Nothing to Lose

Conclusion

Steve Strachan did his best to try to visualize the blowing in of the well as we had seen it, but I knew he wasn’t really convinced. He knew how tense we all were. I suppose he fell that in those circumstances a man is capable of seeing something that never really happened. He did his best. He made polite noises as we described every detail of it. But every now and then he’d say, “Sure I believe you, but just show me something concrete that’ll prove it really happened.”

But what evidence had we? Soaked to the skin, we trudged along the shores of that damned lake, looking for a slick of oil, or stood searching the spot where the rig had been, trying to locate the bubbles that the escaping gas must be making. But little whitecaps frisked across the spot and even through glasses we could see no sign of bubbles.

I remember Garry standing there cursing while the rain streamed down his lined face as though he were crying. We were huddled there in a little bunch by the edge of that sudden lake, our faces gray, exhaustion and despair stamped on our features.

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

Garry turned to me. “Remember the water we ran into when we got clear of the rig? They were flooding then, flooding up to the rig, just in case.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Damn it! One more day!” There was all the bitterness of a gambler who had lost in his voice, “Our only hope is to persuade them to drain the Kingdom.” His voice was high and taut. “Come on, Bruce. We’d better get over there and have a word with them.”

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

For a moment we sat on our horses looking at them and they stood looking at us. Trevedian waited, his small eyes alert, watching us curiously. The policeman said nothing.

Words suddenly burst from Garry’s lips with explosive force, “What do you mean by drowning my rig? You gave us till ten this morning!”

“My warning referred to the house and buildings.” Trevedian glanced at his watch. “It’s now nine-twenty. You’ve forty minutes to get clear of the buildings.”

“But what about the rig?” Garry demanded. “What right had you—”

“You could have moved it,” Trevedian cut in.

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

The man shook his head. “No, I came up here this morning, in case there was trouble.”

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

Trevedian laughed. “Be damned to that for a tale!” he said.

“You know it’s true!” Garry cried. “Don’t ever let me get my hands on you or as sure as heaven I’ll wring your neck.”

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

“What time did you come up here?” I said, addressing the policeman.

“At eight o’clock this morning,” he answered.

“Were you up here last night when they began flooding?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

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

“You mean he was prepared to deal with it himself during the hours of darkness?”

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

“Are you here as an official of the Provincial Police or has the company hired you as a watchdog?”

“Both,” he said rather tersely.

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

He nodded slowly and we rode back to the ranch house in silence. His face looked drawn and haggard. He didn’t say anything all the way back, but I was very conscious of the fact that he’d lost his rig, everything he had worked for during more than fifteen years. It deepened the mood of black despair that had gripped me since I woke up and found the Kingdom had become a lake overnight.

When we reached the ranch house we were greeted with the news that the water was rising again. All our energies were concentrated then on salvaging what we could. We loaded Boy’s vehicles with all our kit and movable equipment and drove them up to the edge of the timber. Jean and I harnessed the horses to an old wagon we found, and in this way I managed to get some of my grandfather’s belongings out. And then, as the rain slackened and a misty sun shone through, we made camp in the shelter of the trees and drank hot tea and watched the water creep slowly up to the ranch house. By midday the place ray grandfather had built with his own hands was a quarter of a mile out in the lake and the water was up to the windows. It was the end of the Kingdom.

That night my feet and hands were swollen and painful and my heart was thudding against my ribs. I felt exhausted and drained of all energy, certain that now my time was up and the end had at last come. I slipped off into a sort of coma, and when I woke sometimes Jean was there, holding my hand, sometimes I was alone. The moon was bright and by craning my head I could just see out of the back of the truck that the ranch house had disappeared completely, swallowed by the waters. There was no sign left that my grandfather had ever been in the country.

I felt better in the morning, but very tired. I slept intermittently and once Boy came and sat beside me and told me he had been over to the dam and had phoned Trevedian from the control room. We were to have the trucks at the hoist by midday tomorrow. I lay back, realizing that this was our final exodus, that the rest of the business would be conducted in the stuffy, soul-destroying atmosphere of a courtroom. There would be weeks, maybe months of litigation.

