Campbell's Kingdom (19 page)

‘Do you know where my grandfather kept the sugar?' I asked him.

He shook his head. He had the bewildered look of a small boy. ‘All right,' I said. ‘I'll find it. You take this kettle and fill it with snow.' I held the kettle out to him and he came slowly forward and took it. ‘Ram the snow in tight,' I said. And then as he stood there, hesitating, I added, ‘You like tea, don't you?'

He nodded his big head slowly. ‘
Ja
.' And then suddenly he smiled. It almost transformed his heavy, rather brutish face. ‘We make some good tea, eh?' And he shambled out.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead and stood there for a moment thinking about Max, thinking of the hell his childhood must have been—with no mother, the boys of Come Lucky making fun of him and tying him on to broncs and bulls, having their own cruel stampede, and then the boy killed and a girl crying rape and the town trying to lynch him. I wondered how his brother had maintained his domination over him during years of absence. His childhood memories must have remained very vivid.

I found some biscuits and some canned meat. We ate them in front of the fire waiting for the snow to melt in the kettle and the water to boil. The wind moaned in the big chimney and Max sat there, wrapped in a blanket, silent and withdrawn. The kettle boiled and I made the tea. But as we sat drinking it I suddenly felt the silence becoming tense. I looked up and Max was staring at me. ‘Why do you come here?' His voice was a growl. ‘Peter say you are not to come—you are like Campbell.'

I began to talk then, telling him about my grandfather as he appeared to me, how I had come all the way from England, how I was a sick man and not expected to live. And all the time the storm beat against the house. And when silence fell between us again and I sensed the tension growing because his interest was no longer held, I searched around in my mind for something to talk to him about and suddenly I remembered the
Jungle Books
and I began to tell him the story of Mowgli. And by the time I had told him of the first visit of Shere Khan I knew I needn't worry any more. He sat enraptured. Maybe it was the first time anybody had ever taken any trouble with him. Certainly I am convinced he had never been told a story before. He listened spell-bound, the expression on his face reacting to every mood of the story. And whenever I paused he muttered fiercely. ‘Go on. Go on.'

When at length I came to the end the tears were streaming down his face. ‘It is very—beautiful.
Ja
, very beautiful.' He nodded his head slowly.

‘Better get some rest now, Max,' I said. He didn't seem to hear me, but when I repeated it, he shook his head and a worried frown puckered his forehead. ‘I must go to Come Lucky.' He clambered to his feet. ‘Peter will be angry with me.'

‘You can't go down till the storm is over,' I said.

He crossed to the door. A howl of wind and snow entered the room as he opened it. He stood there for a moment, his body a hulking shadow against the lamplit white of the driven snow. Then he shut the door again and came slowly back to the fire, shaking his head. ‘No good,' he said.

‘Do you think it'll last long?'

‘Two hours. Two days.' He shrugged his shoulders. He was accustomed to the waywardness of the mountains.

‘How did you come up here?'

‘By the old pony trail.'

‘Did you ride up then?'

‘
Ja, ja
. I ride.'

‘Where's your horse?'

‘In the stable. He is all right. There is good hay there.'

‘Well, you'd better come down with me on the hoist when it clears,' I said. ‘I don't think you'd get far on a pony trail by the time this is over.'

‘We will see,' he said and wrapped himself in his blanket and lay down in front of the fire. I went into the bedroom and got some blankets and stretched myself out near him. I felt desperately tired. I was worried, too, about Jeff down there alone at the bottom of the hoist.

I don't remember much about that night. Once I got up and put more logs on the fire. Mostly I slept in a coma of exhaustion. And then suddenly I was awake. It was bitterly cold, the fire was a dead heap of white ash and a pale glimmer of daylight crept in through the snow-bordered windows. Max was not in the room.

I pulled myself to my feet and stumbled across to the door. It had stopped snowing and I looked out on to a world of white under a grey sky. Footprints led to an open door at the far end of the half-burnt barn. They did not return. ‘Max!' My voice seemed to lose itself in the infinite stillness. ‘Max!' I followed the footsteps through deep drifts of new snow to the stable door. The place was empty. The snow was trampled here and the tracks of a horse went out into the driven white of the Kingdom, headed for the cleft.

