The Fur-Seals Tooth E-Book

Kirk Munroe

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 357

Beschreibung

Kurk Munroe (1850-1930) was an American writer and conservationist. He worked as a reporter for the New York Sun and became the first editor of Harpers Young People magazin.

Leseprobe

The Fur-Seals Tooth

The Fur-Seals ToothCHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER VCHAPTER VICHAPTER VIICHAPTER VIIICHAPTER IXCHAPTER XCHAPTER XICHAPTER XIICHAPTER XIIICHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XVCHAPTER XVICHAPTER XVIICHAPTER XVIIICHAPTER XIXCHAPTER XXCHAPTER XXICHAPTER XXIICHAPTER XXIIICHAPTER XXIVCHAPTER XXVCHAPTER XXVICHAPTER XXVIICHAPTER XXVIIICHAPTER XXIXCHAPTER XXXCHAPTER XXXICHAPTER XXXIICHAPTER XXXIIICHAPTER XXXIVCHAPTER XXXVCHAPTER XXXVICHAPTER XXXVIICHAPTER XXXVIIICHAPTER XXXIXCHAPTER XLCopyright

The Fur-Seals Tooth

A Story of Alaskan Adventure

CHAPTER I

PHIL AND SERGE

Although the sun was shining brightly over the pleasant little British Columbian city of Victoria, and the air was filled with the flower scents and bird notes of late spring-time, at least one of the strollers along its busy streets was so decidedly unhappy that he paid no attention to sunshine, birds, or flowers. Life just then seemed a very serious and perplexing affair to Phil Ryder, and, to quote an expression that he himself had often used in regard to others, he looked as though he had lost his last friend. If any one in all that strange foreign city had been intimate enough with him to suggest this to Phil, he would have replied, “And so I have, for I have lost my last dollar, and in a strange country I don’t know of any better friend than the good old Yankee dollar.”

How it all happened was this way: Phil was a New England lad, and hailed from the quaint old Connecticut town of New London. He was freckle-faced and curly-headed, not very tall, but so broad-shouldered that no one ever thought of asking him if he was travelling for his health. What with rowing, paddling, and sailing, skating and coasting, playing football until he became centre rush and captain of his school team, going on long, delightful outing trips to the Maine woods with his father, who had been the most painstaking of teachers in the useful arts of shooting, fishing, and camping out, this boy had early developed into an all-round athlete of more than ordinary attainments. With additional strength had come an increase of self-reliance, until at the age of seventeen he was about as independent and manly a young fellow as one would be apt to discover in a long day’s journey.

But this very independence often led him into trouble. Like most self-reliant boys, he was inclined to place an undue value upon his own knowledge and acquirements, and to make light of those of his elders. All except his own father, whom Phil regarded as the very wisest and best of men, and whose example in all things he was most anxious to copy.

And yet from this very father the boy inherited his worst fault, which was that of carelessness. Although his aunt Ruth, who had brought him up from the babyhood in which he lost his mother, made a point of providing him with a place for everything, and had almost hourly, during his whole life, impressed upon him the importance of keeping things in their places, he never yet had learned the lesson she strove so earnestly to impart. He would say, “Yes, Aunt Rue, I’ll remember,” give her a hearty kiss, and rush away with an instant forgetfulness of all she had just said. He lost and mislaid not only his own things, but those of other people, until at length no one who knew him would lend him anything of value. He forgot messages, and could not be trusted to go on errands. He was forever in hot water on account of broken engagements, and though naturally a bright student, was always in trouble over his lessons on account of having to spend most of his study hours in searching for mislaid books. Generally they were found flung into a corner of the stone wall bounding the football field, tucked carefully under the steps of the boat-house, or hidden away in some other unlikely place that no one but he would have thought of, and any one but he would have remembered.

His son’s heedlessness was Mr. Ryder’s greatest trial.

“Philip! Philip! why won’t you overcome it for my sake, if not for your own?” he would cry; and the boy would answer:

“I do try, Pop; indeed I do, but it’s no use. I was born that way, and I expect I shall be that way so long as I live. After all, I am the one who suffers most from it.”

