Nothing to Lose

III

While I was walking back to the hotel, my mind unconsciously dwelt on the hatred these people had for my grandfather. I think something of this communicated itself to Pauline. As we reached The Golden Calf she paused with her hand on the door, and said, “Things that are small to you become big to us hero at this time of the year.”

She pressed the latch of the door and pushed it open. The murmur of voices died as we entered. There were TuIly a dozen men clustered round the fire. “Here he is now,” one of them hissed. “Give him the telegram. Hut.” I saw Peter Trevedian watching me. He was sitting with his brother at one of the tables. Bladen was there, too, talking to Mac.

The telegram was creased and much thumbed. I opened it out and took it to the lamp. The message read:

The silence in the room was intense as I stuffed it into my pocket. The men’s eyes were fixed hungrily on my face and it was obvious that they knew the contents of that wire. I turned and started far the door, intent upon escaping to my room.

But the old man who had given me the wire barred my way.

“What is it?” I asked him.

He tugged awkwardly at his mustache. “We-ell. What we want to know is: Are you going to sell or not?”

“I don’t see that it concerns you.”

He stared at me “You wouldn’t understand. I guess. You’re a stranger here. But the completion of the Solomon’s Judgment dam means a lot to us.”

They were all eying me, all silent now, waiting.

“Well?”

“I’m not selling,” I said.

Peter Trevedian’s chair flung back against the wall with a crash as he got to his feet. “You said you were going to think it over.”

“I’ve done so,” I said. “And I’ve made up my mind. I’m not selling.”

He swung round on the others. “I told you what it would be. We’re going to have the same nonsense all over again.” He got control of himself then and came toward me. “Look.” His tone was considered and reasonable, but his eyes were hard and angry. “You owe it to the people your grandfather ruined.”

“And suppose he was right?” I said.

“Then show us the river of oil!” somebody called out.

And another shouted, “Aye! You drown Come Lucky with oil! We’ll drown the Kingdom with water! See who’s flooded out first!”

I turned to Bladen. “Tell me the truth about that survey,” I said.

“Oh, to hell with the survey!” Trevedian snapped. “Why don’t you think about the people here for a change?”

“Why should I?” I cried. “What did they ever do for my grandfather except try and cash in on his discovery and then blame him when they lost their money? I might have been willing to sell, but I’ve just discovered that my grandfather knew the results of that survey. Somebody took a copy of the report up to him just before winter set in.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” James McClellan demanded.

“Just this.” My voice trembled. “In my opinion, the man who did that was responsible for my grandfather’s death. Because of that the welfare of this town is no longer a consideration as far as I’m concerned. And if I knew who’d done it—”

“If you knew, what would you do, huh?” Max Trevedian had thrust his massive body to its feet. “I took that report up. It killed him, did it? That is good.”

I stared at the foolish grin on his thick lips. “You’re mad,” I heard myself say.

“How was my brother to know what the report showed?” Peter Trevedian said. “We naturally I bought the old man would want to know the result.”

I turned to him, staring at him, “You sent your brother up with that report,” I said.

He nodded. “Yes. I sent him.”

“And how did you get hold of a second copy?” He didn’t say anything, but just stood there, smiling at me. “Did this man Henry Fergus send it to you?”

I looked round at the others. What I had seen in. his eyes was reflected in theirs, It was then I noticed that Bladen had left. Feeling suddenly sick at heart, I crossed to the door and went up to the seclusion of my room.

I must have fallen asleep, for I was suddenly startled by a knock on the door. “Come in,” I murmured.

It was Boy Bladen. He shut the door and stood there hesitantly. “I’ve just been talking to Jean. I didn’t know you’d emigrated to Canada, prepared to live up in the Kingdom and start out where Stuart had left off. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I didn’t see any necessity,” I murmured.

“No, of course not,” I had the feeling of something boiling up inside him. “You were outside Trevedian’s office this afternoon. How much did you hear of what we were saying?”

“Enough, I think, to understand why you agreed with the report on your survey.”

“You knew all the time I wasn’t being honest with you?”

“No,” I said. “It was only when Jean Lucas confirmed that you’d been enthusiastic about the prospects of finding oil in the Kingdom that I began to put two and two together.”

“I see.” He turned away again toward the window. “I thought you were just out to get the best price you could for the property. I thought— Hell!” he said, turning sharply and facing me. “I was scared of losing my trucks. I’ve a lot of dough tied up in that equipment and if Trevedian had refused to bring it down on the hoist—” He shrugged his shoulders.

