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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–“