Even to the eye of the most inexperienced traveler there was no doubt that Buena Vista was a “played-out” mining camp. There, seamed and scarred by hydraulic engines, was the old hillside, over whose denuded surface the grass had begun to spring again in fitful patches; there were the abandoned heaps of tailings already blackened by sun and rain, and worn into mounds like ruins of masonry; there were the waterless ditches, like giant graves, and the pools of slumgullion, now dried into shining, glazed cement. There were two or three wooden “stores,” from which the windows and doors had been taken and conveyed to the newer settlement of Wynyard's Gulch. Four or five buildings that still were inhabited—the blacksmith's shop, the post-office, a pioneer's cabin, and the old hotel and stage-office—only accented the general desolation. The latter building had a remoteness of prosperity far beyond the others, having been a wayside Spanish-American posada, with adobe walls of two feet in thickness, that shamed the later shells of half-inch plank, which were slowly warping and cracking like dried pods in the oven-like heat.
The proprietor of this building, Colonel Swinger, had been looked upon by the community as a person quite as remote, old-fashioned, and inconsistent with present progress as the house itself. He was an old Virginian, who had emigrated from his decaying plantation on the James River only to find the slaves, which he had brought with him, freed men when they touched Californian soil; to be driven by Northern progress and “smartness” out of the larger cities into the mountains, to fix himself at last, with the hopeless fatuity of his race, upon an already impoverished settlement; to sink his scant capital in hopeless shafts and ledges, and finally to take over the decaying hostelry of Buena Vista, with its desultory custom and few, lingering, impecunious guests. Here, too, his old Virginian ideas of hospitality were against his financial success; he could not dun nor turn from his door those unfortunate prospectors whom the ebbing fortunes of Buena Vista had left stranded by his side.
Colonel Swinger was sitting in a wicker-work rocking-chair on the veranda of his hotel—sipping a mint julep which he held in his hand, while he gazed into the dusty distance. Nothing could have convinced him that he was not performing a serious part of his duty as hotel-keeper in this attitude, even though there were no travelers expected, and the road at this hour of the day was deserted. On a bench at his side Larry Hawkins stretched his lazy length,—one foot dropped on the veranda, and one arm occasionally groping under the bench for his own tumbler of refreshment. Apart from this community of occupation, there was apparently no interchange of sentiment between the pair. The silence had continued for some moments, when the colonel put down his glass and gazed earnestly into the distance.
“Seein' anything?” remarked the man on the bench, who had sleepily regarded him.
“No,” said the colonel, “that is—it's only Dick Ruggles crossin' the road.”
“Thought you looked a little startled, ez if you'd seen that ar wanderin' stranger.”
“When I see that wandering stranger, sah,” said the colonel decisively, “I won't be sittin' long in this yer chyar. I'll let him know in about ten seconds that I don't harbor any vagrants prowlin' about like poor whites or free niggers on my propahty, sah!”
“All the same, I kinder wish ye did see him, for you'd be settled in YOUR mind and I'd be easier in MINE, ef you found out what he was doin' round yer, or ye had to admit that it wasn't no LIVIN' man.”
“What do you mean?” said the colonel, testily facing around in his chair.
His companion also altered his attitude by dropping his other foot to the floor, sitting up, and leaning lazily forward with his hands clasped.
“Look yer, colonel. When you took this place, I felt I didn't have no call to tell ye all I know about it, nor to pizen yer mind by any darned fool yarns I mout hev heard. Ye know it was one o' them old Spanish haciendas?”
“I know,” said the colonel loftily, “that it was held by a grant from Charles the Fifth of Spain, just as my propahty on the James River was given to my people by King James of England, sah!”
“That ez as may be,” returned his companion, in lazy indifference; “though I reckon that Charles the Fifth of Spain and King James of England ain't got much to do with what I'm goin' to tell ye. Ye see, I was here long afore YOUR time, or any of the boys that hev now cleared out; and at that time the hacienda belonged to a man named Juan Sobriente. He was that kind o' fool that he took no stock in mining. When the boys were whoopin' up the place and finding the color everywhere, and there was a hundred men working down there in the gulch, he was either ridin' round lookin' up the wild horses he owned, or sittin' with two or three lazy peons and Injins that was fed and looked arter by the priests. Gosh! now I think of it, it was mighty like YOU when you first kem here with your niggers. That's curious, too, ain't it?”