He suddenly pulled up a chair and sat down astride it, his hands gripping the back. “Now then, about the survey I did. I formed the impression I was surveying a perfect anticline. I can’t be sure. I’d need to plot the figures I got on a seismogram. But I do know this: the report Winnick made on the figures I sent him is a lot of honey. I was never more surprised in my life than when I saw that article in the Edmonton Journal. I wrote to Louis right away, but all he said in reply was that if I cared to come and check the figures against the seismograms his office had prepared, I’d find them accurate.”

“Is he straight?”

“Louis Winnick? Straight as a die.”

“Have you checked your figures with the ones Winnick worked from?”

“I haven’t seen him. But as soon as I get back to Calgary—” He stopped. “What are you getting at?”

“Did you take the results of your survey down to Winnick yourself?”

“Of course not. We had them mailed from Keithley.”

“Yes, but how did you get them down to Keithley?”

“By the hoist. Max Trevedian was running supplies up to us, and each week—” He stopped then. “Of course. All they had to do was substitute the figures of some unsuccessful survey.” He jumped to his feet and began pacing violently up and down the room. “No wonder Trevedian needed to be sure I kept my mouth shut.” He stopped by the window and stood there, silent for a long time, drawing on his cigarette. He turned slowly and faced me, eyes alight as though he had seen a vision. “I just wanted to get my trucks and go. But now—” He half shrugged his shoulders and came toward me. “Jean said you wanted to prove Stuart right.” His voice was suddenly practical. “She said you’d got guts and you’d do it if you had someone in with you to handle the technical side. How much is a drilling operation worth to you?”

I laughed then. “All I’ve got is a few hundred dollars.”

“I don’t mean that.” He resumed his seat astride the chair facing me. “Look. If I find the capital and the equipment, will you split fifty-fifty? By that I mean fifty-fifty of oil profits resulting from drilling operations in the Kingdom.”

“Aren’t you anticipating a bit?” I said. “Even supposing your survey did show an anticline, you admit yourself it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s oil there.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re too level-headed,” he said, grinning. “All right. Let’s take it step by step. Tomorrow I’ll leave for Calgary. I’ll have a talk with Louis and look over the figures from which he prepared that report. Meantime, you get up to the Kingdom just as soon as they get the road through and the hoist working. You’ll find my trucks in one of the barns there. Somewhere in the instrument truck there are the results of the final surveys I did. Bring them down with you and mail them direct to Louis. While you’re doing that I’ll go and see old Roger Fergus. He’s always been very good to me. I used to work for him quite a lot in the old days. He’s a pretty sick man now, but if I could get him interested he might put up the dough. If I can make Roger Fergus a proposition” — he paused and lit another cigarette — “would you split fifty-fifty for the chance of proving Stuart right?”

“Of course,” I said. “But the only person you could do it with is Fergus. Otherwise we’d be up against his son’s company. Besides, Fergus owns the mineral rights.”

He turned toward the door. “You leave it to me. So long as I have your assurance that you’re prepared to split fifty-fifty?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Okay then. You let Louis have those figures just as soon as you can get them. I’ll talk to him and then I’ll see the old man. I’ll wire you as soon as I’ve any news.”

“And what about your trucks?”

“Oh, the heck with the trucks,” he grinned. “Anyway, we’ll maybe need them to cheek on the anticline.” He took hold of the handle of the door. “I’ll leave you now. Jean said you were pretty tired.”

“Good night,” I said. “And thanks for your help.”

He smiled. “Time enough to thank me when we bring in a well.”

Next morning Jean came to see me. I had just finished breakfast and was out on the veranda enjoying the warmth of the sun. “Has Boy left?” she asked.

I nodded. “He went into Keithley with Creasy this morning.” And I told her what he had planned the night before.

When I had finished she didn’t say anything for a moment, but stood staring toward the gulch of Thunder Creek and the twin peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “He always had a feeling about the Kingdom.”

Footsteps sounded on the bare boards of the sidewalk and I turned to find Peter Trevedian coming toward us. “Where’s Bladen gone,” he asked Jean.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Trevedian grunted and turned to me. “He came to see you late last night. Did he say why he was leaving?”

“He probably regarded that as his own business.”

Trevedian looked at me hard for a moment. Then he grunted and turned on his heel and went into the hotel.

“He’s worried,” Jean said. Her hand touched my arm. “Be careful. You don’t look as though you could go many rounds with him.”

I was gazing after Trevedian. “Maybe not,” I said. “But I’d like to. It was his brother who took that report up to my grandfather. And he sent him.”

“I know,” she said. “Boy told me about the reception committee that greeted you when you got back to the hotel last night. That was Peter’s work too. Be careful,” she repeated. “Stay in Come Lucky, will you, till Boy gets back?”

I took her advice for the next two days and saw quite a lot of her. Meantime, Creasy and his construction gang broke through the fall where the avalanche had carried the old road away, and the talk after the evening meal was all of opening up the camp at the head of the creek and getting the hoist working.

