I would have pulled out of Calgary the next morning, only something happened that evening which radically altered my plans. I hadn’t been near the Calgary Tribune, feeling it would be a waste of time and that they had now lost interest in our drilling operations. However, I had phoned Winnick and I suppose he must have let them know I was in town, for the editor himself rang me up in the afternoon and asked me to have dinner with him. And when I got to his club I found he had a CBC man with him, and the whole picture suddenly brightened, for the CBC man wanted me to broadcast. The reason for his interest was in the copy of a big American magazine he had with him which contained an article beaded:
Will the dream of an old-timer come true? Will his grandson strike oil up in his Rocky Mountain kingdom or will the men building the dam flood the place first?
The author was Steve Strachan, the Calgary Tribune reporter who had visited us.
This sudden interest in what we were doing gave me fresh heart. I stayed on and did the broadcast, for I was already subconsciously working toward obtaining the best compensation I could from the courts. Upon what they awarded me depended the extent to which I could repay those who had helped me. I made it clear, therefore, both in the broadcast and in the article I wrote for the Calgary Tribune, that we were into the igneous country that had stopped Campbell No. 1 and that given a few more weeks we should undoubtedly bring in a well.
This false optimism produced immediate dividends, for on the morning after the broadcast Acheson came to see me. He looked pale and angry, which was not surprising, since Fergus had sent him with an offer of a hundred thousand dollars. I was very tempted to accept.
Then Acheson said, “Of course, in view of the publicity you have been getting, we shall require a statement that you are now of the opinion that Campbell was wrong and there is no oil in that area of the Rockies.”
I went over to the window and stood looking out across the railway tracks. To make that statement meant finally branding my grandfather as a liar and a cheat. It would be a final act of cowardice.
“Would Fergus agree to free transportation of all vehicles and personnel down by the hoist and over the Thunder Valley road?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
He glanced at his watch. “You’ll have to think fast then. This offer is open till midday.”
“What’s the hurry?”
“Fergus wants to get rid of the whole business.”
He left me then, and for an hour I paced up and down the room, trying to balance my unwillingness to accept defeat against the need to repay the men who had helped me. And then the bellhop came and I knew why they had been in such a hurry to get a decision out of me. It was a telegram from Boy, dispatched from Keithley:
THROUGH SILL AT FIFTY-EIGHT HUNDRED. DRILLING TEN PER HOUR. EVERYONE OPTIMISTIC SECOND CONSIGNMENT FUEL ON WAY. BOY.
I stared at it, excitement mounting inside me, reviving my hopes, bursting like a Hood over my mood of pessimism.
I seized hold of the phone and rang Acheson. “I just wanted to let you know that half a million dollars wouldn’t buy the Kingdom now,” I told him. “We’re in the clear and drilling ten feet an hour. You knew that, didn’t you? Well, you can tell Fergus it’s going to cost him a fortune to flood the Kingdom.”
I slammed down the receiver without waiting for him to reply. The crooks! They’d known we were through the sill. They’d known it by the speed at which the traveling block moved down the rig. That’s why they’d increased their offer. I was laughing aloud in my excitement as I picked up the phone and rang the editor of the Calgary Tribune. I told him the whole thing, how they’d offered me a hundred thousand and they’d known all the time we were in the clear. “If they’ll only give us long enough,” I said, “we’ll bring in that well.”
“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 realized 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.
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 cottonwood, 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, bearing the clatter of the drill, seeing the traveling block slowly descending. Jean would be there, and with luck—
I shook my reins and heeled the pony forward. 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 to be 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 they were behind schedule. Already it was the sixteenth and their completion date was supposed to be the twentieth. Only four more days.
We made good time and soon 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.
And when she shook her head I was almost glad, for now that I was back in the Kingdom I felt all the old optimism.
“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.
“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 toward the rig. “They’ve nearly finished the dam,” she said quickly. “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 that 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. 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 they reach it in time?