I went back into the house, rebuilt the fire and got myself some breakfast. The warmth and the food revived me and as soon as I had finished I carried out a quick inspection of the premises. The place was built facing south, the barns spreading out from either side of the house like two arms. Fortunately Bladen's trucks were in the undamaged barn and it didn't take me long to find the spools containing the recordings of his final survey. I slipped the containers into my pocket and then I set out along the trail Max had blazed. The snow was deep in places and it took me the better part of an hour to reach the buttress of rock. From the top of it I could see the hoist. The cage was not in its staging. The thought that it might have broken down flashed into my mind. The place was so damnably still. A frozen silence seemed to have gripped the world. There were no mare's tails on the peaks of Solomon's Judgment. Not a breath of air stirred.

From the buttress Max had led his horse. Only a powdery drift of snow covered the shelving rock. It was slippery like ice. The black line of the water showed through the gap in the dam; it was the only thing that moved. To my left were the rusted remains of some machinery and part of a timbered scaffolding.

I was very tired by the time I staggered into the concrete housing of the hoist. I went straight over to the telephone, lifted the receiver and wound the handle. There was no answer. A feeling of panic crept up from my stomach. It was entirely unreasoned for I could always return to the ranch-house. I tried again and again, and then suddenly a voice was crackling in my ears. ‘Hallo! Hallo! Is that you, Bruce?' It was Jeff Hart. A sense of relief hit me and I leaned against the ice-cold concrete of the wall. ‘Yes,' I said ‘Bruce here. Is the hoist working—'

‘Thank God you're okay.' His voice sounded thin and far away. ‘I was scared stiff you'd got lost. And then that fool, Max Trevedian, came down and galloped off before I could ask him whether you were all right. Were you okay up at Campbell's place?'

‘Yes,' I said. And I told him how I'd found it.

‘You were pretty damned lucky. I'll get them to send the hoist up for you. Johnnie's here. He'll come up with it. I'm just about all in. What a hell of a night. Okay. She's on her way up now.'

I put the phone down. The big cable wheel was clanking monotonously as it turned. I went over to the slit, watching the lip of the cliff. All the valley was white and frozen.

Ten minutes later the cage dropped into its housing with a solid thud and Johnnie was there, gripping my hand as though I'd returned from the Arctic. ‘You goldarned crazy fool!' That was all he said and then he went over to the phone and rang for them to take us down. He didn't talk as we dropped through space to the slide and the concrete housing at the foot of it, I think he realised that I was just about at the end of my tether.

As we dropped into the housing at the bottom I noticed that Jeff's car had gone. In its place was one of the transport company's trucks. Johnnie had to help me over the side of the cage. Now that I was out of the Kingdom my body seemed weak and limp. The engine of the hoist died away and a man came out of the housing towards us. My vision was blurred and I didn't recognise him. And then suddenly I was looking into the angry, black eyes of Peter Trevedian. ‘Seems we got to lock our property up out here now,' he said in a hard voice. ‘Next time, let me know when you want to play around and we'll see you get a nursemaid.'

‘Cut it out, Trevedian. Can't you see he's dead beat?' Johnnie's voice sounded remote, like the surgeon's voice in an operating theatre just before you go under.

I don't remember much about that drive, just the blessed heat of the engine and the trees coming at us in an endless line of white. Then we were at the bunkhouse and Jean was there and several others and they half-carried me up to the hotel. The next thing I knew I was up in my room and my body was sinking into warm oblivion, surrounded by hot-water bottles.

It was getting dark when I woke. Johnnie was sitting by the window reading a magazine. He looked up as I stirred. ‘Feeling better?'

I nodded and sat up. ‘I feel fine,' I said. There was a note of surprise in my voice. I hadn't felt so good for a long time. And I was hungry, too.

He rolled a cigarette, lit it for me and put it in my mouth. ‘Boy got in today. Wants to see you as soon as you feel okay.'

‘Boy Bladen?'

‘Yeh. He's got an Irishman with him—a drilling contractor, name of Garry Keogh. And your lawyer feller, Acheson, rang through. He's coming up here to see you tomorrow. That's about all the news, I guess. Except that Trevedian's madder'n hell about your going up to the Kingdom.'

