Among my grandfather’s papers was a letter to me. Stuart Campbell swore he was innocent of the swindle charges, and his last request to me was to prove he was right about the oil. I emigrated to Canada from London. Although I knew I would never be able to prove my grandfather right, I wanted to see Campbell’s Kingdom before I sold the property.
At Jasper, British Columbia, fifty miles away from the Kingdom, I met Johnny Carstairs, one of the men in the party that found my grandfather’s body. I asked Carstairs how I could get up to the Kingdom. He advised me to wait a month, when the snows would be gone and the roads open. I told him I couldn’t wait, that I had no time. When he argued with me, trying to change my mind, I told him why I had to move quickly — Maclean-Hervey, one of the best surgeons in London, had told me that I had only six months left to live.
II
I lay awake for hours that night, fighting for breath. I can admit it now — I was scared. But the more sick at heart I felt, the more determined I became to reach Campbell’s Kingdom.
Next day Jeff Hart and Johnny Carstairs both came down after lunch to see me off. They insisted on carrying my two hand grips and walked one on either side of me, as though they were afraid I’d die on them right there.
“Hang it!” Jeff growled. “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 sometime,” Johnny 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.
We reached Ashcroft just before midnight. When I asked at the hotel about the road to Clinton, they told me it had been open for the last two days. I felt my luck was in then and that nothing could stop me. Next morning I bought a pair of good waterproof boots and tramped the round of the local garages. My luck held. At one of them I found a mud-be-spattered car filling up with gas, a logger bound for Prince George. He gave me a ride as far as 150-Mile House.
I spent the night there and in the morning got a lift as far as Keithley Creek. It was dark when I arrived. The country was deep in snow and it was freezing hard. I resigned myself to a long delay here, but, to my surprise, when I talked to the proprietor of the hotel after dinner, he told me the road to Come Lucky had been open for a fortnight. 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 wakened with the news that the packer was in from Come Lucky and would be leaving after lunch. I was taken out and introduced to a great ox of a man who was loading groceries into an ex-army truck.
We pulled out of Keithley just after two, the rattle of the chains deadened by the soft snow. 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 color of mahogany. 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.
After half an hour we were climbing steadily beside the black waters of the Little River. Timbered fountain slopes rose steeply above us and I got a momentary glimpse of a shaggy gray head of rock high above us and half veiled in cloud. I glanced at my companion and suddenly it occurred to me that this might be the packer whom Johnny Carstairs had talked about.
“Is your name Max Trevedian?” I asked him.
He turned his head slowly and looked at me. “Ja, that is my name.”
So this was the man who could take me up to Campbell’s Kingdom before the snows melted. “Do you know Campbell’s Kingdom?” I asked him.
“Campbell’s Kingdom!” His voice had a sudden violence of interest. “Why do you ask about Campbell’s Kingdom?”
“I want to go up there.”
“Why? It is too soon for visitors. Are you an oil man?”
“No. What made you ask?”
“Oil men come here last year. There was an old devil lived up in the mountains who thought there was oil there. But he was a swindler!” he growled. “A dirty, lying old man who swindle everyone!” His voice had risen suddenly to a high pitch and his little eyes glared at me hotly. “You ask my brother Peter.”
I was beginning to understand what Johnny Carstairs had meant when he had said the man was an ornery critter. It was like traveling with an animal you’re not quite sure of, and we drove on in silence.
Shortly afterward we reached another stream and began to descend. The going was better here, and as dusk began to fall we came out onto the shores of a narrow lake. Come Lucky was at the head of it. The town was half buried in snow, a dark huddle of shacks clinging to the bare, snow-covered slopes of a mountain. Beyond it a narrow gulch cut back into the mountains and lost itself in a gray veil of cloud. The road appeared to continue along the shore of the lake and into the gulch. We turned right, however, up to Come Lucky and stopped at a long low shack, the log timbers of which had been patched with yellow hoards of untreated pine. There was a notice on one of the doors: Trevedian Transport Company Office. This was as far as the track into Come Lucky had been cleared. A drift of smoke streamed out from an iron chimney. A door slammed and a fat Chinaman waddled out to meet us. He and Max Trevedian disappeared into the back of the truck and began off-loading the stores. I stood around waiting, and presently my two suitcases were dropped into the snow at my feet. The Chinaman poked his head out of the back of the truck.
“You stay here?” he asked.
“Is this the hotel?”
“No. This is bunkhouse for men working on road up Thunder Creek.”
“Where’s the hotel?” I asked.
“You mean Mr. Mac’s place, the Golden Calf?” He pointed up the snow-blocked street. “You find up there on the right side.”
I thanked him and trudged through the snow into the town of Come Lucky. It was a single street bounded on either side by weatherboarded shacks. The roofs of many of them had fallen in. Some had their windows ripped out, frames and all. Doom hung rotting on their hinges. It was my first sight of a ghost town.
The Golden Calf was about the biggest building in the place. The sidewalk was solid here and roofed over to form a sort of street-side veranda. The door of the hotel opened straight into an enormous barroom. The bar itself ran all along one side, and behind it were empty shelves backed by blotchy mirrors. The room was warm, but it had a barrack-room emptiness about it that was only heightened by the marks of its one-time Edwardian elegance.
I put my bags down and drew up a chair to the stove. The warmth of the room was already melting the snow on my storm coat. My trousers steamed. I took off my outer clothes and sat back, letting the warmth seep into my body. I felt deathly tired.
Beyond the stove there was a door, and beside it a bell push. I pulled myself to my feet and rang. After a time the door was opened by a dour-faced man who looked me over with the disinterest of one who has seen many travelers and is surprised at nothing.
“Are you Mr. Mac?” I asked him.
He seemed to consider the question. “Me name’s McClellan,” he said, “but most folk around here call me Mac. Ye’re wanting a room?”
“Yes,” I said. “My name’s Bruce Wetheral. I’ve just arrived from England.”
“Weel, it’s a wee bit airly in the season for us, Mr. Wetheral, Ye’ll no mind feeding in the kitchen wi’ the family?”