Nothing to Lose

VII

Shortly after our meal, when we were sitting having coffee, Pauline arrived. Johnny would meet me at 150-Mile House tomorrow evening or, if he couldn’t make it, the following morning. She had other news too. A stranger had arrived at, the Golden Calf. He wasn’t a fisherman and he was busy plying Mac with drinks and pumping him about our activities in the Kingdom. Boy’s visit to Calgary and Edmonton was evidently bearing fruit.

Thai night I slept in the Victorian grandeur of a feather bed. It was Sarah Garret’s room. She had moved in with her sister for the night. It was not a large room and it was cluttered with heavy, painted furniture, the marble mantelpiece and the dressing table cluttered with china bric-a-brac. For a long time I lay awake, looking at the stars, my mind busy, going over and over the possibilities of packing the necessary fuel up to the Kingdom. And then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, I heard the door open. A figure came softly into the room and stood beside my bed, looking down at me.

It was Sarah Garret. I could just see the tiny outline of her head against the window. “Are you awake?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then light a candle, please.”

I got out of bed, wrapping a blanket round me, and found my lighter. As the thin light, of the candle illumined the room, she took the candlestick from me, her hand trembling and spilling grease. “I have something to show you,” she said.

She crossed over to a big trunk in the corner. It was one of those great leather-covered things with a curved top. There was a jingle of keys and then she had it open and was lifting the lid. It was full of clothes, and the smell of lavender and mothballs was very strong.

“Will you lift the tray out, please?”

I did as she asked. Underneath were more clothes. Dresses of satin and silk piled up on the floor, beautiful lace-edged nightgowns, a parasol, painted ivory fans, necklaces of onyx and amber, a bedspread of the finest needlework.

At last the trunk was empty. With trembling fingers she felt around the edges. There was a click and the bottom moved. She took the candle from me then. “Lift it out, please.”

The false bottom of that trunk was of steel and quite heavy. And underneath were neat little tin boxes. She lifted the lid of one. It was filled with gold coins. There were several bars of gold wrapped in tissue paper, and another box contained gold dust. The last one she opened revealed several pieces of jewelry.

“I have never shown anybody this,” she said.

“Why have you shown me?” I asked.

She looked up at me. She had a brooch in her hand. If was gold, studded with amethysts, and the amethysts matched the color of her eyes and both gleamed as brightly in the candlelight. “This was my favorite.”

“Why have you shown me all this?” I asked again.

She sighed and put the brooch back. Then she closed the lid of the box and signaled me to replace the false bottom. She operated the hidden catch fixing it in position and then returned the clothes to the trunk. When the lid was finally down and locked, she pulled herself to her feet. She was crying gently and dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “That is all I have left of my father,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “He made it in the Come Lucky mine, and when he died, that was my share. There was more, of course, but we have had to live.”

“You mean that was how he left you his money?”

She nodded. “Yes. He did not believe in banks and modern innovations like that. He liked to see what he had made. My sister” — she sighed and blew her nose delicately — “my sister thought she knew better. She was engaged to a man in Vancouver and he invested it for her. She lost it all. The stocks were no good.”

“And her fiancé?”

She gave a little shrug. “The man was no good either.”

“Why have you told me this? Why have you shown me where you keep your money?”

She stared at me for a moment and then she gave me a beautiful little smile. “Because I like you,” she said. “I had a — friend once. He was rather like you. An Englishman. But he was already married.” She got to her feet. “I must go now. I do not want my sister to know that I have done anything so naughty as visiting a man in his bedroom.” Her eyes twinkled up at me. And then she touched my arm. “I am an old lady now. There has been very little in my life. You remember the parable of the talents? Now that I am old I see that I have made too little use of money my father gave me. Jean told us what had happened up in the Kingdom. I would like you to know that you do not have to worry about money. You have only to ask—”

“I couldn’t possibly—” I began, but she silenced me.

“Don’t be silly. It is no good to me and I would like to help.” She hesitated and then smiled. “Stuart Campbell was the friend I spoke about. Now perhaps you understand. Good night.”

That visit from Sarah Garret I treasure as one of the most beautiful memories I have.

A few hours later I left. The house was silent and as I walked down through the shacks of Come Lucky the sky was just beginning to pale over Solomon’s Judgment. I walked along the lakeshore and waited for a truck coming down from Slide Camp. It took me as far as Hydraulic and from there I got a timber wagon down to 150-Mile House. On my own, I found a mood of depression creeping over me.

