Campbell's Kingdom (36 page)

I should have got some sleep, but somehow I couldn't face lying on a sleeping bag in the suffocating heat of the barns. I was too tensed-up for sleep, and the day was too oppressive. I saddled one of the horses and rode out across the Kingdom, past Campbell Number One and along by the stream towards the dam. The water was running deep and fast, carrying off yesterday's hail and the remnants of the winter's snow melted by the gruelling heat. I reached the barbed wire and rode along it up towards the buttress. There didn't seem to be more than a dozen men working on the dam and they weren't labourers, they were engineers in grease-stained jeans. I sat and watched them for a while. They were working on the sluice gates. The cage of the hoist came up only once whilst I sat there. It brought machinery.

The watcher from the buttress came scrambling down towards me. ‘Better get moving, Wetheral.' It was the man I had tangled with outside the Golden Calf, the guard who had been on the hoist when we'd brought the rig up. He wore a dirty cotton vest and he'd a gun in a leather holster on his hip.

‘I'm on my own property,' I said. ‘It's you who are trespassing.'

He started bawling me out then, using a lot of filthy names. I felt the blood beating at my temples. I wanted to fling myself at him, to give vent to the violence that was pent up inside me. But instead I turned my horse and rode slowly back to the ranch-house.

That night at dinner a brooding silence reigned over the table. It had the stillness of weather before a storm. It was in tune with the sultry heat of the night. The faces of the men gathered round the table were thin and tired and shiny with sweat. They sat around till eight waiting for the change of shift. Every now and then one of them would go to the door and listen, his head cocked on one side, listening for some change in the rhythm of the rig, waiting for the news that they'd brought in a well.

But the shift changed and the drilling went steadily on, the bit grinding into the rock, six thousand seven hundred and thirteen feet below the surface, at the rate of ten and a half feet per hour. I got some sleep and went on shift again at midnight. Jean was still up, standing by the stable, looking at the moon. She didn't say anything, but her hand found mine and gripped it. 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. ‘Queer how the moon reflects on the ground below the dam,' Garry said.

‘It's the mist rising,' Boy murmured.

‘I guess so. Queer. It looks as though it were shining on water.' A breath of wind touched our faces. ‘What's that over there—beyond Solomon's Judgment? Looks like a cloud.'

We peered beyond the white outline of the peak. The sky there no longer had the luminosity of moonlight. 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 draw works' diesel. It penetrated 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 the hell off that platform,' Garry shouted up to us. ‘Run, you fools! Run for your lives!'

I heard Boy say, ‘God! 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 travelling 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 upwards. 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 upwards and then with a roar like a hundred express trains it was blown clear. ‘Garry! Garry!' Boy's voice sounded thin against the roar of the gas flare.

We splashed back towards the rig, searching for him. The light was lurid and uncertain. We stumbled against pieces of machinery, the scrap-heap of the rig. ‘Garry!'

A shape loomed out of the darkness. 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. It was all too sudden, too unreal.

‘Oh, to hell with the rig.' He laughed. It was a queer sound, violent and trembling and rather high-pitched against the solid roar of the gas. ‘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 clear of the site and away from the noise of the gas that I realised that the moon had vanished, swallowed by the inky blackness that was rolling across the night sky. Halfway to the ranch-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 well. And then, suddenly, a wall of water fell on us. It was a rain-storm, but as solid as if a cloud had condensed and dropped. It drove the breath back into one's throat and made one claw the air as though reaching for something to grasp to pull one out of the flood. And when I looked back there was no sign of the broken rig, only blackness and the sound of water. A flash of lightning ripped across our heads, momentarily revealing my companions as three half-drowned wraiths. And then the thunder came like a gun and went rolling round the circle of the mountains. Flash after flash of lightning followed, often so close that we could hear the hiss of it, feel the crack as it stabbed the ground, and 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 buff 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 pyjamas. 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 grey and swept by rain, I stood appalled. There was no sign of the gas jet. 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 further side. The Kingdom was already half flooded. It was a lake and the wind was driving across it, ploughing it up into waves and flecking it with white. ‘Oh God!' I said and I dropped my head on my arms.

