It was nearly 3 a.m. when the darkness began to glow with light and we heard the sound of a car. Boy pushed forward to the edge of the road. The headlights brightened until the whole pattern of the brush around us stood in stark silhouette against two enormous eyes of light. It was a car all right and we flagged it down with our arms. It stopped and Garry Keogh got out, his thick body bulkier than ever in a sheepskin jacket. ‘Sorry I’m late. Had a flat. What in hell are we playing at, meeting like this in the middle of the night?’
Boy held up his hand, his head on one side. A faint murmur sounded above the noise of creek. ‘Is there a truck behind you?’ Boy asked.
‘Yeah. Passed it about six miles back.’
‘Quick then.’ Boy jumped into the car with him and guided him off the road to the glade where our horses were. We sat in the car with the lights off watching the heavy truck trundle by.
‘What’s all the secrecy about?’ Garry asked.
I tried to explain, but I don’t think I really convinced him. If Trevedian had been in charge of a rival drilling outfit I think he’d have understood. But he just couldn’t take the construction of a dam seriously. ‘You boys are jittery, that’s all. Why don’t you do a deal with this guy Trevedian. You’ve got to use the hoist anyway to get a drilling rig up there. You’re not planning to take it up by pack pony, are you?’
And his great laugh went echoing around the silence of the glade.
I told him the whole story then, sitting there in the car with the engine ticking over and the heater switched on. When I had finished he asked a few questions and then he was silent for a time. At length he said, ‘Well how do we get the rig up there?’
I said, ‘We’ll talk about that later, shall we — when you’ve had a look at the place and decided whether you’re willing to take a chance on it.’
The lateness of the hour and the warmth of the heater was making us all drowsy. We settled down in the seats then and slept till the first grey light of day filtered through the glade. Then we covered the car with brushwood and started back up the trail to the Kingdom.
It was midday before we reached the top of the Saddle. It was snowing steadily and the wind was from the east. My heart was pumping erratically and I was so tired I found it difficult to stay in the saddle. When we got to the ranch-house I went straight to bed and stayed there till the following morning. Next morning my buttocks were sore and the muscles of my legs stiff with riding, but once I was up I felt fine. My heart seemed steadier and slower and I had recovered my energy. Garry Keogh spent the day out with Boy riding over the territory, planning his drilling site, working out in his own mind the chances of success. In the evening, after supper, we got down to business.
We had a roaring log fire going and hot coffee. Garry sat with his notes in his hand and a cigar clamped between his teeth, the bald dome of his head furrowed by a frown. ‘You think we’ll run into a sill of basalt at about four thousand?’ He looked across at Boy.
‘I think so,’ Boy answered. ‘That or something like it stopped Campbell Number One in 1913. They were drilling by cable-tool and they just couldn’t make any impression. With a rotary drill-’
‘It’s still a snag,’ Garry cut in. He turned to me. ‘I think I told you, Bruce, I could stand two months operating on my own, no more. Well, that’s about the size of it. Boy here says if we’re going to hit oil, we’ll hit it at around five, six thousand. That’s okay, but this isn’t Leduc. We aren’t down in the plains here. There’s this sill he talks about, and down to that it’ll be metamorphic rocks all the way. It’ll be tough going. And on top of that we may drill crooked and have to fool around with a whipstock. Anything could happen in this sort of country. And we’re working on a financial shoe-string with no facilities. We can’t take a core sample. We’ve no geologist. We’ll just have to log on the cuttings — by guess and by God. We’ve no certainty that we’re on top of country that is oil bearing. We’ve no knowledge whatever of the nature of the strata at five thousand feet. We’re working entirely in the dark with minimum crew, no financial backing and against time.’ He sat back, sucking at his cigar. ‘The only clue to what’s under the surface is this story of Campbell’s that thirty years ago he saw some oil 09 the waters of Thunder Creek.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a hell of a risk.’
‘Campbell knew a lot about oil,’ Boy murmured.
‘So you tell me.’
‘Bruce showed you the old man’s progress report. It’s obvious from that that he’s a sound geologist.’
‘Sure. I’ve seen what he’s written, but how do I know that it bears any relation to the ground itself?
I
All I know about Campbell is that he was reckoned to be crazy.’
‘I can confirm a good deal of it from my own observations,’ Boy said.
‘Yeah, the straightforward stuff. But what about the conclusions he draws? Can you confirm them?’
‘There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about them,’ Boy answered. ‘We all know that the oil deposits in the North American continent derive from the marine life deposited on the floor of the central sea area that ran from Hudson’s Bay to the Caribbean. These mountains here are a fairly recent formation. I know most geologists take the view that this is not a likely area. Yet the fact remains that many of the first wells were drilled at points of seepage on the eastern escarpment. Because those wells were not successful it doesn’t necessarily mean that there wasn’t any oil there. They were drilled early in the century and their equipment wasn’t good enough to reach down to any great depth.’
‘In two months I won’t be able to drill much deeper than five thousand, not in this sort of country.’ Garry relit his cigar. ‘There’s water here, there’s all the ingredients for making mud of about the right consistency, the weather shouldn’t be too bad from now on and Winnick has a sound reputation, but…’ He shook his head gloomily.
‘If Louis’ original report had been based on the results we’re now giving him — in other words if those recording tapes hadn’t been switched — Roger Fergus would have drilled a well up here by now.’
‘Sure and he would. But I’m not Roger Fergus. He could afford to lose any amount of dough. I can’t. I’m just in the clear and I mean to stay that way.’ He rubbed his fingers along the line of his jaw. ‘The only thing that makes me go on considering the idea is this fifty-fifty proposition of yours, Bruce.’ He stared at me with a sort of puzzled frown. ‘I keep telling myself I’m a fool, but still I keep considering it. Perhaps if I were younger …’ He shook his head slowly from side to side like a dog trying to remove a buzzing from its ears. ‘You know if this location were just beside a good highway I guess I’d be crazy enough to fall for your proposition, but how the hell am I to get my rig up here?’
‘By the hoist,’ I said.
He stared at me. ‘But you’ve told me about this fellow Trevedian. He owns the valley of Thunder Creek. He owns the road and he owns the hoist and he doesn’t aim to have any drilling done up here. Because of him I have to come up here. All this tomfoolery because he’s got guards on the valley route and now you tell me you’re going to bring my rig up by the hoist.’
‘I think it can be done,’ I said. ‘Once.’
‘I see.’ His leathery face cracked in a grin. ‘You’re going to play it rough, eh? Well, I don’t know that I blame you, considering what you’ve told me. But I’ve got my equipment to think of.’
‘It’s insured, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t know how the insurance company would view my acting outside the law, busting through two guard points and then slinging my equipment up through a mile of space to a mountain eyrie. How do I get it down anyway?’
‘I don’t think there’ll be any difficulty about that,’ I said. ‘If you bring in a well here, you won’t need to get it down. And if you don’t then I think you’ll find Trevedian only too happy to give you a free passage out of the area.’