Campbell's Kingdom

CHAPTER ONE

I flew into Calgary from Edmonton on the morning of August 7th to be met by Calgary Tribune placards announcing: Larsen Company’s Dam Nearing Completion. There was a news story on the front page and inside they had devoted a full feature article to it. There was no mention of our drilling operations in the article, only a brief paragraph in the news story. It gave me a sense of impotence at the outset. I felt as though I were banging my head against a brick wall. It was in this mood that I reached the bank. In an English bank the arrival of a man with a box of gold dust and another containing gold bars would have caused a sensation and necessitated the completion of innumerable forms and declarations. In Calgary they just took it in their stride. I arranged for the necessary funds to be mailed to Boy at Wessels Farm and then went on to my lawyers. There I learned that the case I had come to fight had been dropped. I asked Letour whether this was a result of my threat to seek an injunction restraining Fergus from flooding the Kingdom, but he shook his head. No application for an injunction had been made and he explained to me at some length the legal difficulties of making such an application. The Act authorising the construction of the dam had been passed by the Provincial Parliament of British Columbia. It could only be repealed by a further Act. This would be a lengthy process. He advised me that my only hope was to bring in a well before the flooding of the Kingdom. The scale of compensation likely to be granted by the courts would then be so great as to make it impracticable for the Larsen Company to proceed with the project.

I went back to my hotel feeling that my trip to Calgary had been wasted. Not only that, but Fergus was apparently so sure of himself that he hadn’t even bothered to proceed with his charges in connection with the mineral rights. It left me with the impression that he didn’t consider me worth bothering about. And since Trevedian was undoubtedly keeping a watch on the rig I could well understand this. He must know by now that we were in bad country and drilling only two feet per hour.

I would have pulled out of Calgary the next morning only something happened that evening which radically altered my plans. I hadn’t been near the Calgary Tribune, feeling it would be a waste of time and that they had now lost interest in our drilling operations. However, I had phoned Winnick and I suppose he must have let them know I was in town for the editor himself rang me up in the afternoon and asked me to have dinner with him. And when I got to his club I found he had a CBC man with him and the whole picture suddenly brightened, for the CBC man wanted me to broadcast. The reason for his interest was in the copy of a big American magazine he had with him which contained an article headed: OIL VERSUS ELECTRICITY — Will the dream of an old-timer come true? Will his grandson strike oil up in his Rocky Mountain kingdom or will the men building the dam flood the place first? The author went up there and saw the start of this fantastic race. The author was Steve Strachan, the Calgary Tribune reporter who had first visited us.

This sudden interest in what we were doing gave me fresh heart. I stayed on and did the broadcast, for now that I was down in a town and forced to face the situation with realism I found I could not sustain the forced optimism that had been engendered by the tense atmosphere of the Kingdom. I was already subconsciously working towards obtaining the best compensation I could from the courts. Upon what they awarded me depended the extent to which I could repay those who had helped me. I made it clear, therefore, both in the broadcast and in the article I wrote for the Calgary Tribune, that we were into the igneous country that had stopped Campbell Number One and that given a few more weeks we should undoubtedly bring in a well.

This false optimism produced immediate dividends for on the morning after the broadcast Acheson came to see me. He looked pale and angry, which was not surprising since Fergus had sent him with an offer of $100,000. I was very tempted to accept. And then Acheson said, ‘Of course, in view of the publicity you have been getting, we shall require a statement that you are now of the opinion that Campbell was wrong and there is no oil in that area of the Rockies.’ ‘And if I don’t make the statement?’ ‘Then I’m instructed to withdraw the offer.’ I went over to the window and stood looking out across the railway tracks. To make that statement meant finally branding my grandfather as a liar and a cheat. It meant reversing all I’d aimed at in the last few months. It would be a final act of cowardice. ‘Would Fergus agree to free transportation of all vehicles and personnel down by the hoist and over the Thunder Valley road?’ ‘Yes.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll think about it.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘You’ll have to think fast then. This offer is open till midday.’ ‘What’s the hurry?’