On Saturday Mac handed me a telegram.

I thanked him and went up to my room. So Roger Fergus was dead and that was that. I was back where I’d started, and the Kingdom was as far away as ever.

Creasy was late that day and when he came in we had almost finished tea. “Well, we’re through to the camp,” he said as he lowered himself into his chair. “We should reach the hoist by midday tomorrow.”

“Does Peter know this?” James McClennan asked him.

“Yes. I told him. He wants you to go down and have a word with him this evening. I think he’s pretty anxious to see that hoist working.”

“He doesn’t have to worry about the hoist,” McClennan answered, “It’ll work all right; I built it to last.”

I got to my feet and returned to my room. Ever since the night I had told them I wasn’t selling the Kingdom my presence had produced a strained atmosphere. It made me very dependent upon Jean for company and upon the hospitality of the two Miss Garrets.

When I went down there that evening it was raining hard and blowing half a gale from the west. Miss Sarah Garret opened the door to me.

“Come in, Mr. Wetheral; come in.” She shut the door. “My sister and I were so sorry to hear about the death of Roger Fergus.”

I stared at her. “How did you know he was dead?”

“But you received a telegram from Boy today saying so.”

I wondered whether Trevedian, too, knew the contents of that wire yet, and if so, what he was going to do about it. I wished now I had told Bladen to write.

She smiled at me and her eyes twinkled. “So sensible of you to get Boy to do the organizing side of your venture.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why?” She tapped me with her fingers. “Go on with you. Think I don’t know why? I was young once, you know, and I understand only too well how lonely it can be for a girl up here in Come Lucky.”

She gave a little tinkling laugh and then turned quickly at the sound of footsteps. “Ah, here she is,” she said as Jean entered the room.

“I gather you know about the wire I got from Boy,” I said.

She nodded, “Miss McClellan was here two hours ago with the details of it. The news will be all over Come Lucky by now.” She took me through into her own room. “You look tired,” she said as she poured me a drink.

“I feel it,” I answered. “It seems so hopeless. Henry Fergus now owns the mineral rights of the Kingdom.”

“It’ll work out,” she said quietly. “You see. You’ve got a good partner in Boy. Once he gets hold of an idea, he doesn’t easily let go. He’ll find somebody to back you.”

She had spoken with a warmth that was unusual in her. “Are you in love with him?” I asked.

She stared at me in sudden shocked surprise and then turned away. “We’ll talk about the Kingdom, not me, if you don’t mind,” she said, in a voice that trembled slightly.

“Why has Boy gone to Peace River, do you know?” I asked her.

She started slightly. “Has he? I didn’t know.” Her voice was fiat. She turned and looked at me. “He was working there during the winter.”

For some reason she had withdrawn into herself. I left shortly after that and returned to the hotel. As I was starting upstairs Pauline came out of the kitchen. “Jimmy is going up to the dam tomorrow.”

“When?”

“They leave tomorrow after breakfast; he is going with Ben.”

“Tell him I’d like to come with him, provided he’ll take me to the top if the hoist is working.”

“Yes, I will tell him that.” She flashed me a smile. “Good night, Bruce.”

“Good night, Pauline.”

I went up to my room, suddenly too excited to think of reading. At last I was going to get a glimpse of the Kingdom.

I was called at seven. By the time I got down, the men were already having breakfast. Pauline brought me mine.

“So you’re going up to have a look at the dam. Mr. Wetheral?” old Mac said.

“I gather your son’s willing to take me up,” I said.

He nodded and belched at the same time. “Jamie will take ye up.” He turned to his son. “Take him up the hoist, Jamie; and let him see the place for himself.”

McClellan nodded. He finished his coffee at a gulp, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and got to his feet. “Okay, Ben?” Creasy nodded and pushed back his chair. McClellan turned to me. “You ready, Wetheral?”

I went up to get my boots and a raincoat. A truck was waiting for us down by the bunkhouse — the same one that had brought me to Come Lucky. Max Trevedian was loading drums of Diesel fuel into the back. Peter Trevedian came slithering down through the mud toward us.

“All set?” he asked.

“Just about,” McClellan said.

“Well, what do you want here, Wetheral?” I turned to find Peter Trevedian coming toward me.

“McClellan offered to take me up to have a look at the dam,” I said.

“He did, did he?” He called to McClellan and took him to one side.

“It can’t do any harm,” I heard McClellan say.

Finally Trevedian said, in a voice that was loud enough for me to hear, “Well, he’s not coming up in one of my trucks. If he wants to go up there, he can find his own way up.”

McClellan said something, but Trevedian turned with a shrug and climbed into the cab of the truck.