‘Because I used his hoist?'

‘Mebbe.'

‘Did McClellan object?'

‘Oh, Jimmy's okay. He was just scared you'd gone and killed yourself. Oh, I nearly forgot.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. ‘Mac asked me to give you this.' He tossed it on to the bed.

It was a long envelope and bulky. It was sealed with wax. I turned it over and saw it was postmarked Calgary. ‘That'll be Acheson,' I said. ‘Another copy of the deed of sale for the Kingdom. He just doesn't seem able to take No for an answer.' I put it on the table beside me. ‘Johnnie.'

‘Yeh?'

‘I'm hungry. Do you think you could get them to produce something for me to eat?'

‘Sure. What would you like?'

‘I wouldn't mind a steak. A big, juicy steak.'

He cocked his head on one side, peering at me as though he were examining a horse. ‘Seems the Kingdom agrees with you. I was only saying to Jeff just now that you looked a hell of a lot better than when we saw you at Jasper.' He turned towards the door. ‘Okay. I'll tell Pauline to cook you up something real big in the way of a T-bone steak. All right for Boy and Keogh to come up?'

I nodded. ‘What's the time?'

‘A little after seven.'

I had slept for over twelve hours. I got up and had a wash. I was still towelling myself when footsteps sounded on the stairs. It was Boy Bladen and there was something about the way he erupted into the room that took me back to my school days. He was like a kid bursting with news. The man with him was big and heavy and solid with a battered face and broken teeth. His clothes, like himself, were crumpled and shapeless. And in that shapelessness as well as in the loose hang of his arms, the relaxed state of his muscles, there was something really tough. He looked like a man whom the world had tossed from one end to the other and battered all the way.

‘Bruce. This is Garry Keogh.' I found my hand engulfed in the rasping grip of a fist that seemed like a chunk of rock. Garry Keogh took off his hat and tossed it on to the chair. His grizzled hair was cut short and he was partly bald. He looked like an all-in wrestler, but his eyes were those of a dreamer with a twinkle of humour in them that softened his face to something friendly. ‘I've almost talked him into doing the drilling for us,' Boy added. ‘It was Garry's rig I was wildcatting on during the winter.'

I stared at the big rig operator. ‘You think there's oil up there?'

‘Sure and there may be.' He was Irish, but he spoke slowly, as though words were an unaccustomed commodity. It gave emphasis to everything he said. ‘Boy's impetuous, but he's no fool. I never met Campbell. I heard he was a crazy bird. But then the story of every strike is the story of men who were thought crazy till they were proved to have staked a mine.' He grinned, showing the gaps in his teeth. ‘My father went to the Yukon in '98. That's where I was born.'

‘But I don't own the mineral rights of the Kingdom,' I said. ‘Didn't Boy tell you? They were mortgaged to Roger Fergus by my grandfather's company and now that he's dead they'll pass to his son.'

Garry Keogh turned to Boy. ‘Why the hell didn't you tell me that?'

‘But—' Boy was staring at me. ‘Louis Winnick told me the old man had given you back the mineral rights. The day after you saw Roger Fergus he sent for Louis. He said he'd left him a legacy under his will. He told him about your visit and instructed him that he was to give you all the help you needed—free of any charge. He said it was a condition of the legacy. He wouldn't have done that unless he'd known you were free to go ahead and drill in the Kingdom if you wanted to. You haven't heard from the old man?'

I shook my head.

‘You've had no communication from him at all, or from his lawyers?'

‘Nothing,' I said. ‘The only mail I've had—' I stopped then and turned to the table beside the bed. I picked up the envelope and split the seal. Inside was a package of documents. The letter attached to them wasn't from Acheson. It was on Bank of Canada notepaper and it read:

On the instructions of our client, Mr Roger Fergus, we are enclosing documents relating to certain mineral rights mortgaged to our client by the Campbell Oil Exploration Company. Cancellation of the mortgage is effective as from the date of this letter and we are instructed to inform you that our client wishes you to know that from henceforth neither he nor his estate will have any claim on these rights and further that any debts outstanding with the company referred to above, for which these documents were held as security, are cancelled. You are requested to sign the enclosed receipt and forward it . . .