Steve Strachan did his best to try and visualise the well blowing in as we had seen it, but I knew he wasn't really convinced. It wasn't that he thought we were crooks, making up the story for the sake of proving what we knew wasn't true. It was just that he knew how strung up we all were. I suppose he felt that in those circumstances a man is capable of seeing something that never really happened. He did his best. He made polite noises as we described every detail of it. But every now and then he'd say, ‘Yes, I know, but I've got to convince my editor.' Or in answer to a question: ‘Sure I believe you, but just show me something concrete that'll prove it really happened.'

But what evidence had we? Soaked to the skin, we trudged along the shores of that damned lake looking for a slick of oil, or stood, searching the spot where the rig had been, trying to locate the bubbles that the escaping gas must be making. But little white-caps frisked across the spot and even through glasses we could see no sign of bubbles. The memory of that gas vent flaring high into the night faded until it was difficult for those of us who had actually seen it to believe that it had been real.

I remember Garry standing there cursing whilst the rain streamed down his lined face as though he were crying. We were huddled there in a little bunch by the edge of that sudden lake, our faces grey as the leaden cloud that blanketed the slopes of the mountains opposite with rain, and exhaustion and despair were stamped on our features. We had the grim, hopeless, half-drowned look of a shipwrecked crew.

‘If only they'd waited till the time they said,' Boy murmured.

‘They could see it blow in as well as we could,' Garry said. He turned to me. ‘Remember the water we ran into when we got clear of the rig and the reflection of the moonlight? They were flooding then, flooding up to the rig, just in case. And when they saw the rig go . . .' He shrugged his shoulders. ‘God dammit. One more day.' There was all the bitterness of a gambler who has lost in his voice. ‘Our only hope is to persuade them to drain the Kingdom. Independent judges could tell at a glance that we'd struck oil bearing country.'

‘How?' Steve Strachan asked.

‘How? By the way the pipe is bent, you fool! By the way the rig is smashed.' His voice was high and taut. ‘Come on, Bruce. We'd better get over there and have a word with them.'

I nodded reluctantly, afraid he might do something stupid when faced with Trevedian. He was at the end of his tether and his big hands twitched as though he wanted to get them round the throat of some adversary. We took two horses and cantered along the shores of the lake, below the buttress and across the rock outcrops to where the wire ran down the mountainside and into the water. They had seen us coming and there was a little group waiting for us like a reception committee. There was Trevedian and the policeman who had come with him the previous day and two of Trevedian's men with rifles slung over their shoulders.

For a moment we sat our horses looking at them and they stood looking at us. I could see anger building up inside Garry's big frame. Trevedian waited, his small eyes alert, watching us curiously. The policeman said nothing. For my part I knew it was useless. Words suddenly burst from Garry's lips with explosive force. ‘What the hell do you mean by drowning my rig? You gave us till ten this morning.'

‘My warning referred to the house and buildings.' Trevedian glanced at his watch. ‘It's now nine-twenty. You've forty minutes to get clear of the buildings.'

‘But what about the rig?' Garry demanded. ‘What right had you—'

‘You could have moved it,' Trevedian cut in. ‘However, since you haven't I've no doubt the courts will include the value of it in their grant of compensation.'

Garry turned to the police officer. ‘Were you up here last night when they began flooding?'

The man shook his head. ‘No. I came up here this morning in case there was trouble.'

‘Well, there's going to be plenty of trouble,' Garry snapped. ‘Do you realise you've drowned an oil well. We struck it at approximately two-fifteen this morning.'

Trevedian laughed. ‘Be damned to that for a tale,' he said.

‘You know damn well it's true,' Garry shouted. ‘Don't tell me you couldn't see what happened from here.'

‘I didn't see anything.' Trevedian turned to the two guards. ‘Did you?' They shook their heads dutifully. ‘They were with me when I gave the order to close the sluices,' Trevedian added as he turned to face us, hardly troubling to conceal a slight smile. ‘We were naturally watching the rig to see that you all got clear of the water. We saw nothing unusual.'

‘By God,' Garry cried, ‘you dirty, crooked little liar! Don't ever let me get my hands on you or as sure as hell I'll wring your neck.'