He had stopped, gazing with an odd, superstitious wonderment at the colonel, as if overcome by this not very remarkable coincidence. The colonel, overlooking or totally oblivious to its somewhat uncomplimentary significance, simply said, “Go on. What about him?”
“Well, ez I was sayin', he warn't in it nohow, but kept on his reg'lar way when the boom was the biggest. Some of the boys allowed it was mighty oncivil for him to stand off like that, and others—when he refused a big pile for his hacienda and the garden, that ran right into the gold-bearing ledge—war for lynching him and driving him outer the settlement. But as he had a pretty darter or niece livin' with him, and, except for his partickler cussedness towards mining, was kinder peaceable and perlite, they thought better of it. Things went along like this, until one day the boys noticed—particklerly the boys that had slipped up on their luck—that old man Sobriente was gettin' rich,—had stocked a ranch over on the Divide, and had given some gold candlesticks to the mission church. That would have been only human nature and business, ef he'd had any during them flush times; but he hadn't. This kinder puzzled them. They tackled the peons,—his niggers,—but it was all 'No sabe.' They tackled another man,—a kind of half-breed Kanaka, who, except the priest, was the only man who came to see him, and was supposed to be mighty sweet on the darter or niece,—but they didn't even get the color outer HIM. Then the first thing we knowed was that old Sobriente was found dead in the well!”
“In the well, sah!” said the colonel, starting up. “The well on my propahty?”
“No,” said his companion. “The old well that was afterwards shut up. Yours was dug by the last tenant, Jack Raintree, who allowed that he didn't want to 'take any Sobriente in his reg'lar whiskey and water.' Well, the half-breed Kanaka cleared out after the old man's death, and so did that darter or niece; and the church, to whom old Sobriente had left this house, let it to Raintree for next to nothin'.”
“I don't see what all that has got to do with that wandering tramp,” said the colonel, who was by no means pleased with this history of his property.
“I'll tell ye. A few days after Raintree took it over, he was lookin' round the garden, which old Sobriente had always kept shut up agin strangers, and he finds a lot of dried-up 'slumgullion' * scattered all about the borders and beds, just as if the old man had been using it for fertilizing. Well, Raintree ain't no fool; he allowed the old man wasn't one, either; and he knew that slumgullion wasn't worth no more than mud for any good it would do the garden. So he put this yer together with Sobriente's good luck, and allowed to himself that the old coyote had been secretly gold-washin' all the while he seemed to be standin' off agin it! But where was the mine? Whar did he get the gold? That's what got Raintree. He hunted all over the garden, prospected every part of it,—ye kin see the holes yet,—but he never even got the color!”
* That is, a viscid cement-like refuse of gold-washing.
He paused, and then, as the colonel made an impatient gesture, he went on.
“Well, one night just afore you took the place, and when Raintree was gettin' just sick of it, he happened to be walkin' in the garden. He was puzzlin' his brain agin to know how old Sobriente made his pile, when all of a suddenst he saw suthin' a-movin' in the brush beside the house. He calls out, thinkin' it was one of the boys, but got no answer. Then he goes to the bushes, and a tall figger, all in black, starts out afore him. He couldn't see any face, for its head was covered with a hood, but he saw that it held suthin' like a big cross clasped agin its breast. This made him think it was one them priests, until he looks agin and sees that it wasn't no cross it was carryin,' but a PICKAXE! He makes a jump towards it, but it vanished! He traipsed over the hull garden,—went though ev'ry bush,—but it was clean gone. Then the hull thing flashed upon him with a cold shiver. The old man bein' found dead in the well! the goin' away of the half-breed and the girl! the findin' o' that slumgullion! The old man HAD made a strike in that garden, the half-breed had discovered his secret and murdered him, throwin' him down the well! It war no LIVIN' man that he had seen, but the ghost of old Sobriente!”
The colonel emptied the remaining contents of his glass at a single gulp, and sat up. “It's my opinion, sah, that Raintree had that night more than his usual allowance of corn-juice on board; and it's only a wonder, sah, that he didn't see a few pink alligators and sky-blue snakes at the same time. But what's this got to do with that wanderin' tramp?”
“They're all the same thing, colonel, and in my opinion that there tramp ain't no more alive than that figger was.”
