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

Boy passed us, going to the rig. “There’s a storm brewing,” he said.

There was a ring round the moon and though it was still as sultry as an oven, there was a dampness in the air.

“Something must break soon,” Jean whispered. “I can’t stand this suspense any longer.”

“It’ll all be over tomorrow when they flood the place,” I said.

She sighed and pressed my arm and turned away. I watched her go back into the ranch house. Then slowly I walked down to the rig. Garry was driller on this shift and Don was acting as derrick man. We sat on the bench beside the draw works, smoking and feeling the drill vibrating along our spines.

“What’s that over there, beyond Solomon’s Judgment? Looks like a cloud,” Garry said.

A breath of wind touched our faces. There were no stars. It looked pitch-black and strangely solid. The wind was suddenly chill.

“It’s the storm that’s been brewing,” Boy said.

I don’t know who noticed it first — the change in the note of the drawworks Diesel. It penetrated to my mind as something different, a slowing up, a stickiness that deepened the note of the engine.

Boy shouted something, and then Garry’s voice thundered out, “The mud pump, quick!” His big body was across the platform in a flash, Don and I had jumped to our feet, but we stood there, dazed, not knowing what was happening or what had to be done. “Get off that platform!” Garry shouted up to us. “Run, you fools! Run for your lives!”

I heard Boy say, “We’ve struck it!” And then we collided in a mad scramble for the ladder. As I reached it I caught a glimpse of the traveling block out of the tail of my eye. The wire hawsers that held it suspended from the crown block were slack and the grief stem was slowly rising, pushing it upward. Then I was down the ladder and jumping for the ground, running blindly, not knowing what to expect, following the flying figures of my companions. The ground became boggy. It squelched under my feet. Then water splashed in my face and I stopped, thinking we’d reached the stream. The others had stopped too. They were standing, staring back at the rig.

The grief stem was lifted right up to the crown block now. It was held there for a moment and then, with a rending and tearing of steel, it thrust the rig up clear of the ground. Then the stem bent over. The rig toppled and came crashing to the ground. The draw works, suddenly freed of their load, raced madly with a clattering cacophony of sound. And then, in brilliant moonlight that gave the whole thing an air of unreality, we watched the pipe seemingly squeezed out of the ground like toothpaste out of a tube.

It was like that for a moment, a great snake of piping, turning and twisting upward, and then, with a roar like a hundred express trains, it was blown clear.

“Garry! Garry! Garry!” Boy’s voice sounded thin against the roar.

We splashed back toward the rig, searching for him. We stumbled against pieces of machinery, scraps of trucks that had been flung wide by the force of gas.

“Garry!”

A shape loomed up in the gloom. A hand gripped mine. “Well, we struck it!” It was Garry and his voice trembled slightly.

I’d been too dazed to consider the cause of the disaster, I still couldn’t believe it. “You mean we’ve struck oil?”

“Well, we’ve struck gas. There’ll be oil down there, too, I guess.”

“It hasn’t done your rig much good,” I said. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Oh, to hell with the rig!” He laughed. It was a queer sound, violent and trembling and rather high-pitched.

“We’ve done what we came up here to do. We’ve proved there’s oil down there. And we’ve done it in time. Come on. Let’s rout the boys out. Steve must see this. He’s our independent observer. This is going to shake the Larsen outfit.” And that high-pitched laugh sent out its trembling challenge again to the din of the gas jet.

It wasn’t until we were headed for the ranch house that I realized that the moon had vanished, swallowed by the inky blackness that was rolling across the night sky. Halfway to the house a gust of wind struck us. From the slopes of Solomon’s Judgment came a hissing sound that enveloped and obliterated the sound of the gas. And then, suddenly, a wall of water fell on us. It was a rainstorm, but as solid as if a cloud had condensed and dropped. Lightning ripped across our heads, momentarily revealing my companions as three half-drowned wraiths. And then the thunder was incessant.

Somehow we reached the ranch house. Nobody was up. The place was as silent as if it had been deserted. We stripped to the huff and built up the fire, huddling our bodies close to it and drinking some rye that Boy had found. There seemed no point in waking the others.

There was nothing to see and the storm was so violent that it was quite out of the question to take them down to have a look at the well. We drifted off to our bunks, and as my head touched the pillow I remember thinking that everything was going to be all right now. We had proved there was oil in the Kingdom. My grandfather’s beliefs were confirmed, my own life justified. And then I was asleep.

It was Jean who woke me. She seemed very excited about something and I felt desperately tired. She kept on shaking me. “Quick, Bruce! Something’s happened!”

“I know,” I mumbled, “We didn’t wake you because there was a storm.”

I rolled out of my bunk and pulled a coat on over my pajamas. I was really rather enjoying myself as she took hold of my hand and pulled me through into the ranch house and over to the window.

I don’t know quite how I had expected it to look by daylight, but when I reached the window and looked out across the Kingdom, drab gray and swept by rain, I stood appalled. There was nothing to show we’d ever drilled there or ever had a rig there. I was looking out across a wide expanse of water. It began just beyond the barns and it extended right across to the slopes of the mountains on the farther side. Trevedian had closed the sluice gates and the Kingdom was already half flooded. It was a lake, and the wind was driving across it, plowing it up into waves and flecking it with white. “Oh, God!” I said, and I dropped my head on my arms.

My name is Bruce Campbell Wetheral. On the day my physician told me I had only a few months left to live, I learned that I had inherited the Kingdom from my grandfather, Stuart Campbell. He had spent his life trying to prove there was oil in the Rockies, and his last request to me was to prove he was right.

I found two partners, Boy Bladen and Garry Keogh, and we started drilling. But from the very beginning we knew we were taking a gamble that we might lose. I had proved there was a fortune in oil in Campbell’s Kingdom, a plateau high in the Canadian Rockies. But I lost my race against time. The whole Kingdom was now flooded in the waters of a man-made lake.

A man named Henry Fergus was building a dam just below the Kingdom. When it was finished the entire Kingdom would be flooded. Also, Peter Trevedian, who worked for Fergus, had been trying to sabotage us ever since we started. For months the race was close. Then one evening Trevedian came to our camp with a notice that the dam was done and that the Kingdom would be flooded at any time. After ten o’clock the next morning, he would not be responsible for any of my equipment.

But that very night we struck gas, indicating there was oil just below. A storm broke out and we went to bed.

The next morning when I woke up, the Kingdom was flooded and our oil rig was completely covered. Trevedian had been watching us the night before and closed the dam’s sluice gates ahead of schedule.