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

“Why not? She’s in love with you.” I didn’t answer. “Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“And you? Are you in love with her?”

Slowly I nodded my head. “But I can’t marry her,” I said. And then briefly I told her why. “That’s also a secret between us,” I said when I had finished.

“Doesn’t it occur to you she might want to look after you?”

“She’s been hurt once,” I said. “She doesn’t want to be hurt again. I can’t do that to her. I must go now.”

“Yes, you must go now.” She opened the door for me. As I stepped out into the night I turned. She looked very frail and lonely, standing there in the lamplight. And yet beneath the patina of age I thought I saw the girl who’d known my grandfather. She must have been very lovely. I bent and kissed her. Then I got on my horse and rode quickly out of Come Lucky.

I flew into Calgary from Edmonton on the morning of August seventh to be met by Calgary Tribune placards announcing: Larsen Company’s Dam Nearing Completion. I deposited the gold in the hank and arranged for the necessary funds to be mailed to Boy at Weasel’s Farm, and then went on to my lawyers. There I learned that the case I had come to fight had been dropped. I asked Letour whether this was as a result of my threat to seek an injunction restraining Fergus from flooding the Kingdom, but he shook his head. No application for an injunction had been made and he explained to me at some length the legal difficulties of making such an application. He advised me that my only hope was to bring in a well before the flooding of the Kingdom. The scale of compensation likely to be granted by the courts would then be so great as to make it impracticable for the Larsen Company to proceed with the project.

I went back to my hotel feeling that my trip to Calgary had been wasted. Not only that, but Fergus was apparently so sure of himself he didn’t consider me worth bothering about. And since Trevedian was undoubtedly keeping a watch on the rig, I could well understand this. He must know by now that we were in bad country and drilling only two feet per hour.

I would have pulled out of Calgary the next morning, only something happened that evening which radically altered my plans. I hadn’t been near the Calgary Tribune, feeling it would be a waste of time and that they had now lost interest in our drilling operations. However, I had phoned Winnick and I suppose he must have let them know I was in town, for the editor himself rang me up in the afternoon and asked me to have dinner with him. And when I got to his club I found he had a CBC man with him, and the whole picture suddenly brightened, for the CBC man wanted me to broadcast. The reason for his interest was in the copy of a big American magazine he had with him which contained an article beaded:

Will the dream of an old-timer come true? Will his grandson strike oil up in his Rocky Mountain kingdom or will the men building the dam flood the place first?

The author was Steve Strachan, the Calgary Tribune reporter who had visited us.

This sudden interest in what we were doing gave me fresh heart. I stayed on and did the broadcast, for I was already subconsciously working toward obtaining the best compensation I could from the courts. Upon what they awarded me depended the extent to which I could repay those who had helped me. I made it clear, therefore, both in the broadcast and in the article I wrote for the Calgary Tribune, that we were into the igneous country that had stopped Campbell No. 1 and that given a few more weeks we should undoubtedly bring in a well.

This false optimism produced immediate dividends, for on the morning after the broadcast Acheson came to see me. He looked pale and angry, which was not surprising, since Fergus had sent him with an offer of a hundred thousand dollars. I was very tempted to accept.

Then Acheson said, “Of course, in view of the publicity you have been getting, we shall require a statement that you are now of the opinion that Campbell was wrong and there is no oil in that area of the Rockies.”

I went over to the window and stood looking out across the railway tracks. To make that statement meant finally branding my grandfather as a liar and a cheat. It would be a final act of cowardice.

“Would Fergus agree to free transportation of all vehicles and personnel down by the hoist and over the Thunder Valley road?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

He glanced at his watch. “You’ll have to think fast then. This offer is open till midday.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Fergus wants to get rid of the whole business.”

He left me then, and for an hour I paced up and down the room, trying to balance my unwillingness to accept defeat against the need to repay the men who had helped me. And then the bellhop came and I knew why they had been in such a hurry to get a decision out of me. It was a telegram from Boy, dispatched from Keithley:

THROUGH SILL AT FIFTY-EIGHT HUNDRED. DRILLING TEN PER HOUR. EVERYONE OPTIMISTIC SECOND CONSIGNMENT FUEL ON WAY. BOY.

I stared at it, excitement mounting inside me, reviving my hopes, bursting like a Hood over my mood of pessimism.

I seized hold of the phone and rang Acheson. “I just wanted to let you know that half a million dollars wouldn’t buy the Kingdom now,” I told him. “We’re in the clear and drilling ten feet an hour. You knew that, didn’t you? Well, you can tell Fergus it’s going to cost him a fortune to flood the Kingdom.”

I slammed down the receiver without waiting for him to reply. The crooks! They’d known we were through the sill. They’d known it by the speed at which the traveling block moved down the rig. That’s why they’d increased their offer. I was laughing aloud in my excitement as I picked up the phone and rang the editor of the Calgary Tribune. I told him the whole thing, how they’d offered me a hundred thousand and they’d known all the time we were in the clear. “If they’ll only give us long enough,” I said, “we’ll bring in that well.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “We’ll run this story and I’ll write a leader that won’t do you any harm. When are you planning to go up there?”

“I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning,” I said.

“Okay. Well, don’t worry about transport. I’ll have Steve pick you up in the station wagon around nine. You don’t mind him coming up with you?”

“Of course not.”

Early the following evening Steve and I arrived in Jasper. There was little snow on the mountains now and it was still warm after the blistering heat of the day. It was only that evening, as I sat drinking beer with Jeff, that I realized I had been over a week in Calgary and hadn’t felt ill. “It’s our dry, healthy climate, I guess,” Jeff said. I nodded abstractedly, thinking how much had happened since that first time I had come through Jasper.

The next night we bunked down in the straw of the Wessels hayloft and early the following morning we rode round the north shore of Beaver Dam Lake, and when we emerged from the cottonwood, there, suddenly, straight ahead of us, were the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. I reined in my pony and sat there for a moment, staring at them, thinking of the activity going on up there, bearing the clatter of the drill, seeing the traveling block slowly descending. Jean would be there, and with luck—

I shook my reins and heeled the pony forward. My eyes were dazzled for a moment by the flash of sun on glass. It was a lorry moving on the road up to Thunder Creek. Another and another followed it — materials for the dam moving up to the hoist.

“Seems to be a lot more traffic on that road now,” Steve said.