Nothing to Lose

VI

Garry hesitated, but I think the earnestness of my voice convinced him as much as my words. He motioned to the driver, and the heavy rig truck gathered speed.

“I see you cut the telephone wires.” Garry’s voice was barely audible above the roar of the engine.

“That’s why I can’t do it again,” I said. “All we’ve got to do is rely on confusion. I’m tapping the telephone wires and issuing orders in the name of Trevedian. That enough for you to go on with?”

He hesitated. Then he suddenly nodded and squeezed my arm. “All right,” he said. “You got something up your sleeve, I know that. But if the guard is off the gate up here, I’ll agree you’ve been smart and leave it at that for the moment.”

As we rounded the bend where the guard was posted I saw that the gate was swung open and I caught a glimpse of the deserted guard but as we passed, and then we were climbing.

I glanced at my watch. Eleven-thirty-six. The guard should be on the short cut now. A figure loomed suddenly in the headlights — a figure on horseback, ghostly in his mantle of white.

At a gesture from me the driver checked. “Bruce?” Bill called. And then, as he saw me leaning out toward him, he shouted, “It’s okay! He’s on the trail now!”

“Fine! See you at the Kingdom!”

His “Good luck!” came faintly as we swung away to the first of the hairpins.

That first bend had me in a panic. If we got stuck on the hairpins— But we didn’t get stuck. The driver knew his stuff and we scraped round with inches to spare. And then we were over the top and running out to the cliff where the overhang was.

“Now listen, Garry!” I shouted. “I’m dropping off in a minute. You’ll go on till you get to an area of swamp ground. Just beyond that you’ll find a place where you can turn off to the right into the brush. Get all the vehicles parked in under the trees and all facing outwards, ready to go at a moment’s notice. All lights out. No smoking. No talking. I’ll bring the last truck in myself a little later. Okay?”

He nodded. “Another phone call to make?” He grinned.

“That’s right,” I said. Slowly the big truck rounded the bend under the overhang and then dipped her nose for the long straight run down to the swamp ground. I dropped to the ground.

One by one the trucks passed me... three... four... five... and then I was Hogging down the last truck, jumping for the running board. “I’m Bruce Wetheral!” I shouted to the driver. “Pull up a moment, will you?”

“Okay.” The engine died and the big tanker pulled up with a jerk. “What now?”

“We’re acting as rear guard.” I told him, unslinging my pack. “They’ll be waiting for us about a mile farther on.” I pulled out the box containing batteries and detonating plunger, slung the coil of wires over my shoulder and flicked on my torch. “I’ll be about five minutes,” I said.

I found the cliff wall and felt my way along it, probing with the torch for the branch with which I had marked the shot holes. The branch was still there, white with snow. I found the wires without difficulty, connected up with them and walked back, trailing the battery wires out behind me. At the limit of the wires connected the batteries, checked my connections carefully and then grasped the handle and plunged it down.

There was a terrifying roar, that went on and on, scattering debris in the trees, shaking the snow from them, stripping their branches. A chip of rock as big as my head thudded into the ground at my feet. And then quite suddenly there was silence.

The results couldn’t have been better. The whole cliff face had fallen outward, spilling across the road and over the precipice beyond. I tugged the wires free and went back to the truck.

The driver was out on the road. “What in hell was that?” he asked.

“Just blocking the rood behind us,” I said. “Can you pull your truck over so that I can reach those telephone wires?”

I got my telephone equipment, clipped on to the wires, cut the lines behind the clips, and rang and rang. At length a voice answered me, “Butler, Slide Camp, here. What’s going on? I been trying to get—”

“Listen, Butler!” I shouted, again holding the mouthpiece well away from my face. “There’s been an accident! Can you hear me?”

“Yes. Is that Mr. Trevedian?”

“Yes. Now listen. There’s been a bad fall. The cliff has fallen in and buried one of our trucks. Have you got that?”

“Yes.”

“Right. How many men have you got up there?”

“About fifty-three, I guess.”

“How many trucks?”

“Four. No, five, counting the one that’s just arrived.”

“Okay. Rustle up every man in the camp, all the digging equipment you can, pile them into the trucks and get down to that fall as fast as you can. We’ve got to have that road cleared by tomorrow morning. And there’s the driver of the truck. He’s buried under it somewhere. I want every man, you understand? I’ll have a roll call before we’re through. Every man, you understand. This is an emergency.”

“Where are you speaking from?” His voice sounded doubtful.

“Get on with it, damn you! I want the whole lot of you down here in half an hour! I’ll be working up with my men from the other—” I pulled off the wires then and wiped the sweat from my forehead. I felt tired. Would he bring them all down? Everything depended on how scared he was of Trevedian.

Slowly I climbed down and back into the cab. “Okay,” I murmured as I sank back into the seat. “Let’s go and join the others.”

The driver was staring at me. His face looked white and scared in the dashboard tights. The heavy Diesel coughed and roared, the tanker ground forward around the curve of the hill, down the straight, run to the swamp ground, and then Garry was there, guiding the driver as he backed the tanker alongside the other trucks.

“What was that noise?” Garry naked as the driver cut his engine. His face, too, looked scared in the faint light from the cab.

