Barkerville Gold (3 page)

“Stay here, I'll get my sketchbook.” Rusty ran to the picnic table, grabbed his sketchbook and pencil and hurried back.

Katie held the light steady on the print while Rusty crouched to make a sketch of it. When he was done he ripped off a clean sheet of paper and laid it beside the print to measure its exact length and width.

“What's going on here?” a voice croaked.

Rusty froze. Someone was standing in the shadows near the entrance to their campsite. Katie swung around and shone the light on the dark figure. A pale face appeared. A pale, freckled face. Sheila squinted, rubbed her eyes and yawned. Her hair shone like gold but stuck out in a great lump to one side. Like Katie and Rusty she wore shorts, a T-shirt and sandals.

“Nothing's going on,” Rusty said.

“Shh!” Katie warned.

“Okay,” Sheila cleared her throat, lowered her voice, “so I wake up and see a flashlight switch on and off. I look out and there's Rusty running to the picnic table. He grabs his sketchbook and runs back to the road. Now he's hunched down, in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, laying a piece of paper in the dust. And you tell me
nothing's going on?”
Her voice rose.

“Shhh,” Katie said.

“I'm just sketching a footprint,” Rusty explained, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to be doing at this hour.

“Oh, no!” Sheila backed away. “You better not be starting some big mystery thing again. I promised my mom I wouldn't cause any trouble for your grandparents and I'm not going to break my promise.”

“No problem,” Katie assured her. “Just go on back to bed. You don't need to get involved.” She turned to Rusty. “How's it going?”

“Not that good,” he whispered. “It's hard to get the exact size unless I put the paper half over the print.”

“Then do it. You've already made your sketch, so it doesn't matter if you wipe out the print.”

Rusty held the thin sheet of paper over the footprint. If he laid it down the center, he could mark the length between toe and heel on his paper. But he would rather have a complete outline of the print.

“Wait!” Sheila said.

He held the paper still.

“The police would make a plaster cast so they'd have an exact copy of the footprint.”

“Good idea.” Sheila's mom was a police officer, so she should know. “I'm guessing you have some plaster of Paris in your tent?”

“Even if she did,” Katie whispered, “it wouldn't work. This is just dry dust. You need something solid to make a mold—like clay or thick mud.”

With a soft grunt Rusty pushed himself to his feet.

“Could we, like, make some mud?” Sheila suggested. Just down the road in front of the washrooms, a silver water tap, set into a wooden post, gleamed in the moonlight like an invitation.

“Right,” Rusty said, “we'll just dump a bucket of water on it.”

They all stared down at a footprint so fragile it threatened to vanish in the faintest breeze.

“Hey! I have an idea!” Sheila's voice burst out so loudly she paused, glanced quickly around and continued in a whisper. “You two walk along the road and look for the clearest print you can find. I'll be right back.” She ran toward her tent.

“What's she doing?” Rusty asked.

“Who knows?” Katie started in the direction of the tap, sweeping her flashlight back and forth across the road as she went.

Rusty ran to catch up. They walked side by side, bent low, noses close over the ground. But the footprints had disappeared. Beyond the comforting beam of Katie's flashlight, every black shadow beneath every dark tree took on a sinister appearance. Rusty shuddered. “This must be where he vanished into thin air!”

“Look at this.” Katie pointed at the road.

Rusty looked down at another print, a little deeper and clearer than the first, but with the same distinctive tread. It was directly in front of the water tap, where the dirt was dampened by spray from people filling up their bottles and cooking pots during the day.

“I'm guessing your ghost reappeared right here,”

Katie remarked.

Before Rusty could think of a suitable reply, Sheila joined them, carrying something white and cylindrical in one hand.

“Let's try this.” She bent to spray a fine mist over the print.

“Ugh!” Rusty covered his nose. “That stinks! What is it?”

“Hair spray.”

“Hair spray! You're using hair spray to catch a ghost?”

“It hardens like rock in just a few minutes,” Sheila explained, patting her stiff hair.

“Besides, it isn't a ghost we're after,” Katie reminded him. “It's a man.”

They waited. Sheila touched the edges of the footprint, then sprayed it again. They waited some more. After a fourth spraying, Sheila finally said, “Okay, now lay that paper on top, gently, and see if you can get a rubbing.”

The print had hardened as if it was coated with glue. Rusty laid his thin sheet of clean white paper over it and rubbed gently with the side of his pencil. Slowly, an indistinct image appeared on the paper in front of him. Far from a perfect imprint, it at least provided a rough outline of the sole.

“By the way,” Sheila said as they headed back to their campsite, “just wondering. Why are we doing this?”

Rusty waited for Katie to explain, but when she didn't answer he felt obligated to offer an explanation of his own. “Because,” he said and left it at that. Because, if he stopped to think about it, he really had no idea why they did it. He only knew that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Because you never know,” Katie explained patiently, “when you might need proof.”

“Yeah? Of what?”

“You never know,” Katie repeated wisely.