I couldn’t face that. Jean seemed to understand my mood, for she kept assuring me that it would be all right, that the lawyers would look after it all and that we’d get the compensation required to repay everyone. And then, late in the evening, Johnny rode in with a couple of American newspaper boys, the same who had been up with him the previous fall when they had found the body of my grandfather.

I remember they came in to see me that night. They were a surprisingly quiet, slow-spoken pair and somehow their interest in the whole business as a story put new heart into me.

“But who’ll believe us?” I said. “Even Steve Strachan, who was up here with us, isn’t entirely convinced.”

The taller of them laughed. “He’s not used to this sort of thing,” he said. “We are. We’ve put the four of you through a detailed cross-examination. And it’s okay. The detail is too good to have been fabricated. Soon as we get down I’ll send off my story, Fergus will have half the North American continent gunning for him by the time I’ve finished writing this up. And by a stroke of luck we’ve got pictures of the Campbell homestead and the whole Kingdom before they flooded it.”

Early next morning we started out toward the dam, but it was well after midday by the time we turned the base of the buttress and ground to a halt at the cable terminal. There wasn’t a soul there. Boy went down to the dam and disappeared down concrete steps into the bowels of it. The silence was uncanny. The dam was a flat-topped battlement of concrete flung across the cleft that divided the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. On the Thunder Valley side it sloped down like a great wall into the gloom of the cleft. On the other side the lake of the Kingdom swept to within a yard or so of the top. The wall of concrete seemed to be leaning into the lake, as though straining to hold the weight of the water in check.

Boy came up out of the smooth top of the dam and climbed toward us, a puzzled frown on his sun-tanned face. “Not a soul there,” he said. “And all the sluices are fully open.”

“Isn’t there a phone down in the control room?” Jean asked.

Boy nodded. “I tried it, but I couldn’t get any answer. It seemed dead.”

We stood there for a moment, talking softly, wondering what to do. At length Garry said, “Well, anyway, the cage is here. We’d better start loading the first truck.”

As Don moved toward the instrument truck there was a sudden splintering sound and then the noise of falling stone. It was followed by a faint shout, half drowned in a roar of water. Then a man came clambering up the side of the cleft. He was one of the engineers and he was followed by the guards and another engineer. They saw us and came running toward us. Their faces looked white and scared.

“What’s happened?” Garry called out.

“The dam!” shouted one of the engineers. “There’s a crack! It’s leaking! The whole thing will go any minute!” He was out of breath and his voice was pitched high with fright.

We stared at him, hardly able to comprehend what he was saying — convinced of the reality of it only by his obvious fear.

“Have you told thorn down below?” Steve Strachan asked him.

“I can’t. The phone was cut in that storm the night before last. It’s terrible. I don’t know what to do. There are nearly a hundred men working down on the slide where they’re going to build the powerhouse. What can I do?”

“What about the phone in the cable house?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, of course. But I don’t, think there’ll be anyone in the lower housing, not until six this evening.”

Everybody was talking at once now, and I watched the engineer as he ran stumbling to the cable terminal. If there was nobody at the bottom to get his warning. I looked at the lake. It was six miles or more across, and in the center it would be as deep as the dam was high — over two hundred Feet.

Jean’s hand gripped my arm, “What can we do?” Her voice trembled and I saw by her face that she, too, was picturing that effect of a breach. But the dam looked solid enough.

The others were already scrambling down to have a look at the damage. I followed. Johnny came slithering down with me. And from the top of the dam itself we looked down the smooth face of it to a great jet of water fifty feet long and two or three feel, across. It was coming from a jagged rent about halfway down the dam face, and all around the hole were great splintering cracks through which the water seeped.

“It’s that cement they used on the original dam!” Johnny had to shout in my ear to make himself heard above the din of the water. “It was old stuff and it’s cracking up! The fools!”

As we turned away from the appalling sight, the engineer who had gone to the hoist to try to telephone came slithering down to us. “There’s nobody there,” he shouted.

“Can’t you go down and warn them?” Johnny asked.

“There’s nobody down there, I tell you,” he almost screamed. “Nobody hears the telephone! There’s nobody to work the engine!”