“There’s been a bit of a fall,” I said wearily.

“A fall?” Then he saw the dynamiting equipment lying beside me on the seat. “Do you mean you’ve blown the road?”

“That’s about it,” I said.

“But, hell, man, that’s a criminal offense!”

“We’ll see,” I said. “It won’t be easy to prove.”

“I should have insisted on your telling me your plan before—”

“There wasn’t time,” I said. And then suddenly I lost my temper.

“Damn it, how did you think we were going to get a rig up there? Ask Trevedian to be kind enough to bring it up for us? Well, I did that. I warned him this was a public highway, built with government money. He laughed in my face.”

Boy had come up beside him. “What do we do next, Bruce?” His voice was steady, quite natural, as though this were the most ordinary thing in the world. I liked Boy for that. He understood. For him a thing that was done was done.

“I’ve phoned the camp,” I said. “We wait here until they’re all down at the fall.”

“And then we blow up the camp, I suppose?” Garry said sarcastically.

“No,” I replied. “Just a bridge. Better get some rest, both of you,” I added. “We’ve got a long night’s work.”

Boy turned away, but Garry hesitated, and then he nodded slowly, “Guess you’re right,” he said, and went back to his truck.

Half an hour later headlights pierced the snow for a moment and ft truck rumbled past. Another truck followed a few minutes afterward, and then another. We waited and watched. There were still two more trucks. Five minutes... ten. Nothing came. At length I got out of the cab and walked up the line to Garry’s truck.

“I think we’ll risk it,” I said. “Go one mile and then stop. As soon as I’ve blown the bridge, I’ll change places with Boy and ride up with you. Okay?”

Garry opened his mouth to soy something, but then closed it again. “Okay,” he said.

One by one, the trucks pulled out and swung onto the road. I followed in the last truck. Our headlights nosed the red taillight of the truck ahead. The hill was short and steep. For an awful moment I thought we were going to get stuck. But a moment later we were lipping the top of the hill and running down to the torrent.

A hundred yards beyond the bridge I had my driver stop and I ran back to fit my battery wires. The explosion was much sharper this time. When I went forward to look at the bridge, it was a tumbled mass of logs. The drop to the torrent bed was only a few feet. Nobody would get hurt if a truck failed to pull up in time.

I got back into the cab, and half a mile farther on we caught up with the taillight of the truck ahead. They had pulled up, engines panting softly in the darkness. I ran up to the leading truck and sent Boy back to bring up the rear. Garry looked at me once out of the comer of his eye, but he said nothing and we started forward up the long drag to the camp.

It was twelve-forty when we saw the lights of a hut. More lights appeared as we slowly followed the road across the camp area.

“Do you reckon they’ve all gone down in those trucks?” Garry asked. It was the first time he had spoken.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope so.”

We were almost clear of the camp when a man suddenly ran out into the middle of the road, flagging us down with his arm.

I could feel myself trembling, and my feet and hands felt deathly cold. Something had gone wrong. Another man appeared beside the first; another and another — a whole bunch of them. As we pulled up, they crowded round us. “Switch the dashboard light off,” I said to the driver. And then, leaning out of the darkness of the cab, I flashed the beam of my torch on them, blinding them.

“What are you boys doing up here?” I rasped. “Didn’t you get Trevedian’s orders? Every man is wanted down the trail! There’s been a bad fall! One of our trucks is buried!”

A man stepped forward, a big gangling fellow with a battered nose. “We only got here yesterday. They must have forgotten about us, I guess. We didn’t know what was going on.”

I said, “Well, you’d better get going as fast as you can. Trevedian wants everybody down there.”

“Why didn’t you boys stay there?”

“We had to clear the road,” I said quickly. “Besides, this stuff has to be up on top and operating tomorrow. Anybody on the hoist?”

“I don’t know,” the big fellow answered. “We’re new here.”

“Well, if you’re new here you’d better look lively and get down the road. Trevedian’s a bad man to fall out with.”

“Tough, eh? Well, nobody ain’t going to get tough with me.” His voice was drowned in a bobble of talk. Then the men began to drift away to their hut. I signaled the driver to go on, and we rumbled into the trees and down the slope to the edge of the slide. There a whole circle of lights blazed on the dazzling white of the snow, lighting up the concrete box of the cable housing. A figure appeared, armed with a rifle. “Hell!” I breathed. That fool Butler had failed to collect the guard.

I clambered down from the cab and started to explain. But as he on as I told him we’d got to get our trucks up the hoist, he began asking me for my pass. “Don’t be a fool, man!” I shouted. “Trevedian’s down at the fall, trying to clear it! How would he issue passes? Can you work the motor?”

He shook his head. “Nobody’s allowed to touch the engine except the hoist men.”

“This isn’t routine!” I yelled at him. “This is an emergency! Don’t you know what’s happened?” He shook his head. I leaned closer. “Better keep this under your hat. There’s a bad crack developed in the foundations of the dam. They think the cliff face may be moving. We’ve got to drill and find out what the layer underneath is formed of. And we’ve got to do it damned quick.” I caught hold of his arm. “Hell, man, what do you think we’re doing up here when one of our own trucks is buried under a fall? But Trevedian wouldn’t let us stay. He said it was more important to get our trucks up on schedule.”

