The two old men continued to stare at me. They looked sad and surprised. Their moustaches drooped. ‘Is the hotel open?’ I asked them.
The shock of being asked a question was apparently too much for them. One of them blinked uncertainly, the other coughed. As though they understood each other’s thoughts, they turned without a word and continued their game.
Beyond the stove there was a door and beside it a bell-push. I pulled myself to my feet and rang. A buzzer sounded in the recesses of the building and slippers shuffled on the wooden floor of a corridor. The door opened slowly and an elderly Chinaman entered. He stopped in front of me and stared up at me impassively with a fixed smile that showed the brown of decaying teeth. He was a little wizened man with a monkey face. His clothes hung on him like a bundle of rags and he wore a shapeless cloth cap. On his feet were a pair of tattered carpet slippers. ‘You want something?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d like a room for the night.’
‘I fetch Mr Mac.’ He shuffled off and I sat down again.
After a time the door was opened by a dour-faced man whose long body was stooped at the shoulders. He was bald except for a fringe of iron-grey hair. His eyelids and the corners of his mouth drooped. He had the appearance of a rather elderly heron and he looked me over with the disinterest of one who has seen many travellers and is surprised at nothing.
‘Are you Mr Mac?’ I asked him.
He seemed to consider the question. ‘Me name’s McClellan,’ he said. ‘But most folk around here call me Mac. Ye’re wanting a room Slippers tells me.’ He sighed. ‘Och weel, I daresay we’ll manage it. Ye’re from the Old Country by the sound of your voice.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My name’s Bruce Wetheral. I’ve just arrived from England.’
‘Weel, it’s a wee bit airly in the season for us, Mr Wetheral. We don’t generally reckon on visitors till the fishermen come up from the Coast around the end of June. But we’ve an engineer staying already, so one mair’ll make little difference. Ye’ll no mind feeding in the kitchen wi’ the family?’ ‘Of course not.’
The room he took me to was bare except for the essentials: an iron-framed bed, a wash basin, a chest of drawers and a chair. A text — Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love — was the only adornment on the flaking paint of the wood-partitioned walls. But the room was clean and the bed looked comfortable.
They kept farmhouse hours at the hotel and I barely had time to wash and unpack my things before the old Chinaman called me for tea. By the time I got down the McClellan family was all assembled in the kitchen, a huge room designed to feed the seething population of Come Lucky in its hey-day. Besides the old man and his sister, Florence McClellan, there was his son, James, and his family — his wife, Pauline, and their two children, Jackie aged nine and Kitty aged six and a half. James McClellan was a small, wiry man. Keen blue eyes peered out from under his father’s drooping lids and his nose was as sharply chiselled as the beak of a hawk. His expression was moody, almost sour, and when he spoke, which was seldom, there was the abruptness of a hot, violent-tempered man. Pauline was half French, raven-haired and buxom with an attractive accent and a wide mouth. She laughed a little too often, showing big, white teeth.
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 a 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?’