Rick Dale, A Story of the Northwest Coast Part 22

"Who is he? I mean, what is his name?"

"I don't know. I never thought to ask him. And he doesn't live here either, but has just come down from Alaska, and was going off in the one-o'clock train. I do know, though, that he is the very finest chap I ever met, and I only hope I'll have a chance some time to pay back his kindness to me by helping some other poor boy."

"It is funny," remarked Bonny, meditatively, "that your friend and my friend should both have just come from Alaska."

"Isn't it?" replied Alaric; "but then they are travelling together, you know."

"I didn't know it, though I ought to have suspected it, for they are the kind who naturally would travel together--the kind, I mean, that give a fellow an idea of how much real goodness there is in the world, after all--a sort of travelling sermon, only one that is acted instead of being preached."

"That's just the way I feel about them," agreed Alaric; "but I wish I hadn't been so careless about this ball. It may be one that he values for a.s.sociation's sake, just as I did the one we left in that Siwash camp."

"Let me have it a moment," said Bonny, who was looking curiously at the ball.

Alaric handed it to him, and he examined it closely.

"I do believe it is the very one!" he exclaimed. "Yes, I am sure it is.

Don't you remember, Rick, the burned place on your ball that came when Bah-die dropped it into the fire the first time you threw it at him, and how you laughed and called it a sure-enough red-hot ball? Well, here's the place now, and this is certainly the very ball that introduced us to each other in Victoria."

"How can it be?" asked Alaric, incredulously.

"I don't know, but it surely is."

"Well," said Alaric, finally convinced that his comrade was right, "that is the very most unexplainable thing I ever came across, for I don't see how it could possibly have come into his possession."

While discussing this strange happening, the lads approached the hotel in which one of them had been made to suffer so keenly a few hours before. He dreaded the very thought of entering it again, but having made up his mind that he must, was about to do so, when his attention was attracted to a curious scene in front of the main entrance.

A small, wiry-looking man, evidently a foreigner, was gesticulating, stamping, and shouting to a group of grinning porters and bell-boys who were gathered about him. As our lads drew near they saw that he held a small open book in his hand, from which he was quoting some sentence, while at the same time he was rapidly working himself into a fury. It was a French-English phrase-book, in which, under the head of instructions to servants, the sentence "_Je desire un fiacre_" was rendered "Call me a hansom," and it was this that the excited Frenchman was demanding, greatly to the amus.e.m.e.nt and mystification of his hearers.

"Call me a hansom! Call me a hansom! Call me a hansom!" he repeated over and over, at the top of his voice. "_C'est un fiacre--fiacre--fiacre!_"

he shouted. "_Oh, la, la! Mille tonnerres!_ Call me a hansom!"

"He must be crazy," said Bonny; "for he certainly isn't handsome, and even if he were, he couldn't expect people to call him so. I wonder why they don't send for the police."

Instead of answering him, Alaric stepped up to the laughing group and said, politely, "_Pardon, monsieur. C'est Monsieur Filbert, n'est-ce pas?_"

"_Oui, oui. Je suis Filbert!_ Call me a hansom."

"He wants a carriage," explained Alaric to the porters, who stared open-mouthed at hearing this young tramp talk to the foreigner in his own "lingo."

"_Vous voulez une voiture, n'est-ce pas?_" he added, turning to the stranger.

"Oh, my friend!" cried M. Filbert, in his own language, flinging away the perplexing phrase-book as he spoke, and embracing Alaric in his joy at finding himself once more comprehended. "It is as the voice of an angel from heaven to hear again my own language in this place of barbarians!"

"Have a care, monsieur," warned Alaric, "how you speak of barbarians.

There are many here who can understand perfectly your language."

"I care not for them! I do not see them! They have not come to me! You are the first! Can it be that I may engage you to remain and interpret for me this language of distraction?" Here the speaker drew back, and scanned Alaric's forlorn appearance hopefully.

"That is what I came to see you about, monsieur," answered Alaric. "I am looking for employment, and shall be happy----"

"It is enough!" interrupted the other, vehemently. "You have found it. I engage you now, at once. Come, the carriage is here. Let us enter."

