OIL VERSUS ELECTRICITY
Will the dream of an old-timer come true? Will his grandson strike oil up in his Rocky Mountain kingdom or will the men building the dam flood the place first? The author went up there and saw the start of this fantastic race.
The author was Steve Strachan, the Calgary Tribune reporter who had visited us.
This sudden interest in what we were doing gave me fresh heart. I stayed on and did the broadcast, for now that I was down in a town and forced to face the situation with realism I found I could not sustain the forced optimism that had been engendered by the tense atmosphere of the Kingdom. I was already subconsciously working towards obtaining the best compensation I could from the courts. Upon what they awarded me depended the extent to which I could repay those who had helped me. I made it clear, therefore, both in the broadcast and in the article I wrote for the Calgary Tribune, that we were into the igneous country that had stopped Campbell Number One and that given a few more weeks we should undoubtedly bring in a well.
This false optimism produced immediate dividends for on the morning after the broadcast Acheson came to see me. He looked pale and angry, which was not surprising since Fergus had sent him with an offer of $100,000. I was very tempted to accept. And then Acheson said, ‘Of course, in view of the publicity you have been getting, we shall require a statement that you are now of the opinion that Campbell was wrong and there is no oil in that area of the Rockies.’
‘And if I don’t make the statement?’
‘Then I’m instructed to withdraw the offer.’
I went over to the window and stood looking out across the railway tracks. To make that statement meant finally branding my grandfather as a liar and a cheat. It meant reversing all I’d aimed at in the last few months. It would be a final act of cowardice. ‘Would Fergus agree to free transportation of all vehicles and personnel down by the hoist and over the Thunder Valley road?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll think about it.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘You’ll have to think fast then. This offer is open till midday.’
‘What’s the hurry?’
‘Fergus wants to get shot of the whole business.’
He left me then and for an hour I paced up and down the room, trying to balance my unwillingness to accept defeat against the need to repay the men who had helped me. And then the bell-hop came and I knew why they had been in such a hurry to get a decision out of me. It was a telegram from Boy, dispatched from Keithley:
THROUGH SILL AT FIFTY-EIGHT HUNDRED. DRILLING TEN PER HOUR. EVERYONE OPTIMISTIC. SECOND CONSIGNMENT FUEL ON WAY. BOY.
I stared at it, excitement mounting inside me, reviving my hopes, bursting like a flood over my mood of pessimism. I seized hold of the phone and rang Acheson. ‘I just wanted to let you know that half a million dollars wouldn’t buy the Kingdom now,’ I told him. ‘We’re in the clear and drilling ten feet an hour. You knew that damn well, didn’t you? Well, you can tell Fergus it’s going to cost him a fortune to flood the Kingdom.’ I slammed down the receiver without waiting for him to reply. The damned crooks! They’d known we were through the sill. They’d known it by the speed at which the travelling block moved down the rig. That’s why they’d increased their offer. I was laughing aloud in my excitement as I picked up the phone and rang the editor of the Calgary Tribune. I told him the whole thing, how they’d offered me $100,000 and they’d known all the time we were in the clear. ‘If they’ll only give us long enough,’ I said, ‘we’ll bring in that well.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘We’ll run this story and I’ll write a leader that won’t do you any harm. When are you planning to go up there?’
‘I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning,’ I said.
‘Okay. Well, don’t worry about transport. I’ll have Steve pick you up in the station wagon around nine. You don’t mind him coming up with you?’
‘Of course not.’
Early the following evening Steve and I arrived in Jasper. There was little snow on the mountains now and it was still warm after the blistering heat of the day. It was only that evening, as I sat drinking beer with Jeff, that I realised I had been over a week in Calgary and hadn’t felt ill. ‘It’s our dry, healthy climate, I guess,’ Jeff said. I nodded abstractedly, thinking how much had happened since that first time I had come through Jasper. ‘Don’t reckon they gave you much time to be ill, anyway.’ Jeff took a newspaper from his pocket and passed it across to me. It was the Edmonton paper and it carried a long news story on development in the Kingdom.
The effect was to make me even more impatient to get up to the Kingdom. Somehow I couldn’t bear the thought that they might strike oil before I got up there. From a mood of despair I had swung over to wild, unreasoned optimism. For a long time I lay awake that night watching the moon over the peak of Edith Cavell, praying God that it would be all right, that we’d get deep enough in time. I was sorry Johnnie couldn’t come up with me; he was out riding trail with a party of dudes and Jeff was tied up with his garage now the tourist season was in full swing.