McClellan hesitated, glancing at me. Then he came over. “I’m sorry, Wetheral,” he said. “Trevedian says there isn’t room for all of us. I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you behind.”

“And you take your orders from him?”

He glanced at me quickly, a hard, angry look in his eyes. Then he turned away, and he and Creasy climbed into the cab. The engine roared and I stood there watching the truck as it slithered through the mud. The Kingdom seemed as far away us ever.

I went slowly back to the hotel. Mac was in the bar when I entered. “Are ye not going up to the hoist wi’ Jamie?”

“Trevedian refused to take me,” I said.

He growled something under his breath. “Well, I’ve a message for you. Two friends of yours are down at Hundred-and-Fifty-Mile House. Phoned up to find out whether you were still here.”

“Two friends?” I stared at him. “Who were they?”

“Johnny Carstairs and a fellow called Jeff Hart. Said they’d be up here this afternoon to see you if the road wasn’t washed out.”

I turned away toward the window. Johnny Carstairs and Jeff Hart. It was the best news I had had in a week.

It was around teatime that Johnny and Jeff rolled into Come Lucky in a station wagon plastered with mud. And it wasn’t long before I knew what had brought them. Jeff had met Boy Bladen down at Edmonton.

“He said something about that survey being phony,” Johnny said. “He said Trevedian fixed it and then sent his brother up to the Kingdom with the report.” His eyes were hard and narrow under their puffy lids. “He said you could give us the whole story. The road’s just open, so we came over. I was kinda fond of the old man,” he added. He turned abruptly, facing me. “Where’s Trevedian?”

“Up at the hoist,” I said. And then, because I was shocked by the tenseness of his features, I added, “There’s nothing you can do about it, Johnny.”

“No?” He suddenly smiled gently. “I’m madder’n hell. And when I’m that way the meanest critter on four legs won’t get the better of Johnny Carstairs — nor on two legs neither.” He turned abruptly to the door. “C’mon. Let’s go an’ feed.”

Johnny was one of those men whose values are real. I watched him as he sat eating, quiet and easy and friendly, exchanging banter with old Mac. Only his eyes reflected the mood that was still boiling inside him.

McClellan and Creasy were late getting back and we had nearly finished our meal by the time they arrived. “Was it all right. Jamie?” Mac asked.

“Of course it was.” For the first time since I had known him, James McClellan was smiling. “The motor was all right and so was the cable.” He nodded perfunctorily to Johnny as he sat down and got straight on with his meal. “What brings you here?” he asked. “Bit early in the season for visitors, isn’t it?”

“This is Jeff Hart, from Jasper,” Johnny said. “We came over to see friend Bruce here. Understand you wouldn’t take him up to the Kingdom this morning.”

“Peter Trevedian runs the transport here,” McClellan replied sullenly.

“Sure, sure. Peter Trevedian runs you and the whole goldarned town, from what I hear. Did you know about him sending his brother up to old Campbell with the report on that survey?”

Nobody said anything. The table had become suddenly silent. Anger underlay the mildness of Johnny’s tone, and it showed in his eyes.

“You’d better go and talk to Peter Trevedian,” McClellan said awkwardly.

Johnny was lighting his cigarette, and his eyes were on McClellan through the smoke. “I thought you were Trevedian’s partner?”

“Only on the hoist.”

“I see. Not when it cornea to substituting phony survey figures and driving an old man to his death.”

McClellan pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “What are you getting at?”

“Nothing that you can’t figure out for yourself. Know where Trevedian is, Mac?” he asked.

I don’t think the old man heard the question. He seemed lost in thought. It was Creasy who answered, “You’ll find him down at the bunkhouse.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Johnny had turned to the door. Jeff and I got up and followed him. “You boys stay here,” he said. “You can order me a beer. I’ll be thirsty by the time I get through with Trevedian.”

We sat and waited for him by the stove in the bar. He was gone the better part of an hour and by the time he got bock, men from Creasy’s construction gang were filtering in in ones and twos. They were a mixed bunch, their hands hard and calloused — Poles, Ukrainians, Italians, a Negro and two Chinamen.

“Well?” Jeff asked as Johnny slid into the vacant choir at our table.

“Trevedian wasn’t there,” he said, and called to the Chinaman to bring more beer. “I went along and saw Jean instead.” His eyes crinkled as he looked across at me. “Leastways you got yourself one friend in Come Lucky. She’s a real dandy, that girl. If I were a few years younger—” He stopped suddenly, his gaze fixed over my shoulder.

I turned in my chair. Peter Trevedian was standing in the doorway, looking round the bar.

“Why, if it isn’t Johnny Carstairs.” He crossed the room, his hand outstretched. “What brings you up here this early in the year?”

