The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories Part 13

"Alice! Why, YOU yourself thought your father's conduct that night very strange. Have you forgotten?"

The young lady had NOT, but, for some far-reaching feminine reason, chose to ignore it at that moment, when her late tumble in the snow was still fresh in her mind.

"And this woman, whoever she may be--" continued Mrs. Rightbody.

"How do you know there's a woman in the case?" interrupted Miss Alice, wickedly I fear.

"How do--I--know--there's a woman?" slowly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Rightbody, floundering in the snow and the unexpected possibility of such a ridiculous question. But here her guide flew to her a.s.sistance, and estopped further speech. And, indeed, a grave problem was before them.

The road that led to their single place of refuge--a cabin, half hotel, half trading-post, scarce a mile away--skirted the base of the rocky dome, and pa.s.sed perilously near the precipitous wall of the valley. There was a rapid descent of a hundred yards or more to this terrace-like pa.s.sage; and the guides paused for a moment of consultation, cooly oblivious, alike to the terrified questioning of Mrs. Rightbody, or the half-insolent independence of the daughter. The elder guide was russet-bearded, stout, and humorous: the younger was dark-bearded, slight, and serious.

"Ef you kin git young Bunker Hill to let you tote her on your shoulders, I'll git the Madam to hang on to me," came to Mrs. Rightbody's horrified ears as the expression of her particular companion.

"Freeze to the old gal, and don't reckon on me if the daughter starts in to play it alone," was the enigmatical response of the younger guide.

Miss Alice overheard both propositions; and, before the two men returned to their side, that high-spirited young lady had urged her horse down the declivity.

Alas! at this moment a gust of whirling snow swept down upon her. There was a flounder, a mis-step, a fatal strain on the wrong rein, a fall, a few plucky but unavailing struggles, and both horse and rider slid ignominiously down toward the rocky shelf. Mrs. Rightbody screamed.

Miss Alice, from a confused debris of snow and ice, uplifted a vexed and coloring face to the younger guide, a little the more angrily, perhaps, that she saw a shade of impatience on his face.

"Don't move, but tie one end of the 'la.s.s' under your arms, and throw me the other," he said quietly.

"What do you mean by 'la.s.s'--the la.s.so?" asked Miss Alice disgustedly.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then why don't you say so?"

"O Alice!" reproachfully interpolated Mrs. Rightbody, encircled by the elder guide's stalwart arm.

Miss Alice deigned no reply, but drew the loop of the la.s.so over her shoulders, and let it drop to her round waist. Then she essayed to throw the other end to her guide. Dismal failure! The first fling nearly knocked her off the ledge; the second went all wild against the rocky wall; the third caught in a thorn-bush, twenty feet below her companion's feet. Miss Alice's arm sunk helplessly to her side, at which signal of unqualified surrender, the younger guide threw himself half way down the slope, worked his way to the thorn-bush, hung for a moment perilously over the parapet, secured the la.s.so, and then began to pull away at his lovely burden. Miss Alice was no dead weight, however, but steadily half-scrambled on her hands and knees to within a foot or two of her rescuer. At this too familiar proximity, she stood up, and leaned a little stiffly against the line, causing the guide to give an extra pull, which had the lamentable effect of landing her almost in his arms.

As it was, her intelligent forehead struck his nose sharply, and I regret to add, treating of a romantic situation, caused that somewhat prominent sign and token of a hero to bleed freely. Miss Alice instantly clapped a handful of snow over his nostrils.

"Now elevate your right arm," she said commandingly.

He did as he was bidden, but sulkily.

"That compresses the artery."

No man, with a pretty woman's hand and a handful of snow over his mouth and nose, could effectively utter a heroic sentence, nor, with his arm elevated stiffly over his head, a.s.sume a heroic att.i.tude. But, when his mouth was free again, he said half-sulkily, half-apologetically,--

"I might have known a girl couldn't throw worth a cent."

"Why?" demanded Miss Alice sharply.