"But," objected the lad, "I have a friend whom I cannot leave."

"Let him come! Let all your friends come! Bring your whole family if you will, but only stay with me yourself!" cried the Frenchman, impetuously.

"I am distracted by my troubles with this terrible language, and but for you I shall go crazy. You are my salvation. So enter the carriage, and your friend. _Apres vous, monsieur._ Do you also speak the language of the beautiful France? No? It is a great pity."

"Does his royal highness take us for dukes?" questioned the bewildered Bonny, who, not understanding one word of the foregoing conversation, had, of course, no idea why he now found himself rolling along the streets of Tacoma in one of its most luxurious public carriages.

"Not exactly," laughed Alaric; "but he takes us for interpreters--that is, he wants to engage us as such."

"Oh! Is that it? Well, I'm agreeable. I suppose you told him that I was pretty well up on Chinook? But what language does he talk himself?"

"French, of course," replied Alaric, "seeing that he is a Frenchman."

"Are you a Frenchman too?"

"Certainly not."

"Well, I didn't know but what you were, seeing that you talk the same language he does, and just as well, for all that I can make out. Really, Rick Dale, it is growing interesting to find out the things you know and can do."

"And the things I still have to learn," laughed Alaric.

Having thus satisfied his curiosity, and learned that he was an interpreter, the last position in the world for which he would have applied, Bonny folded his arms, a.s.sumed what he considered a proper att.i.tude for the occasion, and entered upon a calm enjoyment of the first regular carriage-ride of his life. Nor did he allow the animated conversation taking place between M. Filbert and Alaric to disturb him in the least, though by it the whole future course of his life was to be changed.

Under Alaric's direction the carriage first bore them to the railway-station, where a number of strange-looking boxes and packages, all belonging to M. Filbert, were gathered in one place, and given in charge of a porter, who was instructed to receive and care for any others that might come marked with the same name. Then the carriage was again headed up-town, and driven to shop after shop until it seemed as though the entire resources of the city were to be drawn upon to supply the mult.i.tudinous needs of the mysterious Frenchman.

Among the things thus purchased and ordered sent down to the station were provisions, cooking utensils, axes, medicines, alcohol, tents, blankets, ammunition, and clothing.

"I don't know what's up," reflected Bonny, "and I don't care, so long as Rick says everything is all right; but I should think we were either going to make war on the Siwash or take a trip to the North Pole."

Of course Alaric accompanied M. Filbert into each store, where his knowledge of languages was invaluable in conducting the various negotiations; but the Chinook interpreter, as he called himself, finding that his services were not yet in demand, was content to remain luxuriously seated in the carriage. Here he discussed the whole remarkable performance with the driver, who was certain that the Frenchman was either going prospecting for gold, or for a new town-site on which to settle a colony of his countrymen.

During the whole afternoon M. Filbert talked incessantly with his new-found interpreter, and Alaric seemed almost as excited as he. At length the former, casting a dubious glance at the lads, asked, with an apologetic manner, if they were well provided with clothing.

"Only what you see, monsieur," answered Alaric. "Everything else we have lost."

"Ah! is it so? Then must you be provided with the habiliments necessary.

If you will kindly give the instructions?"

So the carriage was ordered to a shoe-shop and an outfitting establishment, where both lads, to Bonny's further bewilderment, were provided with complete suits of rough but warm and serviceable clothing, including two pairs of walking-boots, one of which was very heavy and had hob-nailed soles.

These last purchases were not concluded until after sunset, and with them the business of the day was ended. With many parting injunctions to Alaric, and a polite _bon nuit_ to both lads, M. Filbert was driven back to the hotel, leaving his newly engaged a.s.sistants to their own devices for the time being.

"Now," said Bonny, "if you haven't forgotten how to talk United States, perhaps you will explain what all this means--what we are engaged to do, what our wages are to be, and where we are bound? Are we to turn gold-hunters or Indian-fighters, or is it something in the exploring line?"

"I expect," laughed Alaric, "it is to be more in the climbing line."