Десмонд Бэгли - Landslide

I took one of the test-tubes and looked at it thoughtfully, then put it back in its nest of old newspaper. Ten minutes later I was battling it out on the road back to Fort Farrell.

I badly wanted to use a microscope.

I was still giving myself a headache at the microscope when Mac came back from town. He dumped a box full of groceries on the table which made the slide jiggle. ‘What you got there, Bob?’

‘Trouble,’ I said, without looking up.

‘For us?’

‘For Matterson,’ I said. ‘If this is what I think it is, then that dam isn’t worth two cents. I could be wrong, though.’

Mac cackled with laughter. ‘Hey, that’s the best news I’ve heard in years. What kind of trouble has he got?’

I stood up. ‘Take a look and tell me what you see.’

He bent down and peered through the eyepiece. ‘Don’t see much — just a few bits of rock — leastways, I think it’s rock.’

I said, ‘That’s the stuff that goes to make up clay; it’s rock, all right. What else can you tell me about it? Try to describe is as though you were telling a blind man.’

He was silent for a while, then he said, ‘Well, this isn’t my line. I can’t tell you what kind of rock it is, but there are a few big round bits and a lot of smaller flat ones.’

‘Would you describe those flat bits as card-shaped?’

‘Not so as you’d notice. They’re just thin and flat.’ He straightened up and rubbed his eyes. ‘How big are those things?’

‘The big roundish ones are grains of sand — they’re pretty big. The little flat ones are about two microns across — they’re the clay mineral. In this case I think it’s montmorillonite.’

Mac flapped his hand. ‘You lost me way back. What’s a micron? It’s a long time since I went to school and they’ve changed things pretty much since.’

‘A thousandth of a millimetre,’ I said.

‘And this monty-what-d’you-call-it?’

‘Montmorillonite — just a clay mineral. It’s quite common.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t see anything to get excited about.’

‘Few people would,’ I said. ‘I warned Howard Matterson about this, but the damned fool didn’t check. Anyone round here got a drilling-rig, Mac?’

He grinned. ‘Think you found an oil well?’

‘I want something that’ll go through not more than forty feet of soft clay.’

He shook his head. ‘Not even that. Anyone who wants to bore for water hires Pete Burke from Fort St John.’ He looked at me curiously. ‘You seem upset about this.’

I said, ‘That dam is going to get smashed up if something isn’t done about it fast. At least, I think it is.’

‘That wouldn’t trouble me,’ said Mac decisively.

‘It might trouble me,’ I said. ‘No dam — no Matterson Lake, and Clare loses four million dollars because the Forestry Service wouldn’t allow the cut.’

Mac stared at me open-mouthed. ‘You mean it’s going to happen now ?’

‘It might happen to-night. It might not happen for six months. I might be wrong altogether and it might not happen at all.’

He sat down. ‘All right, I give up. What can ruin a big chunk of concrete like that overnight?’

‘Quick clay,’ I said. ‘It’s pretty deadly stuff. It’s killed a lot of people in its time. I haven’t time to explain, Mac; I’m going to Fort St John — I want access to a good laboratory.’

I left quickly and, as I started the jeep, I looked across at the cabin and saw Mac scratch his head and bend down to look through the microscope. Then I was moving away from the window fast, the wheels spinning because I was accelerating too fast.

I didn’t much like the two hundred miles of night driving, but I made good time and Fort St John hadn’t woken up when I arrived; it was dead except for the gas-refining plant on Taylor Flat which never sleeps. I was registered by a drowsy desk clerk at the Hotel Condil and then caught a couple of hours’ sleep before breakfast.

Pete Burke was a disappointment. ‘Sorry, Mr Boyd; not a chance. I’ve got three rigs and they’re all out. I can’t do anything for you for another month — I’m booked up solid.’

That was bad. I said, ‘Not even for a bonus — a big one.’

He spread his hands. ‘I’m sorry.’

I looked from his office window into his yard. ‘There’s a rig there,’ I said. ‘What about that?’

He chuckled. ‘Call that a rig! It’s a museum piece.’

‘Will it go through forty feet of clay and bring back cores?’ I asked.

‘If that’s all you want it to do, it might — with a bit of babying.’ He laughed. ‘I tell you, that’s the first rig I had when I started this business, and it was dropping apart then.’

‘You’ve got a deal,’ I said. ‘If you throw in some two-inch coring bits.’

‘Think you can operate it? I can’t spare you a man.’

‘I’ll manage,’ I said, and we got down to the business of figuring out how much it was worth.

I left Burke loading the rig on to the jeep and went in search of a fellow geologist. I found one at the oil company headquarters and bummed the use of a laboratory for a couple of hours. One test-tube full of mud was enough to tell me what I wanted to know: the mineral content was largely montmorillonite as I had suspected, the salt content of the water was under four grams a litre — another bad sign — and half-an-hour’s intensive reading of Grim’s Applied Clay Mineralogy told me to expect the worst.

But inductive reasoning can only go so far and I had to drill to make sure. By early afternoon I was on my way back to Fort Farrell with that drilling rig which looked as if it had been built from an illustration in Agricola’s De Re Metallica.

Next morning, while inhaling the stack of hot-cakes Mac put before me, I said, ‘I want an assistant, Mac. Know any husky young guy who isn’t scared of the Mattersons?’

‘There’s me.’

I looked at his scrawny frame. ‘I want to haul a drilling-rig up the escarpment by the dam. You couldn’t do it, Mac.’

‘I guess you’re right,’ he said dejectedly. ‘But can I come along anyway?’

‘No harm in that, if you think you’re up to it. But I must have another man to help me.’

‘What about Clarry Summerskill — he doesn’t like Matterson and he’s taken a fancy to you?’

I said dubiously, ‘Clarry isn’t exactly my idea of a husky young guy.’

‘He’s pretty tough,’ said Mac. ‘Any guy called Clarence who survives to his age must be tough.’

The idea improved with thinking. I could handle a drilling-rig but the stone-age contraption I’d saddled myself with might be troublesome and it would be handy to have a mechanic around. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Put it to him. If he agrees, ask him to bring a tool kit — he might have to doctor a diseased engine.’

‘He’ll come,’ said Mac cheerfully. ‘His bump of curiosity won’t let him keep away.’

By mid-morning we were driving past the powerhouse and heading up the escarpment road. Matterson’s construction crew didn’t seem to have made any progress in getting that armature towards its resting-place, and there was just as much mud, but more churned up than ever. We didn’t stop to watch but headed up the hill, and I stopped about halfway up.

‘This is it.’ I pointed across the escarpment. ‘I want to drill the first hole right in the middle, there.’

Clarry looked up the escarpment at the sheer concrete wall of the dam. ‘Pretty big, isn’t it? Must have cost every cent of what I heard.’ He looked back down the hill. ‘Those guys likely to make trouble, Mr Boyd?’