"Because--why--because--you see--they haven't got the experience," he stammered feebly.

"Nonsense! they haven't the CLAVICLE--that's all! It's because I'm a woman, and smaller in the collar-bone, that I haven't the play of the fore-arm which you have. See!" She squared her shoulders slightly, and turned the blaze of her dark eyes full on his. "Experience, indeed! A girl can learn anything a boy can."

Apprehension took the place of ill-humor in her hearer. He turned his eyes hastily away, and glanced above him. The elder guide had gone forward to catch Miss Alice's horse, which, relieved of his rider, was floundering toward the trail. Mrs. Rightbody was nowhere to be seen. And these two were still twenty feet below the trail!

There was an awkward pause.

"Shall I put you up the same way?" he queried. Miss Alice looked at his nose, and hesitated. "Or will you take my hand?" he added in surly impatience. To his surprise, Miss Alice took his hand, and they began the ascent together.

But the way was difficult and dangerous. Once or twice her feet slipped on the smoothly-worn rock beneath; and she confessed to an inward thankfulness when her uncertain feminine hand-grip was exchanged for his strong arm around her waist. Not that he was ungentle; but Miss Alice angrily felt that he had once or twice exercised his superior masculine functions in a rough way; and yet the next moment she would have probably rejected the idea that she had even noticed it. There was no doubt, however, that he WAS a little surly.

A fierce scramble finally brought them back in safety to the trail; but in the action Miss Alice's shoulder, striking a projecting bowlder, wrung from her a feminine cry of pain, her first sign of womanly weakness. The guide stopped instantly.

"I am afraid I hurt you?"

She raised her brown lashes, a trifle moist from suffering, looked in his eyes, and dropped her own. Why, she could not tell. And yet he had certainly a kind face, despite its seriousness; and a fine face, albeit unshorn and weather-beaten. Her own eyes had never been so near to any man's before, save her lover's; and yet she had never seen so much in even his. She slipped her hand away, not with any reference to him, but rather to ponder over this singular experience, and somehow felt uncomfortable thereat.

Nor was he less so. It was but a few days ago that he had accepted the charge of this young woman from the elder guide, who was the recognized escort of the Rightbody party, having been a former correspondent of her father's. He had been hired like any other guide, but had undertaken the task with that chivalrous enthusiasm which the average Californian always extends to the s.e.x so rare to him. But the illusion had pa.s.sed; and he had dropped into a sulky, practical sense of his situation, perhaps fraught with less danger to himself. Only when appealed to by his manhood or her weakness, he had forgotten his wounded vanity.

He strode moodily ahead, dutifully breaking the path for her in the direction of the distant canyon, where Mrs. Rightbody and her friend awaited them. Miss Alice was first to speak. In this trackless, uncharted terra incognita of the pa.s.sions, it is always the woman who steps out to lead the way.

"You know this place very well. I suppose you have lived here long?"

"Yes."

"You were not born here--no?"

A long pause.

"I observe they call you 'Stanislaus Joe.' Of course that is not your real name?" (Mem.--Miss Alice had never called him ANYTHING, usually prefacing any request with a languid, "O-er-er, please, mister-er-a!"

explicit enough for his station.)

"No."

Miss Alice (trotting after him, and bawling in his ear).--"WHAT name did you say?"

The Man (doggedly).--"I don't know." Nevertheless, when they reached the cabin, after an half-hour's buffeting with the storm, Miss Alice applied herself to her mother's escort, Mr. Ryder.

"What's the name of the man who takes care of my horse?"

"Stanislaus Joe," responded Mr. Ryder.

"Is that all?"

"No. Sometimes he's called Joe Stanislaus."

Miss Alice (satirically).--"I suppose it's the custom here to send young ladies out with gentlemen who hide their names under an alias?"

Mr. Ryder (greatly perplexed).--"Why, dear me, Miss Alice, you allers 'peared to me as a gal as was able to take keer--"

Miss Alice (interrupting with a wounded, dove-like timidity).--"Oh, never mind, please!"