not at
first notice that Hoskins was gazing at her with a singular expression,
which was really one of undisguised admiration. Never having seen this
before in the eyes of any man who looked at her, she referred it to some
vague “larking” or jocularity, for which she was in no mood.
“Say, Libby! you're gettin' to be a right smart-lookin' gal. Seems to
agree with ye up here,” said Hoskins with an awkward laugh. “Darned ef
ye ain't lookin' awful purty!”
“G'long!” said Liberty Jones, more than ever convinced of his badinage.
“Fact,” said Hoskins energetically. “Why, Doc would tell ye so, too. See
ef he don't!”
At this Liberty Jones felt her face grow hot. “You jess get!” she said,
turning away in as much embarrassment as anger. Yet he hovered near
her with awkward attentions that pleased while it still angered her.
He offered to go with her to look up the cows; she flatly declined, yet
with a strange satisfaction in his evident embarrassment. This may have
lent some animation to her face, for he drew a long breath and said:--