Campbell's Kingdom

CHAPTER THREE

I lay awake for hours that night, fighting for breath and looking out at the frozen moonlight glinting on the white needle of Edith Cavell. I can admit it now — I was scared. The idea that I could do in a few months what my grandfather had failed to do in thirty-odd years had carried me over the first hurdle of shock and across 5,000 miles of the earth’s surface. Now that that idea was finally shattered the ground seemed to have been cut away from under my feet. But the more sick at heart I felt the more determined I became to reach Campbell’s Kingdom. Like a dog I wanted to crawl into some safe retreat to die, away from the prying eyes of my fellow creatures.

Next day Jeff Hart and Johnnie Carstairs both came down after lunch to see me off. They didn’t ask me how I was and they studiously avoided looking at me. They insisted on carrying my two handgrips and walked one on either side of me as though they were afraid I’d die on them right there. ‘Damn it,’ Jeff growled, ‘if it had been a month later I’d have driven you over myself.’ A cold wind flung puffs of powdered snow in our faces.

They saw me into my carriage and left cigarettes and magazines the way visitors leave flowers in a sick room. As the train pulled out Johnnie called to me: ‘Any time you need help, Bruce, there’s a couple of pals right here in Jasper you might call on.’

‘We’ll be up to see you some time,’ Jeff added.

I waved acknowledgment and as I watched the black outline of the station fade in the wind-driven snow I felt a lump in my throat. The sense of loneliness had closed in on me again and I went back to my seat.

The train puffed laboriously into a world of virgin white. Our only contact with the outside world was the twin black threads of the line reaching back towards the prairies. The mountains closed in around us, monstrous white shapes scarred here and there by black outcrops of wind-torn rock.

The train threaded its way inexorably southwards, through Thunder River, Redsand, Blue River and Angushorn. At Cottonwood Flats it began to rain and as dusk fell we drew in to Birch Island and I saw for the first time a stretch of road clear of snow.

We reached Ashcroft just before midnight. It was still raining. The darkness was full of the sound of water and great heaps of dirty snow filled the yard with gurgling rivulets. When I asked at the hotel about the roads they told me they had been open for the last two days. I felt my luck was in then and nothing could stop me. Next morning I bought a pair of good water-proof boots and tramped the round of the local garages. My luck held. At one of them I found a mud-bespattered Ford filling up with gas, a logger bound for Prince George. He gave me a ride as far as 150 Mile House. The country poured water from its every crevice, the creeks were roaring torrents and we ground our way through falls of rock and minor avalanches. It took us most of the day to do the 100-odd miles to 150 Mile House.

I spent the night there and in the morning got a lift as far as Hydraulic. By then the rain had turned to a wet snow. I was getting back into the high mountains. After a wait of two or three hours and some lunch, a farm truck took me on to Keithley Creek. It was dark when I arrived. The country was deep in snow and it was freezing hard. I crawled into bed feeling dead to the world and for the first time in months slept like a log.

I slept right through to eleven o’clock and was woken with the news that the packer was in from Come Lucky and would be leaving after lunch. It was blowing half a gale and snowing hard. They served me a steak and two fried eggs and when I’d packed and paid my bill I was taken out and introduced to a great ox of a man who was loading groceries into an ex-army fifteen hundredweight.

We pulled out of Keithley just after two, the rattle of the chains deadened by the soft snow. Visibility was very poor, the snow driving up behind us and flying past the windows as we ground slowly along the uneven track. I glanced at my companion. He was wrapped in a huge bearskin coat and he had a fur cap with ear flaps and big skin gloves. His face was the colour of mahogany. He had thick, loose lips and he kept licking at a trickle of saliva that ran out of the corners of his mouth. His nose was broad and flat and his little eyes peered into the murk from below a wide forehead that receded quickly to the protection of his Russian-looking cap. His huge hands gripped the steering wheel as though he had to fight the truck every yard of the way. ‘Do you live at Come Lucky?’ I asked him.

He grunted without shifting his eyes from the track.

‘I suppose there’s a hotel there?’

A nod accompanied the grunt this time. I let it go at that and relaxed drowsily in the engine-heated noise of the cab.

For a long time we ran through a world of virgin white, between heaped-up banks of snow where the road had been cleared of drifts, only the occasional black line of a stream to relieve the monotony. Then we were climbing and gradually the timber closed in around us. The snow no longer drove past the cab windows. The trees were still and black. I wondered vaguely why the trail to Come Lucky had been cleared of snow, but I was too drowsy to question the driver. It was open and that was all I cared about. I was on the last stage of my journey.

I tried to imagine what it had been like up here less than a hundred years ago when the Cariboo gold rush had been on and these creek beds had been crowded with men from all parts of the world. But it didn’t seem possible. It was just a wilderness of snow and mountain and timber.

After half an hour the snow eased off. We were climbing steadily beside the black waters of the Little River. Timbered mountain slopes rose steeply above me and I got a momentary glimpse of a shaggy head of rock high above us and half veiled in cloud. I glanced at my companion and suddenly it occurred to me that this might be the packer that Johnnie Carstairs had talked about. ‘Is your name Max Trevedian?’ I asked him.

He turned his head slowly and looked at me. ‘Ja, that is my name.’ He seemed to consider for a moment how I knew it and then he turned his attention back to the track.

So this was the man who could take me up to Campbell’s Kingdom before the snow melted. ‘Do you know Campbell’s Kingdom?’ I asked him.

‘Campbell’s Kingdom!’ His voice had a sudden violence of interest. ‘Why do you ask about Campbell’s Kingdom?’ ‘I want to go up there.’

‘Why?’

For some reason I didn’t wish to tell him why. I stared out of my side window. We were running along the shores of a small lake now. It was all frozen over and the flat surface of the ice was covered with a dusting of snow.

