Campbell's Kingdom

by Hammond Innes

  Shortly after our meal, when we were sitting having coffee, Pauline arrived. Johnnie would meet me at 150-Mile House tomorrow evening or, if he couldn’t make it, the following morning. She had other news, too. A stranger had arrived at the Golden Calf. He wasn’t a fisherman and he was busy plying Mac with drinks and pumping him about our activities in the Kingdom. Boy’s visit to Calgary and Edmonton was evidently bearing fruit.

  That night I slept in the Victorian grandeur of a feather bed. It was Sarah Garret’s room. She had moved in with her sister for the night. It was not a large room and it was cluttered with heavy, painted furniture, the marble mantelpiece and the dressing-table littered with china bric-a-brac. The bedstead was a heavy iron affair adorned with brass. For a long time I lay awake looking at the stars, conscious of the smell of the room that took me back to my childhood—it was a compound of lavender and starch and lace. My mind was busy, going over and over the possibilities of packing the necessary fuel up to the Kingdom. And then just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard the door open. A figure came softly into the room and stood beside my bed, looking down at me.

  It was Sarah Garret. I could just see the tiny outline of her head against the window. ‘Are you awake?’ she asked. Her voice trembled slightly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Then light a candle please.’

  I got out of bed, wrapping a blanket round me, and found my lighter. As the thin light of the candle illumined the room I turned to her, wondering why she was here, what had driven her to this nocturnal escapade. She took the candlestick from me, her hand trembling and spilling grease. ‘I have something to show you,’ she said.

  She crossed over to a big trunk in the corner. It was one of those great leather-covered things with a curved top. There was a jingle of keys and then she had it open and was lifting the lid. It was full of clothes and the smell of lavender and mothballs was very strong. ‘Will you lift the tray out, please.’

  I did as she asked. Underneath were more clothes. Her joints creaked slightly as she bent and began to lift them out. Dresses of satin and silk piled up on the floor, beautiful lace-edged nightgowns, a dressing-gown that was like something out of Madam Butterfly, a parasol, painted ivory fans, necklaces of onyx and amber, a bedspread of the finest needlework.

  At last the trunk was empty. With trembling fingers she felt around the edges. There was a click and the bottom moved. She took the candle from me then. ‘Lift it out, please.’

  The false bottom of that trunk was of steel and quite heavy. And underneath were neat little tin boxes. She lifted the lid of one. It was filled with gold coin. There were several bars of gold wrapped in tissue paper, and another box contained gold dust. The last one she opened revealed several pieces of jewellery. ‘I have never shown anybody this,’ she said.

  ‘Why have you shown me?’ I asked.

  She looked up at me. She had a brooch in her hand. It was gold studded with amethyst, and the amethysts matched the colour of her eyes and both gleamed as brightly in the candlelight. ‘This was my favourite.’

  ‘Why have you shown me all this?’ I asked again.

  She sighed and put the brooch back. Then she signalled me to replace the false bottom. She operated the hidden catch fixing it in position and then returned the clothes to the trunk. When the lid was finally down and locked she pulled herself to her feet. She was crying gently and dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. ‘That is all I have left of my father,’ she said, her voice trembling slightly. ‘He made it in the Come Lucky mine and when he died that was my share. There was more, of course, but we have had to live.’

  ‘You mean that was how he left you his money?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. He did not believe in banks and modern innovations like that. He liked to see what he had made. My sister—’ She sighed and blew her nose delicately. ‘My sister thought she knew better. She was engaged to a man in Vancouver and he invested it for her. She lost it all. The stocks were no good.’

  ‘And her fiancé?’

  She gave a little shrug. ‘The man was no good either.’

  ‘Why have you told me this? Why have you shown me where you keep your money?’

  She stared at me for a moment and then she gave me a beautiful little smile. ‘Because I like you,’ she said. ‘I had a—friend once. He was rather like you. A Scotsman. But he was already married.’ She got to her feet. ‘I must go now. I do not want my sister to know that I have done anything so naughty as visiting a man in his bedroom.’ Her eyes twinkled up at me. And then she touched my arm. ‘I am an old lady now. There has been very little in my life. You remember the parable of the talents? Now that I am old I see that I have made too little use of the money my father gave me. Jean told us what had happened up in the Kingdom. I would like you to know that you do not have to worry about money. You have only to ask—’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly—’ I began, but she silenced me.

  ‘Don’t be silly. It is no good to me and I would like to help.’ She hesitated and then smiled. ‘Stuart Campbell was the friend I spoke about. Now perhaps you understand. Goodnight.’

  I watched her as she went out and then I sat down on the bed, staring at the old leather trunk with a strong desire to cry. I still remember every detail of that visit from Sarah Garret and I treasure it as one of the most beautiful memories I have.

  A few hours later I left. The house was silent and as I walked down through the shacks of Come Lucky the sky was just beginning to pale over Solomon’s Judgment. I walked along the lake-shore and waited for a truck coming down from Slide Camp. It took me as far as Hydraulic and from there I got a timber wagon down to 150-Mile House. Jean was to take my horse back up to the Kingdom and now that I was on my own I found a mood of depression creeping over me.

