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

I came to in the firm belief that I was on hoard a ship. “You okay, Bruce?” It was Boy’s voice. He was propping me up in the seat of a cab and we were grinding slowly through thick snow. “You’ll be all right soon. There’s hot food waiting for us at the ranch house. We had to stop to fix chains. The snow is pretty deep in places.”

I remember vaguely being spoon-Ted hot soup, and men moving about, talking excitedly, laughing, pumping my hand. And then I was lying in a bed. I was back in the Kingdom. The rig was here at last. We were going to drill now. And with that thought I went to sleep and stayed asleep for twelve hours.

And when I woke up. Boy was there beside me, and be was grinning and saying that the rig would be set up before nightfall. When I went down to the drilling site the next morning I found the rig erected and the draw works being lightened down on the steel plates of the platform. The traveling block was already suspended from the crown, and the kelly was in its rat housing. They had already begun to dig a mud sump and there were several lengths of pipe ready in the rack.

I stood there with Boy and Garry and stared across to the dam less than a mile away. The sun was shining and already the snow was beginning to melt. I was thinking it was time Trevedian came storming into our camp. But nobody seemed to be taking any notice of us.

“We’ll have to mount a guard,” I said.

Boy wiped the sweat from his face. “I’m sleeping down here,” he said. “And I’ve got that pistol of yours. There are four rides on the site as well.”

I nodded, still looking across to the dam. “The next move is with them,” I murmured half to myself.

Garry chuckled. “Mebbe he’s had enough.”

I turned away. I didn’t like it. The natural thing would have been for Trevedian to show up. It wasn’t in the nature of the man to take it lying down. But he didn’t come that day, or the next, or the next. I didn’t feel up to heavy work, so I took over the cooking again. On Tuesday morning, Garry spudded in. I stood on the platform and watched the block come down and the bit lowered into the hole. We had started to drill Campbell No. 2.

I walked slowly back to the ranch house to the music of the drill, the noise of it drowning the irritating chatter of the mixers at the dam. I went into the kitchen and began peeling potatoes for the evening meal.

Half an hour later I heard a patter of feet, the door was pushed open and a big brown collie fell upon me, barking and licking my hand and jumping up to get at my face. It was Moses. I went out into the gray murk of the morning, and there, coming up beside the barn, was Jean, riding a small pinto. She pulled up as she saw me, and sat there, looking at me. Her face looked strained and almost sad.

“Mac said you needed a cook?” Her voice was toneless.

“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything more to say. And yet there was a singing in my blood as though the Bun were shining and the violets just opening.

“Well, I hope I’ll do.” She climbed stiffly down from the saddle, undid her pack and walked slowly toward me. She stopped when she reached the doorway because I was blocking it. We looked at each other a moment.

“Why did you come?” I asked at length.

She lowered her gaze. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I just had to, I guess. I brought you this.” She handed me a bulky envelope. “Now I’d like to change, please.”

I stood aside and she went through into the bedroom. I turned the envelope over. It was postmarked London. Inside was a whole sheaf of typewritten pages, the newspaper report of my grandfather’s trial, which I had asked a friend to copy for me. I stabled the pinto and then I sat down and read through the report. Stuart Campbell had himself gone into the witness box. One section of his evidence hit me like a blow between the eyes. It occurred during cross-examination by his own counsel:

COUNSEL: This well you were drilling in 1913 — why did you suddenly abandon it?

WITNESS: We struck a sill of igneous rock. We were operating a cable-tool drill and it was too light for the job.

COUNSEL: At what depth was this?

WITNESS: About five thousand six hundred feet. We had to have a heavier drill and that meant more capital.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Five thousand, six hundred! And our geophysical survey showed an anticline at five thousand, five hundred. The anticline was nothing but the sill of igneous rock that my grandfather had struck in 1913. What a fool I’d been not to get bold of the account of this case before starling to drill. Why hadn’t my grandfather mentioned it in his progress report? Afraid of discouraging me, I suppose. I got to my feet and went over to the window and stood there wondering what I was going to do. But there wasn’t anything I could do. It hadn’t stopped my grandfather from trying to drill another well.

“I wish somebody from back home would write me nice long letters like that.”

I swung round to find Jean standing beside me. “It’s just a business letter,” I said quickly. I couldn’t tell her that what she had brought me was the full account of Stuart Campbell’s trial.

That night the stars shone and it was almost warm. The second shift was working and we strolled down to the rig, talking trivialities, carefully avoiding anything personal. And then, after a pause, I said, “Didn’t you like it in Vancouver?”

“Yes, I was having fun — dancing and sailing. But—” She hesitated and then sighed. “Somehow it wasn’t real. I think I’ve lost the capacity to enjoy myself.”

“So you came back to Come Lucky?” She nodded. “To escape again?”

“To escape?” She looked up at me and there was a tired set to her mouth. “No. Because it was the only place I could call home. And then—” She walked on in silence for a bit. Finally she said. “Did you have to slap Peter Trevedian in the face like that?”

“I had to get the rig up here. It was the only way.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she sighed. “Yes. I suppose so.”

We came to the rig and climbed onto the platform and stood there watching the table turning and the block slowly inching down as the drill bit into the rock two hundred feet below us. Bill was standing beside the driller.

“What are you making now?” I shouted to him.

“About eight feet an hour!”

Eight feet an hour. I did a quick calculation. Roughly two hundred a day. “Then twenty-five days — say a month — should see us down to the anticline?”

He nodded. “If we can keep this rate of drilling up!”

We stayed until they shut down at midnight. We were working two teams of four on ten-hour shifts and closing down from midnight to four A.M., Boy and I were taking it in turns to stand guard on the rig, Moses acting as watch dog.

We were soon settled into a regular routine. June dragged into July and each day two more lengths of pipe had been added to the length of the drill. The heat at midday became intense when the sun shone, and the nights were leas cold. And all the time the alfalfa grew and the Kingdom was carpeted with lupines and tiger lilies and a host of other flowers.

And in all that period Trevedian had not once come near us. The work at the dam was going on night and day now. Once we rode over at night to have a look at it, and where the Campbell land stopped and the Trevedian land began the boundary was marked by a heavy barbed-wire fence. There was a guard on the hoist and on the dam itself, and they carried guns and had guard dogs.

All the time I had the uncanny feeling that we were all waiting for something to happen. Fergus couldn’t ignore us indefinitely. He didn’t dare let us bring in a well. And there was Trevedian. Jean’s phrase — about slapping Trevedian in the face — stuck in my mind. The man was biding his time. I felt it. And so did Jean. Sometimes I’d find her standing, alone and solitary, her work forgotten, staring toward the dam.