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.
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