I was looking up toward the hoist, remembering the night Jeff and I had examined the cradle together to see if there was a safety device to get the cage down if the engine packed up.

“How long before this dam goes?” I asked the engineer.

“I don’t know. It may go any minute. It may last till we have drained the lake.”

The American newspaper correspondent came along the top of the dam toward us. He had been out in the center with his photographer, who was taking pictures regardless of the danger. “Why don’t these guys do something — about the boys down below. I mean?”

“What can we do?” the engineer demanded petulantly. “We’ve no phone, no means of communicating.”

I called to Boy and together we climbed the side of the cleft to the hoist. Jean caught up with us just as I was climbing into the cage. “What, are you going to do?” I was already looking up at the cradle, seeing what I needed to knock the pins out that secured the driving cable to it. Her hand gripped my arm. “No! For heaven’s sake, darling! You can’t! They’ll be all right! They’ll have seen that flow of water coming down—”

“If they have, then I’ll stop the cage on the lip of the fault.” I gently disengaged her fingers. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

She stared at me, her face suddenly white. I think she knew as well as I did that the chances of the men working down there having noticed an increase in the How or water from the dam was remote. “Why you?” she whispered. “Why not one of the men who belong to the dam? It’s their responsibility.”

I turned away and climbed into the cage. I couldn’t explain to her why it was better for me logo. “Hand me that bit of timber, Boy.”

He passed it up and I knocked the pins out. As the last one fell to the floor I had my hand on the brake lever. The driving cable dropped free onto the rollers and the cage began to move. I hauled down on the lever and brought the bottom braking wheel into action, forcing the suspension cable up between the two traveling wheels.

I turned to find Joan clambering into the cage. “I’m coming with you, too,” Boy said, climbing in after her. His face was white under his Ian. I didn’t know it then, but he was scared of heights, other than from the air.

“So am I,” Jean said.

I stood there, looking at them, wondering how to get rid of them. It was crazy for more than one to go down. There was a rope on the end of the lever and a pulley in the floor. I slid the rope through the sheaves or the block. Then I called to Boy. “For heaven’s sake,” I said, “get Jean out of here! Pick her up and throw her out!”

He nodded. I was still holding the rope. “Please go, Jean!” I called to her. But she clung to the side and Boy picked her up, fighting her to get her hands clear, and then, leaning far out, he put her over the side. At that moment I let go the rope, caught him by the legs and lipped him over after her. As he fell, the cage began to move.

Looking back, I saw the two of them standing there, watching me. And away to the right, below them, was the great sweep of the dam, with the wall all starred with cracks and the brown water spouting from the huge rent. I stared at it wondering what it would he like up here, hanging in space, if the whole thing burst wide open, imagining the lake pouring through, thundering in a roaring mass only a few feet below my feet and then tumbling in a gigantic, fantastic fall over the lip of the fault.

Then the pylon on the top of the fault was coming toward me, and I hauled on the rope, slowing the cradle up to walking pace. Thunder Valley opened out in front of me. I crawled up to the pylon and stopped. I could see the steep, timbered slopes of the valley, the glint of Beaver Dam Lake, but the rocks on the Lip of the drop hid the slide. I inched past the pylori. The cradle tipped. I hauled on the rope. The rocks slid away below me and suddenly I was hanging in space, and there far below me was the slide with the pylon, and beyond it the concrete housing of the hoist. It was all very minute and unreal. I felt my knees beginning to shake. I don’t think I have ever been so frightened of anything in my life. For there below me the slide looked like an ant heap. Everywhere men were moving about, working on the foundations of the powerhouse. I was committed to go down there, and if the dam should burst— The pylon and the cable housing stood right in the path of the flood. They would be swept away and the cable would swing loose. I should be dashed to pieces against the face of the fault.

It was probably only a few seconds that I hesitated there, not finding the courage to commit myself irrevocably to that awful drop, but it seemed like an age. Then at last I eased the tension slightly on the rope, and the cage dropped down from the lip, seeming to plunge sickeningly on the steep drop down the cliff face. Nervously I strained at the rope till I was hardly moving. But as I gained confidence in the brake system I let it move faster, so that soon I was past the steepest point and leveling out in a long glide toward the pylon on the slide top. Once I looked back, fearful that the dam was breaking up behind me and the pent-up waters of the lake were thundering over the edge of the fault.

