“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.”