“Hold hard, Phil! There’s where you are wrong. No one can truly say that, for no one can ever know how far-reaching may be the consequences of his own actions. With every single act of carelessness you cause more or less anxiety and inconvenience to those about you. Sooner or later, just so sure as you fail to conquer this wretched habit, it will lead you, and probably others with you, into some unhappy predicament, from which I pray you may escape without the accompaniment of a life-long sorrow.”

After a talk like this Phil would reform for a day or two. He would present himself to his astonished schoolmates as a model of punctuality, and would show an attention to trifles that was painful in its minuteness. These efforts at reform were always accompanied by such an unnatural restraint of manner, so severe an expression of countenance, and so stern a refusal to engage in any of the frivolities of life, such as football or even the minor sports of the season, that there was always a general rejoicing when in some sudden excitement the young penitent forgot his vows, and relapsed into his old jolly, heedless self.

Even to Aunt Ruth these brief seasons of austere reform were periods of trial and anxiety lest by some unguarded act or word she should fail to set her nephew a proper example. So she, too, secretly breathed a sigh of relief when the day of penance was ended, and she could resume her accustomed way of quietly picking up and putting things to rights, after one of Phil’s sudden inroads through the house in search of something that must be found at once, because all the fellows were waiting. He knew he left it right here! and what could have become of it?

Phil’s father, Mr. John Ryder, was a mining expert, whose business of examining into the condition of mines, and reporting upon their value for the information of capitalists or stockholders, kept him travelling pretty constantly to all sorts of out-of-the-way nooks and corners of the world. Phil considered it the most delightful business in which one could engage, and longed for the time to come when he might follow in his father’s footsteps. He even thought it a little hard that the latter would never allow him to go as his companion upon any of his distant journeyings, but insisted on his attending strictly to school and his studies.

Mr. Ryder always so arranged his affairs as to spend a part at least of every vacation with his boy, and then they took those long trips into the woods that, up to this time, had formed the most delightful episodes of Phil’s life. At other times, when he was at home, Mr. Ryder devoted himself so entirely to his son, and entered so heartily into his pursuits and plans, that a very strong bond of sympathy existed between them, and the boy was never so happy as when in his father’s company.

Now it happened that the very year in which Phil was to graduate from the New London High School found his father engaged on an important and prolonged survey of mining property in the distant and little-known land of Alaska. It was a great disappointment to both father and son that the former could not be present at the latter’s graduation. At the same time there were compensations in a promise of glittering possibilities held out by Mr. Ryder.

“If you will only graduate within five of the head of your class, Phil, you shall come out and spend the summer with me in Alaska,” he had said, and the boy knew that he meant it.

What a prospect was thus held forth! and what boy in his senses would refuse to work hard for such a reward as that? A whole summer in the distant wonderland of the far north, amid Eskimos and Indians, volcanoes and glaciers, wolves and bears, seals and salmon! Every fellow in the school, and nearly every boy in town, for that matter, knew of the splendid prize for which Phil was striving, and they watched him either with feelings of mean envy that secretly hoped he might lose it, or with an honestly outspoken hope that he might win it, according to their dispositions.

These New London lads knew, or thought they knew, a great deal about Alaska; for had not Serge Belcofsky, a young Russo-American from Sitka, attended one of their schools for a whole year? He had come on an Arctic whaler that had touched at Sitka on her homeward voyage. With an uncommon perseverance, and a longing for a better education than he could obtain at home, the lad had worked his way to New London on this whaler, had with infinite patience and self-denial worked his way through a whole year of schooling, and was now working his way back towards his distant home on a fishing-schooner that had been purchased in New London by parties in Victoria, British Columbia, for use on the Pacific coast.

During his whole year of schooling Serge Belcofsky had been terribly homesick, and his intense longing for his far-away northern home had made it seem to him a veritable paradise. Thus from the outpourings of his full heart the other boys had learned that, while in certain portions of Alaska there were such things as cold weather, ice, snow, fogs, and in summer-time incredible swarms of the most blood-thirsty mosquitoes, and other unpleasant features, these were almost unknown in Sitka, which was by far the loveliest spot on the face of the earth.

There, according to Serge, for some reason not made quite clear, though probably on account of the heat from surrounding but perfectly harmless volcanoes, perpetual summer reigned, flowers bloomed incessantly, and the woods, always green, were filled with the most beautiful birds. Sitka itself was a great and wonderful city, containing a castle, a cathedral, a fort, a parade-ground for the troops always stationed there, a battery of heavy guns, a governor’s residence, stately men-of-war in its harbor, Indians in its suburbs, and a thousand other attractive features. Besides all this, there were gold mines of fabulous richness on every side; in fact, the lofty mountains rising just back of the city were full of gold.