“But YOU were the one that saw this tramp with your own eyes,” retorted the colonel quickly, “and you never before allowed it was a spirit!”
“Exactly! I saw it whar a minit afore nothin' had been standin', and a minit after nothin' stood,” said Larry Hawkins, with a certain serious emphasis; “but I warn't goin' to say it to ANYBODY, and I warn't goin' to give you and the hacienda away. And ez nobody knew Raintree's story, I jest shut up my head. But you kin bet your life that the man I saw warn't no livin' man!”
“We'll see, sah!” said the colonel, rising from his chair with his fingers in the armholes of his nankeen waistcoat, “ef he ever intrudes on my property again. But look yar! don't ye go sayin' anything of this to Polly,—you know what women are!”
A faint color came into Larry's face; an animation quite different to the lazy deliberation of his previous monologue shone in his eyes, as he said, with a certain rough respect he had not shown before to his companion, “That's why I'm tellin' ye, so that ef SHE happened to see anything and got skeert, ye'd know how to reason her out of it.”
“'Sh!” said the colonel, with a warning gesture.
A young girl had just appeared in the doorway, and now stood leaning against the central pillar that supported it, with one hand above her head, in a lazy attitude strongly suggestive of the colonel's Southern indolence, yet with a grace entirely her own. Indeed, it overcame the negligence of her creased and faded yellow cotton frock and unbuttoned collar, and suggested—at least to the eyes of ONE man—the curving and clinging of the jasmine vine against the outer column of the veranda. Larry Hawkins rose awkwardly to his feet.
“Now what are you two men mumblin' and confidin' to each other? You look for all the world like two old women gossips,” she said, with languid impertinence.
It was easy to see that a privileged and recognized autocrat spoke. No one had ever questioned Polly Swinger's right to interrupting, interfering, and saucy criticisms. Secure in the hopeless or chivalrous admiration of the men around her, she had repaid it with a frankness that scorned any coquetry; with an indifference to the ordinary feminine effect or provocation in dress or bearing that was as natural as it was invincible. No one had ever known Polly to “fix up” for anybody, yet no one ever doubted the effect, if she had. No one had ever rebuked her charming petulance, or wished to.
Larry gave a weak, vague laugh. Colonel Swinger as ineffectively assumed a mock parental severity. “When you see two gentlemen, miss, discussin' politics together, it ain't behavin' like a lady to interrupt. Better run away and tidy yourself before the stage comes.”
The young lady replied to the last innuendo by taking two spirals of soft hair, like “corn silk,” from her oval cheek, wetting them with her lips, and tucking them behind her ears. Her father's ungentlemanly suggestion being thus disposed of, she returned to her first charge.
“It ain't no politics; you ain't been swearing enough for THAT! Come, now! It's the mysterious stranger ye've been talking about!”
Both men stared at her with unaffected concern.
“What do YOU know about any mysterious stranger?” demanded her father.
“Do you suppose you men kin keep a secret,” scoffed Polly. “Why, Dick Ruggles told me how skeert ye all were over an entire stranger, and he advised me not to wander down the road after dark. I asked him if he thought I was a pickaninny to be frightened by bogies, and that if he hadn't a better excuse for wantin' 'to see me home' from the Injin spring, he might slide.”
Larry laughed again, albeit a little bitterly, for it seemed to him that the excuse was fully justified; but the colonel said promptly, “Dick's a fool, and you might have told him there were worse things to be met on the road than bogies. Run away now, and see that the niggers are on hand when the stage comes.”