  But when Johnnie arrived everything was different. He came with a couple of Americans. They were on holiday and they regarded the whole thing as a game, part of the fun of being in the Rockies a long way from their offices in Chicago. As soon as they knew the situation they got on the phone to a whole list of farmers along the valley. But we soon discovered that though horses were easy to hire it was difficult to get them complete with packing gear. The farms were widely dispersed and the better part of a week had passed before we had a total of twenty-six animals with gear coralled at a homestead a few miles west of Beaver Dam Lake.

  On the 15th of July we moved them up to the entrance to Thunder Creek and the following morning, as arranged, we rendezvoused with the vehicle trucking in our containers. It took us over twenty-four hours to pack that first five hundred gallons up to the Kingdom. Every four hours we off-loaded and let the animals rest. It was back-breaking work and the weather was bad with several thunder storms and thick mist on the slopes of the Saddle. Without Johnnie I should have turned back, but he seemed to be able to smell the trail out through mist and blinding hail. And the men who were hiring him to show them the Rockies were in high spirits, always anticipating worse conditions than we actually experienced, apparently thoroughly happy to combine pleasure with some real outdoor work.

  The atmosphere when we came down into the Kingdom was one of tense excitement. The whole bunch came out to meet us. The rig had stopped drilling three days back for lack of fuel and Jean told me afterwards that if I hadn’t turned up when I did Garry would have asked Trevedian to hoist the rig down. Time was running out for him. But just before we arrived an Imperial Oil scout had ridden in. This recognition from the outside world had lifted their spirits slightly and with the arrival of the fuel and the starting up of the rig again enthusiasm was suddenly unbounded.

  Two days later the four of us brought a second five hundred gallons up. We now had enough fuel to drill to nearly six thousand feet at the present rate. At the time they started the rig again they were at four thousand six hundred and making over twelve feet an hour through softish rock. By the time we packed in the second load of fuel they were past the five thousand mark and going strong.
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  I remember Johnnie standing in front of the rig the day he and his two Americans took the pack animals down. ‘I’d sure like to stay on up here, Bruce,’ he said. He, too, had been caught by the mood of excitement. Boy had arrived that morning and with him was a reporter from the Calgary Tribune. Five thousand five hundred feet was the level at which they expected to reach the anticline and hanging over me all the time was the knowledge that it wasn’t oil we were going to strike there, but the sill of igneous rock that had stopped Campbell Number One. I couldn’t tell anybody this. I just had to brace myself to combat the sense of defeat when it came.

  ‘Oil isn’t much in your line, is it, Johnnie?’ Jean said.

  He grinned. ‘I guess not. But I’ll need to know what we’re to put on old Campbell’s tombstone.’

  ‘Just quote him as saying “There’s oil in the Rocky Mountains”,’ Garry said. ‘That’ll be enough.’

  Everybody laughed. It was a thin, feverish sound against the racket of the drill and I thought of the grave I had found behind the ranch-house and how they were all up here because of him. They were pretty keyed up now, and their optimism had a feverish undercurrent that wasn’t healthy.

  As the days went by the suspense became almost unbearable. At first there were anxious inquiries as each shift came off duty, but as we approached the end of July the mood changed and we’d just glance at the shift coming off, unwilling to voice our interest, one look at their faces being sufficient to tell us that there were no new developments. The waiting was intolerable and a mood of depression gradually settled on the camp. We were drilling through quartzite and making slower progress than we had hoped. Time was against us. With each day’s drilling our fuel reserves were dwindling. And meanwhile the dam was moving steadily towards completion. Sometimes of an evening Jean and I would ride up to the rock buttress and look at the work. Already by the first week in August there was only a small section to be completed and engineers were working on the installation of the sluices and pens. From higher up the mountainside we could see that work on the power station beside the slide had also started. Some of the drilling crew were in touch with men working on the dam from whom they were able to purchase cigarettes at an inflated price, and from them they learned that the completion date was fixed for August 20th. Worse still, the Larsen Company planned to begin flooding immediately in order to build up a sufficient head of water to run a pilot plant during the winter.

  At the beginning of August we were approaching five thousand five hundred and Garry was getting restive. So were his crew. They had been up in the Kingdom for almost two months. The cuttings, screened from the mud as it flowed back into the sump pit, showed us still in the metamorphic rock. No jokes were cracked on the site now. Nobody spoke much. Four of the boys had started a poker school. I tried to break it up, but there was nothing else for them to do. They’d no liquor and no women and they were fed up.

  The inevitable happened. There was a fight and one of them, a fellow called Weary Dodds, got a finger smashed in the draw works. He was lucky not to have had his arm ripped off for he was flung right against the steel hawser that was lifting the travelling block. Jean patched it up as best she could, but she couldn’t patch up the atmosphere of the camp—it was very tense.

  Just after nine on the morning of August 5th they pulled pipe for what they all hoped might be the last time. The depth was five thousand four hundred and ninety feet. They were all down on the rig, waiting. They waited there all morning, watching the grief stem inching down through the turntable and I stood there with them feeling sick with apprehension. They pulled pipe again at two-fifteen. Another sixty-foot length of pipe was run on and down went the drill again, section by section. The depth was now five thousand five hundred and fifty feet. Those not on shift drifted back to the ranch-house. We had some food and a tense silence brooded over the meal.

