‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Your brother’s gone up Thunder Creek. Can I come in?’
‘Ja, ja. Come in.’ He closed the door after me and stood there, watching me. But for a moment I was too astonished to say anything. I was in a big lounge hall of tawdry magnificence, looking at the faded grandeur of Luke Trevedian, mine-owner and collector. He had apparently had a taste for old furniture, but it was entirely indiscriminate. Exquisite little Queen Anne pieces were mixed up with suits of armour, Chippendale and Adam mahogany and ornate Italian furniture. There was a superb Jacobean refectory table surrounded by Hepplewhite chairs. And everywhere there was dust and an air of decay.
‘Why do you come here?’ Max’s voice, hard and teutonic, growled round the rotting tapestry hangings on the walls.
I turned and faced him, trying to measure his mood. He hadn’t moved from the door. His small eyes were narrowed, his body hunched forward with the arms hanging loose. His expression was one of resentment at my intrusion. He glanced furtively round and then, with a sudden smile that was like a gleam of wintry sunshine in his rugged face, he said, ‘We go into my father’s room. This-’ His big hands indicated the room. ‘This is hers.’
He took me down a short passage and into a small, very simple room. It was furnished almost entirely with colonial pieces from the loyalist houses of the East. The furniture here gleamed with the care that had been lavished on it. I had a sudden feeling of warmth towards Max. He was clumsy and loutish and yet he’d kept this corner as a shrine to his father’s memory with the delicate care of a woman. ‘It’s a beautiful room,’ I said.
‘It is my father’s room.’ There was pride and love and longing in his voice.
‘Thank you for letting me see it.’ I hesitated. ‘Will you take me up to the Kingdom, Max?’
He stared at me and shook his head slowly. ‘Peter does not wish you to go to the Kingdom. I must not go there again.’
I went over and sat at the desk, fitting my mood to the atmosphere of the room, to the man who had once occupied it. I looked at Max Trevedian, trying to visualise the little boy who must have stood here before his father after he had killed another boy. ‘Max,’ I said gently. ‘You didn’t have a very happy childhood, did you?’
‘Childhood?’ He stared at me and then shook his head. ‘No. Not happy. Boys made fun of me and did cruel things. Little girls …’ He swung his head from side to side in that bear-like way he had. ‘They laugh at Max.’
‘Boys made fun of me, too.’ I said.
‘You?’
I nodded. ‘I was poor and half-starved and my grandfather was in prison. And later, something was missing — some money — and they ganged up on me and said I’d stolen it. And because my grandfather had been to prison and my mother was poor they sent me to a reform school.’ God, it seemed only yesterday. It was all so vivid in my mind still. ‘You loved your father, didn’t you?’
He nodded. ‘Ja. I love my father, but always there is my stepmother. She hated me. She made me live in the stables after…’ His voice trailed away, but I knew that what he had been going to say was after I killed Alf Robens. ‘It was different with me,’ I said. ‘I had no father.
He was killed in the first war. I loved my mother very dearly. She always believed my grandfather innocent. She brought me up to believe it, too. But when I was sent to the reform school and she died I began to hate my grandfather.’ I went slowly across to him and put my hand on his arm. ‘Max, I now know I did him a great wrong. I know he is innocent. I’m going to prove him innocent. And you’re going to help me because then Campbell and your father will once again be remembered as friends. He didn’t ruin your father. He was convinced there was oil up in the Kingdom. And so am I, Max. That is why you’re going to take me up to the Kingdom.’
He shook his head slowly, unwillingly. ‘Peter would be angry.’
I wanted to say Damn Peter, but instead I said, ‘You know I’ve been to Calgary?’
He nodded.
‘I was very ill there. I nearly died. I haven’t much time, Max. And it’s important. It’s important for both of us. Suppose there is oil up there — then you’ve done Campbell a great injustice. You remember when you took that report to him up in the Kingdom? That lulled him as surely as if you’d battered his head against a stone.’ I saw him wince. ‘You had hate in your heart, that was why you went up, wasn’t it — that’s why you did what Peter asked you? But you had no cause to hate him and you must give me the chance to prove it.’ I saw his childish mind struggling to grasp what I had been saying and knew I must put it in a way that was positive. ‘Campbell will never rest,’ I said, ‘until I have proved there is oil up there.’
I saw his mouth open, but I didn’t give him the chance to speak. I turned to the door. ‘Meet us at the entrance to Thunder Valley in half an hour,’ I said. ‘I’ll need two saddle horses. I’ve an oil man with me. You needn’t worry about your brother. He’s gone up to the dam.’ I paused, my hand on the door. ‘If you don’t do this for me, Max, may the dead ghost of Stuart Campbell haunt you to your dying day.’
I left him then. Outside the sunlight seemed to breathe an air of spring. I paused when I reached the Golden Calf and looked back to the old house. Max was making his way slowly towards the stables. I knew then that we’d get up to the Kingdom. I turned and went into the hotel, feeling a sense of pity, almost of affection for that great, friendless hulk of a man.
Quarter of an hour later Winnick parked his car in a clearing at the entrance to the valley of Thunder Creek. It was screened from the road and we waited there for Max. Half an hour passed and I began to fear that I had failed. But then the clip-clop of hooves sounded on the packed, rutted surface of the road and a moment later he came into sight leading three horses, two saddle and one pack. He dismounted and helped us into the saddle, adjusting our stirrup leathers, tightening the cinches. ‘You ride good?’ he asked Winnick.
‘I’ll be okay.’
Max turned to me then, his eyes keen and intelligent. ‘But you do not ride, huh?’
‘Not for a long time,’ I said. ‘And not on a Western saddle.’ It was a big, curved saddle shaped like a bucket seat with a roping horn in front. It was elaborately decorated and there were thongs of leather to tie things on to it.
He stared at me critically. In all else he might be a child, but he was a man when it came to horses. He was in his own element now and his stature increased immeasurably. He was the leader and he behaved like a leader. ‘It is different from the English saddle, huh? Now you ride with long stirrups and a long rein. Relax yourself and get down in the saddle. We have some bad places to cross. Let the pony have her head.’ He turned and swung himself on to his big black in a single, easy movement.
We moved off then, Max leading the pack-horse, myself following and Winnick bringing up the rear. We went down through thick brush and black pools damned by beavers to the rushing noise of Thunder Creek. We crossed the swirling ice-cold waters, the horses swimming, their heads high, their feet stumbling on the bottom. Then we were in timber again and climbing steadily.
Now and then we paused to rest the horses. At the stops nobody talked, but I saw Winnick watching me, speculating whether I’d make it or not. When I had returned to the Golden Calf with the news that I’d got horses and a guide, he’d tried to dissuade me. I think his scientific mind was convinced that a man who only a few days ago had been ordered into hospital by a doctor could not possibly stand up to a I