The pylon slid by and then I was running almost free to the concrete housing. Below me I saw men pausing in their work to look up at me, faces gleaming white in the sunlight. I shouted to them that the dam was breaking, as I swung over their heads, and they stared at me with vacant, uncomprehending expressions. Either they didn’t believe me or they didn’t understand what I was saying, for I started no panic; they just stared at me and then got on with their work. And then I was past them and dropping down to the housing. I slid into it gently and climbed out and started back up the roadway to the site where they were working. I reached a bunch of trucks unloading materials. I yelled to the men around them to get them moving back to the camp where they would be safe.

“The dam’s breaking up!” I shouted at them. I climbed to the cab of the first truck and signaled with the horn to the men working on the site. “Get back to the camp!” I shouted to them at the top of my voice. “The dam’s going! Get back to the camp!”

My voice seemed a thin reed in the vastness of the place. It was lost in the clatter of the concrete mixers and the din of metal on stone. But here and there men were stopping to stare at me and then talk to the men working near them. One or two dropped their tools and moved toward me. I kept on shouting to them, my throat, dry with fear and the sweat running out of every pore. I hadn’t realized it would be so difficult to get them started up to the camp to safety. But here and there men began to move, and in a moment it seemed the word buzzed through the whole site and they began to move away from the slide toward the timber, slowly, like bewildered sheep.

And then Trevedian was there, shouting at them, telling them to get back to work. “What are you?” he roared at them. “A bunch of yellow-bellies to be fooled into hiding away in the woods because this fellow Wetheral is so mad at us for drowning the Kingdom that he comes down here shouting a lot of nonsense about the dam? He’s a screwball, you know that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been drilling for oil up there! Now get back to work and don’t be so easily fooled!” He turned and came toward me. “You get the hell out of here!” he shouted. His face was dark with anger.

The men had stopped, standing uncertainly where they stood. My eyes lifted involuntarily to the cleft between the peaks. Was it my imagination or was the veil of white that wavered down the face of the fault wider and bigger. My legs felt weak and my throat was dry. I had to suppress a great desire to run.

I shouted to them again to get clear while they could. “Do you think I’d risk coming down the hoist on the brakes, leaving my friends up there, if the situation wasn’t serious? There was a hole a yard wide halfway down the dam when I left! It will be a lot bigger now! Any minute the whole thing may collapse! The original structure was built of dud cement!” I glanced up again at the cleft. “Well, if you won’t save yourselves, I can’t help it! I’ve done my best!” I jumped down from the truck and started to run. I thought that would get them moving. Trevedian thought so too. Doubt and uncertainty and the beginnings of fear showed in the faces of some of those nearest to me. He swung back toward me, started forward to intercept me and then stopped. “Max!” His voice was sharp, domineering. “Max, stop him!”

I glanced quickly toward the timber. It was about fifty yards away, and between me and it stood the huge, bear-like figure of Max Trevedian.

“Get him, Max!” Trevedian turned to his men. “And you, stay where you are! Why, we’ve only just built the dam! We’ll soon see what all this is about!... Max! Get hold of him!”

Max had already started forward, moving toward me at a shambling run, his great arms swinging loose. I stopped. “Don’t be a fool, Max! Stay where you are!”

I heard Trevedian telling his men to stay where they were, telling them he’d soon find out what all this was about, and then my hand touched the gun in my pocket. “Max!” I shouted. “Stay where you are.” And as he came steadily on, my fingers, automatically finding the opening to my pocket, slipped in and closed over the butt of the gun. I took it out.

Max was not more than thirty yards from me now. I glanced quickly up toward where the men were standing in a close-pocked huddle. They were scared and uncertain. Once Max reached me, I knew I’d never get them moving in time. It was Max or them — one man or nearly a hundred.

“Max,” I screamed, “stay where you are!” And then, as he came on, I raised the weapon slowly, took careful aim at his right leg above the knee and fired.