The next night we bunked down in the straw of the Wessels hayloft and early the following morning we rode round the north shore of Beaver Dam Lake and when we emerged from the cottonwoods there, suddenly, straight ahead of us, were the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. I reined in my pony and sat there for a moment, staring at them, thinking of the activity going on up there, hearing the clatter of the drill, seeing the travelling block slowly descending. Jean would be there and with luck . . .
I shook my reins and heeled the pony forward. It didn’t bear thinking about. There just had to be oil there. My eyes were dazzled for a moment by the flash of sun on glass. It was a lorry moving on the road up to Thunder Creek. Another and another followed it; materials for the dam moving up to the hoist. ‘Seems a lot more traffic on that road now,’ Steve said.
I nodded and pushed on up the trail. I didn’t want to think about that dam. I hoped to God they were behind schedule. Already it was the 15th and their completion date was supposed to be the 20th. Only five more days.
As we wound our way up through the timber I smelt the old, familiar smell of warm resin. It seemed to me as heady as wine. It made the blood sing in my veins and my heart pound. I felt as though this were my country, as though it were a part of me as it had been a part of old Stuart Campbell.
Thunder heads were building up as we reached the timber line. The peaks became cold and grey and streaks of forked lightning stabbed at the mountains to the roll of thunder echoing through the valleys. And then the hail came. The Kingdom was blanketed with it as we crossed the Saddle in a freak shaft of sunlight.
An hour later Moses was barking a welcome to us as we rode up to the ranch-house. Jean came in as we unsaddled. Her eyes were bright in the gloom of the stable and as I gripped her arms and felt the trembling excitement of her body the place seemed like home. ‘Have we brought in a well?’ I asked her.
She shook her head. ‘The boys are working shifts round the clock now,’ she said. ‘They’re determined that if it’s there, they’ll get down to it.’ The tightness of her voice revealed the strain they were working under and when we went out into the sunlight I was shocked to see how tired she looked.
‘What are they down to now?’ I asked.
‘Six thousand four hundred.’
‘Let’s go down to the rig,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some mail for them and a lot of newspapers.’
‘Sure you’re not too tired?’ She was looking at me anxiously. ‘I was afraid—’ She turned away and stared towards the rig. ‘They’ve nearly finished the dam,’ she said quickly. ‘They’ve been working at it like beavers. A week ago they took on fifty extra men.’
‘When do they expect to complete it?’
‘In two days’ time.’
Two days! I turned to Steve. ‘You hear that, Steve? Two days.’
He nodded. ‘It’ll be quite a rac
e.’
‘Better get yourself settled in,’ I told him, and Jean and I set out for the rig, Moses limping along beside us. We didn’t talk. Somehow, now I was here it didn’t seem necessary. We just walked in silence and across the deep grass came the clatter of the rig like music on the still air. But something was missing and my eyes slid unconsciously to the cleft between the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. ‘What’s happened to the cement mixers?’ I asked.
‘They stopped yesterday.’ Her hand came up and gripped my arm. ‘They’ve finished concreting.’
I began to tell her what had happened in Calgary, but somehow the publicity I had got seemed unimportant. Up here only one thing mattered—if there was oil, would we reach it in time?
The strain I had seen in Jean’s face was stamped on the faces of everyone on the rig. They were pulling pipe when we arrived. Garry working the draw works and Boy acting as derrick man. ‘Where are the others?’ I asked Jean.
‘Sleeping. I told you, they’re working round the clock now.’
As soon as they’d changed the bit and were drilling again, they all crowded round me, wanting to hear the news from Calgary, eagerly scanning the papers I had brought and searching the bundle of mail for their own letters. And I stood and watched them, noticing the dark shadows under their eyes, the quick, tense way they spoke. The atmosphere was electric with fatigue and the desperate hope that was driving them.
‘Did you see Winnick?’ Garry asked me. His voice was hard and terse.
I nodded.
‘What did he say?’
‘He’s been over the seismograms again. He thinks we’ll strike it around seven thousand or not at all.’
‘We’ll be at seven thousand the day after tomorrow.’
‘Have you taken a core sample since you got clear of the sill?’
‘Yeh. I don’t know much about geology, I guess, but it looked like Devonian all right to me.’