Two hours later the stage came with a clatter of hoofs and a cloud of red dust, which precipitated itself and a dozen thirsty travelers upon the veranda before the hotel bar-room; it brought also the usual “express” newspapers and much talk to Colonel Swinger, who always received his guests in a lofty personal fashion at the door, as he might have done in his old Virginian home; but it brought likewise—marvelous to relate—an ACTUAL GUEST, who had two trunks and asked for a room! He was evidently a stranger to the ways of Buena Vista, and particularly to those of Colonel Swinger, and at first seemed inclined to resent the social attitude of his host, and his frank and free curiosity. When he, however, found that Colonel Swinger was even better satisfied to give an account of HIS OWN affairs, his family, pedigree, and his present residence, he began to betray some interest. The colonel told him all the news, and would no doubt have even expatiated on his ghostly visitant, had he not prudently concluded that his guest might decline to remain in a haunted inn. The stranger had spoken of staying a week; he had some private mining speculations to watch at Wynyard's Gulch,—the next settlement, but he did not care to appear openly at the “Gulch Hotel.” He was a man of thirty, with soft, pleasing features and a singular litheness of movement, which, combined with a nut-brown, gypsy complexion, at first suggested a foreigner. But his dialect, to the colonel's ears, was distinctly that of New England, and to this was added a puritanical and sanctimonious drawl. “He looked,” said the colonel in after years, “like a blank light mulatter, but talked like a blank Yankee parson.” For all that, he was acceptable to his host, who may have felt that his reminiscences of his plantation on the James River were palling on Buena Vista ears, and was glad of his new auditor. It was an advertisement, too, of the hotel, and a promise of its future fortunes. “Gentlemen having propahty interests at the Gulch, sah, prefer to stay at Buena Vista with another man of propahty, than to trust to those new-fangled papah-collared, gingerbread booths for traders that they call 'hotels' there,” he had remarked to some of “the boys.” In his preoccupation with the new guest, he also became a little neglectful of his old chum and dependent, Larry Hawkins. Nor was this the only circumstance that filled the head of that shiftless loyal retainer of the colonel with bitterness and foreboding. Polly Swinger—the scornfully indifferent, the contemptuously inaccessible, the coldly capricious and petulant—was inclined to be polite to the stranger!
The fact was that Polly, after the fashion of her sex, took it into her pretty head, against all consistency and logic, suddenly to make an exception to her general attitude towards mankind in favor of one individual. The reason-seeking masculine reader will rashly conclude that this individual was the CAUSE as well as the object; but I am satisfied that every fair reader of these pages will instinctively know better. Miss Polly had simply selected the new guest, Mr. Starbuck, to show OTHERS, particularly Larry Hawkins, what she COULD do if she were inclined to be civil. For two days she “fixed up” her distracting hair at him so that its silken floss encircled her head like a nimbus; she tucked her oval chin into a white fichu instead of a buttonless collar; she appeared at dinner in a newly starched yellow frock! She talked to him with “company manners;” said she would “admire to go to San Francisco,” and asked if he knew her old friends the Fauquier girls from “Faginia.” The colonel was somewhat disturbed; he was glad that his daughter had become less negligent of her personal appearance; he could not but see, with the others, how it enhanced her graces; but he was, with the others, not entirely satisfied with her reasons. And he could not help observing—what was more or less patent to ALL—that Starbuck was far from being equally responsive to her attentions, and at times was indifferent and almost uncivil. Nobody seemed to be satisfied with Polly's transformation but herself.
But eventually she was obliged to assert herself. The third evening after Starbuck's arrival she was going over to the cabin of Aunt Chloe, who not only did the washing for Buena Vista, but assisted Polly in dressmaking. It was not far, and the night was moonlit. As she crossed the garden she saw Starbuck moving in the manzanita bushes beyond; a mischievous light came into her eyes; she had not EXPECTED to meet him, but she had seen him go out, and there were always POSSIBILITIES. To her surprise, however, he merely lifted his hat as she passed, and turned abruptly in another direction. This was more than the little heart-breaker of Buena Vista was accustomed to!
“Oh, Mr. Starbuck!” she called, in her laziest voice.
He turned almost impatiently.
“Since you're so civil and pressing, I thought I'd tell you I was just runnin' over to Aunt Chloe's,” she said dryly.
“I should think it was hardly the proper thing for a young lady to do at this time of night,” he said superciliously. “But you know best,—you know the people here.”
Polly's cheeks and eyes flamed. “Yes, I reckon I do,” she said crisply; “it's only a STRANGER here would think of being rude. Good-night, Mr. Starbuck!”