But when Johnny arrived everything was different. He came with a couple of Americans. They were on holiday and they regarded the whole thing as a game, part of the fun of being in the Rockies a long way from their offices in Chicago. As soon as they knew the situation they got on the phone to a whole list of farmers along the valley. The farms were widely dispersed and the better part of a week had passed before we had a total of twenty-six animals with gear corralled at a homestead a few miles west of Beaver Dam Lake.

On the fifteenth of July we moved them up to the entrance to Thunder Creek and the following morning, as arranged, we rendezvoused with the vehicle trucking in our containers. It took us over twenty-four hours to pack that first five hundred gallons up to the Kingdom.

The atmosphere when we came down into the Kingdom was one of tense excitement. Just before we arrived, an Imperial Oil scout had ridden in. With this recognition from the outside world and with the arrival of the fuel, enthusiasm was unbounded.

Two days later the four of us brought a second five hundred gallons up. By the time we packed in the second load of fuel they were past the five thousand mark and going strong.

I remember Johnny standing in front of the rig the day he and his two Americans took the pack animals down, “I’d sure like to stay on up here, Bruce,” he said. He, too, had been caught by the mood of excitement. Boy had arrived that morning, and with him a reporter from the Calgary Tribune. Five thousand five hundred feet was the level at which they expected to reach the anticline, and hanging over me all the time was the knowledge that it wasn’t oil we were going to strike there, but the sill of igneous rock that had stopped Campbell No. 1, I couldn’t tell anybody this, I just had to brace myself to combat the sense of defeat when it came.

As the days went by, the suspense became almost unbearable. We were drilling through quartzite and making slower progress than we had hoped. Some of the drilling crew were in touch with men working on the dam and from them they learned that the completion date was fixed for August twentieth. Worse still, the Larsen Company planned to begin flooding immediately, in order to build up a sufficient head of water to run a pilot plant during the winter.

At the beginning of August we were approaching five thousand five hundred and Garry was getting restive. So were his crew. Just after nine on the morning of August fifth they pulled pipe for what they all hoped might be the last time. The depth was five thousand four hundred and ninety feet. They were all down on the rig, waiting. They waited there all morning, watching the grief stem inching down through the turntable, and I stood there with them, feeling sick with apprehension. They pulled pipe again at two-fifteen. Another sixty-foot length of pipe was run on, and down went the drill again, section by section. The depth was now five thousand five hundred and fifty feet.

At length I could stand the suspense no longer. I drew Garry to one side saying I wanted to talk to him alone. He walked back with me to the ranch house. “Suppose we don’t strike the anticline exactly where we expect to,” I said. “What depth are you willing to drill to?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “The boys are getting restive.”

“Will you give it a margin of two thousand feet?”

“Two thousand!” He stared at me as though I were crazy. “That’s nearly a fortnight’s drilling. It’d take us right up to the date of completion of the dam. Anyway, we haven’t the fuel.”

“I can pack some more up.”

He looked at me, his eyes narrowed. “There’s something on your mind. What is it?”

“I just want to know the margin of error you’re willing to give it.”

He hesitated and then said, “All right. I’ll tell you. I’ll drill till we’ve exhausted the fuel that’s already up here. That’s four days more. That’ll take us over six thousand.”

“You’ve got to give a bigger margin than that,” I said.

He caught hold of my arm then. “See here, Bruce. The boys wouldn’t stand for it. You don’t seem to realize that we’ve all had about as much as we can take. I’ve lost two trucks; neither the rig nor any of the boys are earning their keep. If we don’t bring in a well—”

He stopped then, for the door had burst open and Cliff Lindy, the driller on shift, came in. There was a wild look in his eyes.

“We’re in new country,” he said.

“The anticline?”

But I knew it wasn’t the anticline. His face, his whole manner told me that this was the moment I had dreaded. They had reached the sill.

“We’re down to rock as hard as granite and we’ve worn a bit out in an hour drilling two feet.” He caught hold of Garry’s arm. “For Pete’s sake,” he said, “let’s get out of here before we’re all of us broke!”

Garry didn’t say anything. He just stood there, looking at me, waiting to see what I was going to say.

“You’re just throwing away good hits and wearing out your rig for nothing,” Cliff said excitedly.

“What do you say, Bruce?” Garry asked.

