He growled something under his breath. ‘Well, I’ve a message for you. Two friends of yours are down at 150-Mile House. ’Phoned up to find out whether you were still here.’
‘Two friends?’ I stared at him. ‘Who were they?’
‘Johnnie Carstairs and a fellow called Jeff Hart. Said they’d be up here this afternoon to see you if the road wasn’t washed out.’
I turned away towards the window. Johnnie Carstairs and Jeff Hart. It was the best news I had had in a week. And then my eyes focused on a figure on horseback slithering down the track from the bunkhouse. He reached the lake-shore road, turned right and went into a long, easy canter. No need to ask myself who it was. The size of the man told me that. But he was no longer an ungainly lout. The horse was a big, raw-boned animal and the two of them merged to form a pattern of movement that was beautiful to watch.
‘Why is Max Trevedian so eager to go up to the Kingdom?’ I asked as I lost sight of him behind the shacks opposite.
Old Mac turned away. ‘Och, the man’s just simple. Ye dinna want to worry about him. He’s been crazy for a long time. All he understands is horses.’ And he shuffled out to the kitchen.
It was around tea time that Johnnie and Jeff rolled into Come Lucky in a station wagon plastered with mud. I met them down at the bunkhouse and walked with them up to the hotel. And it wasn’t long before I knew what had brought them. Jeff had met Boy Bladen down at Edmonton. ‘He said something about that survey being phoney,’ Johnny said. ‘He said Trevedian fixed it and then sent his brother up to the Kingdom with the report.’ His eyes were hard and narrowed under their puffy lids. ‘He said you could give us the whole story. The road’s just open so we came over. I was kinda fond of the old man,’ he added.
I took them up to my room and gave them a drink and then I told them what had happened. When I had finished Johnnie was on his feet, pacing angrily up and down. ‘So they got at him through the survey. The bastards! I don’t care what they think of him here, Campbell was a fine old man.’
‘Did you know they hated him?’ Jeff asked.
‘Sure, sure. But I didn’t think they’d stoop to a trick as mean as this.’ He turned to Jeff. ‘You never went up to the Kingdom, did you? Then you wouldn’t understand how I feel about this. You had to see the man in the place he’d made his own. By God . . .’ His long, bony hands were clenched and his eyes were hot with anger in the pallid tan of his face. ‘When a man’s as lonely as Campbell was he talks. Night after night I’ve sat up with him . . . I know him as well as I know myself. He was a fine man—it was just that the luck ran against him, I guess.’ He suddenly turned to the window, staring through it towards the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment, looking towards the Kingdom.
He turned abruptly, facing me. ‘Where’s Trevedian?’
‘Up at the hoist,’ I said. And then, because I was shocked by the tenseness of his features, I added, ‘There’s nothing you can do about it, Johnnie.’
‘No?’ He suddenly smiled gently. ‘I’m madder’n hell. And when I’m that way the meanest crittur on four legs won’t get the better of Johnnie Carstairs—nor on two legs neither.’ He turned abruptly to the door. ‘C’m on. Let’s go an’ feed.’
Johnnie was one of those men whose values are real. I had thought of him as a quiet, rather withdrawn man. And yet the violence of his reaction wasn’t unexpected. His code was the code of Nature, physically hard but with no twists. The unnatural was something that struck deep at his roots. I watched him as he sat eating, quiet and easy and friendly, exchanging banter with old Mac. Only his eyes reflected the mood that was still boiling inside him.
McClellan and Creasy were late getting back and we had nearly finished our meal by the time they arrived. ‘Was it all right, Jamie?’ Mac asked.
‘Of course it was.’ For the first time since I had known him James McClellan was smiling. It gave a queer twist to his features for it was not their accustomed expression. ‘The motor was all right and so was the cable. There was a lot of ice on it up at the top, but underneath there were still traces of the grease packing I put on last year.’ He nodded perfunctorily to Johnnie as he sat down and got straight on with his meal. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked. ‘Bit early in the season for visitors, isn’t it?’
‘This is Jeff Hart, from Jasper,’ Johnnie said. ‘We came over to see friend Bruce here. Understand you wouldn’t take him up to the Kingdom this morning.’