‘Why do you wish to go there?’ he asked again.

‘I’ve heard about it, that’s all,’ I replied vaguely, wondering why the mention of Campbell’s Kingdom should so suddenly rouse him from his tactiturn silence.

‘Why do you go to Come Lucky, huh? It is too soon for visitors. Are you an oil man?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Then why do you come?’

‘That’s my business,’ I answered, annoyed by his child-like persistence.

He grunted.

‘What made you ask if I was an oil man?’

‘Oil men come here last year. There is an old devil lived up in the mountains who thought there was oil there.’ He suddenly began to laugh, a great, deep-throated sound. ‘Damned old fool! All they found were rocks. I could have told them there was no oil.’

‘How do you know?’

‘How did I know?’ He stared at me angrily.

‘What made you so certain?’

‘Because he is a swindler,’ he growled. ‘A dirty, lying, bastard old man who swindle everyone.’ His voice had risen suddenly to a high pitch and his little eyes glared at me hotly. ‘You ask my brother.’

His words swept me back to my childhood, to the taunts and jeers I had suffered. ‘You’re referring to Campbell, are you?’

‘Ar. Campbell.’ There was an incredible vibrance of hatred in the way he spoke the name. ‘King Campbell! Is that why you come here — to see Campbell?’ He laughed. ‘Because if you have, you will waste your time. He is dead.’

‘I know that.’

‘Then why do you come, huh?’

I was beginning to understand what Johnnie Car-stairs had meant when he had said the man was an ornery crittur. I didn’t answer him and I didn’t ask any more questions. It was like travelling with an animal you’re not quite sure of and we drove on in silence.

As dusk began to fall we came out on the shores of a narrow lake. Come Lucky was at the head of it. My first sight of the place was as we slid out of the timber on to the lake shore. The town was half-buried in snow, a dark huddle of shacks clinging to the bare, snow-covered slopes of a mountain and leaning out towards the lake as though in the act of being swept into it by an avalanche. Beyond it a narrow gulch cut back into the mountains and lost itself in a grey veil of cloud. The road appeared to continue along the shore of the lake and into the gulch. We turned right, however, up to Come Lucky and stopped at a long, low shack, the log timbers of which had been patched with yellow boards of untreated pine. There was a notice on one of the doors — Trevedian Transport Company: Office. This was as far as the track into Come Lucky had been cleared. A drift of smoke streamed out from an iron chimney. A door slammed and a fat Chinaman waddled out to meet us. He and Max Trevedian disappeared into the back of the truck and began off-loading the stores. I stood around waiting and presently my two grips were dropped into the snow at my feet. The Chinaman poked his head out of the back of the truck. ‘You stay here?’ he asked.

‘Is this the hotel?’

‘No. This is bunkhouse for men working on road up Thunder Creek.’

‘Where’s the hotel?’ I asked.

‘You mean Mr Mac’s place — The Golden Calf?’ He pointed up the snow-blocked street. ‘You find up there on the right side.’

I thanked him and trudged through the snow into the town of Come Lucky. It was a single street bounded on either side by weather-boarded shacks. Dotted amongst them were log cabins of stripped jack pine. The place seemed deserted. There wasn’t a soul about and only in two instances did I see smoke coming from the ugly clatter of tin chimneys. The roofs of many of the shacks had fallen in. Some had their windows ripped out, frames and all. Doors stood rotting on their hinges. The untreated boards were grey with age and soggy with moisture. Scraps of paper hung forlornly to hoardings and the faint lettering above the empty shops and saloons proclaimed the purpose for which the crumbling bundle of wood had originally been assembled. The King Harry Bar still carried the weathered portrait of an English King and next door there was a doctor’s brass plate, now a green rectangle of decomposing metal. The wooden sidewalks stood up above the level of the snow, a crazy switch-back affair of haphazard design and doubtful safety. It seemed to be constructed on stilts. In fact the whole place was built on stilts and it leaned down the slope to the lake as though the thrust of the coast wind had pushed it outwards like a flimsy erection of cards. Here and there a shack was held together by pieces of packing cases and rough-cut planks; evidence of human existence. But in the main Come Lucky was a rotten clutter of empty shacks.

It was my first sight of a ghost town.

The Golden Calf was about the biggest building in the place. Faded gilt lettering proclaimed its name and underneath I could just make out the words: If it’s the Gaiety of the City for You, This is the Best Spot in the whole of Cariboo. And there was the picture of a calf, now grey with age. The sidewalk was solid here and roofed over to form a sort of street-side verandah.

The door of the hotel opened straight into an enormous bar room. The bar itself ran all along one side and behind it were empty shelves backed by blotchy mirrors. There were faded pictures of nude and near-nude women and yellowing bills advertising local events of years gone by. The few marble-topped tables and rickety chairs, the iron-framed piano and the drum stove which roared against the opposite wall took up little of the dirt-ingrained floor area. The room was warm, but it had a barrack-room emptiness about it that was only heightened by the marks of its one-time Edwardian elegance.

Two old men playing cards at a table near the stove turned to stare at me. Above them was the picture of a voluptuous young beauty of the can-can period. Pencil shading had been added in appropriate places and she had been given a moustache. The crudity of it, however, produced only speculation as to the circumstances in which the trimmings had been added. I put my bags down and drew up a chair to the stove. The warmth of the room was already melting the snow on my windbreaker. My trousers steamed. I took off my outer clothes and sat back, letting the warmth seep into my body. I felt deathly tired.

The two old men continued to stare at me. They looked sad and surprised. Their moustaches drooped. ‘Is the hotel open?’ I asked them.

The shock of being asked a question was apparently too much for them. One of them blinked uncertainly, the other coughed. As though they understood each other’s thoughts, they turned without a word and continued their game.