“It’s the same formation that stopped Campbell’s cable-tool rig. If you get through this—”

“At two feet an hour,” Cliff said, with a laugh that trembled slightly. “We could be a month drilling through this.” He turned to Garry. “The boys won’t stand for it, not any more. Nor will I, Garry. We want to haul out.”

Garry didn’t say anything for a moment. He stood there rasping his lingers along the line of his jaw. “I wonder how thick through this Bill is,” he murmured. “Most of them around here are not more than a hundred, two hundred feet — those that are exposed on the mountain slopes, that is.”

“That’s about four days’ drilling,” Cliff said. “And what’s below the sill, when we get through it? I ain’t a geologist, but I’m not such a foot as to expect oil-bearing country directly below a volcanic intrusion.”

Garry nodded slowly. “I guess you’re right, Cliff.” He turned toward the door. “I’ll come down and have a look at what’s going on... Coming, Bruce?”

I shook my head. I stood there, watching them disappear through the doorway, a mood of anger and bitterness struggling with the wretchedness of failure.

“I’m sorry, Bruce.” A hand touched my arm and I turned to find Jean beside me.

“You heard?”

“No; Boy told me. I came—” She hesitated and then finished on a note of tenderness, “To break it to you.”

Somehow her tone took the edge off my anger. “Thanks, Jean.”

She opened her mouth to speak, and then slowly closed it. “I’ll get you some coffee,” she said quietly, and went through into the kitchen.

I dong myself into the one armchair. Probably Stuart Campbell had flung himself into the selfsame chair when he got the news that drilling was no longer possible on Campbell No. 1. It wasn’t Boy’s fault any more than it was Garry’s. They’d both of them taken a chance on the property. They couldn’t be expected to go on when they’d lost all hope of bringing in a well.

Jean put the tray down and came and stood near me. Her hand reached out and touched my hair. Without thinking, I grasped it tightly. The next moment she was in my arms, holding my head down against her breast. The feel of her body comforted me. The promise of happiness whatever happened to the Kingdom filled me with a sudden feeling that life was good. I kissed her lips and her hair, holding her close, not caring any longer about anything but the fact that she was there in my arms. And then suddenly I remembered what Maclean-Hervey had said, and very gently I pulled myself clear of her and got to my feet.

“I must go down to the rig,” I said.

“I’ll come with you.”

“No. I’d rather go alone. I want to talk to them.”

But when I got there I knew by the expression on their faces that this wasn’t the moment. They were sitting around and the rig was silent. They were as angry and bitter as I had been.

I think Garry had already decided to pack up and write off his two months in the Kingdom. But something happened the next morning that roused the Irish in him, and suddenly altered the whole atmosphere of our camp. We were all at breakfast when there was a knock at the door and Trevedian came in. We all sat and stared at him, wondering what he wanted. I saw Garry’s big hand clench into a fist, and Cliff half rose to his feet. I think Trevedian sensed the violence of the hostility, for he kept the door open behind him and he didn’t come more than a step into the room. His black eyes took in our bitterness and anger. “I’ve brought a telegram for you, Wetheral. Thought it might be urgent.”

I got to my feet, wondering why he had bothered to come all the way up with it. But as soon as I’d read it I knew why. It was from my lawyers.

I looked up at Trevedian. “You know the contents, of course?”

He hesitated, but there was no point in his denying it. “Yes,” he said. “If you care to let me have your reply. I’ll see that it’s sent off.” There was a note of satisfaction in his voice, though he tried to conceal it.

“What is it?” Jean asked.

I handed her the wire. It was passed from hand to hand. And as I watched them reading it I knew that this was the end of any hope I might have of getting them to drill deeper. And yet — I was thinking of Sarah Garret and what she had said there in my room that night.

“So they’re starting to work on you,” Garry said.

“I’ve ample proof of what happened,” I said.

“Sure, you have — that is, till you see what the witnesses themselves are willing to say in the box. I’m sorry, Bruce,” he added, “but looks like they’re going to put you through the mincer now.”

“Fergus told me to give you a message,” Trevedian said. “Settle the whole business out of court, sell the Kingdom and he’ll give you the fifty thousand he originally offered.”

I didn’t say anything. I was still thinking about Sarah Garret. Had she meant it? But I knew she had. She’d not only meant it but she wanted to help. I went over to the desk and scribbled a reply.

As I finished it, Garry’s voice suddenly broke the tense silence of the room. “Two thousand dollars a vehicle! You must be crazy!”

