I raised my glass, thinking of the picture he was giving me of my grandfather and the Kingdom. ‘How do I get there?’ I asked.
‘Up to the Kingdom?’ Johnie shook his head. ‘You won’t get up there yet awhiles — not until the snow melts.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Oh, in about a month, I guess.’
‘I can’t wait that long,’ I said.
Johnnie’s eyes narrowed as he peered across at me. ‘You seem in a goldarned hurry.’
‘I am,’ I said.
‘Well, Max Trevedian might take you up. He acts as packer and guide around Come Lucky. But it’d be a tough trip, an’ he’s an ornery sort of crittur anyway. Me, I wouldn’t look at it, not till the snows melt. But then I ain’t much use without a pony. Had the devil’s job getting down last fall.’
I brought the dog-eared map out of my pocket and spread it on the table. ‘Well, how do I get to Come Lucky anyway?’ I asked.
Johnnie peered at it and shook his head. ‘Maps ain’t much in my line,’ he said. ‘I go by the look of the country.’
It was Jeff who gave me the information I wanted.
‘You’ll have to take the Continental down as far as Ashcroft. From then on it’s a car ride up through 150 Mile House, Hydraulic, Likely and Keithley Creek. Do you reckon the roads will be open, Johnnie?’
Johnnie Carstairs shrugged his shoulders. ‘Depends on the chinook. If it’s blowing then you might find somebody to take you through.’
I thanked him and folded the map up.
He looked across at me and his hand closed over my arm. ‘You’re a sick man, Bruce. Take my advice. Wait a month. It’s too early for travelling through the mountains except by rail. Don’t you agree, Johnnie?’
‘Sure, sure. Leastaways I wouldn’t try it.’
‘I can’t wait that long,’ I murmured.
‘Be sensible,’ Jeff pleaded. ‘Johnnie and I have lived up in this country a long time.’
‘I must get up there,’ I insisted.
‘Well then, wait a month.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why in hell not?’
‘Because-’ I stopped then. I couldn’t just tell them I hadn’t much time.
‘Let him find out for himself, Jeff.’ Johnnie’s voice was gruff with anger. ‘Some people are just cussed. They got to learn the hard way.’
‘It’s not that,’ I said quickly.
‘All right, then — what is it? What’s the goldarned hurry?’
‘It isn’t any of your business.’ I hesitated and then added, ‘I’ve only two months to live.’
They stared at me. Johnnie’s eyes searched my face and then dropped awkwardly. He brought out his tobacco and concentrated on rolling a cigarette. ‘I’m sorry, Bruce,’ he said gently. Accustomed to dealing with animals I think he’d read the truth of Maclean-Harvey’s opinion in my features. But Jeff was a mechanic. ‘How do you know?’ he asked. ‘You can’t know a thing like that.’
‘You can if you’ve got cancer of the stomach.’ My voice sounded harsh. ‘I had the best man in London. He gave me six months at the outside. The anaemia is secondary,’ I added. I got to my feet. My lips were trembling uncontrollably. ‘Good night,’ I said. ‘And thanks for your help.’ I didn’t want them to see that I was scared.
CHAPTER THREE
I lay awake for hours that night, fighting for breath and looking out at the frozen moonlight glinting on the white needle of Edith Cavell. I can admit it now — I was scared. The idea that I could do in a few months what my grandfather had failed to do in thirty-odd years had carried me over the first hurdle of shock and across 5,000 miles of the earth’s surface. Now that that idea was finally shattered the ground seemed to have been cut away from under my feet. But the more sick at heart I felt the more determined I became to reach Campbell’s Kingdom. Like a dog I wanted to crawl into some safe retreat to die, away from the prying eyes of my fellow creatures.
Next day Jeff Hart and Johnnie Carstairs both came down after lunch to see me off. They didn’t ask me how I was and they studiously avoided looking at me. They insisted on carrying my two handgrips and walked one on either side of me as though they were afraid I’d die on them right there. ‘Damn it,’ Jeff growled, ‘if it had been a month later I’d have driven you over myself.’ A cold wind flung puffs of powdered snow in our faces.
They saw me into my carriage and left cigarettes and magazines the way visitors leave flowers in a sick room. As the train pulled out Johnnie called to me: ‘Any time you need help, Bruce, there’s a couple of pals right here in Jasper you might call on.’
‘We’ll be up to see you some time,’ Jeff added.
I waved acknowledgment and as I watched the black outline of the station fade in the wind-driven snow I felt a lump in my throat. The sense of loneliness had closed in on me again and I went back to my seat.
The train puffed laboriously into a world of virgin white. Our only contact with the outside world was the twin black threads of the line reaching back towards the prairies. The mountains closed in around us, monstrous white shapes scarred here and there by black outcrops of wind-torn rock.
The train threaded its way inexorably southwards, through Thunder River, Redsand, Blue River and Angushorn. At Cottonwood Flats it began to rain and as dusk fell we drew in to Birch Island and I saw for the first time a stretch of road clear of snow.
We reached Ashcroft just before midnight. It was still raining. The darkness was full of the sound of water and great heaps of dirty snow filled the yard with gurgling rivulets. When I asked at the hotel about the roads they told me they had been open for the last two days. I felt my luck was in then and nothing could stop me. Next morning I bought a pair of good water-proof boots and tramped the round of the local garages. My luck held. At one of them I found a mud-bespattered Ford filling up with gas, a logger bound for Prince George. He gave me a ride as far as 150 Mile House. The country poured water from its every crevice, the creeks were roaring torrents and we ground our way through falls of rock and minor avalanches. It took us most of the day to do the 100-odd miles to 150 Mile House.
I spent the night there and in the morning got a lift as far as Hydraulic. By then the rain had turned to a wet snow. I was getting back into the high mountains. After a wait of two or three hours and some lunch, a farm truck took me on to Keithley Creek. It was dark when I arrived. The country was deep in snow and it was freezing hard. I crawled into bed feeling dead to the world and for the first time in months slept like a log.
I slept right through to eleven o’clock and was woken with the news that the packer was in from Come Lucky and would be leaving after lunch. It was blowing half a gale and snowing hard. They served me a steak and two fried eggs and when I’d packed and paid my bill I was taken out and introduced to a great ox of a man who was loading groceries into an ex-army fifteen hundredweight.
We pulled out of Keithley just after two, the rattle of the chains deadened by the soft snow. Visibility was very poor, the snow driving up behind us and flying past the windows as we ground slowly along the uneven track. I glanced at my companion. He was wrapped in a huge bearskin coat and he had a fur cap with ear flaps and big skin gloves. His face was the colour of mahogany. He had thick, loose lips and he kept licking at a trickle of saliva that ran out of the corners of his mouth. His nose was broad and flat and his little eyes peered into the murk from below a wide forehead that receded quickly to the protection of his Russian-looking cap. His huge hands gripped the steering wheel as though he had to fight the truck every yard of the way. ‘Do you live at Come Lucky?’ I asked him.
He grunted without shifting his eyes from the track.
‘I suppose there’s a hotel there?’
A nod accompanied the grunt this time. I let it go at that and relaxed drowsily in the engine-heated noise of the cab.