“Of course not.”
The room he took me to was bare except for the essentials — an iron-framed bed, a wash basin, a chest of drawers and a chair. But the room was clean and the bed looked comfortable.
They kept farmhouse hours at the hotel, and I barely had time to wash and unpack my things before an old Chinaman called me for tea. By the time I got down, the McClellan family was all assembled in the kitchen, a huge room designed to feed the seething population of Come Lucky in its heyday. Besides the old man and his sister, Florence McClellan, there was his son, James, and his family — his wife, Pauline, and their two children, Jackie, aged nine, and Kitty, aged six and a half. Pauline was half French, raven-haired and buxom, with an attractive accent and a wide mouth. She laughed a little too often, showing big white teeth.
There was one other person at the big, scrubbed deal table, a thick-set man of about forty with tough, leathery features. His name was Ben Creasy and he was introduced to me as the engineer who was building the road up Thunder Creek. The meal was cooked and served by the old Chinaman.
Nobody spoke during the meal, not even the children. Eating was a serious business. After the meal, the men drifted over to the furnace-hot range and sat and smoked while the women cleared up. Old Mac and his son were talking about cattle, and I sat back, my eyes half closed, succumbing to the warmth. I gathered James McClellan ran a garage in Keithley Creek and farmed a piece of land on the other side of the lake.
“And what brings ye up to Come Lucky at this time of the year, Mr. Wetheral?” the old man asked me suddenly.
The question jerked me out of my reverie. He was looking across at me, his drooped lids almost concealing his eyes, his wrinkled face half hidden in the smoke from his short-stemmed brier.
“Do you know a place near here called Campbell’s Kingdom?” I asked him.
“Aye.” He nodded, waiting for me to go on.
“How do I get up there?” I asked.
“Better ask Ben.” The old man turned to Creasy. “Do ye ken what the snow’s like at the head o’ the creek, Ben?”
“Sure. It’s pretty deep. Anyway, he couldn’t get past the fall till it’s cleared.”
“Why do you want to go up to the Kingdom?” the younger McClellan asked.
“I’m Campbell’s grandson,” I said.
They stared at me in astonishment. “His grandson, did ye say?” The old man was leaning forward, and his tone was one of incredulity.
“Yes.”
James McClellan darted his head forward. “Why do you want to see the Kingdom?” he asked. There was sudden violence in the way he repeated the question.
“Why?” I stared at him, wondering at the tenseness of his expression. “Because it belongs to me.”
“Belongs to you!” He stared at me unbelievingly. “But the place is sold. It was sold to the Larsen Mining and Development Company.”
The Larsen Mining and Development Company? The name was fresh in my memory. It was the name that had been newly painted on the frosted door of Henry Fergus’ office. Acheson and his desire to have foe sell fell into place then.
“I had an offer from the company,” I said, “but I turned it down.”
“You turned it down!” McClellan kicked his chair out from under him as he jerked to his feet. “But—” He stopped and looked slowly across at Creasy. “We’d better go and have a word with Peter.” The other nodded and got to his feet. “You’re sure you really are Campbell’s heir?” he asked me.
“Yes. Is that anything to do with you?” I was a little uncertain, disturbed by the violence of his reaction. He looked scared.
“By heaven, it is!” he said. “If—” He seemed to take bold of himself and hurried out of the room, followed by Creasy.
I turned and stared after them in astonishment. “What was all that about?” I asked the old man. He was still sitting there thumbing tobacco into his pipe.
He didn’t say anything for a moment and as he lit his pipe he stared at me over the flame of the match. “So you’re Campbell’s heir and the legal owner of the Kingdom,” he murmured. “What are your plans?”
“I thought I might live up there,” I said. “My grandfather did.”
“Aye. For twenty years old Campbell lived there.” His voice was bitter and fie spat out a piece of tobacco. “Dinna he a fool, laddie,” he said. “The Kingdom’s no place for ye. And if it’s oil you’re looking for, ye won’t find it, as many of us in this town have learnt to our cost. There’s no oil in these mountains. Bladen’s survey proved that once and for all. Take my advice; sell out and gang home where you belong.”
I leaned back slackly in my chair. Everything was so different from what I had expected — the place, the people, the way they regarded my grandfather, I felt suddenly very tired and went up to my room. Half an hour later I was in bed listening to the sound of the wind. Out there in the darkness, only a dozen or so miles away, was the place I had come so far to see. I was at the end of my journey.
When I got down to breakfast the next morning, the others had finished. The Chinaman served me bacon and eggs and coffee, and after I had eaten I got some clothes and went out to have a look at Come Lucky. The snow had stopped. I turned down through the snow toward the bunkhouse, where a heavy American truck with a bulldozer loaded in the back was drawn up outside the office of the Trevedian Transport Company. The driver came out just as I reached it. He was a big, cheerful man in an old buckskin jacket and olive-green trousers.
“Are you taking that bulldozer up Thunder Creek?” I asked him.
“Yes. Want to ride along?”
There seemed no point in hanging around Come Lucky. “Yes,” I said. “I only got in last night. I haven’t had a chance yet to see much of the country.” I climbed up into the cab beside him and he swung the big truck down the snow-packed grade to the lakeshore road. There we turned right and rumbled along the ice-bound edge of the lake toward the dark cleft of Thunder Creek. “Where’s this road going to lead to when it’s finished?” I asked him.
He stared at me in surprise. “Shouldn’t have thought you could stay a night in Come Lucky and not know the answer to that one. It’s going up to the cable hoist at the foot of Solomon’s Judgment.” He peered through the windshield. “Seems like the clouds are lifting. Maybe you’ll get a glimpse of Solomon’s Judgment after all. Quite a sight where the big slide occurred. The mountain falls away sheer nearly two thousand feet. Happened around the same time as the Come Lucky slide.” He nodded through his side window. “Doesn’t look much from here when it’s covered in snow like it is now. But you see those two big rocks up there? That’s just about where the entrance to the old Come Lucky mine was. They reckon there’s three or four hundred feet of mountainside over that entrance right now.” He started talking about the geological causes of the slide and I watched the slowly lifting clouds as we ground our way along the edge of the lake.
Then we were climbing steeply, reaching back into a tributary of Thunder Creek to gain height. The road twisted and turned, sometimes running across bare, smooth rock ledges, sometimes under overhanging cliffs. On some of the hairpin bends the driver had to back up in order to complete the turn. The engine roared and the cab became stifling hot.
“Quite a road, isn’t it?” The driver grinned at me and then his eyes flicked quickly back to his steering.
We topped a shoulder of rock bare of trees, and I caught a brief glimpse of two snow-covered peaks towering above the dark timbered slopes and of a sheer wall of rock that fell like a black curtain across the end of the valley.
“That’s the slide I was telling you about!” the driver shouted. “And that’s Solomon’s Judgment, those twin peaks!” He revved the big Diesel engine and changed gear.