The man hesitated, conviction struggling against, caution. “You wait here,” he said, and hurried back to the housing, Garry joined me. Through the doorway I could see him winding and winding at the telephone.

“What’s going to happen?” Garry asked.

“It’ll work out,” I said.

“Well, no rough stuff,” he growled. “We’ve done about ten thousand dollars’ worth of damage already tonight.”

The guard came out of the housing. “I can’t get any reply.” His voice was hesitant. He was unsure of himself.

“What did you expect?” I snarled at him. “There’s a million tons of rock down on the road and the line’s under it!” I turned as figures emerged into the glare of the lights, led by the man with the battered nose. “What’s the trouble?” I said.

“No keys in the trucks,” he said. “What do we do now?” Some carried picks and shovels. “If we could have one of your trucks—” he said.

I hesitated. Much as I wanted to get rid of them, I didn’t dare risk one of the trucks. “Are you just laborers or have any of you been taken on as engineers on the draw works of the hoist here?”

It was a shot in the dark, a hundred-to-one chance, but it came off. One of them stepped forward. “Please. I am shown how eet works yesterday.”

“Good,” I said. “Get in there and get the engine started.” And as the little Italian hurried over to the housing, I turned to the guard. “There. Does that satisfy you?”

“But my orders—”

“Damn your orders!” I screamed, catching hold of him by his coat and shaking him. “This stuff has got to be up there, first thing! And because of your blasted Trevedian and this dam, we’re up here instead of helping to dig out one of our pals. But there’ll be hell to pay if we’re not up there on schedule, snow or no snow.” I swung round on the silent, gaping crowd of men. “All right. You stay hero and give us a hand loading the trucks... Garry!” He didn’t answer. He stood there, staring at me, and for the first time that night I saw a gleam of excitement in his eyes, a hint of Laughter. “Get your first truck onto the staging. These men will help you load and secure... Boy, you ride up with the first vehicle and supervise the off-loading at the top. And see that you don’t waste any time.” I turned to the bunch of men, standing there like sheep. “Any of you cook?” It was the inevitable Chinaman who came forward. “All right,” I said. “I want hot chow for all of us in two hours’ time. Okay?”

“Okay, mister. I can do. Velly good cook.”

“See it’s hot!” I shouted at him. “That’s all I care about!”

I turned then and went into the housing. The little Italian engineer grinned at me. The guard touched my arm. His face was pale and he was still uncertain. He opened his mouth to say something, and then the big Diesel started with a roar that drowned all other sound. I saw a look of helplessness come into his eyes and he turned away.

I knew then that we were through the worst. He couldn’t hold the whole gang of us up with his rifle. Besides, it must have seemed all right. I’d more than twenty men from the camp working with me and I had come in quite openly.

Five minutes later the draw works began to turn and the first and heaviest truck went floating off into the whirling, driving white of the night. It was there for a second, white under its canopy of snow, looking strangely unreal suspended from the cable, and then it reached the limits of the lights and vanished abruptly.

I stayed inside the engine housing. I was safe there. Nobody could talk to me against the roar of the engine. Shortly after two-thirty the Chinaman brought down big jugs full of thick soup, piping hot, and a great pile of meat sandwiches. A couple of trucks were up by then. Another was just leaving. We sent one jug up with it. The snow was still falling.

“It sure must be hell up top,” one of the drivers said. His face was a white circle in the fur of his hood, “Have you been up on this thing, Mr. Wetheral?”

“Yes,” I said. And suddenly I realized he was scared. “It’s all right,” I said. “You won’t see anything. It’ll just be cold as hell.”

Somebody shouted to him. His mouth worked convulsively. “I must go now. That’s my truck.”

“Switch your cab lights on,” I called after him as he climbed onto the staging. “It’ll just be like a road then.”

He nodded. And a moment later he was on his way, a white, blood lens face staring at the wheel he was gripping as the Diesel roared and the cables swung him up and out into the night.

By four o’clock the next to last truck was being loaded. Every few minutes now I found myself glancing at my watch. Eight minutes past four and the hoist was running again. Only one more truck.

“What’s worrying you?” Garry shouted above the din of the engine.

“Nothing,” I said.

Ho didn’t say anything, but I noticed that his eyes kept straying now to the roadway up to the camp. Suppose Butler and his gang had smelled a rat. Or maybe he’d send a truck up for more equipment. They’d find the bridge down. It wouldn’t take them long to repair it. Any moment they might drive in, asking what was going on. My hands gripped each other, my eyes alternating between the road and the big iron coble wheel. At last the wheel stopped and we waited for the phone call that would tell us they had unloaded.

“They’re taking their time,” Garry growled. His face looked tired and strained. At last the bell rang, the indicator fell and the engineer started the cage down. That ten minutes seemed like hours. And then at last the cage bumped into the housing, the Diesel slowed to a gentle rumble and we could hear the engine of the Last tanker roaring as it drove onto the cage. We went out into the driving snow then and watched the securing ropes being made fast.

