The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories

Mr. Rightbody looked at this flesh of his flesh, pretty and palpable flesh as it was; but, being confronted as equally with the brain of his brain, all he could do was to say meekly,—

“Yes, certainly. We will see about all that to-morrow.”

Miss Alice rose. Something in the free, unfettered swing of her arms as she rested them lightly, after a half yawn, on her lithe hips, suggested his next speech, although still distrait and impatient.

“You continue your exercise with the health-lift yet, I see.”

“Yes, papa; but I had to give up the flannels. I don’t see how mamma could wear them. But my dresses are high-necked, and by bathing I toughen my skin. See!” she added, as, with a child-like unconsciousness, she unfastened two or three buttons of her gown, and exposed the white surface of her throat and neck to her father, “I can defy a chill.”

Mr. Rightbody, with something akin to a genuine playful, paternal laugh, leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

“It’s getting late, Ally,” he said parentally, but not dictatorially. “Go to bed.”

“I took a nap of three hours this afternoon,” said Miss Alice, with a dazzling smile, “to anticipate this dissipation. Good-night, papa. To-morrow, then.”

“To-morrow,” repeated Mr. Rightbody, with his eyes still fixed upon the girl vaguely. “Good-night.”

Miss Alice tripped from the room, possibly a trifle the more light-heartedly that she had parted from her father in one of his rare moments of illogical human weakness. And perhaps it was well for the poor girl that she kept this single remembrance of him, when, I fear, in after-years, his methods, his reasoning, and indeed all he had tried to impress upon her childhood, had faded from her memory.

For, when she had left, Mr. Rightbody fell again to the examination of his old letters. This was quite absorbing; so much so, that he did not notice the footsteps of Mrs. Rightbody, on the staircase as she passed to her chamber, nor that she had paused on the landing to look through the glass half-door on her husband, as he sat there with the letters beside him, and the telegram opened before him. Had she waited a moment later, she would have seen him rise, and walk to the sofa with a disturbed air and a slight confusion; so that, on reaching it, he seemed to hesitate to lie down, although pale and evidently faint. Had she still waited, she would have seen him rise again with an agonized effort, stagger to the table, fumblingly refold and replace the papers in the cabinet, and lock it, and, although now but half-conscious, hold the telegram over the gas-flame till it was consumed.

For, had she waited until this moment, she would have flown unhesitatingly to his aid, as, this act completed, he staggered again, reached his hand toward the bell, but vainly, and then fell prone upon the sofa.

But alas! no providential nor accidental hand was raised to save him, or anticipate the progress of this story. And when, half an hour later, Mrs. Rightbody, a little alarmed, and more indignant at his violation of the doctor’s rules, appeared upon the threshold, Mr. Rightbody lay upon the sofa, dead!

With bustle, with thronging feet, with the irruption of strangers, and a hurrying to and fro, but, more than all, with an impulse and emotion unknown to the mansion when its owner was in life, Mrs. Rightbody strove to call back the vanished life, but in vain. The highest medical intelligence, called from its bed at this strange hour, saw only the demonstration of its theories made a year before. Mr. Rightbody was dead—without doubt, without mystery, even as a correct man should die—logically, and indorsed by the highest medical authority.

But even in the confusion, Mrs. Rightbody managed to speed a messenger to the telegraph-office for a copy of the despatch received by Mr. Rightbody, but now missing.

In the solitude of her own room, and without a confidant, she read these words:—

In the darkened home, and amid the formal condolements of their friends who had called to gaze upon the scarcely cold features of their late associate, Mrs. Rightbody managed to send another despatch. It was addressed to “Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five,” Cottonwood. In a few hours she received the following enigmatical response:—

“A horse-thief named Josh Silsbie was lynched yesterday morning by the Vigilantes at Deadwood.”

PART II

The spring of 1874 was retarded in the California sierras; so much so, that certain Eastern tourists who had early ventured into the Yo Semite Valley found themselves, one May morning, snow-bound against the tempestuous shoulders of El Capitan. So furious was the onset of the wind at the Upper Merced Canyon, that even so respectable a lady as Mrs. Rightbody was fain to cling to the neck of her guide to keep her seat in the saddle; while Miss Alice, scorning all masculine assistance, was hurled, a lovely chaos, against the snowy wall of the chasm. Mrs. Rightbody screamed; Miss Alice raged under her breath, but scrambled to her feet again in silence.

“I told you so!” said Mrs. Rightbody, in an indignant whisper, as her daughter again ranged beside her. “I warned you especially, Alice—that—that—”

“What?” interrupted Miss Alice curtly.

“That you would need your chemiloons and high boots,” said Mrs. Rightbody, in a regretful undertone, slightly increasing her distance from the guides.

Miss Alice shrugged her pretty shoulders scornfully, but ignored her mother’s implication.

“You were particularly warned against going into the valley at this season,” she only replied grimly.

Mrs. Rightbody raised her eyes impatiently.

“You know how anxious I was to discover your poor father’s strange correspondent, Alice. You have no consideration.”

“But when YOU HAVE discovered him—what then?” queried Miss Alice.

“What then?”

“Yes. My belief is, that you will find the telegram only a mere business cipher, and all this quest mere nonsense.”

“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 ejaculated Mrs. Rightbody, floundering in the snow and the unexpected possibility of such a ridiculous question. But here her guide flew to her assistance, 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 passed perilously near the precipitous wall of the valley. There was a rapid descent of a hundred yards or more to this terrace-like passage; 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 ‘lass’ under your arms, and throw me the other,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean by ‘lass’—the lasso?” 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 lasso 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 lasso, 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.”