Campbell's Kingdom Read Online Free Page B

there be oil in the Rocky Mountains? Maybe I was a fool. I knew nothing about geology or the Rockies. But I had something to bite on now—an objective, a purpose. And somehow it lessened the shock of Maclean-Hervey’s pronouncement.
    And as I sat there thinking about Campbell’s Kingdom high up in the mountains, trying to picture the place in my mind, I was suddenly possessed with an urge to see it, to discover for myself something of the faith, the indomitable hope, that had sent my grandfather back there after conviction and imprisonment. It couldn’t have been an easy decision for him. The newspaper cutting had hinted that many people out there had lost heavily through backing him. It must have been hell for him. And yet he had gone back.
    I got up and began to pace back and forth. Failure and twenty-two years of utter loneliness had not destroyed his faith. His letter proved that. If I could take up where he had left off . . .
    I realised with a shock that I had bridged the gap of 6,000 miles that separated me from Campbell’s Kingdom and was imagining myself already up there. It was absurd. I’d no knowledge of oil, no money. And yet . . . The alternative was to sign that deed of sale. I went over to the table and picked it up. If I signed it Fothergill had said I might get $10,000 out of it in six months’ time. It would pay for my funeral, that was about all the good it would be to me. To sign it was unthinkable. And then it gradually came to me that what had at first seemed absurd was the most reasonable thing for me to do, the only thing. To remain in London, an insurance clerk in the same monotonous rut to the end, was impossible with this prospect, this hope of achievement dangled in front of my eyes. I tore the deed of sale across and flung the pieces on to the floor. I would go to Canada. I would try to carry out the provisions of my grandfather’s will.

2
    IT TOOK ME just a week to get to Calgary. Taking into account that this included a night’s flying across the Atlantic and two and a half days by train across Canada I think I did pretty well. It did not take me long to clear up my own affairs, but the major obstacle was foreign exchange. I got over this by emigrating and here I had two slices of luck: Maclean-Hervey knew the High Commissioner and the Canadian Government were subsidising immigrant travel by air via Trans-Canada so that the quickest route as far as Montreal became also the cheapest. I think, too, that my sense of urgency communicated itself to those responsible for clearing my papers.
    Throughout the journey I had that queer feeling of detachment that comes to anyone suddenly jerked out of the rut of life and thrust upon a new country. I remember feeling very tired, but physical exhaustion was overlaid by mental excitement. I felt like a pioneer. There was even a touch of the knight errant in the picture I built up of myself, tearing across the globe to tilt at the Rocky Mountains and make an old man’s dream come true. It was all a little unreal.
    This sense of unreality allowed me to sit back and relax, content to absorb the vastness of Canada from a carriage window. The only piece of organisation, apart from getting myself on the ’plane as an immigrant, was to arrange for a friend to look up the newspaper reports of my grandfather’s trial and send a resumé of it on to me when I could give him an address. The rest I had left to chance.
    The night before we reached Calgary, just after we had left Moose Jaw, the coloured attendant brought a telegram to my sleeper. It was from Donald McCrae and Acheson:
    For Bruce Campbell Wetheral, Canadian Pacific Railways, Coach B11, The Dominion, No. 7.
    IMPORTANT YOU COME TO OUR OFFICES IMMEDIATELY ON ARRIVAL. PURCHASERS HAVE GIVEN US TILL TOMORROW NIGHT TO COMPLETE DEAL. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO DISPOSE OF PROPERTY. SIGNED—ACHESON.
    I lay back and stared at the message, thinking