High Citadel / Landslide

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘Maybe uranium,’ I said. ‘But I doubt it. Could be thorium.’ I looked at the rock closely, then tossed it away casually. ‘That stuff’s not payable, but it’s an indication. It’s an interesting geological structure round here.’

  They looked at each other, a little startled; then the big man said, ‘That may be, but you’re still on private land.’

  I said pleasantly, ‘You can’t stop me prospecting here.’

  ‘Oh no?’ he said belligerently.

  ‘Why don’t you check with your boss? Might be better that way.’

  The smaller man said, ‘Yeah, Novak, let’s check with Waystrand. I mean, uranium—or this other stuff—it sounds important.’

  The big man hesitated, then said in a heavy tone, ‘Have you got a name, mister?’

  ‘The name’s Boyd,’ I said. ‘Bob Boyd.’

  ‘Okay, Boyd. I’ll see the boss. But I still think you’re not going to stay round here.’

  I watched them go away and smiled, slipping the watch back on my wrist. So Waystrand was some kind of a boss up here. McDougall had said he’d been given a good job at the dam. I had a score to settle with him. I glanced up at the telephone line which followed the road. The big man would tell Waystrand and Waystrand would get on the telephone to Fort Farrell and Howard Matterson’s reaction was predictable—he’d blow up.

  It wasn’t ten minutes before the jeep came back followed by another. I recognized Waystrand—he’d filled out a lot in the last eighteen months; his chest was broader, he looked harder and he wasn’t so much the kid still wet behind the ears. But he still wasn’t as big as I was, and I reckoned I could take him on if I had to, although I’d have to make it quick before the other two characters could get started. Odds of three to one were not too good.

  Waystrand smiled wickedly as he came up. ‘So it’s you. I wondered about that when I heard the name. Mr Matterson’s compliments and will you get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Which Mr Matterson?’

  ‘Howard Matterson.’

  ‘So you’re still running and telling tales to him, Jimmy,’ I said caustically.

  He balled his fists. ‘Mr Matterson said I was to get you off this land nice and easy, with no trouble.’ He was holding himself in with an effort. ‘I owe you something, Boyd; and it wouldn’t take much for me to give it to you. Mr Matterson said if you wouldn’t go quietly I had to see that you went anyway. Now, get off this land and back to Fort Farrell. It’s up to you if you go under your own power or if you’re carried off.’

  I said, ‘I have every right to be here.’

  Waystrand made a quick sign. ‘Okay, boys. Take him.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ve had my say—I’ll go.’ It would be pointless to get beaten up at this stage, although I would dearly have loved to wipe the contemptuous grin off Waystrand’s face.

  ‘You’re not so brave, Boyd; not when you’re facing a man expecting a fight.’

  ‘I’ll take you on any time,’ I said. ‘When you haven’t got a gun.’

  He didn’t like that, but he did nothing. They watched me pick up my gear and stow it in the Land-Rover and then Waystrand climbed into his jeep and drove slowly down the hill. I followed in the Land-Rover and the other jeep came after me. They were taking no chances of my slipping away.

  We got down to the bottom of the escarpment and Waystrand slowed, waving me to a stop. He wheeled round in the jeep and came alongside. ‘Wait here, Boyd; and don’t try anything funny,’ he said, then he shot off and waved down a logging truck that had just come down the hill. He spoke to the driver for a couple of minutes and then came back. ‘Okay, big man; on your way—and don’t come back, although I’d sure like it if you did.’

  ‘I’ll be seeing you, Jimmy,’ I said. ‘That’s for sure.’ I slammed in the gear-lever and drove on down the road, following the loaded logging truck which had gone on ahead.

  It wasn’t very long before I caught up with it. It was going very slowly and I couldn’t pass because this was in one of those places where the road builders had made a cutting right down to bedrock and there were steep banks of earth on either side. I couldn’t understand why this guy was crawling, but I certainly didn’t want to take the chance of passing and being squeezed to a pulp by twenty tons of lumber and metal.