Beyond the stove there was a door and beside it a bell-push. I pulled myself to my feet and rang. A buzzer sounded in the recesses of the building and slippers shuffled on the wooden floor of a corridor. The door opened slowly and an elderly Chinaman entered. He stopped in front of me and stared up at me impassively with a fixed smile that showed the brown of decaying teeth. He was a little wizened man with a monkey face. His clothes hung on him like a bundle of rags and he wore a shapeless cloth cap. On his feet were a pair of tattered carpet slippers. ‘You want something?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d like a room for the night.’

‘I fetch Mr Mac.’ He shuffled off and I sat down again.

After a time the door was opened by a dour-faced man whose long body was stooped at the shoulders. He was bald except for a fringe of iron-grey hair. His eyelids and the corners of his mouth drooped. He had the appearance of a rather elderly heron and he looked me over with the disinterest of one who has seen many travellers and is surprised at nothing.

‘Are you Mr Mac?’ I asked him.

He seemed to consider the question. ‘Me name’s McClellan,’ he said. ‘But most folk around here call me Mac. Ye’re wanting a room Slippers tells me.’ He sighed. ‘Och weel, I daresay we’ll manage it. Ye’re from the Old Country by the sound of your voice.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My name’s Bruce Wetheral. I’ve just arrived from England.’

‘Weel, it’s a wee bit airly in the season for us, Mr Wetheral. We don’t generally reckon on visitors till the fishermen come up from the Coast around the end of June. But we’ve an engineer staying already, so one mair’ll make little difference. Ye’ll no mind feeding in the kitchen wi’ the family?’ ‘Of course not.’

The room he took me to was bare except for the essentials: an iron-framed bed, a wash basin, a chest of drawers and a chair. A text — Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love — was the only adornment on the flaking paint of the wood-partitioned walls. But the room was clean and the bed looked comfortable.

They kept farmhouse hours at the hotel and I barely had time to wash and unpack my things before the old Chinaman called me for tea. By the time I got down the McClellan family was all assembled in the kitchen, a huge room designed to feed the seething population of Come Lucky in its hey-day. Besides the old man and his sister, Florence McClellan, there was his son, James, and his family — his wife, Pauline, and their two children, Jackie aged nine and Kitty aged six and a half. James McClellan was a small, wiry man. Keen blue eyes peered out from under his father’s drooping lids and his nose was as sharply chiselled as the beak of a hawk. His expression was moody, almost sour, and when he spoke, which was seldom, there was the abruptness of a hot, violent-tempered man. Pauline was half French, raven-haired and buxom with an attractive accent and a wide mouth. She laughed a little too often, showing big, white teeth.

There was one other person at the big, scrubbed deal table, a thick-set man of about forty with tough, leathery features and sandy hair which stood up from his scalp and from the backs of his big hands. His name was Ben Creasy and he was introduced to me as the engineer who was building the road up Thunder Creek. The meal was cooked and served by the old Chinaman. He had drifted into the gold mines from Vancouver’s Chinatown during the First World War and had been at the hotel ever since.

Nobody spoke during the meal, not even the children. Eating was a serious business. We had clam chowder and steaks and there was a jug of milk for those who wanted to drink.

‘You do not eat much, Mr Wetheral,’ Pauline McClellan said. ‘The meat, is it tough? I get you another steak if you like.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I’m just not hungry.’

The whole table stared at me as though I were some queer freak. An apple pie followed with cream from a great bowl on the table. Coffee was served with the pie. After the meal the men drifted over to the furnace-hot range and sat and smoked whilst the women cleared up.

Old Mac and his son were talking cattle and I sat back, my eyes half-closed, succumbing to the warmth. I gathered James McClellan ran a garage in Keithley Creek and farmed a piece of. land the other side of the lake.

‘And what brings ye up to Come Lucky at this time of the year, Mr Wetheral?’ the old man asked me suddenly.

The question jerked me out of my reverie. He was looking across at me, his drooped lids almost concealing his eyes, his wrinkled face half hidden in the smoke from his short-stemmed briar. ‘Do you know a place near here called Campbell’s Kingdom?’ I asked him.

‘Aye.’ He nodded, waiting for me to go on.

‘I came to have a look at it,’ I said.

They eyed me curiously and in silence.

‘How do I get up there?’ I asked.

‘Better ask Ben.’ The old man turned to Creasy.

‘Do ye ken what the snow’s like at the head o’ the creek, Ben?’

‘Sure. It’s pretty deep. Anyway, he couldn’t get past the fall till it’s cleared.’

‘Why do you want to go up to the Kingdom?’ the younger McClellan asked.

There was something about the manner in which he put the question that made me hesitate. ‘I just wanted to have a look at it,’ I said. I turned to Creasy. ‘Does this road you’re building go towards the Kingdom?’

‘Yeh.’

‘What’s it for?’

‘It ain’t for the convenience of tourists anyway.’

Old Mac cleared his throat. ‘Ye were telling me, Mr Wetheral, that ye’d come straight out from England?’ I nodded. Then how is it ye’ve got the name Campbell’s Kingdom so pat on your tongue?’

‘I’m Campbell’s grandson,’ I said.

They stared at me in astonishment. ‘His grandson, did ye say?’ The old man was leaning forward, staring at me, and his tone was one of incredulity.

‘Yes.’

‘Ye’re no exactly like him in appearance. He was a big man — broad across the shoulders and tough.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Och, weel, a man’s no’ entirely responsible for his kith and kin, I guess. So ye’ve come to see the Kingdom?’

I nodded.

James McClellan darted his head forward. ‘Why?’

There was a sudden violence in the way he put the question.

‘Why?’ I stared at him, wondering at the tenseness of his expression. ‘Because it belongs to me.’