I turned and saw that he’d taken Trevedian to one side. Trevedian was smiling. “If you want to get your trucks down, that’s what it’s going to cost you.”

The muscles of Garry’s arms tightened. “You know I couldn’t, pay it. I’m broke. We’re all of us broke.” He took a step toward Trevedian. “Now, then, suppose you quote me a proper price for the use of the hoist.”

Trevedian was back at the open door now. Through the window I saw he hadn’t come alone. Three of his men were waiting for him out there, Garry had seen them, too, and his voice was under control as he said, “For heaven’s sake be reasonable, Trevedian.”

“Reasonable! I’m only getting back what it cost us to repair the road after you’d been through!”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Garry said.

“No?” Trevedian laughed. “It was just coincidence that your trucks were in the Kingdom by the time we’d cleared the rubble of that fall. Okay. You didn’t use the hoist. You had nothing to do with blocking the road.” He leaned slightly forward, his round head sunk between his shoulders, his voice hard. “I suppose you’ll tell me you packed the whole outfit up the pony trail. Well, pack ’em down the same way if you don’t like my terms. See which costs you most in the end.” He turned to me, “What will I tell Fergus?” he asked.

I hesitated, glancing round the room. They were all watching me, all except Jean, who had turned her face away, and Garry, who was so angry that I was afraid for the moment that he would rush Trevedian.

“Well?”

I turned to Trevedian. “Tell him,” I said, “that I’m going to seek an injunction to restrain him from flooding the Kingdom. And let him know that if he doesn’t want to lose any more money, he’d better stop work on the dam and the power station until he knows what the courts decide. And you might have this wire sent off for me.” I handed him the slip of paper.

He took it automatically. I think he was too astonished to speak. Then he glanced down at the message and read it. “You’re crazy,” he said. “You haven’t the dough to start an action like this.”

“I think I have.”

“Well, whether you have or not is immaterial,” he said harshly. “No Canadian court is going to grant you an injunction against the damming up of a useless bit of territory like tins. You don’t seem to realize what you’re up against.”

“I know quite well what I’m up against,” I said, suddenly losing control of myself. “I’m up against a bunch of crooks who don’t stop at falsifying surveys, setting fire to fuel tankers, trespassing on other people’s property, shooting, and attempting to expropriate land that doesn’t belong to them. It hadn’t occurred to me to start legal proceedings. But if Fergus wants it that way, he can have it. Tell him I’m fighting him every inch of the ground. Tell him that what we’ve proved already by drilling, together with Winnick’s evidence, will be enough to satisfy any Canadian court. And by the time he’s got his dam finished I’ll have brought in a well up here. Now get out.”

Trevedian hesitated, a bewildered expression on his face. “Then why does Keogh want to get his trucks down?”

“Because we’re just about through here!” I said quickly, “Now get out of here and tell your boss, Henry Fergus, that the gloves are off!”

He stood there, his mouth ball open, as though he was about to say something further. “You heard what Wetheral said.” Garry was moving toward him, his hands low at his sides, the fingers crooked, expressive of his urgent desire to throw Trevedian through the doorway. The boys were closing in on him too. He turned suddenly and ducked out.

For a moment we all stood there without moving. Then Garry came over and grasped my hand. “By heaven, I got to hand it to you,” he said.

I pushed my hand wearily across my face. “It was all bluff,” I said.

He peered down at me. “How do you mean? Aren’t you going to fight ’em?”

“Yes, of course I’m going to fight them.” I suddenly felt very tired. I think it was the knowledge that I had to go back to Calgary.

“Did you really mean you’ve got a backer?” Cliff asked.

“Yes.” I looked across at Jean. “Would you make me up a parcel of food?”

She nodded slowly. “You’re going to Calgary?”

“Yes.” I turned back to Garry, “You’re willing to go on drilling?”

He looked round at his crew. “And why not, eh, boys? We go on drilling till we have to swim for it? That right?” They were suddenly all grinning and shouting agreement. “We’re right with you, Bruce!” There was a gleam in his eyes and he added, “I’d sure like to get even with that swine.” And then the gleam died away. “There’s one or two things, though. We’ve only got fuel for four more days of drilling. We’re getting short of food up here too. There’s a whole lot of things we need.”

