Campbell's Kingdom (24 page)

I rode over and had a look at it. The metal was rotten with age. The teeth of the big cog wheel disintegrated into a brown powder at the touch of my fingers. The wooden baulks that had formed the base of the rig were so rotten I could put my fist through them. There was the remains of a hole with a dirty scum of water in it. I called to Boy. ‘Where's the top of the anticline?'

‘We're on it now,' he shouted back.

I stared at the rusty monument to my grandfather's one and only attempt to drill and wondered how he'd felt when they'd had to give up. A whole lifetime lost for the sake of a thousand odd feet of drilling. I turned and rode slowly back to the ranch-house.

After that first day I took over the commissariat and the cooking, so relieving the survey team to some extent. The weather became unsettled. Sometimes it snowed, sometimes it blew. The change from sunshine to almost blizzard conditions could be astonishingly rapid.

Shortly after midday on the Monday Boy left Bill and Don drilling the second shot hole in the longitudinal traverse and we saddled our horses and started out for the Saddle and the pony trail down to Thunder Creek. It was blowing half a gale and mare's tails of snow were streaming in a white drift from the crests of the mountains. It had snowed during the night and part of the morning and the Kingdom lay under a white drift. The two trucks were black specks about a mile from the ranch-house. We could see the drill working, but the sound of it was lost in the wind.

As we neared the crest of the Saddle wind-blown drifts of snow stung our faces. The going became treacherous and we had to lead the horses, Boy leading the spare as well as his own. On the crest we met the full force of the wind. It stung the eyes and drove the breath down into our throats. ‘Sure you're okay?' Boy shouted. ‘I can manage if you feel—'

‘I'm fine,' I shouted back.

He looked at me for a moment, his eyes slitted against the thrust of wind and powdered snow. Then he nodded and we went on down the other side on a long diagonal for the line of the timber.

As we dropped down from the crests the snow worried us less. Through blurred eyes I got occasional glimpses of the road snaking up the valley from the lake. Sometimes there was movement on the road, a truck grinding up towards the hoist. And as we neared the shelter of the timber the great fault opened out to the left and we could see the slide and men moving around the little square box that was the concrete housing of the hoist.

The going was easier once we reached the timber though we were hampered by soft drifts of deep snow. I tried to memorise the trail, but it was almost impossible coming into it from above for the timber was pretty open and the pattern of drifts swirling round solitary firs or groups of firs repeated itself over and over again, all seemingly alike. We came across the track of a moose; big, splay-footed tracks that seemed to be able to cross the softest drift without sinking very deep.

Gradually the timber became denser and the trail clearer. Sheer slopes patterned by gnarled roots and deadfalls gave place to lightly timbered glades, criss-crossed with game tracks, and at one point we ploughed through almost half a mile of beaver dams. The lower we went the more game we encountered; mule-deer, moose, porcupines and an occasional coyote.

I asked Boy about bears, but he said they were still in hibernation and wouldn't be out for another month at least. He was full of information about the wildlife of the mountains. It was part of his heritage, and when I was getting tired his stories of his encounters with animals kept me going.

It was dark when we swam the ford of Thunder Creek and dismounted close by the road in the glade where Winnick had parked his car. We had some food sitting on a fallen tree. Once in a while headlights cut a swathe through the night and a truck went rumbling up the road to the hoist. We had a cigarette and then rolled ourselves in our blankets on a groundsheet. The horses were hobbled and I could hear their rhythmic munching and the queer jerking sound they made as they reared both front legs together to move forward. It was bitterly cold, but I must have slept for suddenly Boy was shaking me. ‘It's nearly two,' he said.

We went out then to the edge of the road, standing in the screen of a little plantation of cottonwood. Headlights blazed and we heard the roar of a diesel. The heavy truck lumbered past, lighting the curving line of the road. We watched the timber close behind its red tail-light. Darkness closed in round us again and we listened as the sound of the truck's engine slowly died away up the valley. Then all was still, only the murmur of the wind in the trees and the unchanging sound of water pouring over rocks. Somewhere far above us the cry of a coyote split the night like a bloodcurdling scream. An owl flapped from a tree.

