Campbell's Kingdom (8 page)

There was one other person at the big, scrubbed deal table, a thick-set man of about forty with tough, leathery features and sandy hair which stood up from his scalp and from the backs of his big hands. His name was Ben Creasy and he was introduced to me as the engineer who was building the road up Thunder Creek. The meal was cooked and served by the old Chinaman. He had drifted into the gold mines from Vancouver's Chinatown during the First World War and had been at the hotel ever since.

Nobody spoke during the meal, not even the children. Eating was a serious business. We had clam chowder and steaks and there was a jug of milk for those who wanted to drink.

‘You do not eat much, Mr Wetheral,' Pauline McClellan said. ‘The meat, is it tough? I get you another steak if you like.'

‘No,' I said. ‘No, I'm just not hungry.'

The whole table stared at me as though I were some queer freak. An apple pie followed with cream from a great bowl on the table. Coffee was served with the pie. After the meal the men drifted over to the furnace-hot range and sat and smoked whilst the women cleared up.

Old Mac and his son were talking cattle and I sat back, my eyes half-closed, succumbing to the warmth. I gathered James McClellan ran a garage in Keithley Creek and farmed a piece of land the other side of the lake.

‘And what brings ye up to Come Lucky at this time of the year, Mr Wetheral?' the old man asked me suddenly.

The question jerked me out of my reverie. He was looking across at me, his drooped lids almost concealing his eyes, his wrinkled face half hidden in the smoke from his short-stemmed briar. ‘Do you know a place near here called Campbell's Kingdom?' I asked him.

‘Aye.' He nodded, waiting for me to go on.

‘I came to have a look at it,' I said.

They eyed me curiously and in silence.

‘How do I get up there?' I asked.

‘Better ask Ben.' The old man turned to Creasy. ‘Do ye ken what the snow's like at the head o' the creek, Ben?'

‘Sure. It's pretty deep. Anyway, he couldn't get past the fall till it's cleared.'

‘Why do you want to go up to the Kingdom?' the younger McClellan asked.

There was something about the manner in which he put the question that made me hesitate. ‘I just wanted to have a look at it,' I said. I turned to Creasy. ‘Does this road you're building go towards the Kingdom?'

‘Yeh.'

‘What's it for?'

‘It ain't for the convenience of tourists anyway.'

Old Mac cleared his throat. ‘Ye were telling me, Mr Wetheral, that ye'd come straight out from England?' I nodded. ‘Then how is it ye've got the name Campbell's Kingdom so pat on your tongue?'

‘I'm Campbell's grandson,' I said.

They stared at me in astonishment. ‘His grandson, did ye say?' The old man was leaning forward, staring at me, and his tone was one of incredulity.

‘Yes.'

‘Ye're no exactly like him in appearance. He was a big man—broad across the shoulders and tough.' He shook his head slowly. ‘Och, weel, a man's no' entirely responsible for his kith and kin, I guess. So ye've come to see the Kingdom?'

I nodded.

James McClellan darted his head forward. ‘Why?' There was sudden violence in the way he put the question.

‘Why?' I stared at him, wondering at the tenseness of his expression. ‘Because it belongs to me.'

‘Belongs to you!' He stared at me unbelievingly. ‘But the place is sold. They sold it to pay old Campbell's debts.' He glanced at his father and then back at me. ‘It was sold to the Larsen Mining and Development Company.'

‘The Larsen Mining and Development Company?' It was the name that had been newly painted on the frosted door of Henry Fergus's office. ‘I had an offer from a company,' I said. ‘But I turned it down.'

‘You turned it down!' McClellan kicked his chair out from under him as he jerked to his feet. ‘But—' He stopped and looked slowly across at Creasy. ‘We'd better go and have a word with Peter.' The other nodded and got to his feet. ‘You're sure you really are Campbell's heir?' he asked me.

‘Is that anything to do with you?' I was a little uncertain, disturbed by the violence of his reaction. He looked scared.

‘By God it is,' he said. ‘If—' He seemed to take hold of himself. ‘You're still the legal owner of the property, are you?'

I nodded.

‘Can you prove it?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Have you got anything on you to show that you really do own the place?'