“I know,” I said. “Make out a list of your requirements for another month. Get hold of Boy, tell him to hire the pock animals Johnny and I had before. He’s to have them corralled at Weasel’s Farm on the other side of Beaver Dam Lake in three days’ time — that’s the eighth of August. I’ll meet him there. Tell him to have all supplies laid on ready. I’ll wire him the money at Keithley.”

“I’ll do that.” His big hand grippe my shoulder. “You look like you weren’t strong enough to hold your own against a puff of wind. But by heaven, you’re tougher than I am.” He turned toward the door. “C’mon, boys. We’ll get the rig started up again.” He waved his hand to me. “Good luck!” he said, “And just keep your fingers crossed, in case this Hill goes deep.”

I got my things together and then went out to the stables. I was saddling up when Jean came in with a package of food. “Shall I come with you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “This is something I have to do alone.”

She hesitated, and then said, “You’re going to see Sarah, aren’t you?” I didn’t say anything, and she added, “She’s your backer, isn’t she?”

“How did you know?”

She smiled a trifle sadly. “I lived there for three years, you know.” She pushed the food into my pack. “Does she have enough?” I was tightening my cinch and I didn’t say anything. She caught hold of my arm. “It’ll cost a lot to fight a legal battle.”

“A delaying action, that’s all,” I said. “If we don’t bring in a well—” I shrugged my shoulders. “Then I don’t care very much.”

“We’ll bring in a well.” She reached up and kissed me then. For a second I felt the warmth of her lips on mine, and then she was gone.

As I rode up the trail to the Saddle I could hear the draw works of the rig sounding their challenge across the Kingdom. It was like music to hear it working again, to know that the whole crowd were solidly behind me.

“Pray God it comes out right,” I murmured aloud. But I felt tired and depressed. Calgary scared me and I wasn’t sure of myself.

I waited till nightfall before entering Come Lucky, riding in from above it and wending my way through the huddle of shacks. There was a glow of lamplight in the windows of the Garret home. Sarah Garret answered my knock. She seemed to know what I had come for.

“You’re in a hurry, I expect,” she said.

“I have to go to Calgary.”

She nodded. “There’s a rumor you’re going to get the courts to stop the work on the dam. That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

Her eyes were bright and there was a little spot of color in her waxen cheeks. “I’m glad,” she said. She took me through into her room, talking all the time, a Little breathless, a little excited. She wanted to know all my plans, everything that had happened that morning. And while I talked she unlocked the tin trunk and took out the clothes. When I had lifted out the false bottom, she picked out two of the little tin boxes and put them into my hands. “There,” she said. “I do hope it will be enough, but I must keep sufficient for my sister and me to live on.” One of the boxes contained gold dust, the other two small bars of gold.

“You do realize,” I said, “that I may not be able to repay you. We may fail.”

She smiled. “You foolish man. It isn’t a loan. It’s a gift.” She let the lid of the trunk fall. “I think my father would have been glad to know that I had saved it for something that was important to someone.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I murmured.

“Nonsense, I haven’t had so much excitement since—” She looked at me and I swear she blushed. “Well, not for a very long time.” Her eyes I twinkled up at me. “Will you promise me something? When all this is over, will you take me up to the Kingdom? I haven’t been out of Come Lucky for so long and I would like to see it again, and the log house and the tiger lilies. Are there tiger lilies there still?”

I nodded. For some reason I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

“Now you must hurry. If they hear you are in Come Lucky—” She hustled me to the door. “Put the boxes under your coat. Yes, that’s right. Ruth mustn’t see them. I think she suspects, but—” Her frail fingers squeezed my arm. “It’s our secret, eh? She wouldn’t understand.”

Ruth Garret was waiting for us in the living room. “What have you two been up to?” The playfulness of the remark was lost in the sharpness of her eyes.

“We were just talking,” her sister said quickly. She put her band on my arm and led me out. She paused at the front door. “Are you going to marry Jean?”

I looked down at her and then slowly shook my head. “No.”

“Why not? She’s in love with you.” I didn’t answer. “Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“And you? Are you in love with her?”

Slowly I nodded my head. “But I can’t marry her,” I said. And then briefly I told her why. “That’s also a secret between us,” I said when I had finished.

“Doesn’t it occur to you she might want to look after you?”

“She’s been hurt once,” I said. “She doesn’t want to be hurt again. I can’t do that to her. I must go now.”