‘Fergus wants to get shot of the whole business.’ He left me then and for an hour I paced up and down the room, trying to balance my unwillingness to accept defeat against the need to repay the men who had helped me. And then the bell-hop came and I knew why they had been in such a hurry to get a decision out of me. It was a telegram from Boy, dispatched from Keithley: Through sill at fifty-eight hundred. Drilling ten per hour. Everyone optimistic. Second consignment fuel on way. Boy. I stared at it, excitement mounting inside me, reviving my hopes, bursting like a flood over my mood of pessimism. I seized hold of the phone and rang Acheson. ‘I just wanted to let you know that half a million dollars wouldn’t buy the Kingdom now,’ I told him. ‘We’re in the clear and drilling ten feet an hour. You knew that damn well, didn’t you? Well, you can tell Fergus it’s going to cost him a fortune to flood the Kingdom.’ I slammed down the receiver without waiting for him to reply. The damned crooks! They’d known we were through the sill. They’d known it by the speed at which the travelling block moved down the rig. That’s why they’d increased their offer. I was laughing aloud in my excitement as I picked up the phone and rang the editor of the Calgary Tribune. I told him the whole thing, how they’d offered me $100,000 and they’d known all the time we were in the clear. ‘If they’ll only give us long enough,’ I said, ‘we’ll bring in that well.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘We’ll run this story and I’ll write a leader that won’t do you any harm. When are you planning to go up there?’

‘I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning,’ I said.

‘Okay. Well, don’t worry about transport. I’ll have Steve pick you up in the station wagon around nine. You don’t mind him coming up with you?’

‘Of course not.’

Early the following evening Steve and I arrived in Jasper. There was little snow on the mountains now and it was still warm after the blistering heat of the day. It was only that evening, as I sat drinking beer with Jeff, that I realised I had been over a week in Calgary and hadn’t felt ill. ‘It’s our dry, healthy climate, I guess,’ Jeff said. I nodded, abstractedly, thinking how much had happened since that first time I had come through Jasper. ‘Don’t reckon they gave you much time to be ill, anyway.’ Jeff took a newspaper from his pocket and passed it across to me. It was the Edmonton paper and it carried a long news story on development in the Kingdom.

The effect was to make me even more impatient to get up to the Kingdom. Somehow I couldn’t bear the thought that they might strike oil before I got up there. From a mood of despair I had swung over to wild, unreasoned optimism. For a long time I lay awake that night watching the moon over the peak of Edith Cavell, praying to God that it would be all right, that we’d get deep enough in time. I was sorry Johnnie couldn’t come up with me; he was out riding trail with a party of dudes and Jeff was tied up with his garage now the tourist season was in full swing.

The next night we bunked down in the straw of the Wessels hayloft and early the following morning we rode round the north shore of Beaver Dam Lake and when we emerged from the cottonwoods there, suddenly, straight ahead of us, were the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. I reined in my pony and sat there for a moment, staring at them, thinking of the activity going on up there, hearing the clatter of the drill, seeing the travelling block slowly descending. Jean would be there and with luck …

I shook my reins and heeled the pony forward. It didn’t bear thinking about. There just had to be oil there. My eyes were dazzled for a moment by the flash of sun on glass. It was a lorry moving on the road up to Thunder Creek. Another and another followed it; materials for the dam moving up to the hoist. ‘Seems a lot more traffic on that road now,’ Steve said.

I nodded and pushed on up the trail. I didn’t want to think about that dam. I hoped to God they were behind schedule. Already it was the 15th and their completion date was supposed to be the 20th. Only five more days.

As we wound our way up through the timber I smelt the old, familiar smell of warm resin. It seemed to me as heady as wine. It made the blood sing in my veins and my heart pound. I felt as though this were my country, as though it were a part of me as it had been a part of old Stuart Campbell.

Thunder heads were building up as we reached the timber line. The peaks became cold and grey and streaks of forked lightning stabbed at the mountains to the roll of thunder echoing through the valleys. And then the hail came. The Kingdom was blanketed with it as we crossed the Saddle in a freak shaft of sunlight.

An hour later Moses was barking a welcome to us as we rode up to the ranch-house. Jean came in as we unsaddled. Her eyes were bright in the gloom of the stable and as I gripped her arms and felt the trembling excitement of her body the place seemed like home. ‘Have we brought in a well?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘The boys are working shifts round the clock now,’ she said. ‘They’re determined that if it’s there, they’ll get down to it.’ The tightness of her voice revealed the strain they were working under and when we went out into the sunlight I was shocked to see how tired she looked.

