I nodded, still looking across the dam. ‘The next move is with them,’ I murmured half to myself.
Garry chuckled. ‘Mebbe he’s had enough. You sure fooled them.’
I turned away. I didn’t like it. The natural thing would have been for Trevedian to come and raise hell. It wasn’t in the nature of the man to take it lying down. But he didn’t come that day, or the next, or the next. I didn’t feel up to heavy work so I took over the cooking again.
On the morning of Tuesday, June 9th, just a week after the rig had rolled into Thunder Valley, Garry spudded in. I stood on the platform and watched the block come down and the bit lowered into the hole. The bushing was dropped into the table, gripping the grief stern, and then at a signal from Garry the platform trembled under my feet, the big diesel of the draw works roared and the table began to turn. We had started to drill Campbell Number Two.
I walked slowly back to the ranch-house to the music of the drill, the noise of it drowning the irritating chatter of the mixers at the dam. Strangely I felt no elation. It was as though I had sailed out of a calm and felt the threatening presence of the approaching storm. I went into the kitchen and began peeling the potatoes for the evening meal.
Half an hour later I heard the patter of feet, the door was pushed open and a big brown collie fell upon me, barking and licking my hand and jumping up to get at my face. It was Moses. He was spattered with mud and his coat was as wet as if he’d just swam the Jordan. I went out into the grey murk of the morning and there, coming up beside the barn was Jean riding a small pinto. She pulled up as she saw me and sat there, looking at me. Her hair was plastered down with the rain so that it clung to her scalp showing the shape of her head like a boy. Her face looked strained and almost sad. The pony dropped its head. She sat motionless. Only her eyes seemed alive. ‘Mac said you needed a cook?’ Her voice was toneless.
‘Yes,’ I said. And I just stared at her. I couldn’t think of anything to say. And yet there was a singing in my blood as though the sun were shining and the violets just opening.
‘Well, I hope I’ll do.’ She climbed stiffly down from the saddle, undid her pack and walked slowly towards me. She stopped when she reached the doorway. She had to, I suppose, because I was blocking it. We looked at each other for a moment.
‘Why did you come?’ I asked at length. My voice sounded hoarse.
She lowered her gaze. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘I just had to, I guess. I brought you this.’ She handed me a bulky envelope. ‘Now I’d like to change please.’
I stood aside and she went through into the bedroom. I turned the envelope over. It was postmarked London. Inside was a whole sheaf of typewritten pages, the newspaper report of my grandfather’s trial which I had asked a friend to copy for me. I stabled the pinto and then I sat down and read through the report. Stuart Campbell had himself gone into the witness box. His evidence was the story of his discovery of the seep, of the abortive drilling in 1913, of his sincere conviction that there was oil in the Kingdom. Most of it I now knew, but one section of it hit me like a blow between the eyes. It occurred during cross-examination by his own counseclass="underline"
Counseclass="underline" This well you were drilling in 1913 why did you suddenly abandon it? Witness: We couldn’t go on. Counseclass="underline" Why not? Witness: We struck a sill of igneous rock. We were operating a cable-tool drill and it was too light for the job. Counseclass="underline" At what depth was this? Witness: About five thousand six hundred feet.
We had to have a heavier drill and that meant more capital.
Counseclass="underline" And so you came to England? Witness: Not at once. I tried to raise money in Canada. Then the war came …
I leaned back and closed my eyes. Five thousand six hundred! And our geophysical survey showed an anticline at five thousand five hundred. The anticline was nothing but the sill of igneous rock that my grandfather had struck in 1913. God, what a fool I’d been not to get hold of the account of this case before starting to drill. Why hadn’t my grandfather mentioned it in his progress report? Afraid of discouraging me, I suppose. I got to my feet and went over to the window and stood there staring across the alfalfa to the rig, wondering what the hell I was going to do. But there wasn’t anything I could do. It hadn’t stopped my grandfather from trying to drill another well.
‘I wish somebody from back home would write me nice long letters like that.’
I swung round to find Jean standing beside me. ‘It’s just a business letter,’ I said quickly. I folded it up and put it back in the envelope. I couldn’t tell her that what she had brought me was the full account of Stuart Campbell’s trial.
That night the stars shone and it was almost warm. The second shift was working and we strolled down to the rig where it blazed like a Christmas tree with lights rigged up as far as the derrick man’s platform. We were talking trivialities, carefully avoiding anything that could be regarded as personal. And then in a pause I said, ‘Didn’t you like it in Vancouver?’
‘Yes, I was having fun — dancing and sailing. But-’ She hesitated and then sighed. ‘Somehow it wasn’t real. I think I’ve lost the capacity to enjoy myself.’
‘So you came back to Come Lucky?’ She nodded. ‘To escape again?’
‘To escape?’ She looked up at me and there was a tired set to her mouth. ‘No. Because it was the only place I could call home. And then-’ She walked on in silence for a bit. Finally she said, ‘Did you have to slap Peter Trevedian in the face like that?’
‘I had to get the rig up here. It was the only way.’
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she sighed. ‘Yes. I suppose so.’
We came to the rig and climbed on to the platform and stood there watching the table turning and the block slowly inching down as the drill bit into the rock two hundred feet below us. Beneath us the screen shook and the rock chips sifted out of the mud as it returned to the sump. Bill was standing beside the driller. ‘What are you making now?’ I shouted to him.
‘About eight feet an hour.’
Eight feet an hour. I did a quick calculation. Roughly two hundred a day. Then twenty-five days — say a month — should see us down to the anticline?’
He nodded. ‘If we can keep this rate of drilling up.’
We stayed until they shut down at midnight. We were working two teams of four on ten-hour shifts and closing down from midnight to 4 a.m. It was the most the men could do and keep it up day after day. Boy and I were taking it in turns to stand guard on the rig. Moses acting as watchdog.
We were soon settled into a regular routine. One day followed another and each was the same, the monotony broken only by the variable nature of the weather. June dragged into July and each day two more lengths of pipe had been added to the length of the drill. The heat at midday became intense when the sun shone and the nights were less cold. Snow storms became less frequent, but whenever the sun shone throughout the morning thunder heads would build up over the mountains around midday and then there’d be rain and the thunder would rumble round the peaks and they would be assailed by jabbing streaks of lightning. And all the time the alfalfa grew and the Kingdom was carpeted with lupins and tiger lilies and a host of other flowers.
And in all that time Trevedian had not once come near us. The work at the dam was going on night and day now. Once we rode over at night to have a look at it and where Campbell land stopped and Trevedian land began, the boundary was marked by a heavy barbed wire fence. There was a guard on the hoist and on the dam itself and they carried guns and had guard dogs.
The sense of being cut off gradually overlaid all our other feelings. The drill might probe lower and lower, boring steadily nearer to the dome of the anticline, but in all our minds was that sense of being trapped, of not being able to get out. We were completely isolated in a world of our own, the radio our only contact with the outside world. And when that broke down the Kingdom closed in on us.