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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.”

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.”