‘We’ll just have to make it,’ I said.
‘Oh, sure. We’ll make it.’ But his voice didn’t carry conviction. He looked dead beat.
‘Seen anything of Trevedian?’
‘No. But he’s got somebody posted on top of that buttress, keeping an eye on us through glasses. If that bastard shows his face down here—’ He turned and stared towards the dam. His battered face looked crumpled and old in the hard sunlight. ‘I wish to God we’d got a geologist up here. If we do strike it, as like as not it’ll be gas and we’ll blow the rig to hell.’
‘If you do strike it,’ I said, ‘you won’t need to worry about the rig.’
‘It’s not the rig I’m worrying about,’ he snapped. ‘It’s the drilling crew.’ He gave a quick, nervous laugh. ‘I’ve never drilled a well without knowing what was going on under the surface.’
His manner as much as his appearance warned me that nerves were strung taut. It was not surprising for there were only nine of them to keep the rig going the twenty-four hours and it needed four men on each shift. Pretty soon both myself and Steve Strachan were doing our stint. Fortunately it was largely just a matter of standing by, so that our inexperience was not put to the test. Now that we were in softish country it was only necessary to pull pipe every other day and about all that was required of a roughneck on each shift was to add a length of pipe when the travelling block was down to the turntable. I did the shift from eight to twelve and by the time I had been called at four to go on duty again I began to understand the strain they had been working under. I came off duty at eight, had some breakfast and turned in.
I hadn’t been asleep more than an hour before I was woken with the news that Trevedian had arrived and wanted to see me. He was in the main room of the ranch-house and he had an officer of the Provincial Police with him. Garry was there, too, and he held a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘Trevedian’s just served us with notice to quit,’ he said, handing me the paper.
It was a warning that floodings of the Kingdom under the provisions of the Provincial Government Act of 1939 might be expected any time after 18th August. It was written on the Larsen Company’s notepaper and signed by Henry Fergus. I looked across at Trevedian. ‘The dam’s complete, is it?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Just about.’
‘When are you closing the sluice gates?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after. As soon as we’re ready.’ He turned to the policeman. ‘Well, Eddie, you’ve seen the note delivered. Anything you want to say?’
The officer shook his head. ‘You’ve read the notice, Mr Wetheral. I’d just remind you that as from 1000 hours tomorrow morning the Larsen Company is entitled to flood this area and that from that time they cannot be held responsible for any loss of movable equipment.’
‘Meaning the rig?’
He nodded. ‘I’m sorry, fellows, but there it is.’
One or two of the drilling crew had drifted in. They stared in silence at Trevedian and the policeman. It wasn’t difficult to imagine what they were thinking. They’d been working up here now for two and a half months without pay. They’d gambled on the chance of bringing in a well and they’d lost. Trevedian shifted his feet nervously. He knew enough about men to know that it only needed a word to touch off the violence in the atmosphere. ‘Well, I guess we’d better get going,’ he said.
The policeman nodded. In silence they turned and went out through the door. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. At length Garry said, ‘Better get some sleep, boys. We’re on again in an hour and a half.’
‘Any chance of bringing in a well between now and ten o’clock tomorrow?’ Steve Strachan asked.
Garry rounded on him with a snarl. ‘If I knew that do you think we’d be standing around looking like a bunch of steers waiting for the slaughter-house.’ And he flung out of the room, back to his bunk.
When I went on shift at midday the drill was down to six thousand six hundred and twenty-two feet. When we came off again at four we had added another forty-three feet. It was blazing hot and the sweat streamed off me, for we had just had the grief stem out and added another length of pipe. I stood for a while, staring across to the dam. The silence there was uncanny. Not a soul moved. I mopped my forehead with a sweat-damp handkerchief. There wasn’t a breath of air. The whole Kingdom seemed silent and watching, as though waiting for something. A glint of sun on glasses showed from the rock buttress. They were still keeping us under observation.
‘I don’t like it,’ a voice said at my elbow.
I turned to find Boy standing beside me. ‘What don’t you like?’ I asked and already I noticed my voice possessed that same sharpness of strain that the others had.
‘Just nerves, I guess,’ he said. ‘But it’s crook sort of weather this with no thunder heads and the mountains burning up under this sudden wave of heat. It’s as though—’ He paused there, and then turned away with a shrug of his shoulders.
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.
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