‘Belongs to you!’ He stared at me unbelievingly. ‘But the place is sold. They sold it to pay old Campbell’s debts.’ He glanced at his father and then back at me. ‘It was sold to the Larsen Mining and Development Company;’

‘The Larsen Mining and Development Company?’ It was the name that had been newly painted on the frosted door of Henry Fergus’s office. ‘I had an offer from a company,’ I said. ‘But I turned it down.’

‘You turned it down!’ McClellan kicked his chair out from under him as he jerked to his feet. ‘But-’ He stopped and looked slowly across at Creasy. ‘We’d better go and have a word with Peter.’ The other nodded and got to his feet. ‘You’re sure you really are Campbell’s heir?’ he asked me.

‘Is that anything to do with you?’ I was a little uncertain, disturbed by the violence of his reaction. He looked scared.

‘By God it is,’ he said. ‘If-’ He seemed to take hold of himself. ‘You’re still the legal owner of the property, are you?’

I nodded.

‘Can you prove it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Have you got anything on you to show that you really do own the place?’

He seemed so darned worried I got out my pocket book and showed him the wire I had received from Acheson on the train. He almost snatched it from my hand and I could see his lips moving as he read it. ‘Did you see Acheson?’ His hands shook slightly and his face was grey as he looked down at me.

‘Yes.’

‘What did you decide?’

‘I said I’d think about it and came on up here. Why?’

‘Christ Almighty!’ he breathed. ‘That means-’ He stopped and his eyes went to the window as though there was something out there he wanted to look at. But the panes were dark squares reflecting the interior of the kitchen.

‘May I see it?’ Creasy held out his hand and McClellan gave him the wire. He read it through and then he said, ‘Yeh, we’d better see Peter right away.’ He handed the slip back to McClellan who asked me if he could have the loan of it.

‘You can keep it, if you like,’ I said. ‘But what’s the trouble?’

‘Nothing,’ he answered quickly. ‘Nothing at all. We just thought the place was sold, that’s all.’ And he hurried out of the room, followed by Creasy.

I turned and stared after them in astonishment. ‘What was all that about?’ I asked the old man. He was still sitting there thumbing tobacco into his pipe.

He didn’t say anything for a moment and as he lit his pipe he stared at me over the flame of the match. ‘So you’re Campbell’s heir and the legal owner of the Kingdom,’ he murmured. ‘What brought ye all the way out from the Old Country?’

‘I wanted to see the place.’

‘You’ll not be as daft as the old man, surely?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Campbell had oil fever the way some folk have malaria. If he’d struck lucky he might have been a great figure. As it was …’ He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Did you know him well?’ I asked.

‘Aye, about as well as any man in this town. But he wasna a very easy man to get to know. A solitary sort of crittur wi’ a quick temper. He spoke verra fast and violent and he’d a persuasive tongue, damn him.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘The river of oil was just a dream, I guess.’ He looked across at me and then asked abruptly, ‘What would ye be planning to do with the Kingdom now you’ve come out here?’

‘I thought I might live up there,’ I said.

‘Live up there!’

‘My grandfather lived there,’ I reminded him.

‘Aye. For nigh on twenty years old Campbell lived there.’ His voice was bitter and he spat out a piece of ‘tobacco. ‘Dinna be a fool, laddie,’ he said. ‘The kingdom’s no place for ye. And if it’s oil you’re looking for ye won’t find it as many of us in this town have learnt to our cost. There’s no oil in these mountains. Bladen’s survey proved that once and for all. The place isn’t worth two nickels. Och, there’s a bit of ranching to be done up there. The alfalfa’s good and if the chinook blows there’s little need for hauling feed. But it doesna always blow.’ He got to his feet and came and stood over me. ‘This is no your sort of country,’ he said, reaching out a bony hand and gripping my shoulder. ‘It’s a hard country, and it doesna take easily to strangers.’

I stared at him. ‘It’s supposed to be very lovely in summer,’ I murmured. ‘A lot of visitors-’

‘Oh, aye, the visitors. But ye’re no a visitor. Ye’re Campbell’s heir.’ He stared down at me. ‘Take my advice; sell out and gang home where you belong.’

His hard, grey eyes were staring down at me unwinkingly. It was as though his words were meant as a warning. ‘I’ll think about it,’ I muttered, feeling strangely ill-at-ease under his scrutiny.

‘Aye, ye think about it.’ He hesitated, as though about to say something further. But he shook his head. His lids drooped down over his eyes and he turned away with a little shrug and shuffled out of the room.

I leaned back slackly in my chair. Everything was so different from what I had expected — the place, the people, the way they regarded my grandfather. I felt suddenly very tired. I was at the end of my journey now and I went to bed wondering what tomorrow would bring.

When I got down to breakfast next morning there was only a single place laid at the long deal table. It was eight-thirty, but already the others had finished. The Chinaman served me bacon and eggs and coffee and after I had fed I got my coat and went out to have a look at Come Lucky. The snow had stopped. It was a grey, windless morning. The place seemed utterly deserted. I walked the length of the street along the rickety boards of the sidewalk and saw only one shack with glass in the windows and curtains. The town was the most derelict place I’d ever seen, worse than the bombed villages of Italy during the war. It reminded me faintly of Pompeii — a place where people had lived long, long ago.

I turned down through the snow towards the bunkhouse. There was a heavy American truck with a bulldozer loaded in the back drawn up outside the office of the Trevedian Transport Company. The driver came out just as I reached it. ‘Miss the bus this morning?’ he asked with a grin. He was a big, cheerful man in an old buckskin jacket and olive-green trousers.

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Aren’t you working on the. road?’

‘No.’

‘You mean you live here. Christ. I didn’t know anyone under sixty lived in this dump.’

‘No, I’m just a visitor. Are you taking that bulldozer up Thunder Creek?’

‘Yeh. Want to ride along and see how the work’s progressing?’