The report was a thin, sharp sound in the rock-strewn valley. Max’s mouth opened, a surprised look on his face. He took two stumbling steps and then pitched forward onto his face and lay there, writhing in pain.

“You swine! You’ll pay for this!”

I swung round to find Trevedian coming at me. I raised the gun. “Get back!” I said. And then, as he stopped, I knew I had the situation under control for the moment. “Now get out of here, all of you!” I ordered. “Any man who’s still around in one minute from now will get shot! And get to high ground! Now get moving!” To start them, I sent a bullet whistling over their heads. They turned then and made for the timber, bunched close together like a herd of stampeding cattle. Only Trevedian and the man who was with him stood their ground. “Get your brother out of here to safety,” I ordered him.

He didn’t move. He was staring at me, his eyes wide and unblinking. “You must be crazy,” he murmured.

“Don’t be a fool!” I snapped. “Come on! Get your brother out of here!”

“That dam was all right. Government engineers inspected it at every stage. We had engineers in to inspect it before we started the work of completing it.” He shook his head angrily. “I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.” He turned to the man beside him, “We’ll see if we can get them on the hoist phone. If not. I’m going up there. Will you run the engine for me?”

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “Every moment you delay—”

“Oh, go to hell!” he shouted. “Come on, George!” They started at a run for the cable terminal. For a second I considered tiring, trying to stop them. But my fractional hesitation had put them out of effective range. Maybe he’d make it.

I turned away and went over to where Max lay with his body doubled up over a big splinter of rock. His face was bloodless and he was unconscious. His right leg was twisted under him and blood was seeping onto the stones, a crimson splash in the sunlight. I got hold of him by the arms and began to drag him over the rocks. He was incredibly heavy. Each time I paused I called toward the line of the trees, hoping one of the men would have the guts to come back and help me. But the timber seemed silent and empty. In shooting Max I had finally convinced them of the urgency or the danger, just as I had convinced Trevedian himself.

Foot by foot, I dragged Max’s body along the stone-packed road, up the hill to the timber. Every few yards I had to pause. I heard the Diesel start up and saw the cage move out of its staging, Trevedian still working on the cradle, tapping home the pins that locked the driving cable to it.

I suppose I was about halfway to the timber when I paused and glanced up once again at the cleft between the two peaks that towered high above us. The cage was halfway up the face of the fault, a small box swaying gently on the spider’s silk of the cable. And then my eyes lifted to the pylon at the top and suddenly I froze. A solid wave of water and rock burst from the lip of the cliff. The pylon vanished, smothered and swept away by it. And as the water spouted outward over the cliff edge a distant rumbling reached my ears. It. went on and on, sifting down from above, echoing from slope to slope and from the face of the cliff. I remember seeing the cage sway violently and watching the brown flood fall with slow deliberation down the fault, frothing and spouting great gouts of white as it thundered against ledges and outcrops, smashing away great, sections of the rock face with its force, Hinging them outward and down. And I stood there, rigid, unable to move, fascinated and appalled by the spectacle.

A shattering roar filled the whole valley as that monstrous fall of rock and water hit the base of the fault and came thundering on in a mighty, surging wall down the slide. I saw the pylon at the top of the slide smashed to rubble and I remember how the cable suddenly broke and the cage began to swing slowly in toward the cliff. And then I was suddenly running, climbing desperately toward the timber, I heard the angry thunder of those pent-up waters crash down the valley behind me and then the swirling fringe of it reached out to me, sent a line of trees crashing as though cut by a great scythe, caught at my legs and buried me in a frothing flood of water.

I struck out madly, reaching up toward the surface, gasping for breath. Then I was flung against something and all the breath was knocked out of my body. Pain ran like a knife up my right leg. Something swirled against me and I clutched at it, felt the soft texture of clothing and hung on. Then the water sank, my feet touched ground, and as pain shot through me again, almost blacking me out, the branch of a tree curled over me and I clutched at it, holding on with the grip of desperate fear.

