Barkerville Gold (6 page)

The man reached for a bottle of beer on the far corner of his paper. A large ashtray with the stem of a pipe poking out held down the opposite corner. When he picked up his beer, the paper flapped in the wind and he slapped his hand on it. Suddenly his head jerked up and he peered over his glasses at the exact spot where they were hiding.

The man plunked the bottle down and leaned forward to push himself heavily from the picnic table. Giving a loud, wheezy cough, he hitched up his pants and swung one short chunky leg over the bench. Before he moved his other leg, they were gone.

Katie reached her bike first. She pushed it onto the road, wheeled it around in the direction they had come from and hopped on. Rusty followed reluctantly and Sheila swung her bike around. As they passed the short drive leading into the man's campsite, he had almost reached the road. With a book tucked under one arm, he puffed on his pipe and watched them ride past. Rusty's stomach flipped over. He wished they had taken off in the opposite direction, away from the man.

Moments later, quite suddenly and with a sense of relief, he realized Katie had made the right decision. If they had ridden away from Prospector Man's campsite, the man would know something was wrong because he should have seen them pass by as he walked toward the road. Instead, they rode toward him, as if they had just now arrived from farther down the back road.

Before they rounded the curve, Rusty glanced back and was relieved to see the man headed down the road away from them. They had almost reached the front road when Katie turned her bike around. “Let's go!” she whispered.

“Where?” Sheila asked.

“Back to that campsite, of course. We need to find out what he was looking at.”

Sheila shook her head. “No!”

But Katie was already out of sight around the curve. Rusty and Sheila caught up as Katie leaped off her bike just short of the campsite.

“You can't be serious,” Sheila whispered. “He could come back at any minute.”

“He won't,” Katie said confidently. “He's gone down to the washroom and he took a book with him. Don't you know? Men that age sit there, like, forever. So we have plenty of time to take a look.”

“But why should we want to?”

“Because if he's the same man who went creeping past our campsite last night, I want to find out what he's up to.”

“Why?” Sheila demanded.

“Remember what Rusty overheard in the Wake-Up Jake? People who read
Spirits of the Cariboo
will soon be rushing up here to search for Three Finger's gold. I think the rush has already started, and unless I miss my guess, this guy has a map that can help find it.”

Much as Rusty hated to admit it, this made sense to him. “I'll come with you,” he offered.

“I'll wait here,” Sheila said. “If I see him coming I'll whistle like this.” She placed two fingers against her lips and gave a loud, shrill whistle.

Katie and Rusty left their bikes at the roadside and ran into the campsite. They stopped at the picnic table and studied the paper.

“It's a map of Barkerville,” Katie said.

Rusty nodded. “But not just Barkerville—all the trails and old mines and cabins in the whole area.”

“Wow! I wonder where he got it.”

Rusty studied the legend in the bottom right-hand corner. “I don't know, but it looks just like one my dad gave me, which is a copy of an old map from before the fire in 1868.” Rusty rubbed the curled corner of the map between his fingertips. It felt thin and crisp and was yellowed with age.

A short ruler lay at an angle across the map, marking a route between Barkerville and a miner's cabin up to the west, near Lowhee Creek.

“Do you think—” Katie stopped abruptly. She listened for a second then whispered, “Did you hear that?”

“What?” Then Rusty heard it too. A loud snort.
Bear!
he thought, and his heart stopped beating.

There it was again!
Not a snort but a sneeze. And it came from inside the camper van behind them. The springs creaked. The van wobbled.

“Let's go!” Katie whispered.

They started for the road. A shrill whistle stopped them dead. Swinging around, they ran for the trees behind the campsite. As they passed the van, Rusty saw a small red motorcycle propped against its back bumper. They crashed through trees and bushes, heading for the next campsite. At first Rusty thought it was empty, but as they skirted around a thick fir tree, he noticed a small tent-trailer. They stopped again, undecided.

Rrrr-whump
. A van door slid open behind them.

