“Yes, I knew,” I said, sinking down into the warmth of the grass.
“Then why did you go on?”
“Why did you come back to Come Lucky — to the Kingdom?”
She came and sat beside me, chewing on a blade of grass. There was a long silence, and then she said, “Isn’t it about time we had things out together?”
“Why you were running away and then suddenly turned and laced life? Why I refused to give up a hopeless project? Maybe.” But I knew I couldn’t tell her the truth. I knew I had to quench thin growing intimacy. And yet I said, almost involuntarily, “Why did you leave me that gun?”
“I thought you might need it.”
I looked at her, knowing it wasn’t the real reason. She knew it, too, for she put out her hand. “Just leave it at that, Bruce. The message is there, in the weapon itself. You know what that message is as well as I do. You know the truth about my father, Paul Morton, and how he treated your grandfather. That’s why I had to come back and see Stuart. You know that, don’t you?” I nodded. “Then leave it at that, please. Don’t let’s talk about it, ever again.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No, there’s nothing to be sorry about.” Her voice was very quiet, but quite firm — no tremor in it at all, no regrets. “He died as a man should die — fighting for something he believed in. He was hall French, you know, and when it came to the pinch he found he loved France more than money, more than life itself.”
She got, up and walked away then. And I lay back in the grass, dosed my eyes and was instantly asleep. It was cold when she woke me, and the valley was deep in shadow. We ate the low remaining biscuits, and then, as night closed in, we hobbled the horses and cut across the road and along the slope of the hillside. We made a detour and entered Come Lucky from above.
The two Miss Garrets welcomed us with a sort of breathless excitement. They had heard what had happened that morning, and to them our nocturnal arrival, the sense that they were hiding us from a gang of wicked men, won pure Victorian melodrama. Sarah Garret was particularly affected, talking in whispers, a high color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. Miss Ruth Garret was more practical, several times looking to the bolting of the door, getting us food and coffee and trying desperately to maintain an aloof, matter-of-fact air. I found it all a little ridiculous, and yet the reality of it was there, in our need of a safe place to stay the night, in the two burned-out trucks up in the Kingdom.
I knew that Peter Trevedian would stop at nothing to keep me from bringing in an oil well in Campbell’s Kingdom. His men had destroyed two of our trucks and had burned most of our fuel for the oil rig. If nothing else worked, I realized that Trevedian might even try to have me killed.
My grandfather, Stuart Campbell, had left to me, Bruce Campbell Wetheral, all his land in the Canadian Rockies. He had spent his life trying to prove there was oil in the Kingdom, and his last request to me was to prove he was right.
I didn’t have much time, though. A man named Henry Fergus was building a dam just below my land. When it was finished — which wouldn’t be long now — my property would be flooded. Trevedian, who owned a hoist that went up the mountain, was working exclusively for Fergus, and he wouldn’t let us use the hoist at any price.
We were down to about 4000 feet when Trevedian’s men sabotaged our fuel supply. We had enough left to drill another few hundred feet. The only way to get fuel up to the Kingdom was to pack it in on horses.
Jean Lucas, our cook, and I went down to the town of Come Lucky to see what we could arrange. In the town I got into a fight with some of Trevedian’s men. They would have killed me, but Jean held them off with a gun.
After I made arrangements with my friend, Jeff Hart, we left town. That evening we circled back and went to the house of the elderly Garret sisters to spend the night. We would be safe there — if none of Trevedian’s men found out we were still in town.
VII
Shortly after our meal, when we were sitting having coffee, Pauline arrived. Johnny would meet me at 150-Mile House tomorrow evening or, if he couldn’t make it, the following morning. She had other news too. A stranger had arrived at, the Golden Calf. He wasn’t a fisherman and he was busy plying Mac with drinks and pumping him about our activities in the Kingdom. Boy’s visit to Calgary and Edmonton was evidently bearing fruit.
Thai night I slept in the Victorian grandeur of a feather bed. It was Sarah Garret’s room. She had moved in with her sister for the night. It was not a large room and it was cluttered with heavy, painted furniture, the marble mantelpiece and the dressing table cluttered with china bric-a-brac. For a long time I lay awake, looking at the stars, my mind busy, going over and over the possibilities of packing the necessary fuel up to the Kingdom. And then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, I heard the door open. A figure came softly into the room and stood beside my bed, looking down at me.
It was Sarah Garret. I could just see the tiny outline of her head against the window. “Are you awake?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then light a candle, please.”
I got out of bed, wrapping a blanket round me, and found my lighter. As the thin light, of the candle illumined the room, she took the candlestick from me, her hand trembling and spilling grease. “I have something to show you,” she said.
She crossed over to a big trunk in the corner. It was one of those great leather-covered things with a curved top. There was a jingle of keys and then she had it open and was lifting the lid. It was full of clothes, and the smell of lavender and mothballs was very strong.
“Will you lift the tray out, please?”
I did as she asked. Underneath were more clothes. Dresses of satin and silk piled up on the floor, beautiful lace-edged nightgowns, a parasol, painted ivory fans, necklaces of onyx and amber, a bedspread of the finest needlework.
At last the trunk was empty. With trembling fingers she felt around the edges. There was a click and the bottom moved. She took the candle from me then. “Lift it out, please.”
The false bottom of that trunk was of steel and quite heavy. And underneath were neat little tin boxes. She lifted the lid of one. It was filled with gold coins. There were several bars of gold wrapped in tissue paper, and another box contained gold dust. The last one she opened revealed several pieces of jewelry.
“I have never shown anybody this,” she said.
“Why have you shown me?” I asked.
She looked up at me. She had a brooch in her hand. If was gold, studded with amethysts, and the amethysts matched the color of her eyes and both gleamed as brightly in the candlelight. “This was my favorite.”
“Why have you shown me all this?” I asked again.
She sighed and put the brooch back. Then she closed the lid of the box and signaled me to replace the false bottom. She operated the hidden catch fixing it in position and then returned the clothes to the trunk. When the lid was finally down and locked, she pulled herself to her feet. She was crying gently and dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “That is all I have left of my father,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “He made it in the Come Lucky mine, and when he died, that was my share. There was more, of course, but we have had to live.”
“You mean that was how he left you his money?”
She nodded. “Yes. He did not believe in banks and modern innovations like that. He liked to see what he had made. My sister” — she sighed and blew her nose delicately — “my sister thought she knew better. She was engaged to a man in Vancouver and he invested it for her. She lost it all. The stocks were no good.”
“And her fiancé?”
She gave a little shrug. “The man was no good either.”