Johnny was in the middle of the room now. He ignored the other’s hand. He was rocking gently on his high-heeled boots, anger building up inside him like steam in a boiler. “I came on account of what I heard from Bladen.”

“Well?” Trevedian had stopped. His hand had fallen to his side. “What did you hear from Bladen?”

“Did you have to play a dirty trick like that on an old man who never did you—”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about! I’m talking about Stuart Campbell! You killed him!” Johnny’s voice vibrated through the silence of the room, “Why did you have to do it like that, striking at him through his—”

“Oh, atop talking nonsense, I didn’t touch the old man, and you know it,” Trevedian’s eyes glanced round the room, seeing it silent and listening. “We’d better go dawn to my office. We can talk there.” He turned toward the door.

“There’s nothing private in what I got to say.” Johnny had not moved, but his hands had shifted to the leather belt round his waist. “What were you afraid of — that he’d talk to some newspaper feller, that he’d tell them what he knew about the dam?”

“What do you mean?” The other had swung round.

“Campbell wasn’t a Tool. Why do you think he let them go on with the construction of the dam at the start of the war without making any demand for compensation?”

“He’d have put in a claim, only Pearl Harbor brought the Yanks into the—”

“It wasn’t Pearl Harbor. It was because he knew the dam wouldn’t stand the weight of the water.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking—”

“Sure you do. I’m talking about the Marie Bell and her cargo of cement. I took a Vancouver shipowner up to the Kingdom in 1940 and he told us the whole thing.”

“The construction of the dam has nothing to do with me — never has had. I just pack the materials in.” Trevedian’s voice had risen slightly. He moved a step nearer. It was like seeing a hull about to charge a matador.

Johnny laughed softly. It reacted on Trevedian like a slap in the face. His head came dawn and his fists clenched. A tingle of expectation ran through the room. “Think I don’t know what packing rates are?” Johnny said. “You didn’t make enough out of transporting the stuff to start a transport and construction company in Alaska.”

“The Government was responsible for building the dam,” Trevedian snapped. “They had inspectors.”

“Sure they had inspectors. But how were they to know you were packing in cement that had lain for a year on the rocks of the Queen Charlotte Islands?”

“That’s a lie.” Trevedian’s face was livid. “All the cement I delivered was from an American company down in Seattle.”

“Sure. They were shipping cement up to Alaska for military installations. One of their ships—”

Trevedian suddenly straightened up. He had got control of himself and his big laugh boomed through the room. “So I’m supposed to have killed Campbell because he knew I’d supplied dud cement for the dam.” He slapped his thigh with amusement. “That’s damn funny. In the first place, I didn’t kill Campbell, and every person in this room knows it. In the second place, that dud cement you talk about seems to be standing up to it pretty well, since the dam’s still there and there isn’t a crack in the whole structure. You want to get your facts right before you come storming up here making a lot of wild accusations.” And still laughing, he turned on his heel and went out into the night.

Johnny came back to our table and knocked back the rest of his beer.

“What’s all this about the dam?” Jeff asked.

“To hell with the dam!” Johnny’s eyes were angry. “But if that rat—” He suddenly laughed. “Well, maybe Stuart was right. If he was willing to let things take their course, I guess I should be too.” He put down his glass. “I’m going down to have a talk with Jean.”

When he had gone. Jeff said, “You know, I’d like to see this dam there’s all the fuss about. Have you seen it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I saw it the other day from Thunder Creek. What I want to do is get up there. I want to see the Kingdom.”

“Thunder Creek’s where they’re building the road, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

He suddenly laughed. “Well, what are we waiting for? It’s a fine night and there’s a moon. Let’s go right on up there.”

But some instinct of caution made me hesitate. “It would be better to go up by daylight,” I said. “Could we go up tomorrow? Then you’d get a good view of the dam and I might be able to persuade—”

“Tomorrow’s no good,” he said. “We’re leaving tomorrow.” He got to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll go up there now.”

“What about Johnny?”

“Johnny?” He laughed. “We’ll leave a message for him. How far do we have to go up Thunder Creek?”

“I think it’s about ten or eleven miles,” I said.

“And the road has only just been made. We can be there and back in an hour and a half. Come on. You don’t need a coat. We got some in the station wagon and it’s got a healer too.”

The road up Thunder Creek was like the bed of a stream. But Jeff never once suggested turning back. A car to him was an expendable item, a thing to fight nature with, and he sang softly to himself as he wrestled with the wheel.

Both he and the car were thoroughly tested before the timber finally fell back behind us and the headlights blazed on the most colossal rock fall I have ever seen. And above the slide — high, high above it — towered the black shadow of the cliff race, a gleam of white at the top where the moon caught the snow caps.