  The truck slowed even more and I crawled behind at less than walking pace, fuming at the delay. You put an ordinary nice guy in an automobile and he loses all the common decency he ever had. A guy who’ll politely open a door for an old lady will damn’ near kill the same old lady by cutting across her bows at sixty miles an hour just to beat a stop light, and he’ll think nothing of it. This guy in front probably had his troubles and must have had a good and sound reason for going so slowly. I was in no particular hurry to get back to Fort Farrell but still I sat there and cursed—such is the relationship between a man and his auto.

  I glanced into the mirror and was startled. The guy in front certainly had good reasons for going slowly, for coming behind at a hell of a lick was another logging truck, an eighteen-wheeler—twenty or more tons moving at thirty miles an hour. He got so close before he slammed on anchors that I heard the piercing hiss of his air-brakes and he slowed to our crawl with the ugly square front of his truck not a foot from the rear of the Land-Rover.

  I was the filling in the nasty sandwich. I could see the driver behind laughing fit to bust and I knew that if I wasn’t careful there’d be some red stuff in the sandwich which wouldn’t be ketchup. The Land-Rover lurched a little as the heavy fender of the truck rammed into the rear, and there was a crunching noise. I trod delicately on the gas pedal and inched nearer to the truck in front—I couldn’t move much nearer or else I’d have a thirty-inch log coming through the windshield. I remembered this cutting from the way in: it was a mile long and right now we were about a quarter way through. The next three-quarters of a mile was going to be tricky.

  The truck behind blared its horn and a gap opened up in front as the guy ahead put on speed. I pressed on the gas but not fast enough, because the rear truck rammed me again, harder this time. This was going to be trickier than I thought; it looked as though we were going to do a speed run, and that could be goddam dangerous.

  We came to a dip and the speed increased and we zoomed down at forty miles an hour, the truck behind trying to climb up the exhaust pipe of the guy in front and not worrying too much about me, caught in the middle. My hands were sweating and were slippery on the wheel, and I had to do some tricky work with gas pedal, clutch and brake. One mistake on my part—or on theirs—and the Land-Rover would be mashed into scrap-iron and I’d have the engine in my lap.

  Three more times I was rammed from behind and I hated to think what was happening to my gear. And once I was nipped, caught between the heavy steel fenders of the two trucks for a fraction of a second. I felt the compression on the chassis and I swear the Land-Rover was momentarily lifted from the ground. There was a log rubbing on the windshield and the glass starred and smashed into a misty opacity and I couldn’t see a damned thing ahead.

  Fortunately the pressure released and I was running free again with my head stuck out of the side and I saw we were at the end of the cutting. One of the logs on the left side of the front truck seemed to be loaded a little higher than the others, and I judged it was high enough to clear the cab. I had to get out of this squeeze. There was very little room to manoeuvre and those sadistic bastards could hold me there until we got to the sawmill if I couldn’t figure a way out.

  So I spun the wheel and chanced it and found I was wrong. The log didn’t clear the top of the cab—not by a quarter of an inch—and I heard the rending tear of sheet metal. But I couldn’t stop then; I fed gas to the engine frantically and tore free to find myself bucketing over the rough ground and heading straight for a big Douglas fir. I hauled on the wheel and swerved again and again, weaving among the trees and driving roughly parallel with the road.

  I passed the front tr
uck and saw my chance, so I rammed down hard on the gas pedal and shot ahead of it and fled down the road with that eighteen-wheel monster pounding after me, blaring its horn. I knew better than to stop and fight it out with those guys; they wouldn’t stop on the road just because I did and me and the Land-Rover would be a total loss. I had the legs of them and scooted away in front, passing the turn-off to the sawmill and not stopping until I was a full mile the other side.

  Then I stopped and held up my hands. They were shaking uncontrollably and, when I moved, my shirt was clammy against my skin because it was soaked in sweat. I lit a cigarette and waited until the shakes went away before I climbed out to survey the damage. The front wasn’t too bad, although a steady drip of water indicated a busted radiator. The windshield was a total write-off and the top of the cab looked as though someone had used a blunt can-opener on it. The rear end was smashed up pretty badly—it looked like the front end of any normal auto crash. I looked in the back and saw the shattered wooden case and a clutter of broken bottles from my field testing kit. There was the acrid stink of chemicals from the reagents swimming about on the bottom and I hastily lifted the geiger counter out of the liquid—free acids don’t do delicate instruments any good.