She tripped away after this Parthian shot, yet feeling, even in her triumph, that the conceited fool seemed actually relieved at her departure! And for the first time she now thought that she had seen something in his face that she did not like! But her lazy independence reasserted itself soon, and half an hour later, when she had left Aunt Chloe's cabin, she had regained her self-esteem. Yet, to avoid meeting him again, she took a longer route home, across the dried ditch and over the bluff, scarred by hydraulics, and so fell, presently, upon the old garden at the point where it adjoined the abandoned diggings. She was quite sure she had escaped a meeting with Starbuck, and was gliding along under the shadow of the pear-trees, when she suddenly stopped. An indescribable terror overcame her as she stared at a spot in the garden, perfectly illuminated by the moonlight not fifty yards from where she stood. For she saw on its surface a human head—a man's head!—seemingly on the level of the ground, staring in her direction. A hysterical laugh sprang from her lips, and she caught at the branches above her or she would have fallen! Yet in that moment the head had vanished! The moonlight revealed the empty garden,—the ground she had gazed at,—but nothing more!
She had never been superstitious. As a child she had heard the negroes talk of “the hants,”—that is, “the HAUNTS” or spirits,—but had believed it a part of their ignorance, and unworthy a white child,—the daughter of their master! She had laughed with Dick Ruggles over the illusions of Larry, and had shared her father's contemptuous disbelief of the wandering visitant being anything but a living man; yet she would have screamed for assistance now, only for the greater fear of making her weakness known to Mr. Starbuck, and being dependent upon him for help. And with it came the sudden conviction that HE had seen this awful vision, too. This would account for his impatience of her presence and his rudeness. She felt faint and giddy. Yet after the first shock had passed, her old independence and pride came to her relief. She would go to the spot and examine it. If it were some trick or illusion, she would show her superiority and have the laugh on Starbuck. She set her white teeth, clenched her little hands, and started out into the moonlight. But alas! for women's weakness. The next moment she uttered a scream and almost fell into the arms of Mr. Starbuck, who had stepped out of the shadows beside her.
“So you see you HAVE been frightened,” he said, with a strange, forced laugh; “but I warned you about going out alone!”
Even in her fright she could not help seeing that he, too, seemed pale and agitated, at which she recovered her tongue and her self-possession.
“Anybody would be frightened by being dogged about under the trees,” she said pertly.
“But you called out before you saw me,” he said bluntly, “as if something had frightened you. That was WHY I came towards you.”
She knew it was the truth; but as she would not confess to her vision, she fibbed outrageously.
“Frightened,” she said, with pale but lofty indignation. “What was there to frighten me? I'm not a baby, to think I see a bogie in the dark!” This was said in the faint hope that HE had seen something too. If it had been Larry or her father who had met her, she would have confessed everything.
“You had better go in,” he said curtly. “I will see you safe inside the house.”
She demurred at this, but as she could not persist in her first bold intention of examining the locality of the vision without admitting its existence, she permitted him to walk with her to the house, and then at once fled to her own room. Larry and her father noticed their entrance together and their agitated manner, and were uneasy. Yet the colonel's paternal pride and Larry's lover's respect kept the two men from communicating their thoughts to each other.
“The confounded pup has been tryin' to be familiar, and Polly's set him down,” thought Larry, with glowing satisfaction.
“He's been trying some of his sanctimonious Yankee abolition talk on Polly, and she shocked him!” thought the colonel exultingly.
But poor Polly had other things to think of in the silence of her room. Another woman would have unburdened herself to a confidante; but Polly was too loyal to her father to shatter his beliefs, and too high-spirited to take another and a lesser person into her confidence. She was certain that Aunt Chloe would be full of sympathetic belief and speculations, but she would not trust a nigger with what she couldn't tell her own father. For Polly really and truly believed that she had seen a ghost, no doubt the ghost of the murdered Sobriente, according to Larry's story. WHY he should appear with only his head above ground puzzled her, although it suggested the Catholic idea of purgatory, and he was a Catholic! Perhaps he would have risen entirely but for that stupid Starbuck's presence; perhaps he had a message for HER alone. The idea pleased Polly, albeit it was a “fearful joy” and attended with some cold shivering. Naturally, as a gentleman, he would appear to HER—the daughter of a gentleman—the successor to his house—rather than to a Yankee stranger. What was she to do? For once her calm nerves were strangely thrilled; she could not think of undressing and going to bed, and two o'clock surprised her, still meditating, and occasionally peeping from her window upon the moonlit but vacant garden. If she saw him again, would she dare to go down alone? Suddenly she started to her feet with a beating heart! There was the unmistakable sound of a stealthy footstep in the passage, coming towards her room. Was it he? In spite of her high resolves she felt that if the door opened she should scream! She held her breath—the footsteps came nearer—were before her door—and PASSED!
