AN 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 procured as 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 which to 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 the lad’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 of
_my friends_ have 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 singing the 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 going West 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.