This last was the statement that the boys most doubted until it was confirmed by Phil Ryder, who happened to overhear both it and their incredulous exclamations. He knew, of course; for was not his father acquainted with all the gold mines in the world? and had he not even now gone out to set the seal of his approval on those of Alaska?

Phil did not know Serge Belcofsky very well; for though the latter was of about his own age, he was so far behind in his studies as to be in a lower class, and so infinitely removed from a fellow of the former’s high attainments. At the same time, as the young Russo-American did not understand any of the games played by the Yankee boys in whose company he found himself, and was far too busy earning his daily bread to learn them, the leading athlete and ball-player of the school regarded him with a sort of pitying indifference. He did not altogether ignore him, and even on occasions listened with the smiling indulgence of a superior to the young Sitkan’s marvellous tales of his native place.

For this, Serge, who regarded Phil with an admiration that almost amounted to reverence, was deeply grateful, and when the young hero of the ball-field went so far as to back up his most doubtful assertions, and so establish them as truth beyond further question, his gratitude knew no bounds. In a vague effort to express it, he ventured to present Phil with his most valued possession—it was the ivory tooth of a fur-seal exquisitely carved, that had been given to his father many years before, as a token of highest esteem, by a chief of Chilkat Indians—one of the most powerful and warlike of Alaskan tribes.

Phil deigned to accept this gift, and even went so far as to wear it attached to his watch-chain, to the unfeigned gratification of his sincere admirer and would-be friend. Although Phil’s watch was but an inexpensive one in a nickel case, and its chain was of steel, this new ornament attracted so much attention from all who happened to note it, that the lad at length began to value it rather highly himself, and to study with interest the curious devices with which it was so beautifully carved.

CHAPTER II

WINNING THE PRIZE

Serge Belcofsky had departed early in the year, and Alaska was lost sight of by most of the New London boys amid the throng of more immediate, and to them important, interests that crowded thick and fast into their lives. These were Billy Bow’s birthday party, the opening of the gymnasium, the launch of the new yacht, theatricals for the library fund, the last skating-match of the season, and a score of other things demanding their undivided attention. Phil Ryder managed to take some part in all of these, though he was by no means so active nor so much of a leader as formerly. That Alaska trip was to him a living reality, and he was striving for it with all his might. Some of the other fellows were provoked that he should neglect sports, in which he had so excelled, for the mere purpose of studying, while there was still so much time left in which to attend to that.

“There are two whole months yet before graduation,” argued Al Snyder one day, when he was vainly endeavoring to persuade Phil to undertake the coaching of the nine. “Two whole months! And yet here you are grinding away as though examinations were to begin to-morrow. Catch me working like that!”

“Oh yes, you would,” laughed Phil, “if you had the prize held out to you that I have.”

“Pshaw!” ejaculated Al. “You know you can go on that trip no matter where you stand. Your governor only put it that way to try and make you work a little harder. It’s just one of his tricks. They’re all up to them.”

“It is nothing of the kind!” retorted Phil, hotly. “And you don’t know what you are talking about when you speak in that way of my father. He never said anything in his life that he didn’t mean. If I aminside of number five I’ll go to Alaska, and if I’m not, I won’t. That’s all there is about it. But I mean to be inside, and as I can’t make sure of that and watch the nine at the same time, you see it is impossible for me to do what you want.”

So Phil stuck to his books, and all of a sudden there came a letter from Mr. Ryder stating that, as his work was drawing to a close sooner than he had expected, and as he was more desirous than ever of having his son visit the wonderful country in which he was located, Phil might come out to him at once, without waiting to graduate, provided he stood better than number five in all his classes.

Here was a startling proposition! Did he stand better than five everywhere? The boy rapidly ran over his position in his several classes. He was within the magic number everywhere except in mathematics, and there he stood at exactly five.

“I could have stood better than five there too, if I had not given my chance to hump-backed Jimmy, the other day,” he reflected, though he was too honorable a fellow to even have hinted at such a thing aloud. He knew it, and he thought Jimmy himself knew it, for he had seen a quick flush rise to the cripple’s pale cheek when it happened; but he didn’t believe any one else did, nor did he intend they should. Still, what could he do under the circumstances? He was not inside of number five in all of his classes.

