The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories

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, assume a heroic attitude. 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 sex so rare to him. But the illusion had passed; 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 passions, 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!”

The cabin offered but scanty accommodation to the tourists; which fact, when indignantly presented by Mrs. Rightbody, was explained by the good-humored Ryder from the circumstance that the usual hotel was only a slight affair of boards, cloth, and paper, put up during the season, and partly dismantled in the fall. “You couldn’t be kept warm enough there,” he added. Nevertheless Miss Alice noticed that both Mr. Ryder and Stanislaus Joe retired there with their pipes, after having prepared the ladies’ supper, with the assistance of an Indian woman, who apparently emerged from the earth at the coming of the party, and disappeared as mysteriously.

The stars came out brightly before they slept; and the next morning a clear, unwinking sun beamed with almost summer power through the shutterless window of their cabin, and ironically disclosed the details of its rude interior. Two or three mangy, half-eaten buffalo-robes, a bearskin, some suspicious-looking blankets, rifles and saddles, deal-tables, and barrels, made up its scant inventory. A strip of faded calico hung before a recess near the chimney, but so blackened by smoke and age that even feminine curiosity respected its secret. Mrs. Rightbody was in high spirits, and informed her daughter that she was at last on the track of her husband’s unknown correspondent. “Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five represent two members of the Vigilance Committee, my dear, and Mr. Ryder will assist me to find them.”

“Mr. Ryder!” ejaculated Miss Alice, in scornful astonishment.

“Alice,” said Mrs. Rightbody, with a suspicious assumption of sudden defence, “you injure yourself, you injure me, by this exclusive attitude. Mr. Ryder is a friend of your father’s, an exceedingly well-informed gentleman. I have not, of course, imparted to him the extent of my suspicions. But he can help me to what I must and will know. You might treat him a little more civilly—or, at least, a little better than you do his servant, your guide. Mr. Ryder is a gentleman, and not a paid courier.”

Miss Alice was suddenly attentive. When she spoke again, she asked, “Why do you not find out something about this Silsbie—who died—or was hung—or something of that kind?”

“Child!” said Mrs. Rightbody, “don’t you see there was no Silsbie, or, if there was, he was simply the confidant of that—woman?”

A knock at the door, announcing the presence of Mr. Ryder and Stanislaus Joe with the horses, checked Mrs. Rightbody’s speech. As the animals were being packed, Mrs. Rightbody for a moment withdrew in confidential conversation with Mr. Ryder, and, to the young lady’s still greater annoyance, left her alone with Stanislaus Joe. Miss Alice was not in good temper, but she felt it necessary to say something.

“I hope the hotel offers better quarters for travellers than this in summer,” she began.

“It does.”

“Then this does not belong to it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Who lives here, then?”

“I do.”

“I beg your pardon,” stammered Miss Alice, “I thought you lived where we hired—where we met you—in—in—You must excuse me.”

“I’m not a regular guide; but as times were hard, and I was out of grub, I took the job.”

“Out of grub!” “job!” And SHE was the “job.” What would Henry Marvin say? It would nearly kill him. She began herself to feel a little frightened, and walked towards the door.

“One moment, miss!”

The young girl hesitated. The man’s tone was surly, and yet indicated a certain kind of half-pathetic grievance. HER curiosity got the better of her prudence, and she turned back.

“This morning,” he began hastily, “when we were coming down the valley, you picked me up twice.”

“I picked YOU up?” repeated the astonished Alice.

“Yes, CONTRADICTED me: that’s what I mean,—once when you said those rocks were volcanic, once when you said the flower you picked was a poppy. I didn’t let on at the time, for it wasn’t my say; but all the while you were talking I might have laid for you—”