He nodded. ‘Climate is the same as food. What you want is what you’re deficient of. And no damned quack blethering a lot of scientific nonsense will convince me otherwise. You stay up in the mountains, Bruce.’
‘I intend to,’ I said. ‘I’m going up to the Kingdom.’
He nodded. ‘Well, if they try and smoke you out, send for me.’
Next day we made Keithley Creek and the following morning we ploughed through the mud of the newly-graded road to Come Lucky. Now that I was in the mountains again I felt better. My heart was racing madly, but the air was cool and clear and I was suddenly quite confident that I should get my strength back. The sight of the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment against the clear blue of the sky gave me the same feeling that the cliffs of Dover had done when I came back at the end of the war; this was home to me now.
We didn’t turn up to the bunkhouse, but continued straight along the lake-shore road to the dark, timbered mouth of Thunder Creek. I had warned Winnick that we might not be allowed to go up by the hoist, but he wasn’t convinced. He was Henry Fergus’ oil consultant and he’d known him since they were kids together. He thought that would be enough.
But it didn’t work out that way. About a mile up the creek where the road cut back into the mountainside to bridge a torrent we were stopped by a heavy timber gate supported by a tall post like the corral gates around Calgary. There was a log hut with an iron chimney that sent a drift of wood through the frees. A man came out of it as we drew up and through the open doorway I saw a rifle propped against a wooden bench. ‘Can I see your pass?’ The man was short and stocky and he was chewing gum.
I certainly hadn’t expected precautions as elaborate as this and my companion was equally surprised. ‘My name’s Winnick,’ he said. ‘I’m a friend of Henry Fergus.’
‘I don’t know any Henry Fergus,’ the man replied. ‘I take my orders from Trevedian and he says you got to have a pass if you want to go on up to the camp.’
‘Who’s in charge up at the camp?’
‘Fellow named Butler, but that won’t help you, mister. You got to have a pass signed by Trevedian an’ Trevedian’s down at Come Lucky. You’ll find him at the company’s office.’ The last words were almost drowned by the sound of a horn. ‘Pull over, will you. There’s a truck coming through.’ I turned round. Coming up the grade behind us was a big American truck, heavily loaded and grinding up in low gear.
We pulled into a turning section that had been bulldozed out of the hillside and watched the truck grind past, through the wide-swung gate. It was loaded with bags of cement roped down under a tar-pauline. ‘For two pins I’d crash through behind it,’ Winnick said.
‘You’d only get your tyres shot up.’ I nodded to the open doorway of the hut.
He didn’t say anything for a moment, but sat staring first at the rifle inside the hut and then at the man who was leaning on the gate watching us. At length he put the car in gear, turned her and headed back down the valley. ‘Seems you were right after all. We’ll have to find Trevedian.’
‘You won’t get a pass out of him,’ I said.
‘Of course I will,’ he said.
We were running out of the timber and the lake lay blue in the sunshine and the whole hillside above it glistened with water from the melted snow so that the shacks of Come Lucky were like dilapidated houseboats plunging down the glittering cascade of a fall. He swung the car towards Come Lucky and stopped at Trevedian’s office. ‘You wait here,’ he said.
He was gone about ten minutes and when he came out his mouth was set in a tight line. ‘We’ll have to ride up,’ he said. ‘Do you know where we can get horses and a guide?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Unless…’ I paused, looking up to the line of shacks that marked the single street of Come Lucky. Then I climbed out of the car. ‘Let’s walk up to the hotel and have a drink. There’s just one person who might help us.’
‘Who’s that?’
I didn’t answer. It was such a slender chance. But if we didn’t get the horses here it would mean going back to Keithley and starting out from there. As we walked up along the rotten boarding of the sidewalk to the Golden Calf Winnick said, ‘Maybe you were right about that survey.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘About Henry arranging for the recording tapes to be switched. When Trevedian refused to give us a pass to go up the creek, I got through to Calgary. Henry told me I’d no business to be here. He warned me that if I continued to act for you he’d see to it that I got no more business from his companies or from any of his friends. I knew he was a cold-blooded devil, but I never thought he’d try to pull a thing like that.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Go up to the Kingdom with you.’
