Rick Dale: A Story of the Northwest Coast

Alaric Dale Todd was his name, and it was a great grief to him to be called "Allie." Allie Todd was so insignificant and sounded so weak. Besides, Allie was a regular girl's name, as he had been so often told, and expected to be told by each stranger who heard it for the first time. There is so much in a name, after all. We either strive to live up to it, or else it exerts a constant disheartening pull backward. Although Alaric was tall for his age, which was nearly seventeen, he was thin, pale, and undeveloped. He did not look like a boy accustomed to play tennis or football, or engage in any of the splendid athletics that develop the muscle and self-reliance of those sturdy young fellows who contest interscholastic matches. Nor was he one of these; so far from it, he had never played a game in his life except an occasional quiet game of croquet, or something equally soothing. He could not swim nor row nor sail a boat; he had never ridden horseback nor on a bicycle; he had never skated nor coasted nor hunted nor fished, and yet he was perfectly well formed and in good health. I fancy I hear my boy readers exclaim: "What a regular muff your Alaric must have been! No wonder they called him 'Allie'!" And the girls? Well, they would probably say, "What a disagreeable prig!" For Alaric knew a great deal more about places and people and books than most boys or girls of his age, and was rather fond of displaying this knowledge. And then he was always dressed with such faultless elegance. His patent-leather boots were so shiny, his neckwear, selected with perfect taste, was so daintily arranged, and while he never left the house without drawing on a pair of gloves, they were always so immaculate that it did not seem as though he ever wore the same pair twice. He was very particular, too, about his linen, and often sent his shirts back to the laundress unworn because they were not done up to suit him. As for his coats and trousers, of which he had so many that it actually seemed as though he might wear a different suit every day in the year, he spent so much time in selecting material, and then in being fitted, and insisted on so many alterations, that his tailors were often in despair, and wondered whether it paid to have so particular a customer, after all. They never had occasion, though, to complain about their bills, for no matter how large these were or how extortionate, they were always paid without question as soon as presented. From all this it may be gathered that our Alaric was not a child of poverty. Nor was he; for Amos Todd, his father, was so many times a millionaire that he was one of the richest men on the Pacific coast. He owned or controlled a bank, railways, steamships, and mines, great ranches in the South, and vast tracts of timber lands in the North. His manifold interests extended from Alaska to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic; and while he made his home in San Francisco his name was a power in the stock-exchanges of the world. Years before he and his young wife had made their way to California from New England with just money enough to pay their passage to the Golden State. Here they had undergone poverty and hardships such as they determined their children should never know. Of these Margaret, the eldest, was now a leader of San Francisco society, while John, who was eight years older than Alaric, had shown such an aptitude for business that he had risen to be manager of his father's bank. There were other children, who had died, and when Alaric came, last of all, he was such a puny infant that there was little hope of his ever growing up.