We dropped steeply several hundred feel and fetched up at a square concrete building I lint looked like an enormous pillbox. On the side facing us was a timbered Hinging on which rested a heavy wooden cage suspended by wires to a great cable the thickness of a man’s arm. Jeff stopped the car and switched his spotlight onto the cable, following it up the slope of the slide. It gleamed dully in the light, like the thick thread of a spider, running in a long loop away up the slide until it faded into nothing, reaching beyond the range of the spotlight. Below it two subsidiary cables followed the pattern of the loop.

“Well, that’s it, I guess,” Jeff said. “From what Johnny’s told me, it runs to a concrete pylon at the top of the slide and then in one great loop up to another pylon on the lip of the fault. Quite a place, isn’t it?”

I didn’t say anything. That slender thread was the link bridging the dark gap that separated me from the Kingdom. If I could travel that cable— A queer mood of excitement was taking hold of me.

I pushed open the door. “Let’s have a look in the engine house,” I said.

“Sure.”

Jeff flung me a duffel coat from the back of the car and then we pushed down through the wind to the engine housing. Inside we were out of the wind, but the cold was bitter.

The interior was about the size of a large room. One wall was taken up entirely by a huge iron wheel round which the driving cable of the hoist ran. This was connected by a shaft to a big Diesel engine that stood against the other wall, covered by a tarpaulin lashed down with rope through the eyeholes. A control panel was fixed to the concrete and there was an ex-service field telephone on a wooden bracket. Back of the main engine house was a storeroom, and in it I saw the drums of fuel oil that had been brought up from Come Lucky.

I stood there for a moment, absorbing it all, while Jeff peered under the tarpaulin at the engine. I turned slowly, drawn by an irresistible impulse.

The thing that had been in my mind ever since I had seen the slender thread of that cable suddenly crystallized, and I turned to Jeff. “They had that engine going today, didn’t they?”

He nodded, straightening up and facing me, a frown on his friendly, open features. “What’s on your mind?”

I hesitated, strangely unwilling to put my idea into words, for fear it should be impracticable. “You’re a mechanic, aren’t you?” I said. “Can you start that engine?”

“Sure, but—” He stopped and then he stepped forward and caught hold of my arm. “Don’t be crazy, Bruce. You can’t go up there on your own. Suppose the thing jammed or the motor broke down?”

The thought had already occurred to me. “There must be some sort of safety device,” I said.

He nodded reluctantly. “There’ll be something like that, I guess. If the driving cable were disconnected gravity ought to bring it down.” He took me outside and we climbed onto the cage. It was a big contraption, bigger than anything I had seen in the Swiss Alps. He flashed the beam of his torch onto the cradle where the two flanged wheels ran on the cable. “There you are,” he said. It was a very simple device. The driving cable was fixed to the cradle by a pinion on a hinged arm. If the motor failed, all one had to do was knock the pinion out. The driving cable then fell onto a roller, and a braking wheel automatically came into action. It was then possible to let the cage elide down on the brake.

“See if you can get the motor started,” I said.

Jeff hesitated, then he turned with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “Okay,” he said.

There was a pilot engine for starting the big Diesel. It was a petrol engine with battery starter. It started at a touch of the button. Jeff pulled the tarpaulin clear of the Diesel, turned on the oil, and a moment later the concrete housing shook to the roar of the powerful motor. I went to the car and got another coat and a rug. Jeff met me at the entrance to the housing.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“I’ll be all right,” I said.

He looked at me, frowning slightly. “Okay. Better take this.” He handed me his torch. “They’ve rigged a phone up, by the look of it. Ring me from the top.” He glanced at his watch. “If there’s anything wrong with the phone. I’ll bring the cage down at nine o’clock, giving one false start to warn you. If you don’t come down then. I’ll run it up again and bring it down every half hour. Okay?”

I nodded and checked my watch with his. Then I climbed onto the wooden platform of the cage. He shouted “Good luck!” to me and disappeared into the concrete housing. A moment later the note of the Diesel deepened as it took up the slack of the driving cable. I watched the loop of the cable level out and become taut. The cage shook gently and then lifted from its staging. The wheels of the cradle began to turn, creaking slightly. The cage swung gently to and fro. I watched the engine housing slowly grow smaller and then I turned and faced the black rampart of the cliff.

It was an odd journey, alone there, slung in space in the moon-filled night. The rock jumble of the slide fell away steeply below me, a checkerboard of black and white. But ahead all was deep in shadow. A great concrete pillar moved toward me and slid past in the night, a vague shape as the cage ran from moonlight into shadow. For a moment the sound of the cradle wheels changed as they ran on the solid fixing of the cable. Then the whole cradle began to tilt sharply and the rate of progress slowed as it began to climb the vertical cliff face. Looking back, the moon-white valley seemed miles away. I could barely see the tiny square block of the engine housing. I seemed hung in space, like a balloonist caught in an updraft of air and slowly rising.

