Десмонд Бэгли - Landslide

I left early next morning just after daybreak. I suppose you couldn’t have called the few words Clare and I had an argument, but it left a certain amount of tension. She thought I was wrong and she wanted to get married right away, and I thought otherwise, and we had sulked like a couple of kids. Anyway, the tension dissolved in her bed that night; we were getting to be like a regular married couple.

We discussed the Matterson contract which her lawyer had thought not too larcenous, and she signed it and gave it to me. I was to drop it in to Howard’s office and get a duplicate signed by him. Just before I left, she said, ‘Don’t stick your neck out too far, Bob. Old Bull wields a mean axe.’

I reassured her and bumped up the track in the jeep and made Fort Farrell by late morning. McDougall was pottering about his cabin, and looked at me with a knowing eye. ‘You look pretty bushy-tailed,’ he said. ‘Made your fortune yet?’

‘Just about,’ I said, and told him what had happened with Howard and Donner.

I thought he’d go into convulsions. He gasped and chortled and stamped his foot, and finally burst out with: ‘You mean you made six hundred thousand bucks just for insulting Howard Matterson? Where’s my coat? I’m going down to the Matterson Building right away.’

I laughed. ‘You’re dead right.’ I gave him the contract. ‘See that gets to Howard — but don’t part with it until you get a duplicate signed by him. And you’d better check it word for word.’

‘You’re damned right I will,’ said Mac. ‘I wouldn’t trust that bastard as far as I could throw a moose. What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going up to the dam,’ I said. ‘It seems to worry Howard. What’s been happening up there?’

‘The dam itself is just about finished; they closed the sluices a couple of days ago and the lake has started to fill up.’ He chuckled. ‘They’ve had trouble bringing the generator armatures in; those things are big and heavy and they didn’t find them too easy to manage. Got stuck in the mud right outside the powerhouse, so I hear.’

‘I’ll have a look,’ I said. ‘Mac, when you’re in town I want you to do something. I want you to spread the word that I’m the guy who survived the accident which killed the Trinavants.’

He chuckled. ‘I get it — you’re putting the pressure on. Okay, I’ll spread the word. Everybody in Fort Farrell will know you are Grant by sundown.’

‘No,’ I said sharply. ‘You mention no names. Just say that I’m the guy who survived the accident, nothing more.’ He looked at me in bewilderment, so I said, ‘Mac, I don’t know if I’m Grant and I don’t know if I’m Frank Trinavant. Now, Bull Matterson may think I’m Grant, but I want to keep the options open. There may come a time when I have to surprise him.’

‘That’s tricky,’ said Mac admiringly. He eyed me shrewdly. ‘So you made up your mind, son.’

‘Yes, I made up my mind.’

‘Good,’ he said heartily. As an apparent afterthought, he said, ‘How’s Clare?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘You must have given her place a good going-over.’

‘I did,’ I said smoothly. ‘I made absolutely sure there’s nothing there worth the digging. Took two whole weeks on the job.’

I could see he was going to pursue the subject a little further so I backed out. ‘I’m going up the dam,’ I said. ‘See you tonight — and do exactly what I said.’ I climbed into the jeep and left him to mull it over.

Mac had been right when he said the Matterson Corporation was having trouble with the generators. This was not a big hydro-electric scheme like the Peace River Project at Portage Mountain, but it was big enough to have generators that were mighty hard to handle when transporting them on country roads. They had been shipped up from the States and had got to the railhead quite easily, but from then on they must have been troublesome.

I nearly burst out laughing when I drove past the powerhouse at the bottom of the escarpment. A big logging truck loaded with an armature was bogged down in the mud, surrounded by a sweating, swearing gang shouting fit to bust a gut. Another gang was laying a corduroy road up to the powerhouse — a matter of nearly two hundred yards — and they were up to their knees in an ocean of mud.

I stopped and got out to watch the fun. I didn’t envy those construction men one little bit; it was going to be one hell of a job getting that armature to the powerhouse in an intact condition. I looked into the sky and watched the clouds coming in from the west, from the Pacific, and thought it looked like rain. One good downpour and the trouble would be compounded tenfold.

A jeep came up the road and skidded to a halt in the mud and Jimmy Waystrand got out and stamped over. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

I gestured to the stalled truck. ‘Just watching the fun.’

His face darkened. ‘You’re not welcome round here,’ he said harshly. ‘Beat it!’

‘Have you checked with Bull Matterson lately?’ I asked mildly. ‘Or hasn’t Howard passed the word on?’

‘Oh, hell!’ he said exasperatedly. I could see he was itching to toss me out but he was more afraid of old Bull than he was of me.

I said gently, ‘One wrong move from you, Jimmy, and a court order gets slapped on Bull Matterson. That’ll cost him money and you can bet your last cent — if you’re left with one — that it’ll come out of your pay packet. Your best bet is to get on with your job and get that mess cleaned up before it rains again.’

‘Rains again!’ he said savagely. ‘It hasn’t rained yet.’

‘Oh? Then how come all the mud?’

‘How in hell do I know?’ he said. ‘It just came. It just... He stopped and glared at me. ‘What the hell am I doing chewing the fat with you?’ He turned and went back to his jeep. ‘Remember!’ he shouted. ‘You make no trouble or you get whipped.’

I watched him go, then looked down at the mud interestedly. It looked like ordinary mud. I bent down and took some in my hand and rubbed my fingers together. It felt slimy without any grittiness and was as smooth as soap. It would make a good grade of mud for lubricating an oil drill; maybe Matterson could make a few cents out of bottling and selling it. I tasted it with the tip of my tongue; there was no saltiness, but I didn’t expect to find any because the human tongue is not a very reliable guide.

I watched the men slipping and sliding around for a while, then went to the back of the jeep and picked out two empty test-tubes. I picked my way into the middle of the mess, getting thoroughly dirty in the process, and stooped to fill them full of the greyish, slippery goo. Then I went back to the jeep, put the test-tubes away carefully, and drove on up the escarpment.

There was no mud anywhere on the escarpment nor on the road which climbed it. They were still working on the dam, putting in the final touches, but the sluices were closed and the water was building up behind the concrete wall. Already the scene of desolation which I had grieved over was being covered by a clean sheet of water. Perhaps it was a merciful thing to do, to hide the evidence of greed. The new lake spread shallowly into the distance with the occasional spindly tree, too poor for even Bull Matterson to make a profit on, standing forlornly in the flood. Those trees would die as soon as the roots became waterlogged, and they would fall and rot.

I looked back at the activity at the bottom of the escarpment. The men looked like ants I had seen — a crowd of ants trying to drag along the corpse of a big beetle they had found. But they weren’t having as much success with the trucks as the ants did with the beetle.