‘Peter Trevedian runs the transport here,’ McClellan replied sullenly.
‘Sure, sure. Peter Trevedian runs you and the whole goldarned town from what I hear. Did you know about him sending his brother up to old Campbell with the report on that survey?’ Johnnie was rolling himself a cigarette. ‘Pity I didn’t know what had happened. I had a couple of newspaper boys along who would have been interested.’
Nobody said anything. The table had become suddenly silent. Anger underlay the mildness of Johnnie’s tone, and it showed in his eyes.
‘You’d better go and talk to Peter Trevedian,’ McClellan said awkwardly.
‘Sure I will, but at the moment I’m talking to you. Jeff here saw Boy Bladen in Edmonton the other day.’
‘Well?’
‘Boy seemed kinda mad about something. You wouldn’t know what that something was, would you now?’
‘No.’
Johnnie was lighting his cigarette, and his eyes were on McClellan through the smoke. ‘I thought you were Trevedian’s partner?’
‘Only on the hoist.’
‘I see. Not when it comes to substituting phoney survey figures and driving an old man to his death.’
McClellan pushed back his chair and got to his feet. ‘What the hell are you getting at?’
‘Nothing that you can’t figure out for yourself.’ Johnnie had turned away. ‘My advice to you, McClellan, is—watch your step,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You’re riding in bad company, boy.’ He turned suddenly. ‘Now, where will I find Trevedian?’
McClellan didn’t answer. He just turned on his heel and walked out. Johnnie gave a slight shrug. ‘Know where Trevedian is, Mac?’ he asked.
I don’t think the old man heard the question. He seemed lost in thought. It was Creasy who answered. ‘You’ll find him down at the bunkhouse. If he’s not in his office, he’ll most likely be in his quarters round at the back.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’ Johnnie had turned to the door. Jeff and I got up and followed him. ‘You boys stay here,’ he said. ‘You can order me a beer. I’ll be thirstier’n hell by the time I get through with Trevedian.’
We sat and waited for him by the stove in the bar. He was gone the better part of an hour and by the time he got back men from Creasy’s construction gang were filtering in in ones and twos. They were a mixed bunch, their hands hard and calloused; Poles, Ukrainians, Italians, a negro and two Chinamen. They wore war surplus clothing relieved by bright scarves and gaily coloured shirts. They were the same crowd that I had seen in the bar each evening. ‘Well?’ Jeff asked as Johnnie slid into the vacant chair at our table.
‘Trevedian wasn’t there,’ he said and called to the Chinaman to bring more beer. ‘I went along and saw Jean instead.’ His eyes crinkled as he looked across at me. ‘Leastaways you got yourself one friend in Come Lucky. She’s a real dandy, that girl. If I were a few years younger . . .’ He smiled gently to himself and drank his beer.
‘If you were a few years younger, you’d still be a bachelor,’ Jeff said.
‘Sure, I know.’ He nodded slowly. ‘A girl’s all very well, but when it comes to living with her . . .’ He stopped suddenly, his gaze fixed over my shoulder.
I turned in my chair. Peter Trevedian was standing in the doorway, looking round the bar. He went over to Creasy and asked him a question. Creasy shook his head. ‘No. Ain’t seen him.’ Trevedian straightened up, facing the room. ‘Just a minute, boys.’ His solid, throaty voice silenced the murmur of conversation. ‘Anybody here seen my brother today?’
‘Wasn’t he loadi
ng a truck outside the bunkhouse when we left this morning?’ a voice asked.
‘Sure he was . . . I seen him myself.’ There was a chorus of assent all round the room.
‘I know that,’ Trevedian answered. ‘We left him at the bunkhouse when we went up to the hoist. I want to know what’s happened to him since then.’
‘Maybe he went out for a walk and lost hisself.’ It was the driver of one of the bulldozers.
‘Max doesn’t lose himself,’ Trevedian said harshly.
‘Maybe he lose his memory, eh?’
There was a laugh and somebody added, ‘Per’aps he forgot where he is going.’
Trevedian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Another crack like that and I’ll send the man who makes it back where he came from. Just confine yourselves to statements of fact. Has anybody seen Max since this morning?’