The struggle was too hard a one for the boy to make alone, and he carried his perplexities to Mr. Blake, the head-master of his school. After the latter had read Mr. Ryder’s letter, and listened attentively to Phil’s presentation of the facts, he laid his hand on the lad’s shoulder, and said,

“Phil, do you remember the sentiment with which you headed your final composition of last year?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the boy; “of course I do. My father gave it to me, and I shall never forget it.”

“What was its exact wording?”

“‘Regard honor as more precious than life itself; for without the former the latter is valueless,’” repeated Phil, in a low tone.

“You would hardly care to sacrifice your life for the sake of this trip?”

“No, sir, nor my honor either!” cried the lad, with a brave tremble in his voice. “So, as I cannot say with perfect truth that I am inside of number five in all my studies, I will write to father to-night, and tell him the proposed trip must be given up.”

“Spoken like the honest, true-hearted Yankee lad that you are, Phil Ryder!” exclaimed Mr. Blake, grasping the boy’s hand, and holding it tightly clasped. “Stick to that principle through life, and you will have mastered the secret of all true success. But let us look into this matter a little further. I happen to have noticed a private transaction between you and lame Jimmy the other day. If you had not, as I believe purposely, made the same mistake that he did you would have gone above him, and would now stand number four instead of number five in geometry. Now, on account of that I have a proposition to make. While I am sorry not to have you graduate with your class, I know that your father has good reasons for wishing you to visit Alaska this summer, while with you the desire to join him there is very great.”

“Indeed it is, sir!”

“Well, then, if you will give me your word of honor not to divulge a word of their contents, I will place the forthcoming examination papers of your class in your hands. If you can satisfactorily answer ninety per cent. of their questions, you will stand safely within the number named by your father, and I will give you a certificate to that effect.”

“Oh, thank you, sir!” cried Phil, with such a revulsion of feeling from deepest disappointment to brightest hope, that even the sunset seemed suddenly to have taken on a new and more radiant splendor. “Of course I promise! and, of course, I shall be only too glad to try the examinations!”

“Very well,” said Mr. Blake. “Come to my study to-morrow evening directly after tea, and we will make a beginning with English literature and Latin. In the mean time don’t mention to any one, excepting your aunt, what you are doing.”

How thankful Phil was that he had so used his time as to be able to approach this trial with confidence, and how hard he did work during the next three days in revising his studies of the previous year! What anxious minutes he spent at the conclusion of the third evening of examination, while Mr. Blake looked over and marked the last paper, the one in mathematics, that he had just handed in.

“It’s all right, Philip!” the head-master finally announced, “and I do most heartily congratulate you on your success. This last paper brings your average up to ninety-three per cent., which, as compared with the class standings of the past ten years, lands you well within the limit named by your father. I therefore feel no hesitation in giving you that rank, and you may, with a clear conscience, start on your journey just as soon as your preparations can be made. Good-bye! God bless you! I trust you will have the glorious time you expect, and which you have so honestly earned. I also hope that in the autumn you will return to us with a richly increased knowledge of our great country, and particularly of that vast Northern territory concerning which there is still so little general information.”

If the last three days had been busy ones for Phil, they had been equally so for his aunt Ruth, for in that short time she had been compelled to do all the making ready and packing, for which she had expected to have as many weeks. In these few days, during the infrequent intervals that her nephew spared from his studies, she felt it her duty to stock his mind with stores of good advice and oft-repeated warnings against his besetting fault. He listened with what patience he could command, but finally laughingly declared that it would be necessary for him to live at least a hundred years to put all her precepts into practice.

“Oh, but Phil!” she exclaimed, pausing in the packing of his trunk to emphasize her remarks, “you are so young and so careless, and the journey before you is so filled with terrible possibilities! I declare I don’t know but that I ought to go along to take care of you.”

“Nonsense, Aunt Rue!” retorted the young athlete, at the same time picking up the slight figure of his anxious relative and swinging her, ruffled and indignant, into his father’s great leathern arm-chair; “if I’m not old enough and big enough now to take care of myself, I never shall be. Of course I know that I have been careless at times, and heedless, and all that. I can assure you, though, that my careless days are things of the past, and that hereafter no graybeard of your acquaintance will afford a more perfect model of prudence than your humble nephew. As for you! well, the mere idea of a dear little thing like you wandering away out there among the Siwashes to protect a fellow of my size is prodigiously absurd. It surely is.”