  At length I could stand the suspense no longer. I drew Garry on one side. ‘Suppose we don’t strike the anticline exactly where we expect to,’ I said. ‘What depth are you willing to drill to?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The boys are getting restive.’

  ‘Will you give it a margin of two thousand feet?’

  ‘Two thousand!’ He stared at me as though I were crazy. ‘That’s nearly a fortnight’s drilling. It’d take us right up to the date of completion of the dam. Anyway, we haven’t the fuel.’

  ‘I can pack some more up.’

  He looked at me, his eyes narrowed. ‘There’s something on your mind. What is it?’

  ‘I just want to know the margin of error you’re willing to give it.’

  He hesitated and then said, ‘All right, I’ll tell you. I’ll drill till we’ve exhausted the fuel that’s already up here. That’s four days more. That’ll take us over six thousand.’

  ‘You’ve got to give a bigger margin than that,’ I said.

  He caught hold of my arm then. ‘See here, Bruce. The boys wouldn’t stand for it.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I said. ‘You’ve been drilling up here now for two months. Are you going to throw all that effort away for the sake of another fortnight?’

  ‘And risk losing my rig when they flood the place? Good Christ, man, you don’t seem to realise that we’ve all had about as much as we can take. I’ve lost two trucks; neither the rig nor any of the boys are earning their keep. If we don’t bring in a well—’

  He stopped then for the door burst open and Clif Lindy the driller on shift, came in. There was a wild look in his eyes. ‘What is it, Clif?’ Garry asked.

  ‘We’re in new country,’ he said.

  ‘The anticline?’

  But I knew it wasn’t the anticline. His face, his whole manner told me that this was the moment I had dreaded. They had reached the sill.

  ‘We’re down to rock as hard as granite and we’ve worn a bit out in an hour’s drilling.’ He caught hold of Garry’s arm. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said, ‘let’s get the hell out of here before we’re all of us broke.’

  ‘How much have you made in the last hour?’ Garry asked.

  ‘Two feet. The boys want to know shall we stop drilling?’

  Garry didn’t say anything. He just stood there, looking at me, waiting to see what I was going to say.

  ‘You’re just throwing away good bits and wearing out your rig for nothing,’ Clif said excitedly.

  ‘What do you say, Bruce?’ Garry asked.

  ‘It’s the same formation that stopped Campbell’s cable-tool rig. If you get through this—’

  ‘At two feet an hour,’ Clif said with a laugh that trembled slightly. ‘We could be a month drilling through this.’ He turned to Garry. ‘The boys won’t stand for it, not any more. Nor will I, Garry. I don’t mind risking a couple of months for the chance of making big dough. But we know damn well now that we’re not going to bring in a—’

  ‘How do you know?’ I cut in.

  He laughed. ‘You go and ask Boy. You ask him what he thinks about it. Only you won’t find him, not around camp here. He’s away into the mountains to brood over Campbell’s folly—and his own. He thought when the country changed we’d be down to the anticline. He didn’t expect to get into igneous country this deep.’ His fingers dug into my flesh as he gripped my arm. ‘If you want my opinion Boy Bladen doesn’t know enough about geophysics to plot a gopher hole. As for Winnick, well damn it, isn’t it obvious? His office is right next door to Henry Fergus. He’s put it across you.’ He looked across at Garry and his tone was suddenly quieter as he said, ‘The boys want to haul out.’

  Garry didn’t say anything for a moment. He stood there rasping his fingers along the line of his jaw. ‘I wonder how thick through this sill is,’ he murmured. ‘Most of them around here are not more than a hundred, two hundred feet—those that are exposed on the mountain slopes, that is.’

  ‘That’s four days’ drilling,’ Clif said. ‘And what’s below the sill, when we get through it? I ain’t a geologist, but I’m n
ot such a fool as to expect oil bearing country directly below a volcanic intrusion.’

  Garry nodded slowly. ‘I guess you’re right, Clif.’ He turned towards the door. ‘I’ll come down and have a look at what’s going on. Coming, Bruce?’

  I shook my head. I stood there, watching them disappear through the doorway, a mood of anger and bitterness struggling with the wretchedness of failure.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bruce.’ A hand touched my arm and I turned to find Jean beside me.

  ‘You heard?’

  ‘No, Boy told me. I went down to see to the horses and found him in there, saddling up. I came back to—’ She hesitated and then finished on a note of tenderness: ‘To break it to you.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t Boy have the guts to come and tell me himself,’ I exploded.

  ‘Boy’s sensitive,’ she murmured.

  ‘Sensitive?’ I cried, giving rein to my feelings. ‘You mean he’s a moral coward. Instead of supporting me and trying to lick some enthusiasm into this miserable bunch of defeatists, he immediately concludes his survey is inaccurate and goes crawling off into the mountains like a wounded cur. I suppose that’s the Indian in him.’

  ‘That’s a rotten thing to say.’ Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with sudden anger.