  I stepped back and estimated the cost of the damage. Two bloody noses for two truckers; maybe a broken back for Jimmy Waystrand; and a brand-new Land-Rover from Mr Howard Matterson. I was inclined to be a bit lenient on Howard; I didn’t think he’d given any orders to squeeze me like that. But Jimmy Waystrand certainly had, and he was going to pay the hard way.

  After a while I drove into Fort Farrell, eliciting curious glances from passers-by in King Street. I pulled into Summerskill’s used car lot and he looked up and said in alarm, ‘Hey, I’m not responsible for that—it happened after you bought the crate.’

  I climbed out. ‘I know,’ I said soothingly. ‘Just get the thing going again. I think she’ll want a new radiator—and get a rear lamp working somehow.’

  He walked round the Land-Rover in a full circle, then came back and stared at me hard. ‘What did you do—get into a fight with a tank?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I agreed.

  He waved. ‘That rear fender is twisted like a pretzel. How did that happen to a rear fender?’

  ‘Maybe it got hot and melted into that shape,’ I suggested. ‘Cut the wonder. How long will it take?’

  ‘You just want to get the thing moving again? A juryrig job?’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  He scratched his head. ‘I have an old Land-Rover radiator back of the shed, so you’re lucky there. Say a couple of hours.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back in an hour and give you a hand.’ I left him and walked up the street to the Matterson Building. Maybe I just might have the beginnings of a quarrel with Howard.

  I breezed into his outer office and said, without breaking stride, ‘I’m going to see Matterson.’

  ‘But—but he’s busy,’ his secretary said agitatedly.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, not stopping. ‘Howard is a busy, busy man.’ I threw open the door of his office and walked inside to find Howard in conference with Donner. ‘Hello, Howard,’ I said. ‘Don’t you want to see me?’

  ‘What do you mean by busting in like that?’ he demanded. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ He thumbed a switch. ‘Miss Kerr, what do you mean by letting people into—’

  I reached over and lifted his hand away from the intercom, breaking the connection. ‘She didn’t let me,’ I said softly. ‘She couldn’t stop me—so don’t blame her. Now, I’ll ask you a like-minded question. What do you mean by having Waystrand throw me out?’

  ‘That’s a silly question,’ he snarled. He looked at Donner. ‘Tell him.’

  Donner cracked his knuckles and said precisely, ‘Any geological exploration of Matterson land we’ll organize for ourselves. We don’t need you to do it for us, Boyd. You’ll stay clear in future, I trust.’

  ‘You bet he’ll stay clear,’ said Matterson.

  I said, ‘Howard, you’ve held tree-farm licences for so long that you think you own the goddam land. Give you another few years and you’ll think you own the whole province of British Columbia. Your head’s getting swelled, Howard.’

  ‘Don’t call me Howard,’ he snapped. ‘Come to the point.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t on Matterson land—I was on Crown land. Anyone with a prospector’s licence can fossick on Crown land. Just because you have a licence to grow and cut lumber doesn’t mean you can stop me. And if you think you can, I’ll slap a court order on you so fast that it’ll make your ears spin.’

  It took some time to sink in but it finally did and he looked at Donner in a helpless way. I grinned at Donner and mimicked Matterson. ‘Tell him.’

  Donner said, ‘If you were on Crown land—and that is a matter of question—then perhaps you are right.’

  I said, ‘There’s no perhaps about it; you know I’m right.’

  Matterson said suddenly, ‘I don’t think you were on Crown land.’

  ‘Check your maps,’ I said helpfully. ‘I bet you haven’t looked at them for years. You’re too accustomed to regarding the whole goddam country as your own.’

  Matterson twitched a finger at Donner, who left the room. He looked at me with hard eyes. ‘What are you up to, Boyd?’

  ‘Just trying to make a living,’ I said easily. ‘There’s a lot of good prospecting country round here—it’s just as good a place to explore as up north, and a lot warmer, too.’