It was ten to five and the faintest grayness was creeping into the darkness of the night as Garry and I climbed up beside the driver. I raised my hand, there was a shout, the cable ahead of us jerked tight, and then we, too, were being slung out into the void.

I don’t remember much about that trip up. I know I clutched at the seat, fighting back the overwhelming fear of last-minute failure. I remember Garry voicing my thoughts. “I hope they don’t catch us now,” he said. “We’d look pretty foolish swinging up here in space till morning.”

“Shut up!” I barked at him.

He looked at me and then suddenly he grinned and his big hand squeezed my arm. “They don’t breed many of your type around this part of the world.”

The minutes ticked slowly by. A shadow slipped past my window. The pylon at the top. We were over the lip. Two minutes later our progress slowed. There was a slight bump and then we were in the housing. Figures appeared. The lashings were unhitched, the engine roared and with our headlights blazing onto a wall of snow we crawled off the staging and floundered through a drift to stop above the dam.

As we climbed out, the cage lifted from the housing and disappeared abruptly. The ground seemed to move under my feet. I heard Boy’s voice say, “Well, that’s the lot, I guess. You’re in the Kingdom now, Garry, rig and all.” Then my knees were giving under me and I blacked out.

I came to in the firm belief that I was on hoard a ship. “You okay, Bruce?” It was Boy’s voice. He was propping me up in the seat of a cab and we were grinding slowly through thick snow. “You’ll be all right soon. There’s hot food waiting for us at the ranch house. We had to stop to fix chains. The snow is pretty deep in places.”

I remember vaguely being spoon-Ted hot soup, and men moving about, talking excitedly, laughing, pumping my hand. And then I was lying in a bed. I was back in the Kingdom. The rig was here at last. We were going to drill now. And with that thought I went to sleep and stayed asleep for twelve hours.

And when I woke up. Boy was there beside me, and be was grinning and saying that the rig would be set up before nightfall. When I went down to the drilling site the next morning I found the rig erected and the draw works being lightened down on the steel plates of the platform. The traveling block was already suspended from the crown, and the kelly was in its rat housing. They had already begun to dig a mud sump and there were several lengths of pipe ready in the rack.

I stood there with Boy and Garry and stared across to the dam less than a mile away. The sun was shining and already the snow was beginning to melt. I was thinking it was time Trevedian came storming into our camp. But nobody seemed to be taking any notice of us.

“We’ll have to mount a guard,” I said.

Boy wiped the sweat from his face. “I’m sleeping down here,” he said. “And I’ve got that pistol of yours. There are four rides on the site as well.”

I nodded, still looking across to the dam. “The next move is with them,” I murmured half to myself.

Garry chuckled. “Mebbe he’s had enough.”

I turned away. I didn’t like it. The natural thing would have been for Trevedian to show up. It wasn’t in the nature of the man to take it lying down. But he didn’t come that day, or the next, or the next. I didn’t feel up to heavy work, so I took over the cooking again. On Tuesday morning, Garry spudded in. I stood on the platform and watched the block come down and the bit lowered into the hole. We had started to drill Campbell No. 2.

I walked slowly back to the ranch house to the music of the drill, the noise of it drowning the irritating chatter of the mixers at the dam. I went into the kitchen and began peeling potatoes for the evening meal.

Half an hour later I heard a patter of feet, the door was pushed open and a big brown collie fell upon me, barking and licking my hand and jumping up to get at my face. It was Moses. I went out into the gray murk of the morning, and there, coming up beside the barn, was Jean, riding a small pinto. She pulled up as she saw me, and sat there, looking at me. Her face looked strained and almost sad.

“Mac said you needed a cook?” Her voice was toneless.

“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything more to say. And yet there was a singing in my blood as though the Bun were shining and the violets just opening.

“Well, I hope I’ll do.” She climbed stiffly down from the saddle, undid her pack and walked slowly toward me. She stopped when she reached the doorway because I was blocking it. We looked at each other a moment.

“Why did you come?” I asked at length.

She lowered her gaze. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I just had to, I guess. I brought you this.” She handed me a bulky envelope. “Now I’d like to change, please.”

I stood aside and she went through into the bedroom. I turned the envelope over. It was postmarked London. Inside was a whole sheaf of typewritten pages, the newspaper report of my grandfather’s trial, which I had asked a friend to copy for me. I stabled the pinto and then I sat down and read through the report. Stuart Campbell had himself gone into the witness box. One section of his evidence hit me like a blow between the eyes. It occurred during cross-examination by his own counsel:

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Five thousand, six hundred! And our geophysical survey showed an anticline at five thousand, five hundred. The anticline was nothing but the sill of igneous rock that my grandfather had struck in 1913. What a fool I’d been not to get bold of the account of this case before starling to drill. Why hadn’t my grandfather mentioned it in his progress report? Afraid of discouraging me, I suppose. I got to my feet and went over to the window and stood there wondering what I was going to do. But there wasn’t anything I could do. It hadn’t stopped my grandfather from trying to drill another well.

“I wish somebody from back home would write me nice long letters like that.”

I swung round to find Jean standing beside me. “It’s just a business letter,” I said quickly. I couldn’t tell her that what she had brought me was the full account of Stuart Campbell’s trial.

