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When we reached Panj-kiang we felt that our motor troubles were at an end, but ten miles beyond the station my car refused to pull through a sand pit and we found that there was trouble with the differential. It was necessary to dismantle the rear end of the car, and Coltman and Gup were well-nigh discouraged.
In this dependence upon his fellow men he knows that money counts and there is very little that a Chinaman will not do for money. On one of his trips across Mongolia, Mr. Coltman's car became badly mired within a stone's throw of a Mongol yurt. Two or three oxen were grazing in front of the house and Coltman asked the native to pull his car out of the mud.
From Sault Ste Marie, Coltman journeyed on ahead, and arrived at 'the Forks' on July 5. In Montreal he had formed the opinion that Lord Selkirk was a domineering autocrat. Now, however, he concluded after inquiry that Selkirk was neither irrational nor self-seeking, and advised that the accusations against him should not be brought into the courts.
Charles was very anxious to kill the brute from the motor with his .45 caliber automatic pistol, and I promised not to shoot. The wolf was running low to the ground, his head a little to one side watching us with one bloodshot eye. He was giving us a great race, but the odds were all against him, and finally we had him right beside the motor. Leaning far out, Coltman fired quickly.
Yvette had a death grip on my coat, for I was sitting half over the edge of the car ready to jump when Charles threw on the brakes. With any one but Coltman at the wheel I would have been too nervous to enjoy the ride, but we all had confidence in his superb driving. The buck crossed the road not forty yards in front of us, just at the summit of a tiny hill.
At noon on the second day we reached Panj-kiang, the first telegraph station on the line. Its single mud house was visible miles away and we were glad to see it, for our gasoline was getting low. Coltman had sent a plentiful supply by caravan to await us here, and every available inch of space was filled with cans, for we were only one-quarter of the way to Urga.
Coltman was one man among a thousand. He was patient and kind and just. Though he had come to the Colony prejudiced against Lord Selkirk, he found his Lordship so fair and reasonable that he became much attached to the man represented in Montreal and the far East as a destructive ogre. The Commissioner's report covered one hundred pages, and it was in all respects a model.
At the same time he bound Selkirk under bail of £10,000 to appear in Canada for trial. When Coltman returned to Lower Canada in the autumn of 1817, Sherbrooke was able to write the Colonial Office that 'a degree of tranquility' had been restored to the Indian Territories.
Yet I was dining that night with one of the men who had destroyed the mystery of Mongolia. In 1916, Coltman and his former partner, Oscar Mamen, had driven across the plains to Urga, the historic capital of Mongolia.
The fourth day there was more trouble with the connecting rod on my car and we sat for two hours at a well while the motor was eviscerated and reassembled. It had ceased to be a joke, especially to Coltman and Guptil, for all the work fell upon them. By this time they were almost unrecognizable because of dirt and grease and their hands were cut and blistered.
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