‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘We’ll run this story and I’ll write a leader that won’t do you any harm. When are you planning to go up there?’
‘I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning,’ I said.
‘Okay. Well, don’t worry about transport. I’ll have Steve pick you up in the station wagon around nine. You don’t mind him coming up with you?’
‘Of course not.’
Early the following evening Steve and I arrived in Jasper. There was little snow on the mountains now and it was still warm after the blistering heat of the day. It was only that evening, as I sat drinking beer with Jeff, that I realised I had been over a week in Calgary and hadn’t felt ill. ‘It’s our dry, healthy climate, I guess,’ Jeff said. I nodded, abstractedly, thinking how much had happened since that first time I had come through Jasper. ‘Don’t reckon they gave you much time to be ill, anyway.’ Jeff took a newspaper from his pocket and passed it across to me. It was the Edmonton paper and it carried a long news story on development in the Kingdom.
The effect was to make me even more impatient to get up to the Kingdom. Somehow I couldn’t bear the thought that they might strike oil before I got up there. From a mood of despair I had swung over to wild, unreasoned optimism. For a long time I lay awake that night watching the moon over the peak of Edith Cavell, praying to God that it would be all right, that we’d get deep enough in time. I was sorry Johnnie couldn’t come up with me; he was out riding trail with a party of dudes and Jeff was tied up with his garage now the tourist season was in full swing.
The next night we bunked down in the straw of the Wessels hayloft and early the following morning we rode round the north shore of Beaver Dam Lake and when we emerged from the cottonwoods there, suddenly, straight ahead of us, were the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. I reined in my pony and sat there for a moment, staring at them, thinking of the activity going on up there, hearing the clatter of the drill, seeing the travelling block slowly descending. Jean would be there and with luck …
I shook my reins and heeled the pony forward. It didn’t bear thinking about. There just had to be oil there. My eyes were dazzled for a moment by the flash of sun on glass. It was a lorry moving on the road up to Thunder Creek. Another and another followed it; materials for the dam moving up to the hoist. ‘Seems a lot more traffic on that road now,’ Steve said.
I nodded and pushed on up the trail. I didn’t want to think about that dam. I hoped to God they were behind schedule. Already it was the 15th and their completion date was supposed to be the 20th. Only five more days.
As we wound our way up through the timber I smelt the old, familiar smell of warm resin. It seemed to me as heady as wine. It made the blood sing in my veins and my heart pound. I felt as though this were my country, as though it were a part of me as it had been a part of old Stuart Campbell.
Thunder heads were building up as we reached the timber line. The peaks became cold and grey and streaks of forked lightning stabbed at the mountains to the roll of thunder echoing through the valleys. And then the hail came. The Kingdom was blanketed with it as we crossed the Saddle in a freak shaft of sunlight.
An hour later Moses was barking a welcome to us as we rode up to the ranch-house. Jean came in as we unsaddled. Her eyes were bright in the gloom of the stable and as I gripped her arms and felt the trembling excitement of her body the place seemed like home. ‘Have we brought in a well?’ I asked her.
She shook her head. ‘The boys are working shifts round the clock now,’ she said. ‘They’re determined that if it’s there, they’ll get down to it.’ The tightness of her voice revealed the strain they were working under and when we went out into the sunlight I was shocked to see how tired she looked.
‘What are they down to now?’ I asked.
‘Six thousand four hundred.’
‘Let’s go down to the rig,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some mail for them and a lot of newspapers.’
‘Sure you’re not too tired?’ She was looking at me anxiously. ‘I was afraid-’ She turned away and stared towards the rig. ‘They’ve nearly finished the dam,’ she said quickly. ‘They’ve been working at it like beavers. A week ago they took on fifty extra men.’
‘When do they expect to complete it?’
‘In two days’ time.’
Two days! I turned to Steve. ‘You hear that, Steve? Two days.’
He nodded. ‘It’ll be quite a race.’
‘Better get yourself settled in,’ I told him, and Jean and I set out for the rig, Moses limping along beside us. We didn’t talk. Somehow, now I was here it didn’t seem necessary. We just walked in silence and across the deep grass came the clatter of the rig like music on the still air. But something was missing and my eyes slid unconsciously to the cleft between the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. ‘What’s happened to the cement mixers?’ I asked.
They stopped yesterday.’ Her hand came up and gripped my arm. ‘They’ve finished concreting.’
I began to tell her what had happened in Calgary, but somehow the publicity I had got seemed unimportant. Up here only one thing mattered — if there was oil, would we reach it in time?
The strain I had seen in Jean’s face was stamped on the faces of everyone on the rig. They were pulling pipe when we arrived. Garry working the draw works and Boy acting as derrick man. ‘Where are the others?’ I asked Jean.
‘Sleeping. I told you, they’re working round the clock now.’
As soon as they’d changed the bit and were drilling again, they all crowded round me, wanting to hear the news from Calgary, eagerly scanning the papers I had brought and searching the bundle of mail for their own letters. And I stood and watched them, noticing the dark shadows under their eyes, the quick, tense way they spoke. The atmosphere was electric with fatigue and the desperate hope that was driving them.
‘Did you see Winnick?’ Garry asked me. His voice was hard and tense.
I nodded.
‘What did he say?’
‘He’s been over the seismograms again. He thinks we’ll strike it around seven thousand or not at all.’
‘We’ll be at seven thousand the day after tomorrow.’
‘Have you taken a core sample since you got clear of the sill?’
‘Yeh. I don’t know much about geology, I guess, but it looked like Devonian all right to me.’
‘We’ll just have to make it,’ I said.
‘Oh, sure. We’ll make it.’ But his voice didn’t carry conviction. He looked dead beat.
‘Seen anything of Trevedian?’
‘No. But he’s got somebody posted on top of that buttress, keeping an eye on us through glasses. If that bastard shows his face down here-’ He turned and stared towards the dam. His battered face looked crumpled and old in the hard sunlight. ‘I wish to God we’d got a geologist up here. If we do strike it, as like as not it’ll be gas and we’ll blow the rig to hell.’
‘If you do strike it,’ I said, ‘you won’t need to worry about the rig.’
‘It’s not the rig I’m worrying about,’ he snapped. ‘It’s the drilling crew.’ He gave a quick nervous laugh. ‘I’ve never drilled a well without knowing what was going on under the surface.’
His manner as much as his appearance warned me that nerves were strung taut. It was not surprising for there were only nine of them to keep the rig going the twenty-four hours and it needed four men on each shift. Pretty soon both myself and Steve Strachan were doing our stint. Fortunately it was largely just a matter of standing by, so that our inexperience was not put to the test. Now that we were in softish country it was only necessary to pull pipe every other day and about all that was required of a roughneck on each shift was to add a length of pipe when the travelling block was down to the turntable. I did the shift from eight to twelve and by the time I had been called at four to go on duty again I began to understand the strain they had been working under. I came off duty at eight, had some breakfast and turned in.