He stared at me, his mouth slightly open. ‘You’re not acting for me, Acheson,’ I said. ‘You never have been. You’re acting for Fergus here. As for the mineral rights, I suppose you didn’t bother to check with the Bank of Canada who has them now?’
‘What are you getting at?’ Fergus demanded.
For answer I pulled out my wallet and handed him the covering letter I had received with the documents. He read it through slowly. Not a muscle of his face moved. Then he passed it across to Acheson. I watched the solicitor’s face. He wasn’t a poker player like Fergus. ‘How did you get these?’ he demanded angrily. ‘What yarn did you spin the old man?’ He turned to Fergus, ‘I think we could challenge this. It might be a question of false pretences.’
I leaned back. ‘Now I know where I am,’ I said. ‘When you get back to Calgary, Acheson, will you kindly lodge all the documents relating to Stuart Campbell with the Bank of Canada together with a statement of any actions you have taken regarding his affairs without my knowledge. And I warn you, I’ll have the whole thing checked through by a competent and honest lawyer,’ And then, before he could recover himself, I added, ‘Now perhaps you’ll leave us to discuss this business privately since it no longer concerns you.’
He sat staring at me for a moment, his mouth open, quite speechless. Then he turned to Fergus, who had lit a cigarette and was watching the scene with the detachment of a spectator. ‘I think,’ Fergus said, ‘Wetheral and I will get on better on our own.’
Acheson hesitated. He wanted to say something. I could see him struggling to get it out, but he didn’t know what to say. In the end he pulled himself to his feet and left us without a word.
Fergus watched him go and then leaned towards me. ‘It seems you’re a good deal cleverer than Acheson gave you credit for. Suppose we put the cards on the table. In the first place, I have no alternative source of power. The Larsen Mines are low grade ore. It’s all right taking power from one of the existing companies now when lead prices are high. But I’m operating on the long view. I want cheap power permanently in the hands of the company. Therefore, you can take it as quite definite that whatever your attitude- I shall go ahead with the completion of the Solomon’s Judgment dam and in due course — about five months from now — the Kingdom will be a lake. I have full powers to do this under the legislation passed by the Provincial Parliament in February, 1939.
You can either accept my offer, which is $60,000, or we can go to arbitration.’
‘Then we go to arbitration,’ I said. ‘And if there’s oil up there-’
‘There’s only one way for you to prove that there’s oil up there,’ he said, and that is to drill a well.’
I nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I intend to do.’
He smiled. ‘Then you’ll have to drill it with a bit and brace for you won’t get a rig up there. I’ll see to that. Better face it, Wetheral. The courts won’t grant you anything like $60,000 in compensation.’
‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘You’ve already monkeyed about with a survey and caused the death of an old man. That won’t look too good if it comes out in court.’
But he just smiled. ‘You think it over.’ He got to his feet. ‘$60,000 is a lot of money for a young man like you. It would be a pity to lose it all trying to drill a well. And don’t do anything foolish. Remember, Campbell was a crook and his record wouldn’t help you any if you got yourself into the criminal courts.’ He nodded to me, still with that thin-lipped smile on his face, and turned to the door. ‘Acheson! Acheson!’ His voice gradually faded away as I sat there, rigid, my hands gripping the edge of the table, my whole body cold with anger. My grandfather’s record hadn’t been thrown in my face like that since I was a kid.
At length I got to my feet and went slowly up to my room. From the window I watched the two of them leave and walk down to Trevedian’s office. I looked down and saw I was holding the gun in my hand. I threw it quickly on to the bed. I couldn’t trust myself to have it in my hand.
I was still standing there, staring up to the twin peaks of Solomon’s Judgment, when old Mac came in. His face was sour and his burr more pronounced than ever as he told me I could no longer stay at the hotel. I didn’t argue with him. From the window I could see Trevedian’s thick-set figure walking back to the bunkhouse and down the lake-shore a big American car was ploughing through the slush in the direction of Keithley.
The gloves were off and I began to pack my things.
CHAPTER TWO
Days later I was in Calgary and Boy and I heard from Winnick’s own lips his report on that last recording we had mailed to him. He was guardedly optimistic. The pulses recorded by the geophones were not clearly defined, but at least there was no evidence of the broken strata referred to in his original report. ‘All I can say is that it looks like an anticline. Before I can tell you anything definite I’ll need to have the results of a dozen or so more shots from different points over the same ground.’
It wasn’t much to go on, but it was enough to confirm our suspicions that there had been substitution of the original recordings. Boy wired Garry Keogh the result and left for Edmonton at once to pick up the rest of his team. He planned to go up to the Kingdom by the pony trail just as soon as he could get through. He would bring the results of the survey out himself. He reckoned it would take about a month. I asked him how he was fixed for money, but he just shrugged his shoulders. ‘We’ll make out, I guess. There’s gas up in the Kingdom and cans of food. We won’t have to pack anything up there, just ourselves. As for wages, I’ll look after that.’
I stayed on in Calgary. I had a lot to see to. Acheson’s office handed over all the documents relating to my grandfather’s affairs and by the time I had unravelled the affairs of the Campbell Oil Exploration Company and had got somebody to act for me a week had passed. At the same time I did everything I could to make myself familiar with the operation of a drilling rig. Winnick, a little man with pale eyes and spectacles and.a rather sad-looking face, took Roger Fergus’ instructions very literally. He gave me every possible assistance. He lent me books. He took me out to dinner at the Petroleum Club, introduced me to oil men, and sent me to have a look over the Turner Valley field. At the end of that week I really felt that I was beginning to know something about oil.
And at the end of that week the jaded mechanism of my body ran down and I hadn’t the strength to crawl out of bed. Winnick came round to see me and sent at once for his doctor. I knew it wasn’t any use and I told him so. But he insisted. He seemed to feel personally responsible. I think at the back of his mind was the sense of having let old Roger Fergus down over that survey. He was a kind-hearted little man, fussy over details and with an immense regard for the infallibility of his own judgment.
The doctor, of course, wanted me to go straight into hospital. But I refused. I was afraid once I got inside a hospital I’d never get out. I’d been better in the cold, crisp air of the Rockies. I wanted to get back there. I felt that time was running out and if I were going to die I wanted to die up in the Kingdom. As I lay in my bed in the Palliser Hotel, in a half-coma of inertia, this became almost an obsession with me. I think it was this that pulled me through. I just refused to die down there in Calgary with the level ground of the ranchlands spreading out round me and the dust blowing through the streets.
A few days later, very weak and exhausted, I staggered down to Winnick’s car and we headed north for Edmonton and Jasper. We spent the night at Jasper and Johnnie Carstairs and Jeff Hart came to see me in my room. I remember something that Johnnie said to me then. Winnick had told him I’d been ill and he knew what the cause of it was. He said, ‘Take my advice, Bruce. Stay in the Rockies. The mountains suit you.’
‘You may be right,’ I said. ‘I was damn glad to see them again.’