“Yes, you must go now.” She opened the door for me. As I stepped out into the night I turned. She looked very frail and lonely, standing there in the lamplight. And yet beneath the patina of age I thought I saw the girl who’d known my grandfather. She must have been very lovely. I bent and kissed her. Then I got on my horse and rode quickly out of Come Lucky.

I flew into Calgary from Edmonton on the morning of August seventh to be met by Calgary Tribune placards announcing: Larsen Company’s Dam Nearing Completion. I deposited the gold in the hank and arranged for the necessary funds to be mailed to Boy at Weasel’s Farm, and then went on to my lawyers. There I learned that the case I had come to fight had been dropped. I asked Letour whether this was as a result of my threat to seek an injunction restraining Fergus from flooding the Kingdom, but he shook his head. No application for an injunction had been made and he explained to me at some length the legal difficulties of making such an application. He advised me that my only hope was to bring in a well before the flooding of the Kingdom. The scale of compensation likely to be granted by the courts would then be so great as to make it impracticable for the Larsen Company to proceed with the project.

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

I would have pulled out of Calgary the next morning, only something happened that evening which radically altered my plans. I hadn’t been near the Calgary Tribune, feeling it would be a waste of time and that they had now lost interest in our drilling operations. However, I had phoned Winnick and I suppose he must have let them know I was in town, for the editor himself rang me up in the afternoon and asked me to have dinner with him. And when I got to his club I found he had a CBC man with him, and the whole picture suddenly brightened, for the CBC man wanted me to broadcast. The reason for his interest was in the copy of a big American magazine he had with him which contained an article beaded:

The author was Steve Strachan, the Calgary Tribune reporter who had visited us.

This sudden interest in what we were doing gave me fresh heart. I stayed on and did the broadcast, for I was already subconsciously working toward obtaining the best compensation I could from the courts. Upon what they awarded me depended the extent to which I could repay those who had helped me. I made it clear, therefore, both in the broadcast and in the article I wrote for the Calgary Tribune, that we were into the igneous country that had stopped Campbell No. 1 and that given a few more weeks we should undoubtedly bring in a well.

This false optimism produced immediate dividends, for on the morning after the broadcast Acheson came to see me. He looked pale and angry, which was not surprising, since Fergus had sent him with an offer of a hundred thousand dollars. I was very tempted to accept.

Then Acheson said, “Of course, in view of the publicity you have been getting, we shall require a statement that you are now of the opinion that Campbell was wrong and there is no oil in that area of the Rockies.”

I went over to the window and stood looking out across the railway tracks. To make that statement meant finally branding my grandfather as a liar and a cheat. It would be a final act of cowardice.

“Would Fergus agree to free transportation of all vehicles and personnel down by the hoist and over the Thunder Valley road?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

He glanced at his watch. “You’ll have to think fast then. This offer is open till midday.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Fergus wants to get rid of the whole business.”

He left me then, and for an hour I paced up and down the room, trying to balance my unwillingness to accept defeat against the need to repay the men who had helped me. And then the bellhop came and I knew why they had been in such a hurry to get a decision out of me. It was a telegram from Boy, dispatched from Keithley:

I stared at it, excitement mounting inside me, reviving my hopes, bursting like a Hood over my mood of pessimism.

I seized hold of the phone and rang Acheson. “I just wanted to let you know that half a million dollars wouldn’t buy the Kingdom now,” I told him. “We’re in the clear and drilling ten feet an hour. You knew that, didn’t you? Well, you can tell Fergus it’s going to cost him a fortune to flood the Kingdom.”

I slammed down the receiver without waiting for him to reply. The crooks! They’d known we were through the sill. They’d known it by the speed at which the traveling block moved down the rig. That’s why they’d increased their offer. I was laughing aloud in my excitement as I picked up the phone and rang the editor of the Calgary Tribune. I told him the whole thing, how they’d offered me a hundred thousand and they’d known all the time we were in the clear. “If they’ll only give us long enough,” I said, “we’ll bring in that well.”

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

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

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

“Of course not.”

Early the following evening Steve and I arrived in Jasper. There was little snow on the mountains now and it was still warm after the blistering heat of the day. It was only that evening, as I sat drinking beer with Jeff, that I realized I had been over a week in Calgary and hadn’t felt ill. “It’s our dry, healthy climate, I guess,” Jeff said. I nodded abstractedly, thinking how much had happened since that first time I had come through Jasper.