There seemed no point in hanging around Come Lucky. Now I was here I had all the time in the world. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I only got in last night. I haven’t had a chance yet to see much of the country.’ I climbed up into the cab beside him and he swung the big truck down the snow-packed grade to the lake-shore road. There we turned right and rumbled along the icebound edge of the lake towards the dark cleft of Thunder Creek. ‘Where’s this road going to lead to when it’s finished?’ I asked him.

He stared at me in surprise. ‘Shouldn’t have thought you could stay a night in Come Lucky and not know the answer to that one. It’s going up to the cable hoist at the foot of Solomon’s Judgment. Pity about the cloud. On a fine day there’s quite a view of the mountains from here. You know this part at all?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been in the Rockies before.’

‘Well, I guess you haven’t missed much. Winter lasts just about the whole year round up here.’ He peered through the windshield. ‘Seems like the clouds are lifting. Maybe you’ll get a glimpse of Solomon’s Judgment after all. Quite a sight where the big slide occurred. Happened around the same time as the Come Lucky slide.’ He nodded through his side window. ‘Doesn’t look much from here when it’s covered in snow like it is now. But you see those two big rocks up there? That’s just about where the entrance to the old Come Lucky mine was. They reckon there’s three or four hundred feet of mountainside over that entrance right now.’

The line of the timber loomed ahead. Soon it had closed round us, the trees silent and black, their upper branches sagging under the weight of the snow. The road was furrowed by wheel tracks and here and there the broad tracks of a bulldozer showed through the carpet of snow. Wherever there were drifts the snow had been shovelled aside in great banks and the edges of the road were piled with the debris that had been torn out to make it; small trees, chunks of ice and hardpacked snow, gravel and dirt and stones and the rocks of minor falls.

The road was about twelve feet wide with passing points almost every mile. Where streams came down, which was often, the gullies had been packed with timber to form a bridge and damp patches had been surfaced with logs placed corduroy-fashion.

We were climbing steeply now, reaching back into a tributary of Thunder Creek to gain height. The road twisted and turned, sometimes running across bare, smooth rock ledges, sometimes under overhanging cliffs.

We topped a shoulder of rock, bare of trees, and I caught a brief glimpse of two snow-covered peaks towering above the dark, timbered slopes and of a sheer wall of rock that fell like a black curtain across the end of the valley, its gloom emphasised by a tracery of snow-packed crevices and occasional patches of ice. ‘That’s the slide I was telling you about,’ the driver shouted. ‘And that’s Solomon’s Judgment, those twin peaks.’ He revved the big diesel engine and changed gear.

‘Do you know Campbell’s Kingdom?’ I asked him. ‘Heard of it,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the road, which was running sharply down to the bed of a ravine. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever been there.’

‘Do you know where it is?’

‘Sure.’ He eased the big truck over the logs that bridged the stream bed and nursed it up the further side. As the lorry’s snout lifted above the slope the twin peaks rose to meet us above the trees until they filled the whole sky ahead. ‘Campbell’s Kingdom is up there,’ he said, pointing to the peaks.

My heart sank. It looked a hell of a climb. ‘How far does the road go?’ I asked.

‘The road? Well, it doesn’t go up to the Kingdom.’ He laughed. ‘There’s two thousand feet of cliff there.’

He swung the truck round a bend and there, straight ahead of us, two bulldozers and a gang of men were working on a section of the track that had been completely obliterated. There was a closed three-tonner parked at the end of the road and we drew in behind it and stopped.

We were standing on the lip of an almost sheer drop of several hundred feet. Somehow the pines managed to cling to the slope and I found myself looking down over their snow-laden tops to the creek below. Now that the engine was stopped I could hear the roar of the water. Ahead of us, where the construction gang was working, the road swung round under an overhang. Part of the cliff had gone, taking the road with it. The place looked as though it had been blasted by shell fire. All the trees had been swept clean away on a broad front, swept down into the valley bottom with millions of tons of snow. ‘An avalanche did that by the looks of it,’ the driver said. The snow had completely engulfed the waters of Thunder Creek which flowed out from a black arch underneath it. ‘Heh, Ben! I got your other bulldozer for you.’

Creasy was coming back up the road towards us. He was dressed in a fleece-lined jacket and ski cap. ‘About time,’ he said. ‘This is a fair cow, this one.’

He looked across at me. ‘You haven’t wasted much time getting out here.’ He turned to the driver who was already in the back of the truck loosening the securing tackle of the bulldozer. ‘Okay, George. There’s a good snow bank over there. I’ll get some men on to it right away, then you back up and we’ll run her off same as we did the others.’

I left them to it and went down the road to where the bulldozers were working. They had blasted back into the cliff face and the big D7s were hefting the rocks out with their broad blades and shovelling them over the edge, steadily building outwards. I stood on the lip of the road and stared up at the twin peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. From their summits powdery snow streamed lazily upward like smoke. Separating the two peaks was a narrow cleft, a dark gash in the mountain face, and across the upper end of it was wedged a shelf of rock like a wall. Something about that wall caught and held my gaze. Though it was breached in the centre it was too regular to be natural and it was of a lighter shade than the rock walls of the cleft.

‘Like to have a look through these?’ The driver was standing beside me and he was offering me a pair of binoculars. I focused them on the cleft and instantly the lighter coloured rock resolved itself into a wall of concrete. I was looking at a dam, completed except for the centre section.

‘When was that built?’ I asked the driver.

‘It was begun in the summer of 1939,’ he replied, ‘when the Government reckoned they’d need to open up the Larsen mines for the rearmament drive. They stopped work when the States came into the war. It became cheaper to get out ore from across the border, I guess. Now, of course, with the price of lead at the level it is today-’

‘They’re going to complete the dam — is that it? That’s what this road is for?’

He nodded. ‘You can just see the cable of the hoist if you look carefully. It runs up to a pylon at the top.’