He seemed so darned worried I got out my pocket book and showed him the wire I had received from Acheson on the train. He almost snatched it from my hand and I could see his lips moving as he read it. ‘Did you see Acheson?' His hands shook slightly and his face was grey as he looked down at me.

‘Yes.'

‘What did you decide?'

‘I said I'd think about it and came on up here. Why?'

‘Christ Almighty!' he breathed. ‘That means—' He stopped and his eyes went to the window as though there was something out there he wanted to look at. But the panes were dark squares reflecting the interior of the kitchen.

‘May I see it?' Creasy held out his hand and McClellan gave him the wire. He read it through and then he said, ‘Yeh, we'd better see Peter right away.' He handed the slip back to McClellan who asked me if he could have the loan of it.

‘You can keep it, if you like,' I said. ‘But what's the trouble?'

‘Nothing,' he answered quickly. ‘Nothing at all. We just thought the place was sold, that's all.' And he hurried out of the room, followed by Creasy.

I turned and stared after them in astonishment. ‘What was all that about?' I asked the old man. He was still sitting there thumbing tobacco into his pipe.

He didn't say anything for a moment and as he lit his pipe he stared at me over the flame of the match. ‘So you're Campbell's heir and the legal owner of the Kingdom,' he murmured. ‘What brought ye all the way out from the Old Country?'

‘I wanted to see the place.'

‘You'll no be as daft as the old man, surely?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Campbell had oil fever the way some folk have malaria. If he'd struck lucky he might have been a great figure. As it was . . .' He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Did you know him well?' I asked.

‘Aye, about as well as any man in this town. But he wasna a very easy man to get to know. A solitary sort of a crittur wi' a quick temper. He spoke verra fast and violent and he'd a persuasive tongue, damn him.' He sighed and shook his head. ‘The river of oil was just a dream, I guess.' He looked across at me and then asked abruptly, ‘What would ye be planning to do with the Kingdom now you've come out here?'

‘I thought I might live up there,' I said.

‘Live up there!'

‘My grandfather lived there,' I reminded him.

‘Aye. For night on twenty years old Campbell lived there.' His voice was bitter and he spat out a piece of tobacco. ‘Dinna be a fool, laddie,' he said. ‘The Kingdom's no place for ye. And if it's oil you're looking for ye won't find it as many of us in this town have learned to our cost. There's no oil in these mountains. Bladen's survey proved that once and for all. The place isn't worth two nickels. Och, there's a bit of ranching to be done up there. The alfalfa's good and if the chinook blows there's little need for hauling feed. But it doesna always blow.' He got to his feet and came and stood over me. ‘This is no your sort of country,' he said, reaching out a bony hand and gripping my shoulder. ‘It's a hard country, and it doesna take easily to strangers.'

I stared at him. ‘It's supposed to be very lovely in summer,' I murmured. ‘A lot of visitors—'

‘Oh, aye, the visitors. But ye're no a visitor. Ye're Campbell's heir.' He stared down at me. ‘Take my advice; sell out and gang home where you belong.'

His hard, grey eyes were staring down at me unwinkingly. It was as though his words were meant as a warning. ‘I'll think about it,' I muttered, feeling strangely ill-at-ease under his scrutiny.

‘Aye, ye think about it.' He hesitated, as though about to say something further. But he shook his head. His lids drooped down over his eyes and he turned away with a little shrug and shuffled out of the room.

I leaned back slackly in my chair. Everything was so different from what I had expected—the place, the people, the way they regarded my grandfather. I felt suddenly very tired. I was at the end of my journey now and I went to bed wondering what tomorrow would bring.

When I got down to breakfast next morning there was only a single place laid at the long deal table. It was eight-thirty, but already the others had finished. The Chinaman served me bacon and eggs and coffee and after I had fed I got my coat and went out to have a look at Come Lucky. The snow had stopped. It was a grey, windless morning. The place seemed utterly deserted. I walked the length of the street along the rickety boards of the sidewalk and saw only one shack with glass in the windows and curtains. The town was the most derelict place I'd ever seen, worse than the bombed villages of Italy during the war. It reminded me faintly of Pompeii—a place where people had lived long, long ago.

