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

“Are you all right, Bruce?” she called.

“Yes,” I said, struggling to my feet.

“Then get on your horse.”

She leveled her gun at the hunch standing there in the street. “Now get back to Trevedian. And tell him next time he tries to shoot my dog. I’ll kill him.”

She slipped the automatic back into my saddle bag, and in silence we turned and rode down the street and out of Come Lucky. For a long time I couldn’t bring myself to speak. Only when we had reached a clearing above the ford and had dismounted did I manage to thank her.

She looked at me and then said with a wry smile, “Maybe I should thank you — for rushing in like a school kid just because of a word.”

The way she put it hurt, but there was a softness in her eyes and I let it go. “How did you know the gun was in my saddle bag?”

“I felt it there when we stopped on the way down. It was partly why I came. I was scared you might—” She hesitated and then turned away. “I don’t quite understand you, Bruce. You’re not predictable like most people.” She swung round and faced me. “Why didn’t you give up when you found you were faced with a big company?” And when I didn’t answer, she said, “It wasn’t ignorance, was it? You knew what you were up against?”

“Yes, I knew,” I said, sinking down into the warmth of the grass.

“Then why did you go on?”

“Why did you come back to Come Lucky — to the Kingdom?”

She came and sat beside me, chewing on a blade of grass. There was a long silence, and then she said, “Isn’t it about time we had things out together?”

“Why you were running away and then suddenly turned and laced life? Why I refused to give up a hopeless project? Maybe.” But I knew I couldn’t tell her the truth. I knew I had to quench thin growing intimacy. And yet I said, almost involuntarily, “Why did you leave me that gun?”

“I thought you might need it.”

I looked at her, knowing it wasn’t the real reason. She knew it, too, for she put out her hand. “Just leave it at that, Bruce. The message is there, in the weapon itself. You know what that message is as well as I do. You know the truth about my father, Paul Morton, and how he treated your grandfather. That’s why I had to come back and see Stuart. You know that, don’t you?” I nodded. “Then leave it at that, please. Don’t let’s talk about it, ever again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No, there’s nothing to be sorry about.” Her voice was very quiet, but quite firm — no tremor in it at all, no regrets. “He died as a man should die — fighting for something he believed in. He was hall French, you know, and when it came to the pinch he found he loved France more than money, more than life itself.”

She got, up and walked away then. And I lay back in the grass, dosed my eyes and was instantly asleep. It was cold when she woke me, and the valley was deep in shadow. We ate the low remaining biscuits, and then, as night closed in, we hobbled the horses and cut across the road and along the slope of the hillside. We made a detour and entered Come Lucky from above.

The two Miss Garrets welcomed us with a sort of breathless excitement. They had heard what had happened that morning, and to them our nocturnal arrival, the sense that they were hiding us from a gang of wicked men, won pure Victorian melodrama. Sarah Garret was particularly affected, talking in whispers, a high color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. Miss Ruth Garret was more practical, several times looking to the bolting of the door, getting us food and coffee and trying desperately to maintain an aloof, matter-of-fact air. I found it all a little ridiculous, and yet the reality of it was there, in our need of a safe place to stay the night, in the two burned-out trucks up in the Kingdom.

I knew that Peter Trevedian would stop at nothing to keep me from bringing in an oil well in Campbell’s Kingdom. His men had destroyed two of our trucks and had burned most of our fuel for the oil rig. If nothing else worked, I realized that Trevedian might even try to have me killed.

My grandfather, Stuart Campbell, had left to me, Bruce Campbell Wetheral, all his land in the Canadian Rockies. He had spent his life trying to prove there was oil in the Kingdom, and his last request to me was to prove he was right.

I didn’t have much time, though. A man named Henry Fergus was building a dam just below my land. When it was finished — which wouldn’t be long now — my property would be flooded. Trevedian, who owned a hoist that went up the mountain, was working exclusively for Fergus, and he wouldn’t let us use the hoist at any price.

We were down to about 4000 feet when Trevedian’s men sabotaged our fuel supply. We had enough left to drill another few hundred feet. The only way to get fuel up to the Kingdom was to pack it in on horses.

Jean Lucas, our cook, and I went down to the town of Come Lucky to see what we could arrange. In the town I got into a fight with some of Trevedian’s men. They would have killed me, but Jean held them off with a gun.

After I made arrangements with my friend, Jeff Hart, we left town. That evening we circled back and went to the house of the elderly Garret sisters to spend the night. We would be safe there — if none of Trevedian’s men found out we were still in town.

Shortly after our meal, when we were sitting having coffee, Pauline arrived. Johnny would meet me at 150-Mile House tomorrow evening or, if he couldn’t make it, the following morning. She had other news too. A stranger had arrived at, the Golden Calf. He wasn’t a fisherman and he was busy plying Mac with drinks and pumping him about our activities in the Kingdom. Boy’s visit to Calgary and Edmonton was evidently bearing fruit.

Thai night I slept in the Victorian grandeur of a feather bed. It was Sarah Garret’s room. She had moved in with her sister for the night. It was not a large room and it was cluttered with heavy, painted furniture, the marble mantelpiece and the dressing table cluttered with china bric-a-brac. For a long time I lay awake, looking at the stars, my mind busy, going over and over the possibilities of packing the necessary fuel up to the Kingdom. And then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, I heard the door open. A figure came softly into the room and stood beside my bed, looking down at me.

It was Sarah Garret. I could just see the tiny outline of her head against the window. “Are you awake?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then light a candle, please.”

I got out of bed, wrapping a blanket round me, and found my lighter. As the thin light, of the candle illumined the room, she took the candlestick from me, her hand trembling and spilling grease. “I have something to show you,” she said.

She crossed over to a big trunk in the corner. It was one of those great leather-covered things with a curved top. There was a jingle of keys and then she had it open and was lifting the lid. It was full of clothes, and the smell of lavender and mothballs was very strong.

“Will you lift the tray out, please?”

I did as she asked. Underneath were more clothes. Dresses of satin and silk piled up on the floor, beautiful lace-edged nightgowns, a parasol, painted ivory fans, necklaces of onyx and amber, a bedspread of the finest needlework.

At last the trunk was empty. With trembling fingers she felt around the edges. There was a click and the bottom moved. She took the candle from me then. “Lift it out, please.”

The false bottom of that trunk was of steel and quite heavy. And underneath were neat little tin boxes. She lifted the lid of one. It was filled with gold coins. There were several bars of gold wrapped in tissue paper, and another box contained gold dust. The last one she opened revealed several pieces of jewelry.