  ‘You might find it too warm,’ he said acidly. ‘You’re not going about things in a friendly way.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘I’m not! You ought to have been out on the road to Kinoxi this morning. I’d sooner be friendly with a grizzly bear than with some of your truckers. Anyway, I didn’t come here to enter a popularity contest.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘Maybe you’ll find out one day—if you’re smart enough, Howard.’

  ‘I told you not to call me Howard,’ he said irritatedly.

  Donner came in with a map, and I saw it was a copy of the one I had inspected in Tanner’s office. Howard spread it on his desk and I said, ‘You’ll find that the Kinoxi Valley is split between you and Clare Trinavant—she in the north and you in the south with the lion’s share. But Matterson land stops just short of the escarpment—everything south of that is Crown land. And that means that the dam at the top of the escarpment and the powerhouse at the bottom is on Crown land, and I can go fossicking round there any time I like. Any comment?’

  Matterson looked up at Donner, who nodded his head slightly. ‘It seems that Mr Boyd is correct,’ he said.

  ‘You’re damn’ right I’m correct.’ I pointed at Matterson. ‘Now there’s something else I want to bring up—a matter of a wrecked Land-Rover.’

  He glared at me. ‘I’m not responsible for the way you drive.’

  The way he said it I was certain he knew what had happened. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll be using the Kinoxi road pretty often in the near future. Tell your truckers to keep away from me, or someone will get killed in a road accident—and it won’t be me.’

  He just showed me his teeth, and said, ‘I understand you were staying at the Matterson House.’ He leaned so heavily on the past tense that the sentence nearly busted in the middle.

  ‘I get the message,’ I said. ‘Enemies to the death, eh, Howard?’ I walked out without saying another word and went down to the Matterson House Hotel.

  The desk clerk moved fast but I got in first. ‘I understand I’ve checked out,’ I said sourly.

  ‘Er…yes, Mr Boyd. I’ve prepared your bill.’

  I paid it, then went up and packed my case and lugged it across the road to Summerskill’s car lot. He climbed out from under the Land-Rover and looked at me in a puzzled manner. ‘Not ready yet, Mr Boyd.’

  ‘That’s all right. I have to get something to eat.’

  He scrambled to
his feet. ‘Hey, Mr Boyd; you know, something funny has happened. I just checked the chassis and it has bulged.’

  ‘What do you mean—bulged?’

  Summerskill held his hands about a foot apart with curled fingers like a man holding a short length of four-by-two, and brought them together slowly. ‘This damn’ chassis has been squoze.’ He wore a baffled look.

  ‘Will that make any difference to its running?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not much—if you don’t expect much.’

  ‘Then leave well alone,’ I advised. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I’ve had a bite to eat.’

  I ate at the Hellenic Café, expecting to see McDougall but he didn’t show up. I didn’t want to see him at the Recorder office so I drifted round town for a while, keeping my eyes open. When after nearly an hour I hadn’t seen him, I went back to Summerskill to find that he’d nearly finished the job.

  ‘That’ll be forty-five dollars, Mr Boyd,’ he said. ‘And I’m letting it go cheap.’

  I dumped some groceries I had bought into the back of the Land-Rover and took out my wallet, mentally adding it to the account that Matterson was going to pay some day. As I counted out the bills, Summerskill said, ‘I wasn’t able to do much with the top of the cab. I bashed the metal back into place and put some canvas on top; that’ll keep the rain out.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘If I have another accident—and that’s not unlikely—you shall have my trade.’

  He pulled a sour face. ‘You have another accident like that and there’ll be nothing left to repair.’

  I drove out of town to McDougall’s cabin and parked the Land-Rover out of sight after I had unloaded everything. I stripped and changed and heated some water. A little went to make coffee and I washed my shirt and pants in the rest. I stacked the groceries in the pantry and began to get my gear in order, checking to see exactly what was ruined. I was grieving over a busted scintillometer when I heard the noise of a car, and when I ducked my head to look out of the window I saw a battered old Chevvy pulling up outside. McDougall got out.

  ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ he said. ‘They told me at the hotel you’d checked out.’