



Produced by Donald Lainson





THE TWINS OF TABLE MOUNTAIN AND OTHER STORIES


By Bret Harte




CONTENTS


I.   THE TWINS OF TABLE MOUNTAIN

II.  AN HEIRESS OF RED DOG

III. THE GREAT DEADWOOD MYSTERY

IV.  A LEGEND OF SAMMTSTADT

V.   VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION





THE TWINS OF TABLE MOUNTAIN.




CHAPTER I.


A CLOUD ON THE MOUNTAIN.


They lived on the verge of a vast stony level, upheaved so far above
the surrounding country that its vague outlines, viewed from the nearest
valley, seemed a mere cloud-streak resting upon the lesser hills. The
rush and roar of the turbulent river that washed its eastern base were
lost at that height; the winds that strove with the giant pines that
half way climbed its flanks spent their fury below the summit; for, at
variance with most meteorological speculation, an eternal calm seemed
to invest this serene altitude. The few Alpine flowers seldom
thrilled their petals to a passing breeze; rain and snow fell alike
perpendicularly, heavily, and monotonously over the granite bowlders
scattered along its brown expanse. Although by actual measurement an
inconsiderable elevation of the Sierran range, and a mere shoulder of
the nearest white-faced peak that glimmered in the west, it seemed
to lie so near the quiet, passionless stars, that at night it caught
something of their calm remoteness.

The articulate utterance of such a locality should have been a whisper;
a laugh or exclamation was discordant; and the ordinary tones of the
human voice on the night of the 15th of May, 1868, had a grotesque
incongruity.

In the thick darkness that clothed the mountain that night, the human
figure would have been lost, or confounded with the outlines of outlying
bowlders, which at such times took upon themselves the vague semblance
of men and animals. Hence the voices in the following colloquy seemed
the more grotesque and incongruous from being the apparent expression
of an upright monolith, ten feet high, on the right, and another mass of
granite, that, reclining, peeped over the verge.

"Hello!"

"Hello yourself!"

"You're late."

"I lost the trail, and climbed up the slide."

Here followed a stumble, the clatter of stones down the mountain-side,
and an oath so very human and undignified that it at once relieved the
bowlders of any complicity of expression. The voices, too, were close
together now, and unexpectedly in quite another locality.

"Anything up?"

"Looey Napoleon's declared war agin Germany."

"Sho-o-o!"

Notwithstanding this exclamation, the interest of the latter speaker was
evidently only polite and perfunctory. What, indeed, were the political
convulsions of the Old World to the dwellers on this serene, isolated
eminence of the New?

"I reckon it's so," continued the first voice. "French Pete and that
thar feller that keeps the Dutch grocery hev hed a row over it; emptied
their six-shooters into each other. The Dutchman's got two balls in
his leg, and the Frenchman's got an onnessary buttonhole in his
shirt-buzzum, and hez caved in."

This concise, local corroboration of the conflict of remote nations,
however confirmatory, did not appear to excite any further interest.
Even the last speaker, now that he was in this calm, dispassionate
atmosphere, seemed to lose his own concern in his tidings, and to have
abandoned every thing of a sensational and lower-worldly character in
the pines below. There were a few moments of absolute silence, and then
another stumble. But now the voices of both speakers were quite patient
and philosophical.

"Hold on, and I'll strike a light," said the second speaker. "I brought
a lantern along, but I didn't light up. I kem out afore sundown, and you
know how it allers is up yer. I didn't want it, and didn't keer to light
up. I forgot you're always a little dazed and strange-like when you
first come up."

There was a crackle, a flash, and presently a steady glow, which the
surrounding darkness seemed to resent. The faces of the two men thus
revealed were singularly alike. The same thin, narrow outline of jaw and
temple; the same dark, grave eyes; the same brown growth of curly beard
and mustache, which concealed the mouth, and hid what might have been
any individual idiosyncrasy of thought or expression,--showed them to
be brothers, or better known as the "Twins of Table Mountain." A certain
animation in the face of the second speaker,--the first-comer,--a
certain light in his eye, might have at first distinguished him; but
even this faded out in the steady glow of the lantern, and had no
value as a permanent distinction, for, by the time they had reached
the western verge of the mountain, the two faces had settled into a
homogeneous calmness and melancholy.

The vague horizon of darkness, that a few feet from the lantern still
encompassed them, gave no indication of their progress, until their feet
actually trod the rude planks and thatch that formed the roof of their
habitation; for their cabin half burrowed in the mountain, and half
clung, like a swallow's nest, to the side of the deep declivity that
terminated the northern limit of the summit. Had it not been for the
windlass of a shaft, a coil of rope, and a few heaps of stone and
gravel, which were the