I searched the cliff face and gradually made out the slender thread of the cable rising to a concrete pylon on the cliff top and snaking back to a squat housing to the left of the dam and a little above it.’

I lowered the glasses, the truth slowly dawning on me. ‘Where exactly is Campbell’s Kingdom?’ I asked him.

‘Up there.’ He nodded towards the dam. ‘Just through the cleft.’

‘Where’s the boundary of the property?’

‘I wouldn’t know exactly.’

I turned as a bulldozer thrust a great pile of blast-shattered rock towards the lip of the road. They’d been so damned sure I’d sell that they’d started the work without even waiting for me to sign the deeds.

I looked round. Creasy was standing a little way up the road. I got the impression he had been watching me. No wonder they’d been worried last night. Anger boiled up inside me. If they’d given me the details, if they’d explained that there was a dam three-quarters built already… I went over to him. ‘Who ordered you to build this road?’ I demanded.

‘That any of your business?’ His tone was sullen.

‘This road is being built to bring material up to complete the dam, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘And if the dam is on my property-’

‘It isn’t on your property.’

‘Well, where’s the Campbell land start?’

‘Just the other side of the dam.’ He turned away and moved towards the face of the overhang. ‘Looks like we got to do some more blasting,’ he said to his foreman. I followed him over and listened to him giving instructions to the driller. The compressed air unit started up with a roar and the drills began to eat into the rock.- Above the din I shouted, ‘You still haven’t told me who you’re building this road for?’

He turned on me angrily. ‘Suppose you leave me to get on with it. I’m paid to build the damned thing, not to answer a lot of questions. You may own old Campbell’s Kingdom, but this is Trevedian land and what happens down here is nothing to do with you.’

‘I think it is.’

‘All right. Then go and talk to Peter Trevedian and stop worrying me. Blasting this stuff isn’t as easy as it looks.’ He turned his back on me and shouted instructions to his drillers. Somebody yelled at me to get out of the way and a bulldozer started towards the lip of the road, thrusting about five tons of rubble in front of its blade.

I walked back up the road a bit and stood looking up to the cleft in the mountain they called Solomon’s Judgment. The sound of the bulldozers eating their way relentlessly towards the Kingdom echoed in my ears. I hadn’t expected anything like this. I might just as well have signed the deeds of sale, borrowed on the result and spent a few, pleasant carefree months travelling.

The driver shouted to me that he was leaving and I went slowly back up the road and climbed into the cab beside him. Back in Come Lucky I dropped off at the office of the Trevedian Transport Company, but it was locked and I went on to the hotel. There were several old men in the bar drinking beer. They turned as I entered and stared at me curiously. ‘Do you know where I’ll find a man called Peter Trevedian?’ I asked one of them.

‘Sure. Over at Keithley Creek. He and Jamie McClellan went in early this morning.’

I sat down at one of the marble-topped tables and got the Chinaman to bring me a beer. I didn’t know what to do for the best. It seemed absurd to try and stop the completion of a dam that was two-thirds built for the sake of a dead man’s whims. And yet… I found myself thinking back to that one meeting I had had with my grandfather. There must have been something in it surely for a man to come back here and spend the rest of his life up in that mountain fastness. As I sat drinking my beer it occurred to me it was about time I had a word with Acheson. I got up and went across to where old Mac sat with several of his cronies. ‘Can I use your phone?’

He looked up at me. ‘Aye, ye can use it,’ he said. ‘But ye’ll no’ contact anybody. The line’s been down for a week past.’ He smiled dourly. ‘Ye see, there’s only two subscribers in Come Lucky now — meself and Trevedian. The company dinna worry over much about us.’

I went back to my seat and ordered another beer. I had a sudden sense of being cut off. A bell rang in the depths of the hotel and the Chinaman came to tell me dinner was ready. As I got to my feet a man pushed open the street door and came in. He was short and dark, with black hair and a smooth, coppery skin. There was something arresting in the way he threw open the door and stood there, looking round the room. But it was the scar that made me look at him more closely. It ran all across the right side of his face, from the corner of his lip to his ear, half of which was missing. It didn’t exactly disfigure his face, but it gave a queer twist to features that were almost classic in their cleanness of line, the jaw hard and square, the forehead broad and the nose sharply chiselled and quite straight. ‘Hiya, Mac.’ He came forward into the bar, a pleasant, cheerful smile on his face that disclosed the even line of very white teeth. He carried a leather grip and the backs of his hands were marked with the dark purple of burns.

Old Mac got to his feet and shook his hand. ‘It’s grand to see you, Boy.’ There was real pleasure in the old man’s voice. ‘Jean was only saying the other day it was time you came back for your trucks.’

‘She’s still here then?’

‘Aye.’

‘Are they through to the hoist yet?’

‘Not quite. But they’ll no’ be long now. Creasy’s working through the fall right this minute.’ Mac shook his head. ‘It was bad luck that fall. How did you make out this winter?’

The other grinned. ‘Oh, not too bad. Went wild-catting with a bunch of hoodlums up in the Little Smoky country. Have you got a room for me? I guess I’ll stay up here now until the hoist’s working and I can get my trucks down.’

‘Aye, there’s a room for ye. And ye’re just in time for dinner.’

‘Well, thanks, but I thought I’d go and scrounge a meal off Jean.’

‘Ye think the lass has been pining for ye, eh?’ The old man poked him in the ribs.

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ the other grinned. ‘But I’ve been pining for her.’

Their laughter followed me as I went through into the kitchen. When Mac came in I asked him who the newcomer was. ‘That was Boy Bladen,’ he said.

‘Bladen?’

‘Aye. He’s the laddie who did the survey up in the Kingdom last summer.’

Bladen! ‘… Bladen was keen, as keen as Stuart.’ I could hear old Roger Fergus’ words still. It seemed that providence had delivered Bladen into my hands for the sole purpose of discovering the truth about that survey.

