Part 16 (2/2)

We arrived at Skaguay early on a Sunday morning, and were directed to the ”'bus” of the leading hotel. We rode at least a mile before reaching it. We found it to be a wooden structure, four or five stories in height; the large office was used as a kind of general living-room as well. The rooms were comfortable and the table excellent. The proprietress grows her own vegetables and flowers, and keeps cows, chickens, and sheep, to enrich her table.

About ten o'clock in the forenoon we went to the station to have our trunks checked to Dawson. The doors stood open. We entered and pa.s.sed from room to room. There was no one in sight. The square ticket window was closed.

We hammered upon it and upon every closed door. There was no response.

We looked up the stairway, but it had a personal air. There are stairways which seem to draw their steps around them, as a d.u.c.h.ess does her furs, and to give one a look which says, ”Do not take liberties with me!”--while others seem to be crying, ”Come up; come up!” to every pa.s.ser-by. I have never seen a stairway that had the d.u.c.h.ess air to the degree that the one in the station at Skaguay has it. If any one doubts, let him saunter around that station until he finds the stairway and then take a good look at it.

We went outside, and I, being the questioner of the party, asked a man if the ticket office would be open that day.

He squared around, put his hands in his pockets, bent his wizened body backward, and gave a laugh that echoed down the street.

”G.o.d bless your soul, lady,” said he, ”_on Sunday!_ Only an extry goes out on Sundays, to take round-trip tourists to the summit and back while the steamer waits. To-day's extry has gone.”

”Yes,” said I, mildly but firmly, ”but we are going to Dawson to-morrow.

Our train leaves at nine o'clock, and there will be so many to get tickets signed and baggage checked--”

He gave another laugh.

”Don't you worry, lady. Take life easy, the way we do here. If we miss one train, we take the next--unless we miss it, too!” He laughed again.

At that moment, bowing and smiling in the window of the ticket office, appeared a man--the nicest man!

”Will you see him bow!” gasped my friend. ”Is he bowing at _us_?

Why--are you _bowing back_?”

”Of course I am.”

”What on earth does he want?”

”He wants to be nice to us,” I replied; and she followed me inside.

The nice face was smiling through the little square window.

”I was upstairs,” he said--ah, he had descended by way of the ”d.u.c.h.ess,”

”and I heard you rapping on windows and doors”--the smile deepened, ”so I came down to see if I could serve you.”

We related our woes; we got our tickets signed and our baggage checked; had all our questions answered--and they were not few--and the following morning ate our breakfast at our leisure and were greatly edified by our fellow-travellers' wild scramble to get their bills paid and to reach the station in time to have their baggage checked.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo by P. S. Hunt

VALDEZ]

CHAPTER XIV

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