‘Yeah. I seen him.’ It was one of the old men, the one they called Ed Schieffer. ‘I seen him right after you left. Saddled his horse an’ rode off. I seen him from the window of me shack.’
‘Where was he headed for?’
‘He followed you. Up Thunder Creek.’
Trevedian growled a curse and turned towards the door. It was then that Johnnie slid to his feet. I grabbed hold of him by the arm. But he threw me off. ‘Just a minute, Trevedian.’
Something in the quietness of his voice silenced the murmur of talk that had started in the bar. Trevedian turned, his hand on the door. ‘Why, if it isn’t Johnnie Carstairs.’ He crossed the room, his hand outstretched. ‘What brings you up here this early in the year?’ His tone was affable, but his head was sunk into his shoulders and his eyes were watchful under the shaggy brows.
Johnnie was in the middle of the room now. He ignored the other’s hand. He was rocking gently on his high-heeled boots, anger building up inside him like steam in a boiler. ‘I came on account of what I heard from Bladen.’
‘Well?’ Trevedian had stopped. His hand had fallen to his side. ‘What did you hear from Bladen?’
‘Did you have to play a dirty trick like that on an old man who never did you—’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know damn well what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Stuart Campbell. You killed him.’ Johnnie’s voice vibrated through the silence of the room. ‘Why the hell did you have to do it like that, striking at him through his—’
‘Oh, stop talking nonsense. I didn’t touch the old man and you know it.’ Trevedian’s eyes glanced round the room, seeing it silent and listening. ‘We’d better go down to my office. We can talk there.’ He turned towards the door.
‘There’s nothing private in what I got to say.’ Johnnie had not moved, but his hands had shifted to the leather belt round his waist. ‘What were you afraid of—that he’d talk to some newspaper feller, that he’d tell them what he knew about the dam?’
‘What do you mean?’ The other had swung round.
‘Campbell wasn’t a fool. Why do you think he let them go on with the construction of the dam at the start of the war without making any demand for compensation?’
‘He’d have put in a claim only Pearl Harbor brought the Yanks into the—’
‘It wasn’t Pearl Harbor. It was because he knew the dam wouldn’t stand the weight of the water.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking—’
‘Sure you do. I’m talking about the Marie Bell and her cargo of cement. I took a Vancouver shipowner up to the Kingdom in 1940 and he told us the whole thing.’
‘The construction of the dam is nothing to do with me—never has been. I just pack the materials in.’ Trevedian’s voice had risen slightly. He moved a step nearer. It was like seeing a bull about to charge a matador.
Johnnie laughed softly. It reacted on Trevedian like a slap in the face. His head came down and his fists clenched. A tingle of expectation ran through the room. ‘Think I don’t know what packing rates are?’ Johnnie said. ‘You didn’t make enough out of transporting the stuff to start a transport and construction company in Alaska.’
‘The Government was responsible for building the dam,’ Trevedian snapped. ‘They had inspectors.’
‘Sure they had inspectors. But how were they to know you were packing in cement that had lain for a year on the rocks of the Queen Charlotte Islands.’
‘That’s a lie.’ Trevedian’s face was livid. ‘All the cement I delivered was from an American company down in Seattle.’
‘Sure. They were shipping cement up to Alaska for military installations. One of their ships—’
Trevedian suddenly straightened up. He had got control of himself and his big laugh boomed through the room. ‘So I’m supposed to have killed Campbell because he knew I’d supplied dud cement for the dam.’ He slapped his thigh with amusement. ‘That’s damn funny. In the first place I didn’t kill Campbell, and every God-damned person in this room knows it. In the second place, that dud cement you talk about seems to be standing up to it pretty well since the dam’s still there and there isn’t a crack in the whole structure. You want to get your facts right before you come storming up here making a lot of wild accusations.’ And still laughing he turned on his heel and went out into the night, leaving Johnnie standing there in the middle of the floor.
Johnnie didn’t move. He stood there, staring at the closed door and for a moment I thought he was going to follow Trevedian. But instead he came back to our table and knocked back the rest of his beer. ‘What’s all this about the dam?’ Jeff asked.