‘… and he had to abandon all his equipment, leave it up in the Kingdom all winter,’ old Mac was saying. ‘You saw that fall they were clearing when you went up the road today?’ I nodded. ‘Well, that happened just before he was due to come down.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘That’s tough on a boy, all his capital locked up in a place like that. Never had anything but trouble from the Kingdom,’ he growled.

‘About that survey,’ I said. ‘Did my grandfather know the result of it?’

‘No. He went and died while the letter containing the report was waiting for him down here in my office. It would just about have killed him anyway.’

After the meal I went up to my room and lay on the bed and smoked and tried to think the thing out.

It was shortly after four that I heard James McClellan shouting for his father. If he was back, presumably Trevedian was too. I got up, put on my coat and went down through the hard-packed snow to the bunkhouse. The door of the transport company’s office was ajar and as I climbed the wooden steps I heard the sound of voices. I hesitated, my hand on the knob of the door.’… you should have thought of that before you took your trucks up there.’ The man’s tone was easy, almost cheerful. ‘If I weren’t clearing that fall and rebuilding the road you’d never get them out. I’ve got a lot of dough tied up in-’

I was just turning away when another voice cut in, harsher and less controlled. ‘You may own the valley, but you’ve only a half share in the hoist. McClellan’s got some say in-’

‘McClellan will do what I tell him,’ the other replied. ‘You do as I say and you’ll get your trucks down.’

‘God damn you, Trevedian!’ The door flung open and Bladen came out, pushing past me and walking angrily up the slope towards Come Lucky.

I knocked and went in. The office was small and bare and dusty. An old-fashioned telephone stood on a desk littered with papers and cigarette ash and behind the desk sat a stocky man of about forty-five. The bone of his skull showed through the close-cropped, grizzled hair and, since it was a round, solid head jammed close in to the shoulders on a short neck, it bore a remarkable resemblance to those concrete balls that adorn the gate pillars of Victorian houses. But though the head was round, the position of cheek bones and jaw gave the features length, so that with the long nose and rather pursed lips under the clipped grey moustache the features seemed to lose some of the strength of the head. The eyes were black and they had little pouches of loose flesh under them. He was like a fine rugby scrum-half gone to seed, and yet the heaviness of his body wasn’t fat, for, apart from the greyness of his skin, he looked fit. ‘Mr Peter Trevedian?’ I asked.

He rose to greet me. ‘You must be Bruce Wetheral.’ His hand was hard and rough, the smile of welcome rubber-stamped on his leathery features. ‘Sit down. James told me you’d arrived. Cigarette?’ He produced a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his jacket and held it out to me. ‘You’re Campbell’s heir, I understand.’ He flicked his lighter for me and his small, black eyes were fastened on my face.

I nodded.

‘Well, I think I can guess why you’ve come to see me.’ He smiled and sat back in his chair with a grunt. ‘Fact is, I was just coming up to have a talk with you.’ He lit his cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘I’ll be quite frank with you, Wetheral, your refusal to sell the Kingdom has put me in a bit of a spot. As you probably know, through my holding in the Larsen mines, I’ve got the contract for supplying all materials for the completion of the Solomon’s Judgment dam. But the contract is a tricky one. The dam has to be completed this summer. To get all the materials up on the one hoist I had to be in a position to begin packing the stuff in the moment the construction people were ready to start work on the dam. To do that I had to have the road cleared ready. I couldn’t wait for the okay from Fergus. So I took a chance on it.’

‘A bit risky, wasn’t it?’ I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you want to make money out here you’ve got to take risks. If I’d waited for Fergus’ okay, I’d have been too late to pack all the stuff in on the one hoist. I’d have had to build a second hoist and believe me that would have cost a lot at current prices.’ He leaned back. ‘Well now, what are you holding out for — more dough?’ The unwinking stare of his black little eyes was disconcerting ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not that.’

‘What is it then? Mac said something about your planning to live up there.’

‘Yes.’

‘What the hell for? It’s pretty God-damn lonely up there and in the winter-’

‘My grandfather lived up there,’ I said. ‘If he could do it-’

‘Campbell didn’t live there because he liked it,’ he cut in sharply. ‘He lived there because he had to; because he didn’t dare live down here amongst the folk he’d swindled.’

‘Are you suggesting he was a crook?’ I demanded angrily.

He leaned forward and stubbed his cigarette out in a big quartz ash-tray. ‘See here, Wetheral. You know Campbell’s history as well as I do. He was committed to trial and sentenced by an English jury for fraud. If I remember right he got five years. To that jury it was just a Stock Exchange ramp. But out here it was the last gamble of men trying to recoup themselves for the loss of the Come Lucky mine. They believed in Campbell. Maybe I’m a bit bitter. Perhaps you’ll understand my attitude better if I tell you that my father, Luke Trevedian, backed Campbell when he decided to drill up beyond the cleft of Solomon’s Judgment. Most of the old-timers were with him in that venture. Well, it failed. The rock was hard, it cost more than they budgeted to get equipment up there. When they found they’d bitten off more than they could chew Campbell went to England to raise capital. My father put every last penny he possessed into the Rocky Mountain Exploration Company and when he got the news that Morton, the director brought in by your grandfather as financial adviser, had disappeared with all the capital, he got on his horse and rode out into the snow of a winter’s night. We never saw him again.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘No need to be sorry. It was his own fault for being such a sucker. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand why old Campbell lived up in the Kingdom. You don’t want to take too much notice of the newspaper stories. That’s just tourist stuff and I’ll admit he put on a good act for them. But the truth lies here in Come Lucky. This derelict bunch of shacks is his doing. There was a lot of wealth here in this town when the big slide sealed the mine.’ He lit another cigarette and snapped his lighter shut by closing his fist on it as though he meant to crush it. ‘And it isn’t only the town that’s derelict,’ he added. ‘Take a look at the old men around here. They’re all old-timers, men who put their money into Campbell’s oil companies and now eke out a pittance doing a bit of farming on the flats around Beaver Dam lake. They just about fill their bellies and that’s all.’