I turned down through the snow towards the bunkhouse. There was a heavy American truck with a bulldozer loaded in the back drawn up outside the office of the Trevedian Transport Company. The driver came out just as I reached it. ‘Miss the bus this morning?' he asked with a grin. He was a big, cheerful man in an old buckskin jacket and olive-green trousers.

‘How do you mean?' I asked.

‘Aren't you working on the road?'

‘No.'

‘You mean you live here? Christ. I didn't know anyone under sixty lived in this dump.'

‘No, I'm just a visitor. Are you taking that bulldozer up Thunder Creek?'

‘Yeh. Want to ride along and see how the work's progressing?'

There seemed no point in hanging around Come Lucky. Now I was here I had all the time in the world. ‘Yes,' I said. ‘I only got in last night. I haven't had a chance yet to see much of the country.' I climbed up into the cab beside him and he swung the big truck down the snow-packed grade to the lake-shore road. There we turned right and rumbled along the ice-bound edge of the lake towards the dark cleft of Thunder Creek. ‘Where's this road going to lead to when it's finished?' I asked him.

He stared at me in surprise. ‘Shouldn't have thought you could stay a night in Come Lucky and not know the answer to that one. It's going up to the cable hoist at the foot of Solomon's Judgment. Pity about the cloud. On a fine day there's quite a view of the mountains from here. You know this part at all?'

‘No,' I said. ‘I've never been in the Rockies before.'

‘Well, I guess you haven't missed much. Winter lasts just about the whole year round up here.' He peered through the windshield. ‘Seems like the clouds are lifting. Maybe you'll get a glimpse of Solomon's Judgment after all. Quite a sight where the big slide occurred. Happened around the same time as the Come Lucky slide.' He nodded through his side window. ‘Doesn't look much from here when it's covered in snow like it is now. But you see those two big rocks up there? That's just about where the entrance to the old Come Lucky mine was. They reckon there's three or four hundred feet of mountainside over that entrance right now.'

The line of the timber loomed ahead. Soon it had closed round us, the trees silent and black, their upper branches sagging under the weight of the snow. The road was furrowed by wheel tracks and here and there the broad tracks of a bulldozer showed through the carpet of snow. Wherever there were drifts the snow had been shovelled aside in great banks and the edges of the road were piled with the debris that had been torn out to make it; small trees, chunks of ice and hard-packed snow, gravel and dirt and stones and the rocks of minor falls.

The road was about twelve feet wide with passing points almost every mile. Where streams came down, which was often, the gullies had been packed with timber to form a bridge and damp patches had been surfaced with logs placed corduroy-fashion.

We were climbing steeply now, reaching back into a tributary of Thunder Creek to gain height. The road twisted and turned, sometimes running across bare, smooth rock ledges, sometimes under overhanging cliffs.

We topped a shoulder of rock, bare of trees, and I caught a brief glimpse of two snow-covered peaks towering above the dark, timbered slopes and of a sheer wall of rock that fell like a black curtain across the end of the valley, its gloom emphasised by a tracery of snow-packed crevices and occasional patches of ice. ‘That's the slide I was telling you about,' the driver shouted. ‘And that's Solomon's Judgment, those twin peaks.' He revved the big diesel engine and changed gear.

‘Do you know Campbell's Kingdom?' I asked him.

‘Heard of it,' he said, keeping his eyes on the road, which was running sharply down to the bed of a ravine. ‘Can't say I've ever been there.'

‘Do you know where it is?'

‘Sure.' He eased the big truck over the logs that bridged the stream bed and nursed it up the further side. As the lorry's snout lifted above the slope the twin peaks rose to meet us above the trees until they filled the whole sky ahead. ‘Campbell's Kingdom is up there,' he said, pointing to the peaks.

My heart sank. It looked a hell of a climb. ‘How far does the road go?' I asked.

‘The road? Well, it doesn't go up to the Kingdom.' He laughed. ‘There's two thousand feet of cliff there.'

He swung the truck round a bend and there, straight ahead of us, two bulldozers and a gang of men were working on a section of the track that had been completely obliterated. There was a closed three-tonner parked at the end of the road and we drew in behind it and stopped.