I must have passed out, for when I next remembered anything I was lying on the sodden earth, still clutching the branch with my right hand, my left hand twined in Max’s jacket. He was lying face down beside me, his left ear almost torn off by a jagged cut that had opened to show the white of his jaw bone. And just beyond Max, only a few yards below us, a colossal flood of brown water went ripping and roaring down Thunder Creek. The valley was a cataract a thousand yards across, and the face of the slide was a monstrous series of falls and rapids. And in the center of this violent rush of water great rocks were on the move, grinding slowly down through a welter of foam. And on the fringes the scene was one of mad devastation, timber and earth and brush swept clean down to the bare rock by the first rush of the waters. I stared at it all through a blur of pain, saw the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment and the lake spilling through the cleft, felt the sun blazing down on me and passed out again.

I think it was pain that brought me round. I heard a voice say, “It’s his leg all right.” I opened my eyes to see two faces bending over me. And then they began to move me, and I was screaming as the pain ran up my right side, splintering like sparks of electricity in my brain.

For hours it seemed I alternated between periods of blessed unconsciousness and periods of searing pain. I remember the noise and jolting of a truck, the sound of voices, the feel of a spoon against my teeth and the smell of brandy. I think I must have asked at some time about Max. At any rate, I knew somehow that he was alive. And then there were starched uniforms and the smell of ether and the jab of a needle.

I woke at last, to full consciousness in a little room where the blinds were drawn against, the sunlight. There was a movement beside me and a hand closed over mine. I turned then and saw Jean bending over me. Her face was pale and drawn, but her eyes smiled at me. “Better?”

I nodded, trying to accustom myself to the surroundings, to her presence. It was so quiet after the roar of the waters. My right leg was wooden and solid, my chest stiff and painful. It hurt to breathe and I had to force myself to speak.

“I’m in a hospital, aren’t I?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Don’t talk. And don’t worry. You’re all right. You’ve broken a leg, a collarbone and three ribs. The doctor says you’ll be fine in a week or two.”

“And Max?”

“Fractured skull and his left arm’s broken. But he’ll be all right. There’s a bullet wound in his leg, but it’s not serious.” Her hand reached out, touched my forehead, and then her fingers were sliding through my hair in a caress. “Don’t worry, darling. Everything’s going to be all right.”

I lay back and closed my eyes. I felt very sleepy. Her voice seemed a long way away. My mind was drugged. Her voice got fainter and fainter. She was saying something about the rig, about newspapermen, about them knowing now that we’d struck oil. It didn’t seem important any more and her voice faded entirely as I slid into sleep again.

When next I woke the room was dark. I lay there for a long time, my eyes open, seeing nothing in the darkness. I was thinking what a waste of effort this was, this struggle back to life. Why couldn’t I have died there, quickly and easily in the flood of the burst dam? And then I remembered Max and how I had held him against the tearing grasp of the flood, and I was glad. God had been good to me. He had given me time to get the men away from the slide, and we’d brought in a well. And suddenly words were forming on my lips and I was thanking God that I had been able to achieve so much.

Slowly light filtered into the room and day dawned, gray and thick with cloud mist. A nurse brought breakfast in to me. “Well, how’s the great oil man this morning?”

I stared at her and she laughed. “You don’t imagine anybody’s discussing the international situation, with you here in town, do you?” She put the tray down on a bed table and swung it across me. “Now, you stay quiet and eat that egg. It’s time you got some food inside you. And I brought you the papers, so that you can read all about yourself. Doctor Graham said he reckoned that was about the best tonic for you he had in the hospital. And here’s a letter for you.”

I took the envelope and slit it open. Inside was a single sheet of paper, most of which was filled with signatures. The letter was very brief and as I read my eyes blurred.

There followed three columns of signatures, spreading over on to the back — names that were of Polish, French, Italian and Chinese origin as well as English.

I looked up at the nurse. “What day is it?” I asked her.

“Friday.”

And the Kingdom had been flooded on Tuesday. “I’ve been out a long time,” I murmured.

“Not as long as you will be if you don’t get some food inside you,” she said as she went out.