It could have been only a few minutes, but it seemed an age that the cage was climbing the bare rock face of the fault. Then we lipped the top end I was in moonlight again and the world around was visible and white. The concrete pylon passed me so close I could have touched it. The cradle toppled down to an almost horizontal position. Ahead of me now I could see the dam, a gigantic concrete wall, unfinished at the top and crumbling away in the center where the stream ran through. The cage climbed the northern slope of the cleft until I was looking down onto the top of the dam. Then it slowed and moved gently into a wooden staging that finished abruptly at a concrete housing similar to the one at the bottom. The cage stopped with a slight jerk that set the cables swaying.

I climbed stiffly out and looked about me. The dam was below me, looking like some prehistoric rampart built by ancient inhabitants to defend the pass. The unfinished center section, where the water frothed white over a small fall, gave it the appearance of having been breached in some early raid.

All this I saw at a glance and then my gaze swung to the Kingdom itself. It was a natural bowl in the mountains some five to ten miles long; I couldn’t tell the width because a buttress of rock, part of the shoulder of the mountain, blocked my view. The place was completely bare, a white expanse of snow through which ran the black thread of the stream, branching here and there into tributaries that faded rapidly beneath the snow. There was no sign of habitation.

I went into the concrete housing. It contained nothing but the big iron wheel round which the driving cable ran, and some cans of grease. There was a field telephone on a wooden bracket. I lifted the receiver and wound the handle.

Faint in my ear came the sound of Jeff’s voice, “You all right, Bruce?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” It was odd to think of him still down there in the valley with the car outside and the road snaking back to Come Lucky. I seemed to have moved into another world. “I can’t see Campbell’s shack from hero,” I told him. “It’s probably on the north side of the Kingdom, and that’s hidden from me by a buttress of rock. I’ll ring you when I’m ready to come down.”

“Okay. But don’t be too long.”

I hung up and went outside. I stood there for a moment, gazing beyond the buttress to the Kingdom. It was a crystal bowl surrounded by peaks, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine how my grandfather had felt when he had first seen it. Spring would come late here, but when it came it would be splendid and solitary. The light died out of the whiteness of the plateau until it was no more than a distant glimmer. The clouds were thickening up. I turned and climbed the rock-strewn slope to the buttress.

It didn’t take me long to reach it, and from the summit the whole Kingdom lay before me. And there, huddled against the lower slopes of the mountain away to my left, was a low range of buildings half buried in snow.

It shouldn’t have taken me long to reach them, for it was not more than a mile, but the going was very slippery, the snow frozen into a hard crust. But I was making fair progress when all hell broke loose. There was a steady roaring on the mountain slopes above me. The wind came with a drift of powdery snow whipped up from frozen ground, and behind the wind came snow, heavy, driving flakes that were cold and clinging, that blinded my eyes and blanketed the whole world that only a moment before had been so bright and clear in the moonlight.

There was no question now of fighting my way back to the top of the hoist. I knew the direction in which the homestead lay and I made for it, head down against the blinding fury of the blizzard, cursing myself for a fool, for not realizing how quickly the mood of mountains can change.

After a struggle that seemed endless, I found myself in the shelter of a group of buildings — low, log-built barns stretching out like two arms from a central ranch house that had doors and windows. I felt my way along the log face until I found the door. It yielded to my touch and I stumbled inside, closing it after me.

The place was cold, cold with the gripping chill of a room that has had no heat in it for a long time. I fumbled for my lighter and in the tiny flame of it I saw a big, ghostly room full of shadows. The walls were of log, the ceiling and floorboards of split pine planks, and there was the gaping hole of a huge stone chimney. On a table stood a lamp. It still had oil in it and I removed the glass chimney and lit the wick. When I set the chimney back the warm lamplight flooded the place. I stood back and stared at a room that might have been constructed by one of the pioneers that had moved into the Fraser River country a hundred years ago.

The place was dominated by the huge stone chimney which broadened out just below the rafters to a big open fireplace. The grate still held some half-burnt pine logs and a great heap of ash. The beams and rafters that supported the roof were rough-hewn, the marks of my grandfather’s ax plainly visible. Most of the furniture was handmade, but there were a few small pieces that had been imported. A door to the right led into a kitchen. On the other side of the living room was a bedroom. The bed was unmade. Clothes were strewn around — heavy ski hoots, an old pair of jeans, a buckskin jacket beautifully worked with beads, an old and battered hat.

