It was at best merely a rocky trail winding along a shelf of the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz range, yet the only road between the sea and the inland valley. The hoof-prints of a whole century of zigzagging mules were impressed on the soil, regularly soaked by winter rains and dried by summer suns during that period; the occasional ruts of heavy, rude, wooden wheels—long obsolete—were still preserved and visible. Weather-worn boulders and ledges, lying in the unclouded glare of an August sky, radiated a quivering heat that was intolerable, even while above them the masts of gigantic pines rocked their tops in the cold southwestern trades from the unseen ocean beyond. A red, burning dust lay everywhere, as if the heat were slowly and visibly precipitating itself.
The creaking of wheels and axles, the muffled plunge of hoofs, and the cough of a horse in the dust thus stirred presently broke the profound woodland silence. Then a dirty white canvas-covered emigrant wagon slowly arose with the dust along the ascent. It was travel-stained and worn, and with its rawboned horses seemed to have reached the last stage of its journey and fitness. The only occupants, a man and a girl, appeared to be equally jaded and exhausted, with the added querulousness of discontent in their sallow and badly nourished faces. Their voices, too, were not unlike the creaking they had been pitched to overcome, and there was an absence of reserve and consciousness in their speech, which told pathetically of an equal absence of society.
“It's no user talkin'! I tell ye, ye hain't got no more sense than a coyote! I'm sick and tired of it, doggoned if I ain't! Ye ain't no more use nor a hossfly,—and jest ez hinderin'! It was along o' you that we lost the stock at Laramie, and ef ye'd bin at all decent and takin', we'd hev had kempany that helped, instead of laggin' on yere alone!”
“What did ye bring me for?” retorted the girl shrilly. “I might hev stayed with Aunt Marty. I wasn't hankerin' to come.”
“Bring ye for?” repeated her father contemptuously; “I reckoned ye might he o' some account here, whar wimmin folks is skeerce, in the way o' helpin',—and mebbe gettin' yer married to some likely feller. Mighty much chance o' that, with yer yaller face and skin and bones.”
“Ye can't blame me for takin' arter you, dad,” she said, with a shrill laugh, but no other resentment of his brutality.
“Ye want somebody to take arter you—with a club,” he retorted angrily. “Ye hear! Wot's that ye're doin' now?”
She had risen and walked to the tail of the wagon. “Goin' to get out and walk. I'm tired o' bein' jawed at.”
She jumped into the road. The act was neither indignant nor vengeful; the frequency of such scenes had blunted their sting. She was probably “tired” of the quarrel, and ended it rudely. Her father, however, let fly a Parthian arrow.
“Ye needn't think I'm goin' to wait for ye, ez I hev! Ye've got to keep tetch with the team, or get left. And a good riddance of bad rubbidge.”
In reply the girl dived into the underwood beside the trail, picked a 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:—
“Don't go pertendin' ye don't know yer purty. Say, let me and you walk a bit and have a talk together.” But Libby had another idea in her mind and curtly dismissed him. Then she ran swiftly to the spring, for the words “The Doc will tell ye so, too” were ringing in her ears. The doctor who came with the two beautifully dressed women! HE—would tell her she was pretty! She had not dared to look at herself in that crystal mirror since that dreadful day two months ago. She would now.
It was a pretty place in the cool shade of the giant trees, and the hoof-marks of cattle drinking from the run beneath the pool had not disturbed the margin of that tranquil sylvan basin. For a moment she stood tremulous and uncertain, and then going up to the shining mirror, dropped on her knees before it with her thin red hands clasped on her lap. Unconsciously she had taken the attitude of prayer; perhaps there was something like it in her mind.
And then the light glanced full on the figure that she saw there!
It fell on a full oval face and throat guileless of fleck or stain, smooth as a child's and glowing with health; on large dark eyes, no longer sunk in their orbits, but filled with an eager, happy light; on bared arms now shapely in contour and cushioned with firm flesh; on a dazzling smile, the like of which had never been on the face of Liberty Jones before!
She rose to her feet, and yet lingered as if loath to part from this delightful vision. Then a fear overcame her that it was some trick of the water, and she sped swiftly back to the house to consult the little mirror which hung in her sleeping-room, but which she had never glanced at since the momentous day of the spring. She took it shyly into the sunshine, and found that it corroborated the reflection of the spring. That night she worked until late at the calico Doctor Ruysdael had sent her, and went to bed happy. The next day brought her Hoskins again with a feeble excuse of inquiring if she had a letter for the doctor, and she was surprised to find that he was reinforced by a stranger from Hoskins's farm, who was equally awkward and vaguely admiring. But the appearance of the TWO men produced a singular phase in her impressions and experience. She was no longer indignant at Hoskins, but she found relief in accepting the compliments of the stranger in preference, and felt a delight in Hoskins's discomfiture. Waya, promoted to the burlesque of a chaperone, grinned with infinite delight and understanding.
When at last the day came for the doctor's arrival, he was duly met by Hoskins, and as duly informed by that impressible subordinate of the great change in Liberty's appearance. But the doctor was far from being equally impressed with his factor's story, and indeed showed much more interest in the appearance of the stock which they met along the road. Once the doctor got out of the wagon to inspect a cow, and particularly the coat of a rough draught horse that had been turned out and put under Liberty's care. “His skin is like velvet,” said the doctor. “The girl evidently understands stock, and knows how to keep them in condition.”
“I reckon she's beginning to understand herself, too,” said Hoskins. “Golly! wait till ye see HER.”