We had reached the Golden Calf. As we pushed open the door old Mac came to meet us. ‘Ah’m sorry, Wetheral,’ he said sourly, ‘but ye ken verra well Ah canna have ye here.’
‘Trevedian phoned you we were coming up, did he?’ I said.
He shrugged his shoulders awkwardly. ‘Ah canna help it, man.’
I said, ‘Well, don’t worry, we’re not here for the night. We just want a drink, that’s all.’
Mac hesitated and then he said angrily, ‘Och, o’course ye can have a drink.’ He looked at me and his face softened slightly, ‘If ye’d care to come into ma office there’s a wee drap o’ Scotch ye could have.’
We went through into a small room with a roll-top desk and a grandfather clock. I introduced Winnick. The old man stood looking at him for a moment and then he went over to the desk and brought out a bottle and glasses from the cupboard underneath. ‘So ye’re the oil consultant from Calgary.’ He passed the bottle across to Winnick. ‘And what brings ye to Come Lucky, Mr Winnick?’
‘We want to get up to the Kingdom,’ I said. ‘But there’s a guard at the entrance to Thunder Creek.’
He nodded. ‘Aye. And there’s anither at the hoist. Ye’ll no’ get to the Kingdom that way, laddie, not unless ye get Trevedian’s permission, and I dinna think ye’ll get that.’
‘He’s already refused,’ I said.
‘Aye.’ He nodded. ‘An’ he’s within his rights.
Thunder Creek’s all Trevedian land right up the fault to the dam.’
‘Where’s the pony trail start?’ I asked.
‘The pony trail?’ He rubbed the stubble of his chin with his bony fingers. ‘You cross Thunder Creek by a ford a few hundred yards above the lake and it runs up through the timber below Forked Lightning Mountain and then over the Saddle below the northern peak of Solomon’s Judgment.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a hard trail to follow. Ye’d never make it on your own.’
‘I was afraid of that,’ I said. ‘Is Max around today or has he gone to Keithley for supplies?’
‘Max Trevedian? Aye, he’ll be doon at his place. But Max’ll no’ take ye up.’
‘Where’s his shack?’
The old man stared at me for a moment and then took me to the window and pointed it out to me, a dilapidated huddle of buildings standing on their own a few hundred yards above and beyond the bunk-house. ‘It’s Luke Trevedian’s old place.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘One time it was a fine farmhouse with flowers and all the people from miles around coming to parties there. He had some of the finest horses in the country and a big ranch over in the Kootenay. Och, the times I’ve had up there.’
‘You wait here,’ I said to Winnick. ‘I won’t be long.’
Mac stopped me at the door. ‘Take care,’ he said. ‘Max is an uncertain sort of critur. He doesna realise his own strength.’
‘I know,’ I said.
As I walked down the street I saw Trevedian come out of his office and get into the truck parked by the bunkhouse. He drove down to the lake-shore and turned up towards Thunder Creek. I couldn’t help smiling. Trevedian was making certain of his guards, and all because I had arrived in Come Lucky. A wisp of smoke came from the stone chimney of the old Trevedian home. Even now, though it was falling into ruins, it had an air of solidity about it. The stables and barns were of split pine, but the house itself was built of stone and there was the remains of a carriage driveway. A big saddle horse stood tethered to the railing of the verandah and it pricked its ears at me as I knocked on the patched woodwork of the front door. Nothing stirred inside the house and I knocked again. Below me Beaver Dam Lake lay like a sheet of glass mirroring the blue of the sky and the sharp-etched white of the mountains beyond. Boots sounded on bare boards. Then the door was flung open and Max Trevedian stood there, staring at me, his fool mouth agape. His eyes slid towards the shape of the bunkhouse.