Then it was that the blood rushed back to her cheek with a flush of indignation. Her room was at the end of the passage; there was nothing beyond but a private staircase, long disused, except by herself, as a short cut through the old patio to the garden. No one else knew of it, and no one else had the right of access to it! This insolent human intrusion—as she was satisfied it was now—overcame her fear, and she glided to the door. Opening it softly, she could hear the stealthy footsteps descending. She darted back, threw a shawl over her head and shoulders, and taking the small Derringer pistol which it had always been part of her ostentatious independence to place at her bed-head, she as stealthily followed the intruder. But the footsteps had died away before she reached the patio, and she saw only the small deserted, grass-grown courtyard, half hidden in shadows, in whose centre stood the fateful and long sealed-up well! A shudder came over her at again being brought into contact with the cause of her frightful vision, but as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she saw something more real and appalling! The well was no longer sealed! Fragments of bricks and boards lay around it! One end of a rope, coiled around it like a huge snake, descended its foul depths; and as she gazed with staring eyes, the head and shoulders of a man emerged slowly from it! But it was NOT the ghostly apparition of last evening, and her terror changed to scorn and indignation as she recognized the face of Starbuck!
Their eyes met; an oath broke from his lips. He made a movement to spring from the well, but as the girl started back, the pistol held in her hand was discharged aimlessly in the air, and the report echoed throughout the courtyard. With a curse Starbuck drew back, instantly disappeared in the well, and Polly fell fainting on the steps. When she came to, her father and Larry were at her side. They had been alarmed at the report, and had rushed quickly to the patio, but not in time to prevent the escape of Starbuck and his accomplice. By the time she had recovered her consciousness, they had learned the full extent of that extraordinary revelation which she had so innocently precipitated. Sobriente's well had really concealed a rich gold ledge,—actually tunneled and galleried by him secretly in the past,—and its only other outlet was an opening in the garden hidden by a stone which turned on a swivel. Its existence had been unknown to Sobriente's successor, but was known to the Kanaka who had worked with Sobriente, who fled with his daughter after the murder, but who no doubt was afraid to return and work the mine. He had imparted the secret to Starbuck, another half-breed, son of a Yankee missionary and Hawaiian wife, who had evidently conceived this plan of seeking Buena Vista with an accomplice, and secretly removing such gold as was still accessible. The accomplice, afterwards identified by Larry as the wandering tramp, failed to discover the secret entrance FROM the garden, and Starbuck was consequently obliged to attempt it from the hotel—for which purpose he had introduced himself as a boarder—by opening the disused well secretly at night. These facts were obtained from papers found in the otherwise valueless trunks, weighted with stones for ballast, which Starbuck had brought to the hotel to take away his stolen treasure in, but which he was obliged to leave in his hurried flight. The attempt would have doubtless succeeded but for Polly's courageous and timely interference!
And now that they had told her ALL, they only wanted to know what had first excited HER suspicions, and driven her to seek the well as the object of Starbuck's machinations? THEY had noticed her manner when she entered the house that night, and Starbuck's evident annoyance. Had she taxed him with her suspicions, and so discovered a clue?
It was a terrible temptation to Polly to pose as a more perfect heroine, and one may not blame her if she did not rise entirely superior to it. Her previous belief, that the head of the accomplice at the opening of the garden was that of a GHOST, she now felt was certainly in the way, as was also her conduct to Starbuck, whom she believed to be equally frightened, and whom she never once suspected! So she said, with a certain lofty simplicity, that there were SOME THINGS which she really did not care to talk about, and Larry and her father left her that night with the firm conviction that the rascal Starbuck had tried to tempt her to fly with him and his riches, and had been crushingly foiled. Polly never denied this, and once, in later days, when admiringly taxed with it by Larry, she admitted with dove-like simplicity that she MAY have been too foolishly polite to her father's guest for the sake of her father's hotel.
However, all this was of small account to the thrilling news of a new discovery and working of the “old gold ledge” at Buena Vista! As the three kept their secret from the world, the discovery was accepted in the neighborhood as the result of careful examination and prospecting on the part of Colonel Swinger and his partner Larry Hawkins. And when the latter gentleman afterwards boldly proposed to Polly Swinger, she mischievously declared that she accepted him only that the secret might not go “out of the family.”
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.”