‘What are they down to now?’ I asked.

‘Six thousand four hundred.’

‘Let’s go down to the rig,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some mail for them and a lot of newspapers.’

‘Sure you’re not too tired?’ She was looking at me anxiously. ‘I was afraid-’ She turned away and stared towards the rig. ‘They’ve nearly finished the dam,’ she said quickly. ‘They’ve been working at it like beavers. A week ago they took on fifty extra men.’

‘When do they expect to complete it?’

‘In two days’ time.’

Two days! I turned to Steve. ‘You hear that, Steve? Two days.’

He nodded. ‘It’ll be quite a race.’

‘Better get yourself settled in,’ I told him, and Jean and I set out for the rig, Moses limping along beside us. We didn’t talk. Somehow, now I was here it didn’t seem necessary. We just walked in silence and across the deep grass came the clatter of the rig like music on the still air. But something was missing and my eyes slid unconsciously to the cleft between the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. ‘What’s happened to the cement mixers?’ I asked.

They stopped yesterday.’ Her hand came up and gripped my arm. ‘They’ve finished concreting.’

I began to tell her what had happened in Calgary, but somehow the publicity I had got seemed unimportant. Up here only one thing mattered — if there was oil, would we reach it in time?

The strain I had seen in Jean’s face was stamped on the faces of everyone on the rig. They were pulling pipe when we arrived. Garry working the draw works and Boy acting as derrick man. ‘Where are the others?’ I asked Jean.

‘Sleeping. I told you, they’re working round the clock now.’

As soon as they’d changed the bit and were drilling again, they all crowded round me, wanting to hear the news from Calgary, eagerly scanning the papers I had brought and searching the bundle of mail for their own letters. And I stood and watched them, noticing the dark shadows under their eyes, the quick, tense way they spoke. The atmosphere was electric with fatigue and the desperate hope that was driving them.

‘Did you see Winnick?’ Garry asked me. His voice was hard and tense.

I nodded.

‘What did he say?’

‘He’s been over the seismograms again. He thinks we’ll strike it around seven thousand or not at all.’

‘We’ll be at seven thousand the day after tomorrow.’

‘Have you taken a core sample since you got clear of the sill?’

‘Yeh. I don’t know much about geology, I guess, but it looked like Devonian all right to me.’

‘We’ll just have to make it,’ I said.

‘Oh, sure. We’ll make it.’ But his voice didn’t carry conviction. He looked dead beat.

‘Seen anything of Trevedian?’

‘No. But he’s got somebody posted on top of that buttress, keeping an eye on us through glasses. If that bastard shows his face down here-’ He turned and stared towards the dam. His battered face looked crumpled and old in the hard sunlight. ‘I wish to God we’d got a geologist up here. If we do strike it, as like as not it’ll be gas and we’ll blow the rig to hell.’

‘If you do strike it,’ I said, ‘you won’t need to worry about the rig.’

‘It’s not the rig I’m worrying about,’ he snapped. ‘It’s the drilling crew.’ He gave a quick nervous laugh. ‘I’ve never drilled a well without knowing what was going on under the surface.’

His manner as much as his appearance warned me that nerves were strung taut. It was not surprising for there were only nine of them to keep the rig going the twenty-four hours and it needed four men on each shift. Pretty soon both myself and Steve Strachan were doing our stint. Fortunately it was largely just a matter of standing by, so that our inexperience was not put to the test. Now that we were in softish country it was only necessary to pull pipe every other day and about all that was required of a roughneck on each shift was to add a length of pipe when the travelling block was down to the turntable. I did the shift from eight to twelve and by the time I had been called at four to go on duty again I began to understand the strain they had been working under. I came off duty at eight, had some breakfast and turned in.

I hadn’t been asleep more than an hour before I was woken with the news that Trevedian had arrived and wanted to see me. He was in the main room of the ranch-house and he had an officer of the Provincial Police with him. Garry was there, too, and he held a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘Trevedian’s just served us with notice to quit,’ he said, handing me the paper.

It was a warning that floodings of the Kingdom under the provisions of the Provincial Government Act of 1939 might be expected any time after 18th August. It was written on the Larsen Company’s note-paper and signed by Henry Fergus. I looked across at Trevedian. The dam’s complete, is it?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Just about.’

