The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-07-09

You jest get back to your scrubbin',
dye hear? I'm boss o this shanty, YOU
| beti"
! 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 hours
walk they found the team that mad
brought them there in waiting and
drove toward San Jose. 1t 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 compan-
ion alone and contented in that track
less solitude.
Liberty Jones had been year at the
cabin. In that time she had learned
! that her employers name was DR..
Ruysdael that he had a lucrative prac-
| tice in San Jose, but had also taken
up" a league or two of wild forest land
in the Santa Cruz range, which he pre-
served and held after a fashion Of mis-
own, which gave him the reputation Of
being a crank among the very few
neighbors his vast possessions permit
ted, and the equally few friends his
singular tastes allowed him. Ii was
believed that a man owning such an
enormous quantity of timber Land who
should refuse to set up saw mill AMI
absolutely forbid the telling of trees,
who should decline to connect 1t with
the highway to Santa Cruz and close
it against improvement and specu.d
ton. 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 its limits,
and that these restrictions were fur
Their preserved and 'poiced" by the
scattered remnants of a band of abor-
iginees known as Digger Injins. it
was seriously limited that his eccen-
tricity had acquired a political and
moral significance. and demanded Leg
islative Interference. But the doctor
was rich man. necessity To his pa
tents, good marksman, and. ii was
rumored, did not include his fellow
man among the animals he had d lis
taste for killing.
OF all this. however, Liberty knew
little and cared less. The solitude 2p-
pealed 10 her sense Of freedom; she lid
not banker" after a society she nad
week when the doctor communicated
to her briefly by letter, the convincing
proofs of the death of her father. and
his entombment beneath the sunknn
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 DR.. Ruysdael-with scripturai quo
tations and the cheerful hope that it
would be lesson to her and she
would profit in her new place'-sne
left her aunt's letter unanswered.
She looked after the COWS and calves
with an interest that was almost pos
sessory. patronized and played with the
squaw-yet made her feel her inferior
ity-and moved among the peaceful
aboriginees with the domination of a
white woman and superior. She col
Grated the half-monthly visits of Jim
Hoskins," the young companion of the
doctor, whom she learned was the doe
tors factor and oversees. of the proper
ty. who lived seven miles away on IN
agricultural clearing, and whose con-
troll of her actions was evidently lin
tied by the doctor-fOr the doctors sake
alone Nor was Mr.. HoskinS inclined II
exceed those limits He looked upon
her as something Abnormal ''cranK'
as remarkable in her way as her pat
ron was in his-neuter of sex and vague
of race, and he simply restricted his
to the bringing ana taking
of messages. She renamed sole queen
of the domain. \ rare straggler from
the main road. penetrating this seclI-
sion, might have scarcely distinguished
her from Waya. in her coarse cotton
gown and slouched hat-eXcept for the
free stride which contrasted with her
waddle. once, in follow
h, Il
the highway and been saluted by a
passing teamster in the Digger dialect,
vet the mistake left no sting in her
memory And, like the Digger, she
shrank from that civilization which
had only proved 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 commentator of her rude and
rustic work 1t is possible that the
strange, middle-aged, gray-haired in
tellectual man, whose very language
was at times mysterious and unintel-
ligible to her and whose suggestion of
power awed her, might have touched
some untried filial chord in her being. |
she felt that, save for abso-
lutte 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 perform
ance 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 shamed |
and if she was relieved at his depar-
ture, it none the less left her to a de-
ightful memory of him, warm sense |
IF his approval and a fierce ambition
20 be worthy of it, for which-she would /
nave sacrificed herself or the other mis-