They ran into the tent-trailer's campsite, skirted behind the trailer, reached the front road and ran around the curve. Rusty was sure that their two bikes, lying on the roadside near the campsite, would give them away. But his fears vanished when, before reaching the back road, they saw Sheila standing close against some bushes where she had moved all three bikes.

“I don't think that man saw you in his campsite,” she whispered, “because he was still a long way down the road when I whistled.”

While they paused to catch their breath, Katie told Sheila about the map and the sneeze. They climbed on their bikes, continued on to the back road and cycled past Prospector Man's campsite as fast as they could pedal. Rusty was afraid to look. He followed the girls to the far end of the campground.

In the lead as usual, Sheila stopped at the bottom of a dirt trail that wound invitingly into the forest. A wooden sign pointing up the trail identified it as the
Lowhee
Walking Trail
.

“Want to go up there?” Sheila asked eagerly.

“Not today,” Katie said. “We're going swimming, remember?”

Rusty jumped off his bike and leaned it against the trailer before he realized that three people were seated on folding chairs in the shade of the awning. Gram, GJ and an older woman with black and gray-streaked hair and light blue eyes. She looked vaguely familiar as she dabbed at her damp forehead with a clean, white handkerchief. The three adults were chatting, sipping tall glasses of iced tea and swatting flies with their hats.

“Hey! Here they are,” GJ said. “Joyce, I'd like you to meet our two grandchildren, Katie Reid and Russell Gates, and our friend, Sheila Walton. Kids, this is Joyce Evans—but I guess you already met her at the gold-mining demo. Gram and I got to chatting with her and asked her to stop by this afternoon.”

“Ms. Evans came all the way from Cornwall, Ontario, to visit Barkerville,” Gram added.

Rusty recognized her now, the 136-year-old woman. She looked different without her hat and sunglasses.

“Then,” Katie said, “you must be from that white camper van we saw.”

Joyce Evans frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it has Ontario license plates.”

“Well, you're very observant, Katie, but actually I drove here in my Jeep, towing my little tent-trailer.”

“We were telling Ms. Evans about your interest in history, Rusty,” Gram said. “She would like to borrow that book your dad gave you because she hadn't heard about it before leaving home and may want to buy a copy.”

“Listen,” Ms. Evans stood up, “thank you so much for the tea, but I know you folks are anxious to go swimming, so I'll be off now. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon the five of you will come down to my campsite for refreshments? And Rusty, maybe you could bring the book along then?”

“We'd love to,” Gram said. “Around 4:00?”

“Perfect.” Ms. Evans started to walk away, then stopped and turned back. “By the way, did any of you happen to come across an old map of Barkerville today? Perhaps folded up and left on a bench near the Cornish wheel?”

They shook their heads.

Ms. Evans pressed her hand to her forehead as if it hurt. “I must be getting forgetful. I know I brought it with me, but I seem to have misplaced it since arriving here.”

“Oh?” GJ asked. “That's too bad, but you should be able to get another one easily enough.”

“The thing of it is, this particular map belonged to my late husband's family. It's really very old.”

8
The Map

T
hey swam out from the shoreline of shallow, muddy Bowron Lake. Out here, so long as they whispered, no one could overhear.

“I told you that man was up to something,” Katie said.

“You mean Prospector Man?” Rusty asked.

Sheila rolled over and floated on her back, gazing up at the clear blue sky. “What are you talking about?”

“It's obvious,” Katie said. “He stole Ms. Evans' map.”

“You don't know that. Just because he has an old map doesn't mean he
stole
it. And besides, doesn't Rusty have one just like it? Maybe Rusty is the one who stole Ms. Evans' map.”

“Don't be so dumb, Sheila. You know my dad gave me those maps, and he copied them at the archives.” Rusty tried to tread water without straightening out his legs because he really didn't want his toes to touch the mucky lake bottom. He bent his knees, cupped his hands and did a vigorous dog paddle to keep his head above water. “But anyway…” Water splashed into his eyes and mouth and he tried to paddle a little less energetically. “Anyway, don't you think it's a huge coincidence?”