‘When are you closing the sluice gates?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after. As soon as we’re ready.’ He turned to the policeman. ‘Well, Eddie, you’ve seen the note delivered. Anything you want to say?’

The officer shook his head. ‘You’ve read the notice, Mr Wetheral. I’d just remind you that as from 10.00 hours tomorrow morning the Larsen Company is entitled to flood this area and that from that time they cannot be held responsible for any loss of movable equipment.’

‘Meaning the rig?’

He nodded. ‘I’m sorry, fellows, but there it is.’

One or two of the drilling crew had drifted in. They stared in silence at Trevedian and the policeman. It wasn’t difficult to imagine what they were thinking. They’d been working up here now for two and a half months without pay. They’d gambled on the chance of bringing in a well and they’d lost. Trevedian shifted his feet nervously. He knew enough about men to know that it only needed a word to touch off the violence in the atmosphere. ‘Well, I guess we’d better get going,’ he said.

The policeman nodded. In silence they turned and went out through the door. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. At length Garry said, ‘Better get some sleep, boys. We’re on again in an hour and a half.’

‘Any chance of bringing in a well between now and ten o’clock tomorrow?’ Steve Strachan asked.

Garry rounded on him with a snarl. ‘If I knew that do you think we’d be standing around looking like a bunch of steers waiting for the slaughter-house?’ And he flung out of the room, back to his bunk.

When I went on shift at midday the drill was down to six thousand six hundred and twenty-two feet. When we came off again at four we had added another forty-three feet. It was blazing hot and the sweat streamed off me, for we had just had the grief stem out and added another length of pipe. I stood for a while, staring across to the dam. The silence there was uncanny. Not a soul moved. I mopped my forehead with a sweat-damp handkerchief. There wasn’t a breath of air. The whole Kingdom seemed silent and watching, as though waiting for something. A glint of sun on glasses showed from the rock buttress. They were still keeping us under observation.

‘I don’t like it,’ a voice said at my elbow.

I turned to find Boy standing beside me. ‘What don’t you like?’ I asked and already I noticed my voice possessed that same sharpness of strain that the others had.

‘Just nerves, I guess,’ he said. ‘But it’s crook sort of weather this with no thunder heads and the mountains burning up under this sudden wave of heat. It’s as though-’ He paused there, and then turned away with a shrug of his shoulders.

I should have got some sleep, but somehow I couldn’t face lying on a sleeping bag in the suffocating heat of the barns. I was too tensed-up for sleep, and the day was too oppressive. I saddled one of the horses and rode out across the Kingdom, past Campbell Number One and along by the stream towards the dam. The water was running deep and fast, carrying off yesterday’s hail and the remnants of the winter’s snow melted by the gruelling heat. I reached the barbed wire and rode along it up towards the buttress. There didn’t seem to be more than a dozen men working on the damn and they weren’t labourers, they were engineers in grease-stained jeans. I sat and watched them for a while. They were working on the sluice gates. The cage of the hoist came up only once whilst I sat there. It brought machinery.

The watcher from the buttress came scrambling down towards me. ‘Better get moving, Wetheral.’ It was the man I had tangled with outside the Golden Calf, the guard who had been on the hoist when we’d brought the rig up. He wore a dirty cotton vest and he’d a gun in a leather holster on his hip.

‘I’m on my own property,’ I said. ‘It’s you who are trespassing.’

He started bawling me out then, using a lot of filthy names. I felt the blood beating at my temples. I wanted to fling myself at him, to give vent to the violence that was pent up inside me. But instead I turned my horse and rode slowly back to the ranch-house.

That night at dinner a brooding silence reigned over the table. It had the stillness of weather before a storm. It was in tune with the sultry heat of the night. The faces of the men gathered round the table were thin and tired and shiny with sweat. They sat around till eight waiting for the change of shift. Every now and then one of them would go to the door and listen, his head cocked on one side, listening for some change in the rhythm of the rig, waiting for the news, that they’d brought in a well.

But the shift changed and the drilling went steadily on, the bit grinding into the rock, six thousand seven hundred and thirteen feet below the surface at the rate of ten and a half feet per hour. I got some sleep and went on shift again at midnight. Jean was still up, standing by the stable, looking at the moon. She didn’t say anything, but her hand found mine and gripped it. Boy passed us, going to the rig. ‘There’s a storm brewing,’ he said.

