CHAPTER IIIAN UNDESIRABLE ACQUAINTANCE
According to the plan laid out by Mr. Ryder, Phil was to make his long journey across the continent by the Canadian Pacific Railway, which not only offers the most direct route to Victoria and a connection with the Alaska steamers, but passes through some of the grandest and most interesting scenery in America. Mr. Ryder’s letter contained explicit instructions concerning each step of the journey, and Phil had read these over so often that he knew them by heart. It had also contained a bank check for $200, which formed an ample allowance for the proposed trip. In regard to this Mr. Ryder had written: “Above all, my boy, take care of your money, and never display it before strangers. You know we are not wealthy people, and though the sum enclosed is not a large one, its loss and replacement would cause me a real inconvenience.”
“Of course I will take care of it,” said Phil, when he and his aunt Ruth read this paragraph over together, and she added her caution to that of his father. “I may lose some other and less-important things now and then, but money is something I’m likely to keep a pretty solid grip on, and I’d like to meet the man who’d dare try and take it from me.”
Here the sturdy young fellow glared about him as fiercely as though the room were filled with robbers, with whom he should take the greatest pleasure in trying conclusions.
In New London, Phil’s ticket could only be procuredas far as Montreal, at which place he was to purchase another that would take him to Victoria, check his trunk to the same destination, and engage his sleeping-car berth as far as Vancouver. This latter city is the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific, is situated on the mainland bordering Puget Sound, and is seventy miles by water from Victoria, which is on the island of Vancouver.
Before leaving home, Phil’s money, in the shape of bank-bills, was placed in the new alligator-skin pocket-book which was Aunt Ruth’s parting gift, and thrust carefully into the young traveller’s inside vest pocket. There, in spite of his remonstrances, his aunt fastened it securely with two stout safety-pins.
Phil had taken the journey to Montreal so often with his father that he felt entirely at home in the Canadian metropolis, and knew just what to do when he reached there early on the following morning after leaving New London. With quite the air of an old traveller, and a slight feeling of contempt for the fluttering anxiety of those who were about to undergo their first experience with customs officers, he handed both his check and the key of his trunk to the Windsor Hotel porter, requested him to send the trunk to the Canadian Pacific station after it should have been examined, and stepped into the waiting hotel bus, with his mind relieved of all further anxiety concerning that portion of the business. As the overland train would not leave until evening, he now had the whole day before him, and was consequently free from hurry or worry of any kind.
After a capital breakfast, to which he devoted an hour of his ample leisure, he strolled into the great rotunda. Here he wrote a note to his aunt Ruth on the hotel paper, and felt imposed upon by being obliged to pay three cents for a Canadian stamp with whichto send a letter out of the country, into which a two-cent American stamp would bring it. This was so clearly an extravagance that Phil decided to deny himself the luxury of letter-writing until he should come once more within the lines of the United States mail-service. Having settled upon this plan for saving money, he purchased a silver souvenir spoon, the handle of which was surmounted by the Canadian beaver, and mailed it, together with his letter, to his aunt Ruth.
Phil argued that though this might appear extravagant, it really was not; for in return for all her kindness he owed something to his dear aunt, whose hobby was the collecting of souvenir spoons. Besides, if he neglected this opportunity for the securing of one of those beaver spoons, he probably would not meet with another.
This transaction had hardly been finished when the hotel porter, with a touch of the hat that drew a quarter from Phil’s pocket, handed him the key of his trunk, and announced that it awaited him in the Canadian Pacific station. So Phil strolled down to the superb building that rears its massive granite front like that of a mediæval castle a short distance below the Windsor, bought his ticket, and checked his trunk to Victoria. Then, for twenty dollars more, he engaged a lower berth in a sleeping-car that would run to Vancouver without change.
These expenditures reduced his available cash to a one-hundred-dollar bill and a twenty. As the latter would be needed for meals, etc.,en route, he tucked it into a vest pocket, but the larger bill he restored to his pocket-book, which now looked so flat it was hard to realize it was not empty.
While he was struggling to recommit this to the security of its safety-pins, and the sleeping-car clerk was watching him with a slight smile that caused thelad’s face to flush, he became conscious that a young fellow, apparently a few years older than himself, was standing near, and regarding his precautions for securing his money with something very like a sneer.
Instantly Phil was seized with a hot indignation, under the impulse of which he blurted out, “Well, sir! I trust that I afford you sufficient amusement to excuse your rudeness.”
“Excuse me,” said the young man. “Were you addressing me? I am glad you spoke, for I see by your ticket that we are to be travelling companions together across the continent. My name is Goldollar—Simon Goldollar—and I am from New York. I presume you also are from the States?”
