‘Just about,’ McClellan said.
Max Trevedian paused with one of the drums on his shoulders. ‘You are going to Campbell’s Kingdom today.’ He had a foolish expectant look on his face, and his eyes were excited.
‘We’re going to the dam,’ his brother replied, glancing at me.
The dam — the Kingdom, same thing,’ Max growled. ‘We go together, huh?’
‘No.’
‘But-’ His thick, loose lips trembled. I thought how like the lips of a horse they were. ‘But I must go up. You tell me he do not rest. You tell me-’
‘Shut up!’ His brother’s voice was violent and the poor fool cringed away from him. ‘Get to work and finish loading the truck.’
Max hesitated, half turning. But then he reached out a long arm and gripped his brother’s elbow. ‘Maybe the old devil still alive, eh? Maybe if we-’ His brother struck him across the mouth then and seized him by his jacket and shook him. ‘Will you shut up,’ he shouted. And then as Max gaped at him, a lost, bewildered expression on his ugly features, Trevedian put his arms affectionately round his shoulders and drew him aside out of earshot. He talked to him for a moment and then Max nodded. ‘Ja, ja. I do that.’ He stumbled back to the truck, mumbling to himself, picked up a drum and hurled it into the back..
‘Well, what do you want here, Wetheral?’ I turned to find Peter Trevedian coming towards me.
‘McClellan offered to take me up to have a look at the dam,’ I said.
‘He did, did he?’ He called to McClellan and took him on one side. ‘It can’t do any harm,’ I heard McClellan say. They were both looking at me as they talked. Finally Trevedian said in a voice that was loud enough for me to hear: ‘Well, he’s not coming up in one of my trucks. If he wants to go up there, he can find his own damn way up.’ McClellan said some-thing, but Trevedian turned with a shrug and climbed into the cab of the truck.
McClellan hesitated, glancing at me. Then he came over. ‘I’m sorry, Wetheral,’ he said. ‘Trevedian says there isn’t room for all of us. I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you behind. There’s a lot of fuel to take up, you see,’ he added lamely.
‘You mean he refuses to let me go up?’
‘That’s about it, I guess.’
‘And you take orders from him?’
He glanced at me quickly, a hard, angry look in his eyes. Then he turned away without another word, his shoulders hunched. He and Creasy climbed into the cab. The engine roared and I stood there watching the truck as it slithered through the mud to the lake-shore road and turned up towards Thunder Creek. My eyes lifted to the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment, half-veiled in twin caps of cloud. The Kingdom seemed as far away as ever. As I turned angrily away I saw Max standing just where his brother had left him, his long arms hanging loose, his eyes watching the truck. His mouth was open and there was a queer air of suppressed excitement about him. Suddenly he turned with the quickness of a bear and went up into the shacks of Come Lucky at a shambling trot.
I went slowly back to the hotel. Mac was in the bar when I entered. ‘Are ye not going up to the hoist wi’ Jamie?’
‘Trevedian refused to take me,’ I said.
He growled something under his breath. ‘Well, I’ve a message for you. Two friends of yours are down at 150 Mile House. ‘Phoned up to find out whether you were still here.’
‘Two friends?’ I stared at him. ‘Who were they?’
‘Johnnie Carstairs and a fellow called. Jeff Hart. Said they’d be up here this afternoon to see you if the road wasn’t washed out.’
I turned away towards the window. Johnnie Carstairs and Jeff Hart. It was the best news I had had in a week. And then my eyes focused on a figure on horseback slithering down the track from the bunkhouse. He reached the lake-shore road, turned right and went into a long, easy canter. No need to ask myself who it was. The size of the man told me that. But he was no longer an ungainly lout. The horse was a big, raw-boned animal and the two of them merged to form a pattern of movement that was beautiful to watch.
‘Why is Max Trevedian so eager to go up to the Kingdom?’ I asked as I lost sight of him behind the shacks opposite.
Old Mac turned away. ‘Och, the man’s just simple. Ye dinna want to worry about him. He’s been crazy for a long time. All he understands is horses.’ And he shuffled out to the kitchen.
It was around tea-time that Johnnie and Jeff rolled into Come Lucky in a station wagon plastered with mud. I met them down at the bunkhouse and walked with them up to the hotel. And it wasn’t long before I knew what had brought them. Jeff had met Boy Bladen down at Edmonton. ‘He said something about that survey being phoney,’ Johnny said. ‘He said Trevedian fixed it and then sent his brother up to the Kingdom with the report.’ His eyes were hard and narrowed under their puffy lids. ‘He said you could give us the whole story. The road’s just open so we came over. I was kinda fond of the old man,’ he added.
I took them up to my room and gave them a drink and then I told them what had happened. When I had finished Johnnie was on his feet, pacing angrily up and down. ‘So they got at him through the survey. The bastards! I don’t care what they think of him here, Campbell was a fine old man.’
‘Did you know they hated him?’ Jeff asked.
‘Sure, sure. But I didn’t think they’d stoop to a trick as mean as this.’ He turned to Jeff. ‘You never went up to the Kingdom, did you? Then you wouldn’t understand how I feel about this. You had to see the man in the place he’d made his own. By God …’ His long, bony hands were clenched and his eyes were hot with anger in the pallid tan of his face. ‘When a man’s as lonely as Campbell was he talks. Night after night I’ve sat up with him … I know him as well as I know myself. He was a fine man — it was just that the luck ran against him, I guess.’ He suddenly turned to the window, staring through it towards the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment, looking towards the Kingdom.
He turned abruptly, facing me. ‘Where’s Trevedian?’
‘Up at the hoist,’ I said. And then, because I was shocked by the tenseness of his features, I added, ‘There’s nothing you can do about it, Johnnie.’
‘No?’ He suddenly smiled gently. ‘I’m madder’n hell. And when I’m that way the meanest crittur on four legs won’t get the better of Johnnie Carstairs — nor on two legs neither.’ He turned abruptly to the door. ‘Cm on. Let’s go an’ feed.’
Johnnie was one of those men whose values are real. I had thought of him as a quiet, rather withdrawn man. And yet the violence of his reaction wasn’t unexpected. His code was the code of Nature, physically hard but with no twists. The unnatural was something that struck deep at his roots. I watched him as he sat eating, quiet and easy and friendly, exchanging banter with old Mac. Only his eyes reflected the mood that was still boiling inside him.
McClellan and Creasy were late getting back and we had nearly finished our meal by the time they arrived. ‘Was it all right, Jamie?’ Mac asked.
‘Of course it was.’ For the first time since I had known him James McClellan was smiling. It gave a queer twist to his features for it was not their accustomed expression. ‘The motor was all right and so was the cable. There was a lot of ice on it up at the top, but underneath there were still traces of the grease packing I put on last year.’ He nodded perfunctorily to Johnnie as he sat down and got straight on with his meal. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked. ‘Bit early in the season for visitors, isn’t it?’
‘This is Jeff Hart, from Jasper,’ Johnnie said. ‘We came over to see friend Bruce here. Understand you wouldn’t take him up to the Kingdom this morning.’
‘Peter Trevedian runs the transport here,’ McClellan replied sullenly.
‘Sure, sure. Peter Trevedian runs you and the whole goldarned town from what I hear. Did you know about him sending his brother up to old Campbell with the report on that survey?’ Johnnie was rolling himself a cigarette. ‘Pity I didn’t know what had happened. I had a couple of newspaper boys along who would have been interested.’