It was nearly 3 a.m. when the darkness began to glow with light and we heard the sound of a car. Boy pushed forward to the edge of the road. The headlights brightened until the whole pattern of the brush around us stood in stark silhouette against two enormous eyes of light. It was a car all right and we flagged it down with our arms. It stopped and Garry Keogh got out, his thick body bulkier than ever in a sheepskin jacket. ‘Sorry I'm late. Had a flat. What in hell are we playing at, meeting like this in the middle of the night?'

Boy held up his hand, his head on one side. A faint murmur sounded above the noise of the creek. ‘Is there a truck behind you?' Boy asked.

‘Yeah. Passed it about six miles back.'

‘Quick then.' Boy jumped into the car with him and guided him off the road to the glade where our horses were. We sat in the car with the lights off watching the heavy truck trundle by.

‘What's all the secrecy about?' Garry asked.

I tried to explain, but I don't think I really convinced him. If Trevedian had been in charge of a rival drilling outfit I think he'd have understood. But he just couldn't take the construction of a dam seriously. ‘You boys are jittery, that's all. Why don't you do a deal with this guy Trevedian. You've got to use the hoist anyway to get a drilling rig up there. You're not planning to take it up by pack pony, are you?' And his great laugh went echoing around the silence of the glade.

I told him the whole story then, sitting there in the car with the engine ticking over and the heater switched on. When I had finished he asked a few questions and then he was silent for a time. At length he said, ‘Well, how do we get the rig up there?'

I said, ‘We'll talk about that later, shall we—when you've had a look at the place and decided whether you're willing to take a chance on it.'

The lateness of the hour and the warmth of the heater was making us all drowsy. We settled down in the seats then and slept till the first grey light of day filtered through the glade. Then we covered the car with brushwood and started back up the trail to the Kingdom.

It was midday before we reached the top of the Saddle. It was snowing steadily and the wind was from the east. My heart was pumping erratically and I was so tired I found it difficult to stay in the saddle. When we got to the ranch-house I went straight to bed and stayed there till the following morning. Next morning my buttocks were sore and the muscles of my legs stiff with riding, but once I was up I felt fine. My heart seemed steadier and slower and I had recovered my energy. Garry Keogh spent the day out with Boy riding over the territory, planning his drilling site, working out in his own mind the chances of success. In the evening, after supper, we got down to business.

We had a roaring log fire going and hot coffee. Garry sat with his notes in his hand and a cigar clamped between his teeth, the bald dome of his head furrowed by a frown. ‘You think we'll run into a sill of basalt at about four thousand?' He looked across at Boy.

‘I think so,' Boy answered. ‘That or something like it stopped Campbell Number One in 1913. They were drilling by cable-tool and they just couldn't make any impression. With a rotary drill—'

‘It's still a snag,' Garry cut in. He turned to me. ‘I think I told you, Bruce, I could stand two months operating on my own, no more. Well, that's about the size of it. Boy here says if we're going to hit oil, we'll hit it at around five, six thousand. That's okay, but this isn't Leduc. We aren't down in the plains here. There's this sill he talks about, and down to that it'll be metamorphic rocks all the way. It'll be tough going. And on top of that we may drill crooked and have to fool around with a whipstock. Anything could happen in this sort of country. And we're working on a financial shoe-string with no facilities. We can't take a core sample. We've no geologist. We'll just have to log on the cuttings—by guess and by God. We've no certainty that we're on top of country that is oil bearing. We've no knowledge whatever of the nature of the strata at five thousand feet. We're working entirely in the dark with minimum crew, no financial backing and against time.' He sat back, sucking at his cigar. ‘The only clue to what's under the surface is this story of Campbell's that thirty years ago he saw some oil on the waters of Thunder Creek.' He shook his head. ‘It's a hell of a risk.'

‘Campbell knew a lot about oil,' Boy murmured.

‘So you tell me.'

‘Bruce showed you the old man's progress report. It's obvious from that that he's a sound geologist.'

‘Sure. I've seen what he's written, but how do I know that it bears any relation to the ground itself? All I know about Campbell is that he was reckoned to be crazy.'

