‘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 j
udges 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.’
‘It seems I was right in insisting on police protection up here.’ Trevedian smiled and glanced at his watch again. ‘Better get your things clear of the ranch buildings now, Wetheral,’ he said. ‘I’m going to finish flooding.’ He turned away, the policeman following him.
‘Just a minute,’ I called. ‘What time did you come up here?’ They had paused and I was addressing the policeman.
‘At eight o’clock this morning,’ he answered.
‘And you weren’t up here when the order to flood was given?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Mr Trevedian didn’t expect any trouble until this morning.’
‘You mean he was prepared to deal with it himself during the hours of darkness.’
The other shrugged his shoulders. ‘My orders were to be up here at eight this morning.’
‘Are you here as an official of the Provincial Police or have the company hired you as a watch-dog?’
‘Both,’ he said rather tersely.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘In other words you’re employed by the company and take your orders from Trevedian. That’s all I wanted to know.’ I turned my horse. ‘We’re wasting our time here,’ I said to Garry. ‘This will have to be fought out in the courts.’
He nodded slowly and we rode back to the ranch-house in silence. His face looked drawn and haggard. The fire of anger had gone out of him and he slumped in his saddle like a bag of bones and flesh. He didn’t say anything all the way back, but I was very conscious of the fact that he’d lost his rig, everything he had made in over fifteen years. It deepened the mood of black despair that had gripped me since I woke up and found the Kingdom had become a lake over-night. It was difficult to remember the elation that had filled us in the early hours when the drenching rain had obliterated the broken rig from our sight.
When we reached the ranch-house we were greeted with the news that the water was rising again. They had thrust a stake in at the edge of the lake and even as we watched the water ran past it and in a moment it was several feet out from the lake’s edge. All our energies were concentrated then on salvaging what we could. We loaded Boy’s vehicles with all our kit and movable equipment and drove them up to the edge of the timber. Jean and I harnessed the horses to an old wagon we found and in this way I managed to get some of my grandfather’s belongings out. And then as the rain slackened and a misty sun shone through we made camp in the shelter of the trees and drank hot tea and watched the water creep slowly up to the ends of the barns and then trickle in clutching fingers round the back of the ranch-house. By midday the place my grandfather had built with his own hands was a quarter of a mile out in the lake and the water was up to the windows. For five miles there was nothing but water flecked with white as the wind whipped across it.
It was the end of the Kingdom.
2
I DON’T KNOW whether it was the reaction after the strain of the last two months or the physical effect of suddenly having nothing to work for any more, but that night my feet and hands were swollen and painful and my heart was thudding against my ribs. I felt exhausted and drained of all energy. They made me a bed in the back of Boy’s instrument truck and though I was reasonably comfortable I lay awake half the night, feeling certain that now my time was up and the end had at last come. I slipped off into a sort of coma and when I woke sometimes Jean was there, holding my hand, sometimes I was alone. The moon was bright and by craning my head I could just see out of the back of the truck and get a glimpse of the lake that now filled the Kingdom. The ranch-house had disappeared completely, swallowed by the waters. There was no sign left that my grandfather had ever been in the country.
I felt better in the morning, but very tired. I slept intermittently and once Boy came and sat beside me and told me he had been over to the dam and had phoned Trevedian from the control room. We were to have the trucks at the hoist by midday tomorrow. I lay back realising that this was our final exodus, that we should not be coming back. The rest of the business would be conducted in the stuffy, soul-destroying atmosphere of a court room. I didn’t feel that I wanted to live. There would be weeks, maybe months of litigation. I couldn’t face that. Jean seemed to understand my mood for she kept assuring me that it would be all right, that the lawyers would look after it all and that we’d get the compensation required to repay everyone. But I didn’t really believe her. And then, late in the evening, Johnnie rode in with a couple of American newspaper boys, the same who had been up with him the previous fall when they had found the body of my grandfather.
I remember they came to see me that night. They were a surprisingly quiet, slow-spoken pair and somehow their interest in the whole business as a story put new heart into me. They had listened to Garry’s story of the night we’d struck the anticline. They’d got the pictures so vividly in their minds that I could see it all again as they talked. ‘But who’ll believe us?’ I said. ‘Even Steve Strachan, who was up here with us, isn’t entirely convinced.’
The taller of them laughed. ‘He’s not used to this sort of thing,’ he said. ‘We are. We’ve put the four of you through a detailed cross-examination. And it’s okay. The detail is too good to have been fabricated. Soon as we get down I’ll send off my story a
nd I’m going to ask my paper to put up the dough for us to get divers down before the weather breaks. If we can drag that pipe up, that’ll prove it. In the meantime, I take it you’ve no objection to Ed taking a few pictures of you.’ His big, warm-hearted laugh boomed out. ‘Boy, you certainly provide the final touch to make this one of the most human dramas I’ve ever been handed. Now if you’d been running around full of health and vigour . . .’ He shook his head and grinned. ‘But here you are, King Campbell’s grandson, lying sick with no roof over your head because these bastards . . .’ There was a flash as Ed took the first picture. ‘Well, don’t worry. Fergus will have half the North American continent gunning for him by the time I’ve finished writing this up. And by a stroke of luck we’ve got pictures of the Campbell homestead and the whole Kingdom before they flooded it.’
Next morning we started out towards the dam. The going was very rough for the water forced us up into the rock-strewn country at the foot of the mountains. In places boulders had to be hefted aside and at one point the timber came right down to the water’s edge and it took us an hour to cut a way through for the trucks. I started off in the instrument truck, but pretty soon I got out and walked. It was less tiring than being jolted and flung from side to side.
It was well after midday by the time we turned the base of the buttress and ground to a halt at the barbed wire. There was nobody on the dam or up at the concrete housing of the hoist. The whole place seemed strangely deserted. We hung about for a time, blowing on the horns and shouting to attract attention. But nobody came and in the end we found a join in the wire, rolled it back and drove the vehicles through. I had taken the precaution of hiding all the rifles under a pile of bedding. The Luger I had slipped into my pocket. The drillers, exhausted and despondent, were in an ugly mood. It only wanted a crack or two from some of the men working on the power house at the bottom of the hoist and there would be trouble. I was taking no chances of it coming to shooting.
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