There was a ring round the moon and though it was still as sultry as an oven, there was a dampness in the air. ‘Something must break soon,’ Jean whispered. ‘I can’t stand this suspense any longer.’

‘It’ll all be over tomorrow when they flood the place,’ I said.

She sighed and pressed my arm and turned away. I watched her go back into the ranch-house. Then slowly I walked down to the rig. Garry was driller on this shift and Don was acting as derrick man. We sat on the bench beside the draw works, smoking and feeling the drill vibrating along our spines. ‘Queer how the moon reflects on the ground below the dam,’ Garry said.

‘It’s the mist rising,’ Boy murmured.

‘I guess so. Queer. It looks as though it were shining on water.’ A breath of wind touched our faces. ‘What’s that over there — beyond Solomon’s Judgment? Looks like a cloud.’

We peered beyond the white outline of the peak. The sky there no longer had the luminosity of moonlight. There were no stars. It looked pitch black and strangely solid. The wind was suddenly chill. ‘It’s the storm that’s been brewing,’ Boy said.

I don’t know who noticed it first — the change in the note of the draw works’ diesel. It penetrated to my mind as something different, a slowing up, a stickiness that deepened the note of the engine. Boy shouted something and then Garry’s voice thundered out: The mud pump — quick!’ His big body was across the platform in a flash. Don and I had jumped to our feet, but we stood there, dazed, not knowing what was happening or what had to be done. ‘Get the hell off that platform,’ Garry shouted up to us. ‘Run, you fools! Run for your lives!’

I heard Boy say, ‘God! We’ve struck it!’ And then we collided in a mad scramble for the ladder. As I reached it I caught a glimpse of the travelling block out of the tail of my eye. The wire hawsers that held it suspended from the crown block were slack and the grief stem was slowly rising, pushing it upwards. Then I was down the ladder and jumping for the ground, running blindly, not knowing what to expect, following the flying figures of my companions. The ground became boggy. It squelched under my feet. Then water splashed in my face and I stopped, thinking we’d reached the stream. The others had stopped, too. They were standing, staring back at the rig-

The grief stem was lifted right up to the crown block now. It was held there for a moment and then with a rending and tearing of steel it thrust the rig up clear of the ground. Then the stem bent over. The rig toppled and came crashing to the ground. The draw works, suddenly freed of their load, raced madly with a clattering cacophony of sound. And then in brilliant moonlight that gave the whole thing an air of unreality we watched the pipe seemingly squeezed out of the ground like toothpaste out of a tube.

It was like that for a moment, a great snake of piping, turning and twisting upwards and then with a roar like a hundred express trains it was blown clear. ‘Garry! Garry!’ Boy’s voice sounded thin against the roar of the gas flare.

We splashed back towards the rig, searching for him. The light was lurid and uncertain. We stumbled against pieces of machinery, the scrap-heap of the rig. ‘Garry!’

A shape loomed out of the darkness. A hand gripped mine. ‘Well, we struck it.’ It was Garry and his voice trembled slightly.

I’d been too dazed to consider the cause of the disaster. I still couldn’t believe it. ‘You mean we’ve struck oil?’

‘Well, we’ve struck gas. There’ll be oil down there, too, I guess.’

‘It hasn’t done your rig much good,’ I said. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. It was all too sudden, too unreal.

‘Oh, to hell with the rig.’ He laughed. It was a queer sound, violent and trembling and rather high-pitched against the solid roar of the gas. ‘We’ve done what we came up here to do. We’ve proved there’s oil down there. And we’ve done it in time. Come on. Let’s rout the boys out. Steve must see this. He’s our independent observer. This is going to shake the Larsen outfit.’ And that high-pitched laugh sent out its trembling challenge again to the din of the gas jet.