‘To hell with the dam.’ Johnnie’s eyes were angry. ‘But if that bastard—’ He suddenly laughed. ‘Well, maybe Stuart was right. If he was willing to let things take their course, I guess I should be, too.’ He put down his glass. ‘I’m going down to have a talk with Jean.’ He turned then and went out of the room. And as the door closed behind him a buzz of conversation filled the smoke-laden atmosphere.
‘What did he mean—about the dam?’ I asked Jeff.
‘I don’t know. Never heard him mention it before.’
We discussed it for a while and then Jeff said, ‘You know, I’d like to see this dam there’s all the fuss about. Have you seen it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I saw it the other day from Thunder Creek. What I want to do is get up there. I want to see the Kingdom.’
‘Thunder Creek’s where they’re building the road, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
He suddenly laughed. ‘Well, what are we waiting for? It’s a fine night and there’s a moon. Let’s go right on up there.’
I stared at him. ‘Now?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
But some instinct of caution made me hesitate. ‘It would be better to go up by daylight,’ I said. ‘Could we go up tomorrow? Then you’d get a good view of the dam and I might be able to persuade—’
‘Tomorrow’s no good,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving tomorrow.’ He got to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll go up there now.’
‘What about Johnnie?’
‘Johnnie?’ He laughed. ‘Johnnie wouldn’t come anyway. He just hates automobiles. We’ll leave a message for him. How far do we have to go up Thunder Creek?’
‘I think it’s about ten or eleven miles,’ I said.
‘And the road has only just been made. Hell! We can be there and back in an hour and a half. Come on. You don’t need a coat. We got some in the station wagon and it’s got a heater, too.’
Part Two
The Kingdom
1
THE ROAD UP Thunder Creek was like the bed of a stream. Water poured across it. The groundgrips of the big car were either slithering and spinning in a morass of yellowish mud or bumping over stones and small boulders washed down from above. Some of the log bridges were unable to dispose of the volume of water coming down the gullies they spanned. It banked up above them and poured across, a foot deep in places, so that they looked like small weirs. But Jeff never once suggested turning back. A car to him was
an expendible item, a thing to fight nature with and he sang softly to himself as he wrestled with the wheel.
Above us, through the trees, the moon sailed fast among ragged wisps of cloud, a full circle of luminous yellow that lit the winding trail in a macabre light, half drowning the brilliance of the headlights. Thunder Creek, below us to the left, was a dark canyon of shadow out of which came the steady, relentless roar of water. And as we climbed, the black shadow of the fault capped by the snow-white peaks shouldered its way up the sky till it blotted out the moon and seemed to tower right over us.
It was here, in the dark shadows, that we suddenly emerged from the timber into a clearing where roofless log huts sprawled amongst the sapling growth. We had reached the camp built in 1939 when work on the dam had begun. The trail, blazed by the piles of slash on either side, ran straight across it and into the timber again. Gradually the trees thinned out. The surface of the road under its frozen powdering of snow became hard and bumpy. Then the timber finally fell back behind us and the headlights blazed on the most colossal rock fall I have ever seen. Great blocks of stone the size of houses were piled one on top of the other, balanced precariously and hung like the playthings of the Cornish giants against the moon-tipped edges of the racing cloud wisps. And above the slide—high, high above it—towered the black shadow of the cliff face, a gleam of white at the top where the moon caught the snowcaps, a gleam of white that wavered and moved as mare’s tails of wind-driven snow streamed from the crests.
The headlights swung across the fantastic, gargantuan jumble of the slide as the track turned away into the wind that funnelled up the dark cleft of the valley. The track here had been hammered out of the edge of the slide itself and the wheels bounced and jolted over the uneven surface of stones. We dropped steeply several hundred feet and fetched up at a square, concrete building that looked like an enormous pill-box. On the side facing us was a timbered staging on which rested a heavy wooden cage suspended by wires to a great cable the thickness of a man’s arm. Jeff stopped the car and switched his spotlight on to the cable, following it up the slope of the slide. It gleamed dully in the light like the thick thread of a spider, running in a long loop away up the slide until it faded into nothing, reaching beyond the range of the spotlight. Below it two subsidiary cables followed the pattern of the loop.
Campbell's Kingdom Page 12