That night the stars shone and it was almost warm. The second shift was working and we strolled down to the rig, talking trivialities, carefully avoiding anything personal. And then, after a pause, I said, “Didn’t you like it in Vancouver?”

“Yes, I was having fun — dancing and sailing. But—” She hesitated and then sighed. “Somehow it wasn’t real. I think I’ve lost the capacity to enjoy myself.”

“So you came back to Come Lucky?” She nodded. “To escape again?”

“To escape?” She looked up at me and there was a tired set to her mouth. “No. Because it was the only place I could call home. And then—” She walked on in silence for a bit. Finally she said. “Did you have to slap Peter Trevedian in the face like that?”

“I had to get the rig up here. It was the only way.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she sighed. “Yes. I suppose so.”

We came to the rig and climbed onto the platform and stood there watching the table turning and the block slowly inching down as the drill bit into the rock two hundred feet below us. Bill was standing beside the driller.

“What are you making now?” I shouted to him.

“About eight feet an hour!”

Eight feet an hour. I did a quick calculation. Roughly two hundred a day. “Then twenty-five days — say a month — should see us down to the anticline?”

He nodded. “If we can keep this rate of drilling up!”

We stayed until they shut down at midnight. We were working two teams of four on ten-hour shifts and closing down from midnight to four A.M., Boy and I were taking it in turns to stand guard on the rig, Moses acting as watch dog.

We were soon settled into a regular routine. June dragged into July and each day two more lengths of pipe had been added to the length of the drill. The heat at midday became intense when the sun shone, and the nights were leas cold. And all the time the alfalfa grew and the Kingdom was carpeted with lupines and tiger lilies and a host of other flowers.

And in all that period Trevedian had not once come near us. The work at the dam was going on night and day now. Once we rode over at night to have a look at it, and where the Campbell land stopped and the Trevedian land began the boundary was marked by a heavy barbed-wire fence. There was a guard on the hoist and on the dam itself, and they carried guns and had guard dogs.

All the time I had the uncanny feeling that we were all waiting for something to happen. Fergus couldn’t ignore us indefinitely. He didn’t dare let us bring in a well. And there was Trevedian. Jean’s phrase — about slapping Trevedian in the face — stuck in my mind. The man was biding his time. I felt it. And so did Jean. Sometimes I’d find her standing, alone and solitary, her work forgotten, staring toward the dam.

And then the blow fell. It was on July fourth. Boy had left that morning, taking core samples down to Winnick in Calgary. The weather was bad, and when I came on watch at midnight it was blowing half a gale, with the wind driving a murk of rain before it that was sometimes sleet, sometimes had and occasionally snow. As usual, I had Moses with me, and the Luger was stropped to my belt.

Time passed slowly that night. The dog kept moving about. I tried to make him settle, but every time he got himself curled up something made him get to his feet again.

It was about two-thirty and I had just peered out to see it snowing hard. As I closed the door, Moses suddenly cocked his head on one side and gave a low growl. The next moment he leaped for the door. I opened it and be shot through. And at the same instant there was a great roar of flame, a whoof of hot air that seemed to fling back the snow and scared my eyeballs with the hot blast of it. It was followed almost instantly by another — two explosions in close succession that shook the rig and sent great gobs of flaming fuel high into the night.

In the lurid glare of one of these liquid torches I saw a figure running, a shapeless unrecognizable bundle of clothing heading for the dam. And behind him came Moses in great bounds. The figure checked, turned, and as Moses leaped I saw the quick stab of a gun, though the sound of it was lost in the holocaust of flame that surrounded me. The dog checked in midleap, twisted and fell.

I had my gun out now, and I began firing, emptying the magazine at the fleeing figure. Then suddenly the pool of flame that had illuminated him died out, and he vanished into the red curtain of the driving snow.

As suddenly as they had started, the flames died down. For a moment I saw the skeletons of the two tankers, black and twisted, against the lurid background. And then quite abruptly everything was dark again, except for a few bits of metal that showed a lingering tendency to remain red hot.

I hurried down from the platform of the rig, and at the bottom I met Moses, dragging himself painfully on three legs. In the light of the torch I saw that a bullet had furrowed his shoulder. He was bleeding badly and his right front leg would support no weight.

I made a quick round of the remaining vehicles to check that there was nothing smoldering. Then I hurried to the ranch house with Moses following as best he could.

Every moment I expected to meet the others running to the rig to find out what had happened. And yet when I reached the house it was in darkness. They were all fast asleep and blissfully ignorant of the disaster. For disaster it was; the attack had been made on the one thing that could stop us dead. Without fuel we could not drill.

The first person I woke was Jean, and I gave Moses into her care, avoiding meeting her gaze as I told her briefly what had happened, I was scared of the reproach I knew must he in her eyes. She loved that dog. After that I woke Garry.

I think that was one of the hardest things I ever had to do — tell Garry that two of his trucks were gone and all his fuel. He didn’t say anything when 1 had finished, but put on his clothes and strode out into the storm. I followed him.

