‘You can’t go down till the storm is over,’ I said.
He crossed to the door. A howl of wind and snow entered the room as he opened it. He stood there for a moment, his body a hulking shadow against the lamplit white of the driven snow. Then he shut the door again and came slowly back to the fire, shaking his head. ‘No good,’ he said.
‘Do you think it’ll last long?’
‘Two hours. Two days.’ He shrugged his shoulders. He was accustomed to the waywardness of the mountains.
‘How did you come up here?’
‘By the old pony trail.’
‘Did you ride up then?’
‘ Ja, ja. I ride.’
‘Where’s your horse?’
‘In the stable. He is all right. There is good hay there.’
‘Well, you’d better come down with me on the hoist when it clears,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you’d get far on a pony trail by the time this is over.’
‘We will see,’ he said and wrapped himself in his blanket and lay in front of the fire. I went into the bedroom and got some blankets and stretched myself out near him. I felt desperately tired. I was worried, too, about Jeff down there alone at the bottom of the hoist.
I don’t remember much about that night. Once I got up and put more logs on the fire. Mostly I slept in a coma of exhaustion. And then suddenly I was awake. It was bitterly cold, the fire was a dead heap of white ash and a pale glimmer of daylight crept in through the snow-bordered windows. Max was not in the room.
I pulled myself to my feet and stumbled across to the door. It had stopped snowing and I looked out on to a world of white under a grey sky. Footprints led to an open door at the far end of the half-burn barn. They did not return. ‘Max!’ My voice seemed to lose itself in the infinite stillness. ‘Max!’ I followed the footsteps through deep drifts of new snow to the stable door. The place was empty. The snow was trampled here and the tracks of a horse went out into the driven white of the Kingdom, headed for the cleft.
I went back into the house, rebuilt the fire and got myself some breakfast. The warmth and the food revived me and as soon as I had finished I carried out a quick inspection of the premises. The place was built facing south, the barns spreading out from either side of the house like two arms. Fortunately Bladen’s trucks were in the undamaged barn and it didn’t take me long to find the spools containing the recordings of his final survey. I slipped the containers into my pocket and then I set out along the trail Max had Blazed. The snow was deep in places and it took me the better part of an hour to reach the buttress of rock. From the top of it I could see the hoist. The cage was not in its staging. The thought that it might have broken down flashed into my mind. The place was so damnably still. A frozen silence seemed to have gripped the world. There were no mare’s tails on the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. Not a breath of air stirred.
From the buttress Max had led his horse. Only a powdery drift of snow covered the shelving rock. It was slippery like ice. The black line of the water showed through the gap in the dam; it was the only thing that moved. To my left were the rusted remains of some machinery and part of a timbered scaffolding.
I was very tired by the time I staggered into the concrete housing of the hoist. I went straight over to the telephone, lifted the receiver and wound the handle. There was no answer. A feeling of panic crept up from my stomach. It was entirely unreasoned for I could always return to the ranch-house. I tried again and again, and then suddenly a voice was crackling in my ears. ‘Hallo! Hallo! Is that you, Bruce?’ It was Jeff Hart. A sense of relief hit me and I leaned against the ice-cold concrete of the wall. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Bruce here. Is the hoist working-’
‘Thank God you’re okay.’ His voice sounded thin and far away. ‘I was scared stiff you’d got lost. And then that fool, Max Trevedian, came down and galloped off before I could ask him whether you were all right. Were you okay up at Campbell’s place?’
‘Yes,’ I said. And I told him how I’d found it.
‘You were pretty damned lucky. I’ll get them to send the hoist up for you. Johnnie’s here. He’ll come up with it. I’m just about all in. What a hell of a night. Okay. She’s on her way up now.’
I put the phone down. The big cable wheel was clanking monotonously as it turned. I went over to the slit, watching the lip of the cliff. All the valley was white and frozen.
Ten minutes later the cage dropped into its housing with a solid thud and Johnnie was there, gripping my hand as though I’d returned from the Arctic. ‘You goldarned crazy fool!’ That was all he said and then he went over to the phone and rang for them to take us down. He didn’t talk as we dropped through space to the slide and the concrete housing at the foot of it. I think he realised that I was just about at the end of my tether.
As we dropped into the housing at the bottom I noticed that Jeff’s car had gone. In its place was one of the transport company’s trucks. Johnnie had to help me over, the side of the cage. Now that I was out of the Kingdom my body seemed weak and limp. The engine of the hoist died away and a man came out of the housing towards us. My vision was blurred and I didn’t recognise him. And then suddenly I was looking into the angry, black eyes of Peter Trevedian. ‘Seems we got to lock our property up out here now,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘Next time, let me know when you want to play around and we’ll see you get a nursemaid.’
‘Cut it out, Trevedian. Can’t you see he’s dead beat?’ Johnnie’s voice sounded remote, like the surgeon’s voice in an operating theatre just before you go under.
I ‘don’t remember much about that drive, just the blessed heat of the engine and the trees coming at us in an endless line of white. Then we were at the bunkhouse and Jean was there and several others and they half-carried me up to the hotel. The next thing I knew I was up in my room and my body was sinking into warm oblivion, surrounded by hot water bottles.
It was getting dark when I woke. Johnnie was sitting by the window reading a magazine. He looked up as I stirred. ‘Feeling better?’
I nodded and sat up. ‘I feel fine,’ I said. There was a note of surprise in my voice. I hadn’t felt so good for a long time. And I was hungry, too.
He rolled a cigarette, lit it for me and put it in my mouth. ‘Boy got in today. Wants to see you as soon as you feel okay.’
‘Boy Bladen?’
‘Yeh. He’s got an Irishman with him — a drilling contractor, name of Garry Keogh. And your lawyer feller, Acheson, rang through. He’s coming up here to see you tomorrow. That’s about all the news, I guess. Except that Trevedian’s madder’n hell about your going up to the Kingdom.’
‘Because I used his hoist?’
‘Mebbe.’
‘Did McClellan object?’
‘Oh, Jimmy’s okay. He was just scared you’d gone and killed yourself. Oh, I nearly forgot.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. ‘Mac asked me to give you this.’ He tossed it on to the bed.
It was a long envelope and bulky. It was sealed with wax. I turned it over and saw it was postmarked Calgary. That’ll be Acheson,’ I said. ‘Another copy of the deed of sale for the Kingdom. He just doesn’t seem able to take No for an answer.’ I put it on the table beside me. ‘Johnnie.’
‘Yeh?’
‘I’m hungry. Do you think you could get them to produce something for me to eat?’
‘Sure. What would you like?’
‘I wouldn’t mind a steak. A big, juicy steak.’
He cocked his head on one side, peering at me as though he were examining a horse. ‘Seems the Kingdom agrees with you. I was only saying to Jeff just now that you looked a hell of a lot better than when we saw you at Jasper.’ He turned towards the door. ‘Okay. I’ll tell Pauline to cook you up something real big in the way of a T-bone steak. All right for Boy and Keogh to come up?’
I nodded. ‘What’s the time?’
‘A little after seven.’
I had slept for over twelve hours. I got up and had a wash. I was still towelling myself when footsteps sounded on the stairs. It was Boy Bladen and there was something about the way he erupted into the room that took me back to my school days. He was like a kid bursting with news. The man with him was big and heavy and solid with a battered face and broken teeth. His clothes, like himself, were crumpled and shapeless. And in that shapelessness as well as in the loose hang of his arms, the relaxed state of his muscles, there was something really tough. He looked like a man whom the world had tossed from one end to the other and battered all the way.