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

I shook my reins and heeled the pony forward. My eyes were dazzled for a moment by the flash of sun on glass. It was a lorry moving on the road up to Thunder Creek. Another and another followed it — materials for the dam moving up to the hoist.

“Seems to be a lot more traffic on that road now,” Steve said.

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

We made good time and soon Moses was barking a welcome to us as we rode up to the ranch house. Jean came in as we unsaddled. Her eyes were bright in the gloom of the stable, and as I gripped her arms and felt the trembling excitement of her body, the place seemed like home.

“Have we brought in a well?” I asked her.

And when she shook her head I was almost glad, for now that I was back in the Kingdom I felt all the old optimism.

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

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

“Sure you’re not too tired?” She was looking at me anxiously. “I was afraid—” She turned away and stared toward the rig. “They’ve nearly finished the dam,” she said quickly. “A week ago they took on fifty extra men.”

“When do they expect to complete it?”

“In two days’ time.”

Two days! I turned to Steve. “You hear that, Steve? Two days.”

He nodded. “It’ll be quite a race.”

“Better get yourself settled in,” I told him, and Jean and I set out for the rig, Moses limping along beside us. We didn’t talk. Somehow, now that I was here it didn’t seem necessary. We just walked in silence and across the deep grass came the clatter of the rig like music on the still air. I began to tell her what had happened in Calgary, but somehow the publicity I had got seemed unimportant. Up here only one thing mattered — if there was oil, would they reach it in time?

The strain I had seen in Jean’s face was stamped on the face of everyone I on the rig. They all crowded round me, wanting to hear the news from Calgary, eagerly scanning the papers I had brought and searching the bundle of mail for their own letters. The atmosphere was electric with fatigue and the desperate hope that was driving them.

“Did you see Winnick?” Garry asked me. His voice was hard and terse.

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

“We’ll he at seven thousand the day after tomorrow.”

“Have you taken a core sample since you got clear of the sill?”

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

“We’ll just have to make it,” I said.

“Oh, sure. We’ll make it.” But his voice didn’t carry conviction. He looked dead heat.

“Seen anything of Trevedian?”

“No.” He turned and stared toward the dam. His battered face looked crumpled and old in the hard sunlight. “I wish we’d got a geologist up here. If we do strike it, as like as not it’ll be gas and we’ll blow the rig to hell.”

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

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

His manner as much as his appearance warned me that his nerves were strung taut. It was not surprising, for there were only nine of them to keep the rig going the twenty-four hours, and it needed four men on each shift. Pretty soon both I and Steve Strachan were doing our stint. I did the shift from eight to twelve, and by the time I had been called at four to go on duty again, I began to understand the strain they had been working under. I came off duty at eight, had some breakfast and turned in.

I hadn’t been asleep more than an hour before I was wakened with the news that Trevedian had arrived and wanted to see me.

He was in the main room of the ranch house and he had an officer of the Provincial Police with him, Garry was there, too, and he held a sheet of paper in his hand.

“Trevedian’s just served us with notice to quit,” he said, handing me the paper.

It was a warning that flooding of the Kingdom under the provisions of the Provincial Government Act of 1939 might be expected any time after August eighteenth.

“The dam’s complete, is it?” I asked.

Trevedian nodded. “Just about.”

“When are you closing the sluice gates?”

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

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

“Meaning the rig?”

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

One or two of the drilling crew had drifted in. Trevedian shifted his feet nervously. He knew enough about men to know that it only needed a word to touch off the violence in the atmosphere.

“Well, I guess we’d better get going,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the shift changed and the drilling went steadily on, the bit grinding into the rock six thousand, seven hundred and thirteen feet below the surface, at the rate of ten and a half feet per hour. I got some Bleep and went on shift again at midnight. Jean was still up, standing by the stable, looking at the moon. She didn’t say anything, but her hand found mine and gripped it.

Boy passed us, going to the rig. “There’s a storm brewing,” he said.

There was a ring round the moon and though it was still as sultry as an oven, there was a dampness in the air.

“Something must break soon,” Jean whispered. “I can’t stand this suspense any longer.”

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

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

“What’s that over there, beyond Solomon’s Judgment? Looks like a cloud,” Garry said.

A breath of wind touched our faces. There were no stars. It looked pitch-black and strangely solid. The wind was suddenly chill.

“It’s the storm that’s been brewing,” Boy said.

