CHAPTER XXV
AN EIGHTY-MILE WALK THROUGH THE COLUMBIA VALLEY
We got back to Wilmer the following morning, and the problem then was—how to reach Golden again. The boat was due up the river some time in the day, but sandbanks do not encourage punctuality. I had my suspicions of that boat, and in any case, even if it arrived that day, it would certainly not start back again till the morning following. I did not want to wait for it at Wilmer, and decided instead that I would start walking down the valley at once and pick the boat up at Spellamacheen, forty miles downstream, some time next day. My friend was as suspicious of the walk as I was of the boat; and since he had heard that some men were likely to turn up that day in a motor from Golden who might give him a lift back in case the boat failed, he decided to wait for them.
So we parted, and rather late in the day—at noon, to be exact—I set out on my walk. Forty miles is not much of a walk. It can be done in ten hours very easily—in eight if you make up your mind to it. I decided I would take nine hours over it and waste no time. I did not stop for lunch in Athelmer—where one crosses the Columbia—but merely bought some chocolate and a pound of apples, and hurried on.
About a mile out of Athelmer I ate the apples, because they were a nuisance to carry, and wished I could as easily get rid of my heavy overcoat, which had its pockets stuffed with toilet and sleeping accessories just like a suit-case. I also wished that I had on boots that I had ever tried walking in. Still I did six or seven miles in the first hour and a half, and then I realised that two things destructive to fast walking were about to happen. One was footsoreness and the other was rain. Both came upon me a few minutes later, and both increased steadily hour after hour. The valley which had looked so beautiful in all the reds of autumn, as we drove through it in the sunlight, was now filled with a clammy mist; and the road which had seemed a fine road for the horses in fine weather now struck me as offensively sticky, and my pace declined to something under three miles an hour. I consoled myself for a little with the thought that I was getting an experience of autumn in the Columbia Valley. Afterwards I decided that I would gladly do without it. I could have imagined it just as well. The road was like glue and my coat had increased in weight several pounds. To balance this as far as possible, I sat on a wet spruce tree that had fallen by the side of the road and ate my packet of chocolate; after which I moved on at a very sober pace. I began to doubt if I should get to Spellamacheen that night; and the doubt soon increased to a certainty that I should not. Then I remembered that on the drive out we had passed a place called Dolans, only twenty-eight miles from Wilmer. I did some mental arithmetic which seemed to prove that even Dolans was a terrible distance off, and I tried a little running, but it was not of a kind to win a Marathon race. Running through glue when you are footsore is trying work. Nevertheless by six o'clock I calculated I was only about three miles from Dolans, which rejoiced me, until the horrid thought cropped up—if I got in after the supper hour, should I get any supper?
It was by no means certain in that valley.
Providence a few minutes later sent a buggy, driven by a small, glum-looking man up behind me, and the glum-looking man said 'Care to drive?' I said 'Yes,' and found he was bound for Dolans like myself. We got there about seven o'clock. The rancher and his wife were in; also another wayfarer like ourselves, who had arrived a few minutes before us. He was an elderly man, with a great shock of iron-grey hair, who was driving into Golden in a farm-cart from some place several days distant. He had the strangest pair in his cart—a little brown mare of about fourteen hands, and a great lanky horse the height of a giraffe.
We were all given a good meal, and ate it in silence, and sat in silence to digest it. Canadians in these valleys are often that way; it is due not to unsociability but to disuse of their tongues. Possibly to ruminate is the better way, but silence can be oppressive, and if you start a conversation and the other people only reflect upon your words, they may be weighing them as if they were gold, but you are not sure enough of this to be elated. I was rather glad to be shown to my bed, which was in a barn (but the blankets were clean, Mr. Dolans said), pretty early. Mr. Dolans sat on the bed for a bit, and advised me to buy the ranch. I promised to think the matter over, and went to sleep instead in a nice atmosphere of hay, and got up for six o'clock breakfast. The other two had already driven off; but the rain had ceased, and though the road was a mud slide, I started for Spellamacheen in high hopes of catching the boat in spite of being footsore.
I need not have worried myself, for when I got there at 12.30, I learnt that the boat had just passed on its way up to Wilmer, and was not likely to be down again for two or three days.
Spellamacheen consists of a rest-house ranch in full view of a semicircle of snowclad mountains, but I was a little disheartened in spite of the view. I particularly wanted to catch the midnight train from Golden to Vancouver, and now I realised that to do this I should have to walk the rest of the way—another forty miles. From two o'clock to twelve is ten hours. If I did four miles an hour, I should catch the train to a nicety.