As I ate my breakfast I read through the papers. They were full of the disaster. But there was the story of the well we had brought in too — interviews with Garry and Johnny, and in one of them a long feature article headed: There’s Oil in the Rocky Mountains. The writer was Steve Strachan, and in it he acknowledged the quotation as belonging to Stuart Campbell, and made it clear that the old man was now completely vindicated. I put the paper down and lay back, suddenly completely happy.

The doctor came in then. He gave my broken bones only a cursory examination and then started to go over me thoroughly, listening to my breathing, taking my blood pressure, feeling my pulse, listening to my heart beat, and all the time asking me questions.

“What’s the trouble, doc?” I asked him.

“Oh, just a routine checkup.”

But I knew this wasn’t routine for a man with a broken leg and a few broken ribs. And when they wheeled in the X-ray apparatus, I knew he was on to the real trouble.

“You’re wasting your time,” I said, and I told him what Maclean-Hervey’s verdict had been.

He shrugged his shoulders and I bit my lip as they shifted me to get the screen and X-ray tube in position. “How did you know?” I asked him.

“Jean Lucas told me,” he answered.

“Jean!” I stared at him, wondering how Jean knew.

They were some time taking the photographs and when they had finished they made me comfortable and trundled the equipment out. The doctor was not in the room, but he returned a few minutes later. “All right, Mr. Wetheral? I hope they didn’t cause you too much pain moving you.”

“No,” I said. “It just seemed pointless, that’s all.”

He nodded and drew up a chair beside me. “Does it occur to you that for a man who was given two to six months to live way back in the spring you’ve been remarkably active lately?”

“There seemed no point in conserving energy,” I murmured.

“No, no, of course not.” He hesitated, and then said quietly, “There have been cures, you know.”

“Have there?” I looked at him, seeing his broad, rather serious features through a blur of pain.

“Aye.” He nodded. “There are such things as spontaneous cures. We don’t know the cause of them. I wish we did. Some change in the chemistry of the patient, maybe — or a psychological readjustment. Anyway, once in a while it happens.” He leaned forward, his large gray eyes peering down at me from behind the thick-lensed glasses. “Listen, Mr. Wetheral. I don’t want to raise any false hopes. We’ll know soon enough when they’ve developed those X-ray plates. There’s just a chance, that’s all.” There was a glint of excitement in his eyes now. It showed in his manner, in the way he spoke. “I can’t believe a case as desperate as yours must have been when Doctor Maclean-Hervey gave you that verdict could have gone on for five months, living the way you have been, unless the condition had improved. You’ve been eating well and instead of getting weaker, you’ve got stronger.” He suddenly sat back, taking his glasses off and polishing them. “I shouldn’t really have spoken to you about it. I should have waited till I had the X-ray results. But—” He hesitated and got to his feet. “It’s a most interesting case, you see. I didn’t want you to feel that I was just taking the opportunity to examine you out of curiosity.” He smiled suddenly. “You must be about as obstinate a man as your grandfather, I guess. Anyway, I’ll be back just as soon as I’ve got a picture of what’s going on inside you.”

He left me then, and for a while I lay there, thinking over what he had said. I felt suddenly restless. The mood of excitement I had seen reflected in the doctor’s eyes had communicated itself to me.

Almost unconsciously I reached for the papers and began reading Steve’s article again. I was still rending it when the nurse showed Jean in. She was followed by Johnny and Garry.

“We just looked in to say good-by,” Johnny said. “Garry’s off to Edmonton to see about a new rig and I’m going up to the Kingdom.” He came and stood over me, his eyes narrowed as though he were looking straight into the sun, a lazy smile on his lined face. “You look pretty comfortable lying there, Bruce.”

“What are you going up to the Kingdom for?” I asked him.

“Well, that’s what I come to see you about, I guess.” He rubbed his chin awkwardly. “You see, the boys who were working on the power station have got together and put up some dough. A few of them are coming up to the Kingdom with me and my two Americans to clear up Campbell’s place and make it snug for the winter. The rest —” He hesitated. “Well, it’s like this, Bruce: they came to me and asked what they could do about it. They’re a decent bunch and they felt sort of bad about you lying here in hospital and all of them fit and well. I didn’t know quite what to say, but I hinted you were figuring on settling down around this neighborhood, so they’ve decided to buckle to and build you a house down by the ford at the entrance to Thunder Valley. You know, the place we camped.”

