After supper I stumbled along the unlighted street to a little general store, hoping to find a hot-water bottle to mitigate the rigors of the climate a little, but the queer old backwoodsman storekeeper declared,
“I’ve heern of them things, but I never had no call for one.”
The store was the queerest jumble I ever saw, groceries, clothing, dry goods, hardware, patent medicines—just a little of each—and endless odds and ends that looked as if they had been twenty-five years accumulating, were piled in hopeless confusion—there seemed a chance of finding anything but what you wanted.
“Yaas,” the old fellow admitted, “thar’s another store in the town, just down the street—just down the street.”
The other store was closed, but the next day we found it a large, well-stocked mercantile concern which evidently did a big volume of business.
Returning to the hotel, I lounged half an hour about the lobby, listening to the conversation, which I soon found was almost wholly made up of humorous anecdotes of the old storekeeper whom I had just visited and who appeared to be a character of considerable local notoriety—an honest, simple-minded old fellow fitter for almost anything than managing a business.
If it was hard to get into the chilly bed at the Laytonville, it was still harder to get up by twilight in the frosty air of the room and wash in ice-cold water—for there was no call bell and we neglected to leave orders for hot water. We rushed through with the process, however, thinking we would hurry down and thaw out by the big wood-stove, but we found it stone cold and the room deserted—and it is safe to say that thousands of cords of wood were rotting within a mile of the inn. The lady indignantly marched into the kitchen, somewhat to the consternation of the powers that presided there—but it was not long until a big fire was roaring in the lobby stove.
A sign above the counter admonished the wayfarer thirsting for information to “Ask Dad—he knows,” referring to the portly landlord, whom we found very jovial and accommodating. He apologized for lack of fire in the morning with some remark about the unreasonable “stumpage” charge of the people who owned the forest about the place and he also deprecated the unwillingness of the owner of the building to do a number of things that would conduce to the comfort of the guests.
When we asked “Dad” about the road to Westport and from thence along the coast, we found he did “know,” all right, for he assured us that it was far better than the main highway to the south. And so we resolved to get back to the sea, for the morning had cleared beautifully and gave promise of a day full of light and color. It is twenty miles to Westport and the road runs through a fine forest all the way, though the redwoods, which are quite common, are only saplings five or six feet in diameter. There is only one grade of consequence—the long descent to the coast, which affords many glorious views of the ocean through occasional openings in the trees.
Westport is a small, bleak-looking lumber town, evidently in a state of decline; there was nothing to detain us there and we were quickly away on the road to the south, which keeps in sight of the ocean for more than one hundred miles, though we were told that it was not then practicable for motors for more than half that distance. The excellence of the road for perhaps thirty miles was an agreeable surprise, a smooth, well graded natural dirt surface very much like a well-dragged Iowa road at its very best—fine in dry weather, but to be avoided when it rains.