There was nothing I could say. He was giving me the other side of the picture and the violence in his voice emphasised that it was the truth he was telling me. It explained so much, but it didn’t make my problem any easier.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what are you going to do? If you sell the Kingdom, then Henry Fergus will go ahead with the hydro-electric scheme and Come Lucky will become a flourishing little town again.’

‘And if I don’t?’ I asked.

He hesitated. ‘I don’t know. It just depends.’ He got up and walked over to the window. For a time he stood there, staring up the straggling length of Come Lucky’s main street. Then he turned suddenly to me. ‘This place is what they call a ghost town. You’ve got a chance to bring it back to life.’

‘My grandfather’s will imposed certain obligations on me,’ I said. ‘You see, he still believed-’

‘Obligations, hell!’ he snapped. He came and stood over me. ‘Suppose you go and think this thing over.’ He was looking down at me, his eyes slightly narrowed, the nerves at the corners quivering slightly. ‘I phoned Henry Fergus this morning when I was in Keithley. I tried to get him to increase his offer to you.’

‘It’s not the money,’ I said.

‘Well, maybe.’ He smiled sourly. ‘But money’s a useful commodity all the same. He’s coming up to see the progress they’re making at Larsen. I suggested he came on up here and had a talk with you. He said he would.’ His hand dropped to my shoulder. ‘Think it over very carefully, will you. It means a lot to the people here.’

I nodded and got to my feet. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I’ll think it over.’

‘Yes. Do that.’

When I got back to the hotel it was tea-time. There was an extra place laid at the big deal table and just after we’d sat down Bladen came in. Several times in the course of the meal I noticed James McClellan looking at me out of the corners of his eyes. He didn’t eat much and as soon as the meal was over he hurried out, presumably down to Trevedian to discover the result of our interview. I went over to Bladen. ‘Can I have a word with you?’ I asked him.

He hesitated. ‘Sure.’ His voice sounded reluctant. We drew our chairs a little apart from the others. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s about the Kingdom?’ His voice sounded nervous.

‘I believe you did some sort of a survey up there last summer?’

He nodded. ‘A seismographic survey.’ His voice was very quiet, a gentle, musical sound. The scar was white across the smooth, gypsy skin. His eyes were fixed on his hand as he pressed back the cuticles of the nails. The nails were pale against the dark skin. ‘If you want the results of that survey an account was published in the Edmonton Journal of 3rd December.’

‘The results were unfavourable?’

‘Yes.’

‘How reliable is a seismographic survey?’

He raised his head and looked at me then. ‘It won’t tell you definitely where there’s oil, if that’s what you mean. But it gives a fairly accurate picture of the strata and from that the geophysicist can decide whether it’s a likely spot to drill.’

‘I see.’ That was what Acheson had said. ‘Oil is trapped in the rock formations, isn’t it?’ I asked.

‘Yeh, like in an anticline where you have a dome formation and the oil is trapped under the top of the dome.’

‘So the sort of survey you did in Campbell’s Kingdom last year is pretty well a hundred per cent in showing where there’s no likelihood of oil?’

He nodded.

‘In your opinion did that survey make it clear that there could be no oil in the Kingdom?’

‘I think you’ll find the report makes that quite clear.’

‘I’m not interested in the report. I want your opinion.’

His eyes dropped to his hands again. ‘I don’t think you quite understand the way this thing works. My equipment records the time taken by a shock wave to be reflected back from the various strata to half a dozen detectors. It’s the same principle as the echo-sounding device used by ships at sea. All I do is the field work. I get the figures and from these the computers map the strata under the surface.’

‘But you must have some idea how the survey is working out,’ I insisted.

‘All I do is get the figures.’ He got to his feet. ‘You’d better go and talk to Winnick in Calgary if you want to query the results. He charted the area.’

I caught him as he turned towards the door. ‘I’m only asking for your opinion,’ I said. ‘I haven’t time to go to Calgary again.’

‘I have no opinion,’ he replied, his eyes looking towards the door as though he wanted to escape from my questions.

‘All I want to know,’ I said, ‘is whether there is any chance of oil existing under the surface of the Kingdom.’

‘The report says No,’ he replied. ‘Why don’t you write Winnick for a copy and read it?’

Something about his insistence on the report made me wonder. ‘Do you agree with the report?’ I asked him.

‘Look, I’m in a hurry. I’ve already told you-’

‘I’m asking you a very simple question,’ I said. ‘Do you or do you not agree with the report?’

He seemed to hesitate. ‘Yes,’ he said, and pushed quickly by me to the door.

I stood there for a moment, staring at the still open doorway, wondering why he had been so reluctant to commit himself. I went back to the stove and sat there for a while, smoking a cigarette and thinking. I went over again my conversation with Roger Fergus. He had given me to understand that Bladen had been as enthusiastic as my grandfather. And yet now, when I had asked Bladen …

I looked round the room. It was quite empty, but through the door to the scullery I could see Pauline busy at the sink. I went across to her. ‘Could you tell me whether there’s a girl called Jean Lucas still living here?’ I asked. Her little girl clung to her apron and stared up at me with big round eyes, sucking a dirty thumb. ‘She’s English and she used to go up-’

‘Yes, she’s still here,’ she replied. ‘She lives with Miss Garret and her sister.’ She looked at me out of slanting brown eyes as she stretched up to put a plate on the rack. She had a fine, firm figure. ‘If you like I’ll take you over there when I’ve put Kitty to bed.’

I thanked her and went back to the stove.