Trevedian glanced at his watch. ‘It’s now nine-twenty. You’ve forty minutes to get clear of the buildings.’
‘But what about the rig?’ Garry demanded. ‘What right had you-’
‘You could have moved it,’ Trevedian cut in. ‘However, since you haven’t I’ve no doubt the courts will include the value of it in their grant of compensation.’
Garry turned to the police officer. ‘Were you up here last night when they began flooding?’
The man shook his head. ‘No. I came up here this morning in case there was trouble.’
‘Well, there’s going to be plenty of trouble,’ Garry snapped. ‘Do you realise you’ve drowned an oil well? We struck it at approximately two-fifteen this morning.’
Trevedian laughed. ‘Be damned to that for a tale,’ he said.
‘You know damn well it’s true,’ Garry shouted. ‘Don’t tell me you couldn’t see what happened from here.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’ Trevedian turned to the two guards. ‘Did you?’ They shook their heads dutifully. ‘They were with me when I gave the order to close the sluices,’ Trevedian added as he turned to face us, hardly troubling to conceal a slight smile. ‘We were naturally watching the rig to see that you all got clear of the water. We saw nothing unusual.’
‘By God,’ Garry cried, ‘you dirty, crooked little liar! Don’t ever let me get my hands on you or as sure as hell I’ll wring your neck.’
‘It seems I was right in insisting on police protec tion up here.’ Trevedian smiled and glanced at his watch again. ‘Better get your things clear of the ranch buildings now, Wetheral,’ he said. ‘I’m going to finish flooding.’ He turned away, the policeman followed him.
‘Just a minute,’ I called. ‘What time did you come up here?’ They had paused and I was addressing the policeman.
‘At eight o’clock this morning,’ he answered.
‘And you weren’t up here when the order to flood was given?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Mr Trevedian didn’t expect any trouble until this morning.’
‘You mean he was prepared to deal with it himself during the hours of darkness.’
The other shrugged his shoulders. ‘My orders were to be up here at eight this morning.’
‘Are you here as an official of the Provincial Police or have the company hired you as a watchdog?’
‘Both,’ he said rather tersely.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘In other words, you’re employed by the company and take your orders from Trevedian. That’s all I wanted to know.’ I turned my horse. ‘We’re wasting our time here,’ I said to Garry. ‘This will have to be fought out in the courts.’
He nodded slowly and we rode back to the ranch-house in silence. His face looked drawn and haggard. The fire of anger had gone out of him and he slumped in his saddle like a bag of bones and flesh. He didn’t say anything all the way back, but I was very conscious of the fact that he’d lost his rig, everything he had made in over fifteen years. It deepened the mood of black despair that had gripped me since I woke up and found the Kingdom had become a lake overnight. It was difficult to remember the elation that had filled us in the early hours when the drenching rain had obliterated the broken rig from our sight.
When we reached the ranch-house we were greeted with the news that the water was rising again. They had thrust a stake in at the edge of the lake and even as we watched the water ran past it and in a moment it was. several feet out from the lake’s edge. All our energies were concentrated then on salvaging what we could. We loaded Boy’s vehicles with all our kit and movable equipment and drove them up to the edge of the timber. Jean and I harnessed the horses to an old wagon we found and in this way I managed to get some of my grandfather’s belongings out. And then as the rain slackened and a misty sun shone through we made camp in the shelter of the trees and drank hot tea and watched the water creep slowly up to the ends of the barns and then trickle in clutching fingers round the back of the ranch-house. By midday the place my grandfather had built with his own hands was a quarter of a mile out in the lake and the water was up to the windows. For five miles there was nothing but water flecked with white as the wind whipped across it.
It was the end of the Kingdom.
CHAPTER TWO
I don’t know whether it was the reaction after the strain of the last two months or the physical effect of suddenly having nothing to work for any more, but that night my feet and hands were swollen and painful and my heart was thudding against my ribs. I felt exhausted and drained of all energy. They made me a bed in the back of Boy’s instrument truck and though I was reasonably comfortable I lay awake half the night, feeling certain that now my time was up and the end had at last come. I slipped off into a sort of coma and when I woke sometimes Jean was there, holding my hand, sometimes I was alone. The moon was bright and by craning my head I could just see out of the back of the truck and get a glimpse of the lake that now filled the Kingdom. The ranch-house had disappeared completely, swallowed by the waters. There was no sign left that my grandfather had ever been in the country.
I felt better in the morning, but very tired. I slept intermittently and once Boy came and sat beside me and told me he had been over to the dam and had phoned Trevedian from the control room. We were to have the trucks at the hoist by midday tomorrow. I lay back realising that this was our final exodus, that we should not be coming back. The rest of the business would be conducted in the stuffy, soul-destroying atmosphere of a court room. I didn’t feel that I wanted to live. There would be weeks, maybe months of litigation. I couldn’t face that. Jean seemed to understand my mood for she kept assuring me that it would be all right, that the lawyers would look after it all and that we’d get- the compensation required to repay everyone. But I didn’t really believe her. And then, late in the evening, Johnnie rode in with a couple of American newspaper boys, the same who had been up with him the previous fall when they had found the body of my grandfather.
I remember they came to see me that night. They were a surprisingly quiet, slow-spoken pair and somehow their interest in the whole business as a story put new heart into me. They had listened to Garry’s story of the night we’d struck the anticline. They’d got the pictures so vividly in their minds that I could see it all again as they talked. ‘But who’ll believe us?’ I said. ‘Even Steve Strachan, who was up here with us, isn’t entirely convinced.’
The taller of them laughed. ‘He’s not used to this sort of thing,’ he said. ‘We are. We’ve put the four of you through a detailed cross-examination. And it’s okay. The detail is too good to have been fabricated.
Soon as we get down I’ll send off my story and I’m going to ask my paper to put up the dough for us to get divers down before the weather breaks. If we can drag that pipe up, that’ll prove it. In the meantime, I take it you’ve no objection to Ed taking a few pictures of you.’ His big, warm-hearted laugh boomed out. ‘Boy, you certainly provide the final touch to make this one of the most human dramas I’ve ever been handed. Now if you’d been running around full of health and vigour …’ He shook his head and grinned. ‘But here you are, King Campbell’s grandson, lying sick with no roof over your head because these bastards…’ There was a flash as Ed took the first picture. ‘Well, don’t worry. Fergus will have half the North American continent gunning for him by the time I’ve finished writing this up. And by a stroke of luck we’ve got pictures of the Campbell homestead and the whole Kingdom before they flooded it.’
Next morning we started out towards the dam. The going was very rough for the water forced us up into the rock-strewn country at the foot of the mountains. In places boulders had to be hefted aside and at one point the timber came right down to the water’s edge and it took us an hour to cut a way through for the trucks. I started off in the instrument truck, but pretty soon I got out and walked. It was less tiring than being jolted and flung from side to side.