When he’d looked at the damage, he said, “Well, I hope the insurance company pays up, that’s all.” We went into the hut then. “Cigarette?” He thrust the packet toward me. As we lit up, he said, “It might have been worse, I guess. The whole rig could have gone.” He leaned bock and closed his eyes, drawing on his cigarette. “We’re down around four thousand. Fortunately, the rig tank was filled up yesterday. That’ll get us down a couple hundred more feet. With luck, we’ll only need another seven hundred gallons — say a thousand.” He had been talking to himself, but now he opened his eyes and looked across at me. “Any idea how we’ll get a thousand gallons of fuel up here?”

“We’ll have to bring it in by the pony trail,” I said.

“H’m-m. Twenty gallons to a pony; that means fifty ponies. Know where you can get fifty ponies? It’ll make the cost about a dollar a gallon. That’s a thousand bucks, and I’m broke. Can you raise a thousand bucks?”

There was nothing I could say. His big frame looked crumpled and tired. An hour later the morning shift came on. They stood and stared at the gutted trucks, talking in low, excited whispers.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Garry shouted at them. “Get the rig going!”

He remained with them and I walked slowly back to the ranch house, hearing the clatter of the drill behind me, very conscious that they could go on drilling for just a short time and then we’d have to close down.

Jean was still up as I staggered wearily in. “How’s Moses?” I asked as I pulled off my wet clothes.

“He’ll be all right,” she said, and went through into the kitchen. She came back with a mug of tea. “Drink that,” she said.

I drank the tea and flung myself into a chair. She brought in logs and built the fire up into a blaze. “Hungry?”

I nodded. And then I fell asleep and she had to wake me when she brought in a plate of bacon and fried potatoes. She sat down opposite me, watching me as I began to eat. Moses came in, moving stiffly, and sat himself beside me, licking my hand, much as to say, “Sorry I didn’t get the swine for you.” I stared down, fondling his head. And then I gave him the plate of food. Suddenly I didn’t feel like eating. Instead I tit a cigarette and watched the dog as he cleared the plate.

There was a dry sob and I looked across the table to see Jean staring at me, tears in her eyes. She turned quickly as our eyes met, and she got up and went out into the kitchen. I went over to the window. Dawn had broken and the wisps of ragged cloud were lifting and breaking up. I went out to the barn where I slept, got my things together and look them across to the stables.

As I was saddling up, Jean came in. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Get in touch with Johnny,” I said. “See if he’ll pack the fuel up for us.”

“You’re going atone?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated and then went back to the house. Before I’d finished saddling, however, she returned, dressed for the trail.

“What’s the idea?” I said. “There’s no point in your coming with me.”

She didn’t say anything, but got out her pinto and flung the saddle on it, I tried to dissuade her, but all she said was, “You’re in no state to go down on your own.”

“What about Moses?”

“Moses will be all right. And the boys can cook for themselves for a day or so.”

Something in the set of her face warned me not to argue with her. I had an uneasy feeling that her coming with me was inevitable, a necessary part of the future. I scribbled a note for Garry, left it on the table in the living room, and then we rode up the mountainside. We rode in silence, forcing the reluctant horses forward. At times we had to lead them, particularly near the top where the mist was freezing and coating the rocks with a thin layer of ice. Then suddenly there was a breath of wind on our faces and the white miasma of the mist began to lift.

It was fortunate for us that the mist did clear, for the trail over the Saddle was not an easy one and in places it was difficult to follow. It was dangerous, too, for a slight deviation at the top brought us out onto the edge of a sheer drop of several hundred feet.

Having started so early, we were down into the timber again before ten. Jean insisted on a rest here and we sat on a deadfall and ate the biscuits and cheese which she had very thoughtfully included in her pack. I was very tired after my sleepless night, and extremely depressed. We had not yet drilled deep enough for me to feel any of the excitement that is inherent in drilling when the bit is approaching the probable area of oil. Without fuel, success was as remote as ever, and I cursed myself for not having foreseen the most probable means by which Trevedian would get back at us.

“What do you plan to do when we get down into the valley?” Jean asked suddenly.

I looked at her in surprise. “Phone Johnny,” I said. “I can always get him through Jeff.”

“Where are you going to phone from?”

“The Golden Calf, of course. Mac will—” I stopped then, for she was laughing at me. It wasn’t a natural laugh. It was half bitter, half contemptuous. “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t you understand what you did when you blew the Thunder Valley road? You’d get battered to pulp if you went into Come Lucky now.”

“By whom — Trevedian?” I asked.

“Of course not. By the boys you fooled. You actually got some of them to help you load the trucks onto the hoist, didn’t you?” I nodded, “Trevedian was pretty sarcastic when he hauled them over the coals for being such mutts. If any of those boys got their hands on you—” She shrugged her shoulders. “That’s why I came up to the Kingdom — to stop you walking into a bad beating up.”

“Sort of nursemaid, eh?” I felt suddenly, violently angry.

“You’ll have to ride into Keithley and phone from there,” she said quietly.

“I’ll do no such thing.” I got abruptly to my feet and went over to my horse. “The nearest phone is at the Golden Calf, and that’s where I’m going.”

She didn’t attempt to argue. She just shrugged her shoulders and swung herself up into the saddle. “I’ll pick up the pieces,” she said.