“Absurd or not, Master Impudence, you’ll see the day more than once, before this trip is ended, that you’ll wish your old aunty was at hand with a little of her common-sense to help you out of some reckless scrape or other. Mark my words, you will.”

“All right, Aunt Rue, I’ll mark down your words as you suggest; mark ’em down to half-price. I’ll also make a note in my log-book of every time I get stranded for want of your counsel. Then when the cruise is over I promise to make a full confession, and humbly beg for those chunks of wisdom that shall enable me to steer clear of all such rocks in the future.”

“Get away with your foolishness, you young scapegrace!” cried Aunt Ruth, jumping down from the arm-chair and attempting a box on Phil’s ear, which the boy skilfully dodged, as a preliminary to resuming her packing.

At length all was in readiness, the last lingering good-byes were spoken, and the boy was fairly launched on his travels. All his young friends, and apparently half the town besides, were assembled at the station to see him set forth. His trunk was checked, he carried an overcoat on his arm, in his hands were a stout travelling-bag, and in a canvas case the beautiful Winchester that had been his father’s last birthday gift.

There was a grand shout of farewell from the fellows as the train finally moved out from the station, and Phil answered it with a wave of his hat from the rear platform of the last car. Then, going inside, he sat down to reflect upon his glorious prospects, that seemed to stretch away in a limitless haze of exciting adventure and daring exploit. If he could have had but one real glimpse of the varied hardships and bitter experiences held by the immediate future, I am afraid he would have shrunk from them as did the poor little bear who found himself alone in the world with all his troubles before him. Fortunately for our hero’s peace of mind, his vision was just as limited as is that of every one of us, who can have no possible inkling of what each coming day may bring forth.

CHAPTER III

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.

CHAPTER IV

ACROSS THE CONTINENT

In his journeyings thus far it may have been remarked that our careless hero had been a model of prudence and forethought. About this time, however, his old habits began to assert themselves. Thus, before the end of the first day out from Montreal his belongings were so scattered from one end of the sleeping-car to the other, that its good-natured black porter was kept constantly on the alert gathering them up and restoring them to their owner. At the same time, by his cheerful disposition and obliging manners the young fellow made himself a universal favorite. Especially was this the case with the weary mothers, whose restless children he was always ready to amuse and entertain.

To these children the quaintly carved tooth that dangled from his watch-chain was a source of never-failing delight. It was also considered a great curiosity, and examined with interest by the older passengers, while Simon Goldollar, who managed to maintain an appearance of intimacy with its owner, asked many questions concerning it. “Was it not a witch charm? Did its engraved figures represent totems?” etc., to all of which Phil had to plead ignorance.

One day he detached it from its chain to give it to a fretful baby as a plaything. At the same time he gave his watch to another child. Then, attracted by a bit of scenery that was best visible from the smoking-room at the rear end of the car, he went off and forgot all about them.

A few hours later one mother returned his watch to him; while the other said that, after her infant had nearly choked himself in trying to swallow the fur-seal’s tooth, she had taken it from him and laid it on the window-sill of Phil’s seat. In the mean time the berths had been made up for the night, and it was nowhere to be seen. Its owner good-naturedly said, “No matter, it will turn up again somewhere,” and thought no more about it until the next day. Then a vigorous search was instituted for the missing trinket, but with no avail. It was not to be found, nor was it again seen during the remainder of the journey.

Phil felt badly over the loss of the fur-seal’s tooth, because the universal interest it had excited led him to believe it more valuable than he had at first supposed. Also because of Serge Belcofsky, of whom it had been a constant reminder, and whose good qualities grew more and more apparent to our hero with the lapse of time and distance. He wondered if any one could have stolen the bit of carved ivory; but being of a singularly honest and unsuspicious nature, he dismissed this thought almost before it was formed.