The doctor DID see her, but with what feelings he did not as frankly express. She was not at the cabin when they arrived, but presently appeared from the direction of the spring where, for reasons of her own, she had evidently made her toilet. Doctor Ruysdael was astounded; Hoskins's praise was not exaggerated; and there was an added charm that Hoskins was not prepared for. She had put on a gown of her own making,—the secret toil of many a long night,—amateurishly fashioned from some cheap yellow calico the doctor had sent her, yet fitting her wonderfully, and showing every curve of her graceful figure. Unaccented by a corset,—an article she had never known,—even the lines of the stiff, unyielding calico had a fashion that was nymph-like and suited her unfettered limbs. Doctor Ruysdael was profoundly moved. Though a philosopher, he was practical. He found himself suddenly confronted not only by a beautiful girl, but a problem! It was impossible to keep the existence of this woodland nymph from the knowledge of his distant neighbors; it was equally impossible for him to assume the responsibility of keeping a goddess like this in her present position. He had noticed her previous improvement, but had never dreamed that pure and wholesome living could in two months work such a miracle. And he was to a certain degree responsible, HE had created her,—a beautiful Frankenstein, whose lustrous, appealing eyes were even now menacing his security and position.
Perhaps she saw trouble and perplexity in the face where she had expected admiration and pleasure, for a slight chill went over her as he quickly praised the appearance of the stock and spoke of her own improvement. But when they were alone, he turned to her abruptly.
“You said you had no wish to go to San Jose?”
“No.” Yet she was conscious that her greatest objection had been removed, and she colored faintly.
“Listen to me,” he said dryly. “You deserve a better position than this,—a better home and surroundings than you have here. You are older, too,—a woman almost,—and you must look ahead.”
A look of mingled fright, reproach, and appeal came into her eloquent face. “Yer wantin' to send me away?” she stammered.
“No,” he said frankly. “It is you who are GROWING away. This is no longer the place for you.”
“But I want to stay. I don't wanter go. I am—I WAS happy here.”
“But I'm thinking of giving up this place. It takes up too much of my time. You must be provided”—
“YOU are going away?” she said passionately.
“Yes.”
“Take me with you. I'll go anywhere!—to San Jose—-wherever you go. Don't turn me off as dad did, for I'll foller you as I never followed dad. I'll go with you—or I'll die!”
There was neither fear nor shame in her words; it was the outspoken instinct of the animal he had been rearing; he was convinced and appalled by it.
“I am returning to San Jose at once,” he said gravely. “You shall go with me—FOR THE PRESENT! Get yourself ready!”
He took her to San Jose, and temporarily to the house of a patient,—a widow lady,—while he tried, alone, to grapple with the problem that now confronted him. But that problem became more complicated at the end of the third day, by Liberty Jones falling suddenly and alarmingly ill. The symptoms were so grave that the doctor, in his anxiety, called in a brother physician in consultation. When the examination was over, the two men withdrew and stared at each other.
“Of course there is no doubt that the symptoms all point to slow arsenical poisoning,” said the consulting doctor.
“Yes,” said Ruysdael quickly, “yet it is utterly inexplicable, both as to motive and opportunity.”
“Humph!” said the other grimly, “young ladies take arsenic in minute doses to improve the complexion and promote tissue, forgetting that the effects are cumulative when they stop suddenly. Your young friend has 'sworn off' too quickly.”
“But it is impossible,” said Doctor Ruysdael impatiently. “She is a mere child—a country girl—ignorant of such habits.”
“Humph! the peasants in the Tyrol try it on themselves after noticing the effect on the coats of cattle.”
Doctor Ruysdael started. A recollection of the sleek draught horse flashed upon him. He rose and hastily re-entered the patient's room. In a few moments he returned. “Do you think I could remove her at once to the mountains?” he said gravely.
“Yes, with care and a return to graduated doses of the same poison; you know it's the only remedy just now,” answered the other.
By noon the next day the doctor and his patient had returned to the cabin, but Ruysdael himself carried the helpless Liberty Jones to the spring and deposited her gently beside it. “You may drink now,” he said gravely.
The girl did so eagerly, apparently imbibing new strength from the sparkling water. The doctor meanwhile coolly filled a phial from the same source, and made a hasty test of the contents by the aid of some other phials from his case. The result seemed to satisfy him. Then he said gravely:
“And THIS is the spring you had discovered?”
The girl nodded.
“And you and the cattle have daily used it?”
She nodded again wonderingly. Then she caught his hand appealingly.
“You won't send me away?”
He smiled oddly as he glanced from the waters of the hill to the brimming eyes. “No.”
“No-r,” tremulously, “go away—yourself?”
The doctor looked this time only into her eyes. There was a tremendous idea in his own, which seemed in some way to have solved that dreadful problem.
“No! We will stay here TOGETHER.”
Six months later there was a paragraph in the San Francisco press: “The wonderful Arsenical Spring in the Santa Cruz Mountain, known as 'Liberty Spring,' discovered by Doctor Ruysdael, has proved such a remarkable success that we understand the temporary huts for patients are to be shortly replaced by a magnificent Spa Hotel worthy of the spot, and the eligible villa sites it has brought into the market. It will be a source of pleasure to all to know that the beautiful nymph—a worthy successor to the far-famed 'Elise' of the German 'Brunnen'—who has administered the waters to so many grateful patients will still be in attendance, although it is rumored that she is shortly to become the wife of the distinguished discoverer.”
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