The sun was shining as we rode up the hill to Come Lucky. The door of Trevedian’s office was open. He must have seen us coming, for as we drew level he came to the door and stood there watching us. No words were exchanged between us, but out of the corners of my eyes I could see he was smiling.

We met nobody in the sun-drenched street. The place seemed dead, as though the whole population were up working on the dam. We tied our horses to the hotel rail and Jean led me in by the back way. Pauline stared at us as we entered, and then there was the rasp of a chair and James McClellan stormed toward me, his face scowling with sudden anger.

“I’ve been wanting to have a word with you, Wetheral, for a long time!” His fists were clenched. His eyes were cold and there was an ugly set to his jaw.

There was only one thing to do. “Was it you or Trevedian — or both of you — who set fire to our trucks last night?”

He stopped in his tracks. “What’s that? Are you trying to swing something on—”

“I’m not swinging anything on you,” I said. “I’m just asking you, McClellan. Were you in on it?”

“In on what?” He had halted. Pauline had hold of his arm. Her face was white. They were both staring at me.

“There’s about two thousand gallons of fuel gone up and two trucks. Shots were tired. You’re damn lucky it was only a dog that got hit.” I turned toward the office. “Mind if I use the phone?”

“You brought it on yourself,” he said. “If you phone the police, then Trevedian will report what happened.”

“I’m not phoning the police,” I said over my shoulder. “I’m phoning for more fuel.”

The office was empty. I got hold of the phone and put a personal call through to Jeff Hart at Jasper. Then I sat there, waiting, feeling sleep creeping up on me, trying to keep myself awake. I heard voices in the kitchen, and then a door slammed and all was quiet. Half an hour later my call came through and I explained to Jeff Hart what had happened. He couldn’t get away himself, but he’d talk to Johnny and ring me back in the evening.

I went out into the kitchen then. It was empty. I sat down in the chair by the stove and went to sleep. It was Pauline who woke me. She had made me some coffee and there was a plate full of bacon and eggs waiting for me.

“You shouldn’t have bothered,” I murmured sleepily.

“It is no trouble.”

“Where’s Jean?”

“She is with Miss Garret, I think.”

“Jean told you what happened?”

“Oui. I am very sorry.” She smiled, a flash of white teeth. “I am sorry also that you do not stay. But it is dangerous for you.”

“I’ll have to stay till this evening. I’m waiting for a call.”

“No, no. It is dangerous, I tell you.”

I looked at her, a mood of frustration and annoyance taking hold of me. “Another nursemaid, eh?”

“Please?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Jean came in then. “We must go now, Bruce. There are some men coming up from the bunkhouse. I think Trevedian sent them up.”

I explained about the phone call. But all she said was, “Do you want to get beaten up?”

“You think I’m no good in a scrap?”

She hesitated fractionally. “You’ve been ill,” she said. “I don’t think you’re very strong.” She must have guessed what I was thinking, for she added, “The way you handled Jimmy won’t work with them.”

She was right, of course, but it went against the grain to appear a coward. And yet it wouldn’t do any good. Reluctantly I got to my feet.

Pauline suddenly touched my arm. “I will fake your call for you, if you wish.”

“That’s kind of you, Pauline,” Jean said.

I hesitated, feeling caught in the web of a woman’s world, feeling like a skunk. “All right,” I said, and told her what I wanted to say. “If he can come, arrange where I can meet him. Okay?”

She nodded, smiling. “Okay. I will leave a message for you with Miss Garret.”

I thanked her and we went out the back way and round to the front to get our horses. There were about a dozen men coming up the street, a rough-looking bunch headed by a man I recognized, the man who had been on guard at the hoist the night we ran the rig up to the Kingdom. He was a little fellow with bandy legs and a mean face.

“That’s him!” he shouted. “That’s the rat!” And he began to run toward us. The others followed at his heels, and they were almost on us as we unhitched our ponies and swung into the saddles, I heeled my animal into a canter, and side by Bide we drove through them. But as I passed, the Fellow shouted a remark. It wasn’t aimed at me. It was aimed at Jean. It was just one word, and without thinking I reined up and swung round. I caught a glimpse of the color Baring in Jean’s face as she called to me to ride on.

The whole bunch of them were laughing now, and thus emboldened the little bow-legged swine called out, “Why d’yer keep her all to yerselves?” He leered at Jean and then let his filthy tongue run riot.

I don’t know what got into me. I hadn’t felt this way in years — that sense of being swept up in a red blur of rage. I pushed my horse toward him. “Say that again,” I said. All that had happened in the last twelve hours seemed condensed into that one sordid little figure. I saw the trucks blossom into flame, the spurt of the gun as it was emptied at the dog, the look of tired resignation on Garry Keogh’s face. I saw the man hesitate, glancing round at his companions, and then, with sudden truculence born of the herd, he mouthed that one word again.

I dug my heels into my horse’s ribs and drove straight at him. I saw him fall back, momentarily knocked off balance, and as the horse reared I flung myself from the saddle, grappling for his throat as my arms closed round him. We hit the dirt of the street and I felt his breath hot on my face as it was forced out or his lungs with a grunt. Then hands reached for me, clutching at my arms, twisting me back and pinning me down against the gravel. Fingers gripped my hair, and as my skull was pounded against the hard earth I saw half a dozen faces, panting and sweaty, bending over me.