So the eventful journey wore on, with each day more full of strange and wonderful interest than its predecessor. The scenery of the first day was an almost unbroken forest with queer settlements at wide intervals. It was rather monotonous, and to beguile the time Simon Goldollar induced Phil to join him and two others in a game of cards. The lad did not care much for the game, and only entered it rather than appear ill-natured or disobliging. When at the end of an hour he expressed a wish to withdraw, Simon Goldollar informed him that he could do so upon payment of the two dollars he had lost, as they had been playing for a shilling a point. At this Phil sprang from his seat in a sudden fury.

“So you are a gambler, are you! And I have been led blindfolded into your trap!” he cried. “Very well, sir; there is your wretched money; and now, if you ever mention cards to me again, or in fact if you dare speak to me on any subject, I will knock you down.” With this the lad flung two silver dollars upon the table and left the room, almost choked with the tumult of his feelings.

He heard Goldollar’s sneering laugh and his remark of “Pretty loud crowing for a bantam, eh?” and he heard one of the other men say something about its being too bad; but he did not wait for anything more.

Afterwards both the strangers apologized to him for their apparent share in the deception, saying that Goldollar had told them before the game began that it was understood by all they were to play for money. The author of this unpleasant scene did not, however, see fit to offer any apology for his share in it, nor did he and Phil exchange aught save black looks for several days.

Our lad was too manly a fellow to allow an incident of this kind to affect him for long, and he was soon enjoying the trip as keenly as ever.

The second day was passed amid the rugged scenery of Thunder Bay and the northern shores of Lake Superior, greatest of fresh-water seas. It was followed by their arrival in the early morning of the third day at Winnipeg, the old Fort Garry of fur-trading times. This fort had played so conspicuous a part in the stories of Phil’s boyhood that he gazed about him on all sides with an eager interest, and was disappointed to find the Hudson Bay Company’s post of romance grown into a fair and wide-spread city.

Here, with the crossing of the Red River, the forest country ended, and the treeless plains of Manitoba, once the range of countless buffalo, but now one of the greatest wheat regions of the world, began. As the train rushed across the vast breezy levels at an accelerated speed the far-reaching view with its myriad objects of interest was exhilarating in the extreme, and Phil gazed upon it for the greater part of two days without a trace of weariness. Here were old buffalo trails and wallows; there a fleeing band of antelope or a skulking coyote. Now a party of mounted Blackfeet in all the bravery of savage decoration would dash up to some little station at which the train was stopping. A few minutes later it would whirl past a cluster of their tepees looking exactly like the pictures of Indian camps he had pored over so often in his books. He saw cowboys, too, and great herds of cattle. He saw a vast wheat ranch, containing one hundred square miles of land, divided into fields of such size that in them the ploughing of a single furrow was a day’s work for a man and team.

At length, during the morning of the fourth day, soon after leaving the brisk little city of Calgary, Phil caught a glimpse, far ahead, of something that caused him to rub his eyes and look again. It was high up and of dazzling whiteness. It could not be a cloud. No, it must be snow. Yes, it actually was a snow-capped peak of the Rocky Mountains. As the discovery burst upon him in all its magnitude Phil uttered a shout of delighted wonder that attracted the attention of every one in the car, and all the passengers crowded to the windows to look.

From this on all was excitement, which, as the wondrous panorama of glistening peaks was unfolded and uplifted, until finally the train plunged into their very midst, increased with each moment. Now an open observation-car was attached to the train, and as it sped up the narrow valley of the crystal Bow, the ever-changing and ever-fascinating view was unobstructed. On they hurried, past Banff, with its sky-piercing peaks, its boiling springs, and its stately hotel; and past Laggan, the point of departure on horseback for the marvellously beautiful lakes of the clouds. Ten miles further on the Great Divide was crossed, and with a thrill our young traveller realized that the rivulet flowing beside the track was the head-waters of the Kicking Horse, a tributary of the mighty Columbia, and the first Pacific waters he had ever seen.

From here, for a hundred miles down the western slope of the Rockies, and over the majestic Selkirk Range, the scenery was so indescribably grand, so filled with lofty mountain peaks, fathomless gorges, gleaming glaciers, and foaming cataracts, that no words can tell of it, and even the enthusiasts of the observation-car were awed into silence. As for Phil Ryder, who had never even imagined anything so marvellous, he sat and gazed alone, and with swelling heart, at the wonders unfolded by each succeeding moment. The majesty of that day’s scenery was so overpowering that he was actually glad when night came and hid it from his wearied eyes.