‘I can confirm a good deal of it from my own observations,' Boy said.

‘Yeah, the straightforward stuff. But what about the conclusions he draws? Can you confirm them?'

‘There's nothing particularly revolutionary about them,' Boy answered. ‘We all know that the oil deposits in the North American continent derive from the marine life deposited on the floor of the central sea area that ran from Hudson's Bay to the Caribbean. These mountains here are a fairly recent formation. I know most geologists take the view that this is not a likely area. Yet the fact remains that many of the first wells were drilled at points of seepage on the eastern escarpment. Because those wells were not successful it doesn't necessarily mean that there wasn't any oil there. They were drilled early in the century and their equipment wasn't good enough to reach down to any great depth.'

‘In two months I won't be able to drill much deeper than five thousand, not in this sort of country.' Garry relit his cigar. ‘There's water here, there's all the ingredients for making mud of about the right consistency, the weather shouldn't be too bad from now on and Winnick has a sound reputation, but . . .' He shook his head gloomily.

‘If Louis's original report had been based on the results we're now giving him—in other words if those recording tapes hadn't been switched—Roger Fergus would have drilled a well up here by now.'

‘Sure and he would. But I'm not Roger Fergus. He could afford to lose any amount of dough. I can't. I'm just in the clear and I mean to stay that way.' He rubbed his fingers along the line of his jaw. ‘The only thing that makes me go on considering the idea is this fifty-fifty proposition of yours, Bruce.' He stared at me with a sort of puzzled frown. ‘I keep telling myself I'm a fool, but still I keep considering it. Perhaps if I were younger . . .' He shook his head slowly from side to side like a dog trying to remove a buzzing from its ears. ‘You know if this location were just beside a good highway I guess I'd be crazy enough to fall for your proposition, but how the hell am I to get my rig up here?'

‘By the hoist,' I said.

He stared at me. ‘But you've told me about this fellow Trevedian. He owns the valley of Thunder Creek. He owns the road and he owns the hoist and he doesn't aim to have any drilling done up here. Because of him I have to come here at dead of night, hide my wagon in the brush and ride up here. All this tom-foolery because he's got guards on the valley route and now you tell me you're going to bring my rig up by the hoist.'

‘I think it can be done,' I said. ‘Once.'

‘I see.' His leathery face cracked in a grin. ‘You're going to play it rough, eh? Well, I don't know that I blame you, considering what you've told me. But I've got my equipment to think of.'

‘It's insured, isn't it?'

‘Yeah, but I don't know how the insurance company would view my acting outside the law, busting through two guard points and then slinging my equipment up through a mile of space to a mountain eyrie. How do I get it down anyway?'

‘I don't think there'll be any difficulty about that,' I said. ‘If you bring in a well here, you won't need to get it down. And if you don't then I think you'll find Trevedian only too happy to give you a free passage out of the area.'

‘Yeah.' He nodded slowly. ‘That's reasonable, I guess. What about the cable? Will it take my equipment?'

‘I don't know what the breaking point is,' I said. ‘But I've been up it and from what I've seen it'll take about three or four times the tonnage that can be got on to the cage.' I turned to Boy. ‘You brought your trucks up by it last year. What's your view? Will it take Garry's rig?'

‘I don't think you need worry about that, Garry,' he said. ‘It's like Bruce says. The thing is built to carry a heavy tonnage.'

He nodded slowly. ‘And how do you propose we get the use of this hoist? As I understand it, there's a guard at the entrance to Thunder Creek, another at the hoist terminal and near the terminal there's a camp. I'll have five, possibly six trucks—' He hesitated. ‘Yes, it will be at least six trucks if we're to haul in everything we need for the whole operation, including fuel and pipe.' He shook his head. ‘It's a heck of an operation, you know. We'll need two tankers for a start and two truck-loads of pipe. Then there's the rig, draw works, all equipment, tools, spares, everything. And casing.' He hesitated and looked across at Boy. ‘We'd have to take a chance on that. In this sort of country it might be all right. Well, say seven trucks. That'll mean a minimum of four to five hours at the hoist. Now how the hell do you think you're going to fix that?'