“But I couldn’t possibly allow them to do that,” I said. “They’ve got their living to—”

“Now, listen, Bruce,” he cut in. “They feel had about this. It’s their way of showing they’re grateful to you. You just, got to accept it. It’s a sort of—” He glanced at Jean, and then said. “Well, anyway, they want to do it, and nothing’ll stop them, I guess.” He moved awkwardly to the door. “I must be going now... You coming, Garry?”

The big drilling contractor nodded. “I just wanted to say I’m glad you’re O.K.” He gripped my left hand. “And I’m proud to be associated with you.” He coughed in embarrassment and added quickly, “I’ll go down to Calgary and see Winnick. Things will begin to hum now. I’ll tell him you’ll be in to see him as soon as you can. I’ll see you I hen and find out whether you want to sell out to one of the big companies or whether you plan to develop the area yourself.”

He turned quickly and went out, leaving me alone with Jean. She hadn’t moved all the time they had been talking. I glanced at her face. It. was very pale and she seemed nervous. “You look much better,” she murmured, her eyes sliding away from mine. “Doctor Graham’s very pleased with you.”

An awkward silence fell between us. She moved toward the window. “Did Doctor Graham say anything to you?” She had turned to face me.

I closed my eyes. She looked so cool and fresh and radiant.

“How did you know I had it?” I asked her.

“Sarah Garret told me.”

“She shouldn’t have. I told her because—” What was the use of talking about it? I felt tired now. “I want to sleep,” I murmured. Anything to get her out of the room, to avoid having to look at her and have her eyes and face and body reproaching me for the future that might have been. “Please, Jean,” I whispered. “Leave me. Let me go to sleep now.”

There was no sound in the room, only a tense silence. Then I heard her move. “Not until I’ve said something,” she said gently. I opened my eyes to see her bending over me. A shaft of sunlight touched her hair, rimming her face in gold. Her hand touched my face, smoothing my forehead. “I’m not leaving you, Bruce. Whether you marry me or not doesn’t matter, but you’ll just have to get used to having me around.”

I stared up at her for a moment and then closed my eyes. I think I wanted to hold the memory of her face, that little smile that spread up into the eyes. “The doctor may be wrong,” I murmured.

“If you weren’t injured I’d slap you for that.” Her voice trembled slightly. Then she bent over me and her lips touched mine. “I seem fated to fall in love with men who are under sentence of death.” Her fingers touched my temple and then I heard her footsteps cross the room, the door closed and I was alone.

I lay there, feeling relaxed and happy. I wasn’t afraid of anything now. I wasn’t alone. Even the pain seemed dull as I sank slowly into a deep sleep.

It is winter now and the mountains lie under a white mantle of snow. I am writing this, sitting at the desk my grandfather made. Johnny brought it down from the Kingdom with him. Through the window I look across a clearing in the colt on woods to the ford where the waters of Thunder Creek glide, swift and black, to the lake. Someday that clearing will be a garden. Already Jean has a library of gardening books sent out from England and is planning the layout. We are full of plans — plans for the house, plans for the development of the Kingdom, plans for a family. It is just wonderful to sit back and plan. To plan something is to have a future. And to have a future is to have the whole of life.

As you’ve probably guessed already, the miracle did happen. Doctor Graham was right. The X-ray pictures showed no trace of what had threatened me. How it happened nobody seems to know. I can only quote the letter I received from Doctor Maclean-Hervey.

On the wall behind me is a big frame, a sort of montage of pictures and documents. There are the X-ray photographs, before and after, Maclean-Hervey’s letter, a picture of Campbell No. 2 before it blew in, a photograph of the dam, the original of my grandfather’s will and the document signed by Roger Fergus returning to me the mineral rights of Campbell’s Kingdom. There in that frame is the whole story of the last six months. Now I have put it down on paper. What the future has in store, I do not know. What does it matter? The great thing is to have a future. We will begin drilling operations up in the Kingdom as soon as the snows melt. Maybe I’ll end up a millionaire. But all the money in the world cannot buy what I have now.