noon
None the less , I prepared to set out at once up the Columbia River trail . From Fort Vancouver to the missions at Wailatpu was a distance by trail of more than two hundred miles . This I covered horseback , rapidly , and arrived two or three days in advance of the English . Nothing disturbed the quiet until , before noon of one day , we heard the gun fire and the shoutings which in that country customarily made announcement of the arrival of a party of travelers . Being on the lookout for these , I soon discovered them to be my late friends of the Hudson Bay Post . One old brown woman , unhappily astride a native pony , I took to be Threlka , my lady 's servant , but she rode with her class , at the rear . I looked again , until I found the baroness , clad in buckskins and blue cloth , brave as any in finery of the frontier .