I don’t know who noticed it first — the change in the note of the drawworks Diesel. It penetrated to my mind as something different, a slowing up, a stickiness that deepened the note of the engine.

Boy shouted something, and then Garry’s voice thundered out, “The mud pump, quick!” His big body was across the platform in a flash, Don and I had jumped to our feet, but we stood there, dazed, not knowing what was happening or what had to be done. “Get off that platform!” Garry shouted up to us. “Run, you fools! Run for your lives!”

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

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

It was like that for a moment, a great snake of piping, turning and twisting upward, and then, with a roar like a hundred express trains, it was blown clear.

“Garry! Garry! Garry!” Boy’s voice sounded thin against the roar.

We splashed back toward the rig, searching for him. We stumbled against pieces of machinery, scraps of trucks that had been flung wide by the force of gas.

“Garry!”

A shape loomed up in the gloom. A hand gripped mine. “Well, we struck it!” It was Garry and his voice trembled slightly.

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

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

“It hasn’t done your rig much good,” I said. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Oh, to hell with the rig!” He laughed. It was a queer sound, violent and trembling and rather high-pitched.

“We’ve done what we came up here to do. We’ve proved there’s oil down there. And we’ve done it in time. Come on. Let’s rout the boys out. Steve must see this. He’s our independent observer. This is going to shake the Larsen outfit.” And that high-pitched laugh sent out its trembling challenge again to the din of the gas jet.

It wasn’t until we were headed for the ranch house that I realized that the moon had vanished, swallowed by the inky blackness that was rolling across the night sky. Halfway to the house a gust of wind struck us. From the slopes of Solomon’s Judgment came a hissing sound that enveloped and obliterated the sound of the gas. And then, suddenly, a wall of water fell on us. It was a rainstorm, but as solid as if a cloud had condensed and dropped. Lightning ripped across our heads, momentarily revealing my companions as three half-drowned wraiths. And then the thunder was incessant.

Somehow we reached the ranch house. Nobody was up. The place was as silent as if it had been deserted. We stripped to the huff and built up the fire, huddling our bodies close to it and drinking some rye that Boy had found. There seemed no point in waking the others.

There was nothing to see and the storm was so violent that it was quite out of the question to take them down to have a look at the well. We drifted off to our bunks, and as my head touched the pillow I remember thinking that everything was going to be all right now. We had proved there was oil in the Kingdom. My grandfather’s beliefs were confirmed, my own life justified. And then I was asleep.

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

“I know,” I mumbled, “We didn’t wake you because there was a storm.”

I rolled out of my bunk and pulled a coat on over my pajamas. I was really rather enjoying myself as she took hold of my hand and pulled me through into the ranch house and over to the window.

I don’t know quite how I had expected it to look by daylight, but when I reached the window and looked out across the Kingdom, drab gray and swept by rain, I stood appalled. There was nothing to show we’d ever drilled there or ever had a rig there. I was looking out across a wide expanse of water. It began just beyond the barns and it extended right across to the slopes of the mountains on the farther side. Trevedian had closed the sluice gates and the Kingdom was already half flooded. It was a lake, and the wind was driving across it, plowing it up into waves and flecking it with white. “Oh, God!” I said, and I dropped my head on my arms.

My name is Bruce Campbell Wetheral. On the day my physician told me I had only a few months left to live, I learned that I had inherited the Kingdom from my grandfather, Stuart Campbell. He had spent his life trying to prove there was oil in the Rockies, and his last request to me was to prove he was right.

I found two partners, Boy Bladen and Garry Keogh, and we started drilling. But from the very beginning we knew we were taking a gamble that we might lose. I had proved there was a fortune in oil in Campbell’s Kingdom, a plateau high in the Canadian Rockies. But I lost my race against time. The whole Kingdom was now flooded in the waters of a man-made lake.

A man named Henry Fergus was building a dam just below the Kingdom. When it was finished the entire Kingdom would be flooded. Also, Peter Trevedian, who worked for Fergus, had been trying to sabotage us ever since we started. For months the race was close. Then one evening Trevedian came to our camp with a notice that the dam was done and that the Kingdom would be flooded at any time. After ten o’clock the next morning, he would not be responsible for any of my equipment.

But that very night we struck gas, indicating there was oil just below. A storm broke out and we went to bed.

The next morning when I woke up, the Kingdom was flooded and our oil rig was completely covered. Trevedian had been watching us the night before and closed the dam’s sluice gates ahead of schedule.