It wasn’t until we were clear of the site and away from the noise of the gas that I realised that the moon had vanished, swallowed by the inky blackness that was rolling across the night sky. Halfway to the ranch-house a gust of wind struck us. From the slopes of Solomon’s Judgment came a hissing sound that enveloped and obliterated the sound of the well. And then, suddenly, a wall of water fell on us. It was a rainstorm, but as solid as if a cloud had condensed and dropped. It drove the breath back into one’s throat and made one claw the air as though reaching for something to grasp to pull one out of the flood. And when I looked back there was no sign of the broken rig, only blackness and the sound of water. A flash of lightning ripped across our heads, momentarily revealing, my companions as three half-drowned wraiths. And then the thunder came like a gun and went rolling round the circle of the mountains. Flash after flash of lightning followed, often so close that we could hear the hiss of it, feel the crack as it stabbed the ground, and the thunder was incessant.

Somehow we reached the ranch-house. Nobody was up. The place was as silent as if it had been deserted. We stripped to the buff and built up the fire, huddling our bodies close to it and drinking some rye that Boy had found. There seemed no point in waking the others. There was nothing to see and the storm was so violent that it was quite out of the question to take them down to have a look at the well. We drifted off to our bunks and as my head touched the pillow I remember thinking that everything was going to be all right now. We had proved there was oil in the Kingdom. My grandfather’s beliefs were confirmed, my own life justified. And then I was asleep.

It was Jean who woke me. She seemed very excited about something and I felt desperately tired. She kept on shaking me. ‘Quick, Bruce. Something’s happened.’

‘I know,’ I mumbled. ‘We didn’t wake you because there was a storm-’ I rolled out of my bunk and pulled a coat on over my pyjamas. I was really rather enjoying myself as she took hold of my hand and pulled me through into the ranch-house and over to the window.

I don’t know quite how I had expected it to look by daylight, but when I reached the window and looked out across the Kingdom, drab grey and swept by rain, I stood appalled. There was no sign of the gas jet. There was nothing to show we’d ever drilled there or ever had a rig there. I was looking out across a wide expanse of water. It began just beyond the barns and extended right across to the slopes of the mountains on the farther side. The Kingdom was already half flooded. It was a lake and the wind was driving across it, ploughing it up into waves and flecking it with white. ‘Oh God!’ I said and I dropped my head on my arms.

Steve Strachan did his best to try and visualise the well blowing in as we had seen it, but I knew he wasn’t really convinced. It wasn’t that he thought we were crooks, making up the story for the sake of proving what we knew wasn’t true. It was just that he knew how strung up we all were. I suppose he felt that in these circumstances a man is capable of seeing something that never really happened. He did his best. He made polite noises as we described every detail of it. But every now and then he’d say, ‘Yes, I know, but I’ve got to convince my editor.’ Or in answer to a question: ‘Sure I believe you, but just show me something concrete that’ll prove it really happened.’

But what evidence had we? Soaked to the skin, we trudged along the shores of that damned lake looking for a slick of oil, or stood, searching the spot where the rig had been, trying to locate the bubbles that the escaping gas must be making. But little white-caps frisked across the spot and even through glasses we could see no sign of bubbles. The memory of that gas vent flaring high into the night faded until it was difficult for those of us who had actually seen it to believe that it had been real.

I remember Garry standing there cursing whilst the rain streamed down his lined face as though he were crying. We were huddled there in a little bunch by the edge of that sudden lake, our faces grey as the leaden cloud that blanketed the slopes of the mountains opposite with rain, and exhaustion and despair were stamped on our features. We had the grim, hopeless, half-drowned look of a shipwrecked crew.

‘If only they’d waited till the time they said,’ Boy murmured.

‘They could see it blow in as well as we could,’ Garry said. He turned to me. ‘Remember the water we ran into when we got clear of the rig and the reflection of the moonlight? They were flooding then, flooding up to the rig, just in case. And when they saw the rig go…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘God dammit. One more day.’ There was all the bitterness of a gambler who has lost in his voice. ‘Our only hope is to persuade them to drain the Kingdom. Independent judges could tell at a glance that we’d struck oil bearing country.’

‘How?’ Steve Strachan asked.

‘How?’ By the way the pipe is bent, you fool. By the way the rig is smashed.’ His voice was high and taut. ‘Come on, Bruce. We’d better get over there and have a word with them.’

I nodded reluctantly, afraid he might do something stupid when faced with Trevedian. He was at the end of his tether and his big hands twitched as though he wanted to get them round the throat of some adversary. We took two horses and cantered along the shores of the lake, below the buttress and across the rock outcrops to where the wire ran down the mountainside and into the water. They had seen us coming and there was a little group waiting for us like a reception committee. There was Trevedian and the policeman who had come with him the previous day and two of Trevedian’s men with rifles slung over their shoulders.