I felt as though I were an intruder in a private house, not the sole legatee of a man four months dead come to look over his property. The place was cold, it was true, but it wasn’t dump. He’d built it well on a good rock foundation and with a double lining of timbers, packed with sawdust and straw, and double windows. It was a living part of Stuart Campbell. Everything I was looking at had been made by him at great cost of labor and ingenuity. I gated slowly round the room with a strange feeling of tenderness for the man who had made it. This was the place that they wanted to drown with their dam.

A pool of water was forming at my feet. There were logs piled in a big bin beside the fireplace, logs brought in by Johnny and his party when they had returned. There was a box of ax chippings and sawdust. In a few minutes I had a fire blazing in the hearth and had stripped off my clothes. I went through into the bedroom and got some things of my grandfather’s — a pair of jeans, a plaid shirt and a big fur-lined jacket.

I lit a cigarette and went over to the desk. It was in the bottom drawer that I found what I was looking for — rolled sheets of cartographic paper and a black leather-bound book. The seismograms were quite incomprehensible to me. I rolled them up and put them back in the drawer. Then I opened the book.

This was what I had hoped to find. On the first page was written: An Account of the Efforts of one Stuart Campbell to Establish the Truth that there is Oil in the Rocky Mountains. The report was written in ink. All the entries were dated beginning with March 3, 1911 and going straight through to the entry made on the day of his death.

I turned back to the beginning and read with fascination the account of his discovery of oil in the valley of Thunder Creek:

There followed more details, and then this passage:

I had read enough to remove any lingering doubts. The rest could wait. I went into the kitchen and in the cupboard found tea in a round tin, crackers and canned meal. I ate, then went into the bedroom, got Home blankets and stretched myself out in front of the fire. I felt desperately tired. I was worried, too, about Jeff down there alone at the bottom of the hoist.

I don’t remember much about that night. Once I got up and put more logs on the fire. Mostly I slept in a coma of exhaustion. And then suddenly I was awake. It was bitterly cold, the fire was a dead heap of white ash, and a pale glimmer of daylight crept in through the snow-covered windows.

I rebuilt the fire and got myself some breakfast. The warmth and the food revived me, and as soon as I had finished, I carried out a quick inspection of the premises. The place was built facing south, the barns spreading out from either aide of the house like two arms. Fortunately, Bladen’s trucks were in the barns and it didn’t take me long to find the spools containing the recordings of his final survey. I slipped the containers into my pocket and, after getting some food in case Jeff had stayed all night at the foot of the hoist, I set out. The snow was deep in places and I was very tired by the time I staggered into the concrete housing of the hoist. I went straight over to the telephone, lifted the receiver and wound the handle. There was no answer. A feeling of panic crept up from my stomach. It was entirely unreasoned, for I could always return to the ranch house.

I tried again and again, and then suddenly a voice was crackling in my ears, “Hullo! Hullo! Is that you, Bruce?” It was Jeff Hart.

A sense of relief hit me and I leaned against the ice-cold concrete of the wall. “Yes,” I said. “Bruce here. Is the hoist working?”

“Thank God you’re okay.” His voice sounded thin and far away. “I was scared stiff you’d got lost. Were you okay up at Campbell’s place?”

“Yes,” I said. And I told him how I’d found it.

“You were pretty lucky. I’ll got thorn to send the hoist up for you. Johnny’s here. He’ll come up with it. I’m just about all in. What a night! Okay. She’s on her way up now.”

My decision not to sell Campbell’s Kingdom, the land I owned in the Canadian Rockies, made my name — Bruce Campbell Wetheral — an object of hatred in the town of Come Lucky, British Columbia.

My grandfather, Stuart Campbell, had died convinced there was oil in the Kingdom. He willed the land to me, with the request that I prove his theory correct. Although my physician had told me I had only a few months left to live, I determined to try to carry out my grandfather’s last wish.

I took as partner a man named Boy Bladen, who had made a survey in the Kingdom the year before. The experts who analyzed his survey reported that there couldn’t be oil in the Kingdom, but Boy was convinced someone had doctored his survey figures.

It sounded logical. Henry Fergus was building a dam just below the Kingdom right now. If I found oil on my land, Fergus would have to abandon his project. Another man who might have falsified the report was Peter Trevedian, who was working for Fergus, hauling supplies for the dam up on his mountain hoist.

Boy went to Calgary to check the old survey figures. He wired me that the report was false, and told me I could find his original records in a truck up in the Kingdom. A few nights later, with a friend, I went to the foot of Trevedian’s hoist. We started it and I went up the mountain. A storm forced me to spend the night there, but in the morning I found Boy’s reports and returned to the hoist.

With the help of these new figures, we might be able to prove there was oil in the Rocky Mountains — if I could only live long enough to find it.