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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.