And then there was the sharp crack of an explosion and something whined out of the dust. The faces fell slack, and as I sat up I saw Jean sitting close alongside my horse, the Luger that had been in my saddle bag smoking in her hand. And her face was calm and set. She held the ugly weapon as though it were a part of her, as though shooting were as natural as walking or riding. The men saw it, too, and they huddled together uncertainly, their faces unnaturally pale, their eyes looking all ways for a place to run.

“Are you all right, Bruce?” she called.

“Yes,” I said, struggling to my feet.

“Then get on your horse.”

She leveled her gun at the hunch standing there in the street. “Now get back to Trevedian. And tell him next time he tries to shoot my dog. I’ll kill him.”

She slipped the automatic back into my saddle bag, and in silence we turned and rode down the street and out of Come Lucky. For a long time I couldn’t bring myself to speak. Only when we had reached a clearing above the ford and had dismounted did I manage to thank her.

She looked at me and then said with a wry smile, “Maybe I should thank you — for rushing in like a school kid just because of a word.”

The way she put it hurt, but there was a softness in her eyes and I let it go. “How did you know the gun was in my saddle bag?”

“I felt it there when we stopped on the way down. It was partly why I came. I was scared you might—” She hesitated and then turned away. “I don’t quite understand you, Bruce. You’re not predictable like most people.” She swung round and faced me. “Why didn’t you give up when you found you were faced with a big company?” And when I didn’t answer, she said, “It wasn’t ignorance, was it? You knew what you were up against?”

“Yes, I knew,” I said, sinking down into the warmth of the grass.

“Then why did you go on?”

“Why did you come back to Come Lucky — to the Kingdom?”

She came and sat beside me, chewing on a blade of grass. There was a long silence, and then she said, “Isn’t it about time we had things out together?”

“Why you were running away and then suddenly turned and laced life? Why I refused to give up a hopeless project? Maybe.” But I knew I couldn’t tell her the truth. I knew I had to quench thin growing intimacy. And yet I said, almost involuntarily, “Why did you leave me that gun?”

“I thought you might need it.”

I looked at her, knowing it wasn’t the real reason. She knew it, too, for she put out her hand. “Just leave it at that, Bruce. The message is there, in the weapon itself. You know what that message is as well as I do. You know the truth about my father, Paul Morton, and how he treated your grandfather. That’s why I had to come back and see Stuart. You know that, don’t you?” I nodded. “Then leave it at that, please. Don’t let’s talk about it, ever again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No, there’s nothing to be sorry about.” Her voice was very quiet, but quite firm — no tremor in it at all, no regrets. “He died as a man should die — fighting for something he believed in. He was hall French, you know, and when it came to the pinch he found he loved France more than money, more than life itself.”

She got, up and walked away then. And I lay back in the grass, dosed my eyes and was instantly asleep. It was cold when she woke me, and the valley was deep in shadow. We ate the low remaining biscuits, and then, as night closed in, we hobbled the horses and cut across the road and along the slope of the hillside. We made a detour and entered Come Lucky from above.

The two Miss Garrets welcomed us with a sort of breathless excitement. They had heard what had happened that morning, and to them our nocturnal arrival, the sense that they were hiding us from a gang of wicked men, won pure Victorian melodrama. Sarah Garret was particularly affected, talking in whispers, a high color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. Miss Ruth Garret was more practical, several times looking to the bolting of the door, getting us food and coffee and trying desperately to maintain an aloof, matter-of-fact air. I found it all a little ridiculous, and yet the reality of it was there, in our need of a safe place to stay the night, in the two burned-out trucks up in the Kingdom.

I knew that Peter Trevedian would stop at nothing to keep me from bringing in an oil well in Campbell’s Kingdom. His men had destroyed two of our trucks and had burned most of our fuel for the oil rig. If nothing else worked, I realized that Trevedian might even try to have me killed.

My grandfather, Stuart Campbell, had left to me, Bruce Campbell Wetheral, all his land in the Canadian Rockies. He had spent his life trying to prove there was oil in the Kingdom, and his last request to me was to prove he was right.

I didn’t have much time, though. A man named Henry Fergus was building a dam just below my land. When it was finished — which wouldn’t be long now — my property would be flooded. Trevedian, who owned a hoist that went up the mountain, was working exclusively for Fergus, and he wouldn’t let us use the hoist at any price.

We were down to about 4000 feet when Trevedian’s men sabotaged our fuel supply. We had enough left to drill another few hundred feet. The only way to get fuel up to the Kingdom was to pack it in on horses.

Jean Lucas, our cook, and I went down to the town of Come Lucky to see what we could arrange. In the town I got into a fight with some of Trevedian’s men. They would have killed me, but Jean held them off with a gun.

After I made arrangements with my friend, Jeff Hart, we left town. That evening we circled back and went to the house of the elderly Garret sisters to spend the night. We would be safe there — if none of Trevedian’s men found out we were still in town.