Хэммонд Иннес - Nothing to Lose [= Campbell’s Kingdom]

My partner, Boy Bladen, had made a survey of the Kingdom which Louis Winnick, an oil consultant and surveyor, found encouraging. I took Winnick to the Kingdom. On the way up, we discovered that Trevedian had posted guards around the hoist and along the road that went part way up the mountain.

Winnick reminded me I’d lose everything if the Ham was finished before I found oil. And Winnick warned me, “Henry Fergus will go a long way to see that his money isn’t thrown away.”

There was nothing new in what he said. He was only saying what Jean had said, what I knew in my heart was inevitable. And yet, hearing it from him, coldly and clearly stated, forced me to face up to the situation. I watched him ride out across the Kingdom and then I brought a chair out into the sunshine, and most of the day I lay there, relaxed in the warmth, trying to work it out.

That night I wrote to Keogh, telling him the result of the survey to date and instructing him to talk to no one and to come up on his own in three days’ time. “Drive through from 150-Mile House without stopping, arriving at the entrance to Thunder Creek at two A.M. on the morning of Tuesday. We’ll meet you there with horses.” I gave Winnick the letter to take down.

Winnick left the next day. I was feeling so much better that I rode with him up to the top of the Saddle. High up above the Kingdom I said good-by to him and thanked him for all he’d done. I sat there watching his Email figure jogging slowly down the mountain slope till it was lost to view behind an outcrop. Then I turned my horse and slithered down through the snow back into the bowl of the Kingdom. As I came out below the timber I saw the drilling truck, like a small rectangular box, away to the right, close beside the stream that was the source of Thunder Creek. They were drilling a new shot hole as I rode up, the three of them working on the drill, which was turning with a steady rattle as it drove into the rock below.

Boy pointed toward the dam. “They’ve started!” he shouted to me above the din.

I turned and looked back at the dam. Men were moving about the concrete housing of the hoist and there were more men at the base of the dam, stacking cement bags that were being lowered to them from the cable that stretched across the top of the structure. My eye was caught by a solitary figure standing on the buttress of rock above the cable terminal. There was a glint of glass in the sunlight, a flicker like two small heliographs.

“Have you got a pair of glasses?” I shouted to Boy.

He nodded and got them from the cab of the drilling truck. Through them every detail became clear. There was no doubt about the solitary figure on the buttress. It was Trevedian and he was watching us through glasses of his own.

“Did you have to start at this end of the Kingdom?” I asked.

“Got to start somewhere,” he said. “They were bound to find out what we were up to.”

That was true enough. I swung the glasses toward the dam. The cage was just coming in with another load, two tip trucks this time and a pile of rails. More cement was being slung along the top of the dam. And then in the foreground, halfway between us and the dam, I noticed a big rusty cog wheel and some rotten balks of timber bolted together in an upright position. There were the remains of an old boiler and a shapeless mass of machinery.

“What’s that pile of junk there?” I asked Boy.

“Don’t you know?” He seemed surprised. “That’s Campbell Number One.”

“How far did they get down?”

“Don’t know. Something over four thousand, I guess.”

I stared at the rusty monument to my grandfather’s one and only attempt to drill and wondered how he’d felt when they’d had to give up. A whole lifetime lost for the sake of a thousand-odd feet of drilling. I turned and rode slowly back to the ranch house.

Shortly after midday on Monday, Boy left Bill and Don drilling the second shot hole in the longitudinal traverse and we saddled our homes and started out for the Saddle and the pony trail down to Thunder Creek. As we neared the crest of the Saddle windblown drifts of snow stung our faces. The going became treacherous and we had to lend the homes. Boy leading the spare as well as his own. On the crest we met the full force of the wind.

“Sure you’re okay?” Boy shouted. “I can manage if you feel—”

“I’m fine!” I shouted back.

He looked at me for a moment, his eyes slitted against the thrust of wind and powdered snow. Then he nodded and we went on down the other side on a long diagonal. The going was easier, once we reached the timber, though we were hampered by soft drifts of deep snow. Gradually the woods became denser and the trail clearer. In thick timber it was well blazed by the deadfalls that had been cleared by ax and saw, some of them so old that it was probably my grandfather who had cleared them. In places the trail zigzagged down almost sheer slopes patterned by the gnarled roots of the trees that clung precariously. In other places we passed through lightly timbered glades deep in grass where game tracks crisscrossed, and several times we mistook one of these tracks for the trail.

It was dark when we swam the ford of Thunder Creek and dismounted close by the road in the glade where Winnick had parked his car. We had some food, sitting on a fallen tree. Once in a while headlights cut a swath through the night and a truck went rumbling up the road to the hoist. We had a cigarette and then rolled ourselves in our blankets on a ground sheet. It was bitterly cold, but I must have slept, for suddenly Boy was shaking me. “It’s nearly two,” he said.

We went out then to the edge of the road, standing in the screen of a little plantation of cottonwood. Headlights blazed and we heard the roar of a Diesel. The heavy truck lumbered past, lighting the curving line of the road. We watched the timber close behind its red taillight. Darkness closed in round us again and we listened as the sound of its engine slowly died away up the valley. Then all was still, only the murmur of the wind in the trees and the unchanging sound of water pouring over rocks.

It was nearly three A.M. when the darkness began to glow with tight and we heard the sound of a car. Boy pushed forward to the edge of the road and flagged it down. It stopped and Garry Keogh got out, his thick body bulkier than ever in a sheepskin jacket. “Sorry I’m late. Had a flat. What are we playing at, meeting like this in the middle of the night?”

Boy held up his hand, his head on one side. A faint murmur sounded above the noise of the creek. “Is there a truck behind you?” Boy asked Garry.

“Yeah. Passed it about six miles back.”

“Quick then.” Boy jumped into the car with him and guided him off the road to the glade where our horses were. We sat in the car with the lights off, watching the heavy truck trundle by.

“What’s all the secrecy about?” Garry asked.

I tried to explain, but I don’t think I really convinced him. If Trevedian had been in charge of a rival drilling outfit, I think he’d have understood. But he just couldn’t take the construction of a dam seriously. “You boys are jittery, that’s all. Why don’t you do a deal with this guy Trevedian? You’ve got to use the hoist anyway to get a drilling rig up there. You’re not planning to take it up by pack pony, are you?” And his great laugh went echoing around the silence of the glade.

I told him the whole story then, sitting there in the car with the engine ticking over and the heater switched on. When I had finished, he asked a few questions, and then he was silent for a time. At length he said, “Well, how do we get the rig up there?”

I said, “We’ll talk about that later, shall we? When you’ve had a look at re place and decided whether you’re willing to take a chance on it.”