Completely disarmed by this polite speech, and feeling heartily ashamed of his own, Phil accepted the stranger’s advances, and allowed himself to be drawn into a conversation. At the same time he was not at all prepossessed by the other’s appearance or manner. Still, he reflected that if they were to be shut up in the same car together for the next five or six days, it would be much pleasanter that they should be on friendly terms than otherwise. So he told Mr. Simon Goldollar his own name, confided to him that he was on his way to Alaska, and they walked out of the station together.
“Going to Alaska, are you?” asked the stranger. “Taking the regular tourist trip, I suppose?”
“I don’t know what the regular trip is,” answered Phil. “I am going as far as Sitka.”
“Oh yes, just to the edge of Alaska, and then you’ll come away thinking that you know it all, like the rest of the tourists. If you’d studied the country as I have, you’d realize that Alaska is a mighty big place, and that you must spend months and thousands of dollars in travelling over it before you know much about it.”
“Have you done that?” asked Phil, simply.
“Well, no, not exactly; but I’m expecting to in the near future—that is,” he added, with a slight air of confusion, “I have particular reasons for wishing to take the trip, and if things work out all right I hope to be able to do it. By-the-way, I suppose you’ve laid in your supply of hardware?”
“Hardware?” repeated Phil, in a puzzled tone.
“Yes; wet goods, you know. Montreal’s the very best place for providing the stock.”
“I can’t imagine what you mean.”
Again a slight sneer flitted across Mr. Simon Goldollar’s face as he explained that “hardware” and “wet goods” were but polite terms for liquor, with a flask of which every “travelling gent” should provide himself before going aboard a train.
“I don’t see why liquor should be more necessary on board a train than anywhere else,” said Phil.
“Nor I,” replied Simon Goldollar; “for to me it’s just as necessary in one place as another.”
“And as I am not a ‘travelling gent,’” continued Phil, “and have never touched liquor in my life, and don’t ever intend to, I can’t see why I should provide myself with a flask of it.”
“How about being ready for your friends?”
“I am always ready for my friends, and glad to see them, and willing to treat them to the best of everything I may happen to have; but none ofmy friendshave any more use for liquor than I have.”
“You and your friends must be a precious spooney lot,” muttered Simon Goldollar to himself; but aloud he said: “Oh, well, you are young yet, and not rid of your Yankee notions. Wait till you’ve been out on the coast a few months, and you’ll sing a different tune.”
“I guess not,” replied Phil, stoutly. “For I’m singingthe same tune now that my father sings, and he has been out on the ‘coast,’ as you call it, for a good many years, off and on.”
“Well, you must admit that it’s a mighty good medicine to have along, and a fine thing for sickness.”
“Yes,” replied the lad, dryly; “I have often heard my father say that liquor was one of the best things in the world for sickness; but that he would rather not be made sick in that way.”
“I suppose your father doesn’t smoke either?”
“Oh yes he does; he smokes a cigar every evening after dinner.”
“Then of course you follow his example, and do the same thing?”
“Then of course I do nothing of the kind. I don’t know what I may do when I become twenty-one years of age; but I gave him my promise long ago never to smoke even a cigarette until that time. Besides, I’m on a football team, and a fellow who smoked would be fired out of that quick enough, I can tell you. Now, as we are at my hotel, I think I will go in and write some letters.”
Phil said this with the hope of shaking off the companion whose presence was anything but agreeable to him; but the other remarked:
“Oh! you put up at the swell hotel, do you? Well, I guess I’ll go in and write a letter too.”
“I didn’t know you were stopping here. I didn’t see you at breakfast,” said Phil.
“No, nor you won’t see me at dinner, either, unless some of my friends happen to give me an invite. All the same, I write my letters to the firm from here, and send in my expense bills from here. That’s the only way to make money on the road nowadays. Charge up first-class hotel prices, live at restaurants, and pocket the difference. See? That is the reason I’m goingWest by this route, too,” continued Simon Goldollar, who seemed anxious to show off his smartness before this new and evidently very verdant acquaintance. “The scheme is to charge up the highest possible railroad fares, and travel on scalped tickets. Oh, it’s a great racket! and the sooner you get onto it the better for your pocket-book.”
“Thank you,” answered Phil, in a tone that expressed as much of disgust as he could throw into it. “Whenever I find it necessary to make my living by turning ‘road-agent,’ which is what I suppose you mean by ‘going on the road,’ I will remember your advice; but now you really must excuse me if I leave you for a while.”
With this, and without giving the other a chance to reply, the lad turned and left the hotel. He took a long walk through the city, and when he returned for dinner was thankful to find no trace of his late companion. “I’ve almost a mind to stop over and take to-morrow’s train in order to avoid him,” he said to himself; but reflecting that this would be cowardly as well as extravagant, he decided to adhere to his original plan.