For a moment we sat on our horses looking at them and they stood looking at us. I could see anger building up inside Garry’s big frame. Trevedian waited, his small eyes alert, watching us curiously. The policeman said nothing. For my part I knew it was useless. Words suddenly burst from Garry’s lips with explosive force. ‘What the hell do you mean by drowning my rig? You gave us till ten this morning.’

‘My warning referred to the house and buildings.’

Trevedian glanced at his watch. ‘It’s now nine-twenty. You’ve forty minutes to get clear of the buildings.’

‘But what about the rig?’ Garry demanded. ‘What right had you-’

‘You could have moved it,’ Trevedian cut in. ‘However, since you haven’t I’ve no doubt the courts will include the value of it in their grant of compensation.’

Garry turned to the police officer. ‘Were you up here last night when they began flooding?’

The man shook his head. ‘No. I came up here this morning in case there was trouble.’

‘Well, there’s going to be plenty of trouble,’ Garry snapped. ‘Do you realise you’ve drowned an oil well? We struck it at approximately two-fifteen this morning.’

Trevedian laughed. ‘Be damned to that for a tale,’ he said.

‘You know damn well it’s true,’ Garry shouted. ‘Don’t tell me you couldn’t see what happened from here.’

‘I didn’t see anything.’ Trevedian turned to the two guards. ‘Did you?’ They shook their heads dutifully. ‘They were with me when I gave the order to close the sluices,’ Trevedian added as he turned to face us, hardly troubling to conceal a slight smile. ‘We were naturally watching the rig to see that you all got clear of the water. We saw nothing unusual.’

‘By God,’ Garry cried, ‘you dirty, crooked little liar! Don’t ever let me get my hands on you or as sure as hell I’ll wring your neck.’

‘It seems I was right in insisting on police protec tion up here.’ Trevedian smiled and glanced at his watch again. ‘Better get your things clear of the ranch buildings now, Wetheral,’ he said. ‘I’m going to finish flooding.’ He turned away, the policeman followed him.

‘Just a minute,’ I called. ‘What time did you come up here?’ They had paused and I was addressing the policeman.

‘At eight o’clock this morning,’ he answered.

‘And you weren’t up here when the order to flood was given?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Mr Trevedian didn’t expect any trouble until this morning.’

‘You mean he was prepared to deal with it himself during the hours of darkness.’

The other shrugged his shoulders. ‘My orders were to be up here at eight this morning.’

‘Are you here as an official of the Provincial Police or have the company hired you as a watchdog?’

‘Both,’ he said rather tersely.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘In other words, you’re employed by the company and take your orders from Trevedian. That’s all I wanted to know.’ I turned my horse. ‘We’re wasting our time here,’ I said to Garry. ‘This will have to be fought out in the courts.’

He nodded slowly and we rode back to the ranch-house in silence. His face looked drawn and haggard. The fire of anger had gone out of him and he slumped in his saddle like a bag of bones and flesh. He didn’t say anything all the way back, but I was very conscious of the fact that he’d lost his rig, everything he had made in over fifteen years. It deepened the mood of black despair that had gripped me since I woke up and found the Kingdom had become a lake overnight. It was difficult to remember the elation that had filled us in the early hours when the drenching rain had obliterated the broken rig from our sight.

When we reached the ranch-house we were greeted with the news that the water was rising again. They had thrust a stake in at the edge of the lake and even as we watched the water ran past it and in a moment it was. several feet out from the lake’s edge. All our energies were concentrated then on salvaging what we could. We loaded Boy’s vehicles with all our kit and movable equipment and drove them up to the edge of the timber. Jean and I harnessed the horses to an old wagon we found and in this way I managed to get some of my grandfather’s belongings out. And then as the rain slackened and a misty sun shone through we made camp in the shelter of the trees and drank hot tea and watched the water creep slowly up to the ends of the barns and then trickle in clutching fingers round the back of the ranch-house. By midday the place my grandfather had built with his own hands was a quarter of a mile out in the lake and the water was up to the windows. For five miles there was nothing but water flecked with white as the wind whipped across it.

It was the end of the Kingdom.