Katie narrowed her eyes. “If you mean that Ms. Evans lost an old map and Prospector Man had one on his picnic table, then yes, because that map was ancient.”

Rusty nodded. “But that's not what I meant.” When his chin sank underwater he straightened his knees just a little, just enough that he could kick gently to keep himself afloat. His big toe dipped into something slimy. “Ugh!” He curled his legs up again.

“So what's a coincidence then?” Katie asked.

“Her name! I mean, think about it, Joyce Evans—Three Finger Evans—they've got to be related.”

“No way,” Sheila said. “There must be a jillion people named Evans in Canada.”

“But,” Rusty insisted, “she comes from Cornwall.”

“So?”

“So Three Finger Evans came from Cornwall, Ontario. Didn't you read the book?”

“Nope,” Sheila curled forward and did a lazy somersault in the water.

“Ms. Evans said the map belonged to her husband's family,” Katie said and promptly disappeared below the surface. She popped back up, sputtering and coughing. “But guess what. So does Prospector Man!”

Nothing showed of Sheila except the top of her head, her eyes and her nose, but she managed to look totally confused. She floated up high enough to ask, “Prospector Man belongs to Ms. Evans' husband's family?”

“Huh?” Katie wrinkled her forehead. “No! I mean he comes from Cornwall too. There's a decal with the name of his car dealership on the back of his van and it's in Cornwall, Ontario.”

“Now
that
is a coincidence,” Sheila agreed. She kicked her legs and swam away with strong, steady strokes.

Rusty watched her go, knowing he could never hope to keep up with her. Neither could Katie, but she would never admit it. His eyes rolled toward his cousin. She was floating on her back with ten toes sticking out of the water.

“She doesn't want to get involved,” Katie whispered.

“I know.”

“Because she promised her mom.”

“Yeah.” Rusty hesitated, then added, “I kind of did too.”

“What?”

“I promised not to cause any trouble for Gram and GJ.”

“Oh, that. Well, so did I, but only because Mom and Dad forced me. Anyhow, the way I figure it is, if Gram and GJ don't know, then it won't cause them any trouble. Right?”

“I guess.” Rusty wasn't quite sure this was what his parents had in mind—but hey! Whatever worked.

“And anyway,” Katie added, “it's not as if there are a bunch of bad guys involved up here, not like before. It's only some people who want to get rich quick.”

“So you think Prospector Man is after the gold?”

“Looks that way.”

“And Ms. Evans too?”

“Could be.” Katie curled into a ball, floating with only her face above the surface. “And don't forget about those two security guards you overheard. And Frizzy Hair. She's up to something, unless I miss my guess. We need to outsmart them all and find the gold ourselves. Then everyone will have to take us seriously from now on.”

“Maybe,” Rusty said doubtfully, “but who knows how many other people are looking for it. Since
Spirits of the
Cariboo
hit the bookstores, tons of people could show up here this summer hoping to find that gold. What makes you think we can find it?”

“Simple,” Katie said. “Just like any good detectives, we follow the clues. Plus we have all the old maps. And I bet Ms. Evans knows more than she's letting on, so we need to keep a close eye on her.”

When they returned to the campground after swimming, Gram and GJ set about barbecuing hamburgers for dinner; Katie settled at the picnic table, bent over her notebook; Sheila sprawled in a folding chair, listening to music; and Rusty spread out his maps next to Katie at the table.

The first map showed the actual townsite of Barkerville, as it looked back in 1870 after being rebuilt following the fire. The second one showed all the claims staked on Williams Creek, from the original town of Richfield to the south, right down Williams Creek to Camerontown on the north side of Barkerville. The third map, the one that really interested him, showed all the old prospectors' trails and roads in the entire area. Except that the paper was new and the printing much clearer, it looked the same as the map they saw on Prospector Man's picnic table. Rusty studied it closely.

Most of the trails that led through the woods and up the mountainsides around Barkerville had little drawings of tiny log cabins scattered here and there along them. Near many of the smaller creeks that flowed into Williams Creek were little squares, and next to many of the squares were spoked wheels.