“Just remember, I'm not getting involved in any mystery,” Sheila said, “at least not anything dangerous. I promised.”

“No problem.” Katie dropped to her knees in front of her tent. “I've got to make some notes,” she said and crawled inside.

“There is no mystery,” Rusty assured Sheila. “Nothing but a quiet little ghost wandering around in the night and leaving his footprints in the dust.” He tucked the loose paper back into his sketchbook and slid the book under his pillow. Then he crawled inside his tent. The air was much cooler now, so he pulled his sleeping bag up and over his shoulders. The pillow felt good, soft and cool beneath his head. He closed his eyes and thought about Three Finger Evans and the missing gold and the ghost.

That's when he heard it. The soft padding of footsteps. Rusty propped himself up on one elbow. Moonlight no longer fell on the road, and the high, ragged wall of trees loomed even blacker now beneath a dome of starlit sky. But out there, on the pale gray road, someone was walking. Rusty could see well enough to recognize Three Finger's ghost. He walked surprisingly quickly now, scurrying along in the opposite direction from before. This time, though, he was empty-handed.

Rusty waited until long after the footfalls had faded to nothing, then called out softly, “Did you see it?” But no one answered. “Katie?” he called a little louder. Still no answer.

He covered his head with his sleeping bag and was just drifting off to sleep when he heard something. Not footsteps, but a cough. A gruff, wheezy sort of cough. Rusty's eyes popped open. He shook his head free of the sleeping bag and rolled over to look outside. All Rusty could see of the shadowy figure was the profile of a wide-brimmed hat and a full white beard that showed up in the faint light of stars.

In spite of Katie's skepticism, Rusty thought this really was the ghost of Three Finger Evans. And he must be getting tired by now—
do ghosts get tired?—
because, in spite of the darkness, Rusty could see that the ghost stooped forward from the waist and his long arms hung down like a chimpanzee's.

“Katie! Sheila!” he called as loudly as he dared. When no one answered, he settled back quietly on his pillow, watching the road, half expecting Three Finger to walk past again and again and again, all night long, night after night, still searching for his fortune in stolen gold.

5
Wake-Up Jake

B
efore eight o'clock the next morning, they all donned backpacks and climbed on their bikes to ride the short distance into Barkerville. Katie seemed lost in thought and Sheila was unusually quiet. Rusty could scarcely contain his excitement.

After locking their bikes outside the Visitors' Center, they stopped to gaze up at a gigantic wood carving of Billy Barker. The old prospector was crouched down, clutching a gold pan in both hands. With his bushy beard and wide-brimmed hat, Barker looked a lot like the man Rusty had seen in the night.

Rusty pulled his sketchbook from his backpack and opened it to his “ghost” sketch. He pulled out a pencil and studied the serious expression on Billy Barker's face. If this man hadn't left England and traveled halfway around the world to Williams Creek in 1862, if he hadn't ignored what everyone told him and chosen a rocky outcrop below the canyon because he believed an old creek once ran through there and deposited gold, and if he hadn't constructed a shafthouse and dug and dug and kept on digging while all the other miners made fun of him, then he never would have struck gold at fifty-two feet below ground, and the town of Barkerville would not have grown around Barker's claim. “It's hard to believe he lost all his money and died penniless in Victoria,” Rusty said, but no one answered.

He glanced around.
Where did everybody go?
Then he spotted them, just entering the Visitors' Center. He ran to catch up.

“Hurry up, Rusty,” Gram called, waiting at the door. “Please try to pay attention and keep up with us.”

She sounded a lot like his mother, except more polite. Rusty wondered how long that would last. Last summer, it took three days before she lost her patience with him. But it wasn't his fault. He couldn't help getting interested in stuff.

Stepping onto the dusty main street of Barkerville was like stepping into a time warp. The narrow street was lined on both sides with wood-frame structures, false-fronted buildings that looked like the setting for an old cowboy movie. On their left a man was hitching horses to a shiny red wagon with the words
Barnard's Express
written on its side. After they passed Saint Saviour's Church, Rusty stopped to look back. The church faced down the length of Barkerville's main street as if keeping a watchful eye on everything that happened. He had seen so many pictures of it, the church seemed like an old friend, with vertical wood siding, steeply pitched roof and a small steeple perched at the peak.

Barkerville was quiet at this hour, as if it had yet to wake up. Rusty wandered past the schoolhouse and pressed his nose against the dark window of Cameron and Ames Blacksmith Shop. He wanted to see everything, do everything and experience everything. But first, he really needed food. “I'm hungry!” he said.

Again no one answered.
Now where did they go?

“You coming, Rusty?” Across the street, on the raised plank sidewalk, Gram waited outside a small old-fashioned house with a gabled roof and white wood siding. Above the unusually high and narrow door were the words WAKE-UP JAKE.

Rusty recognized the name. It came from a miner named Jake who used to fall asleep there every morning before his breakfast arrived. Rusty ran across the street, drawn as much by history as the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and sizzling bacon. He charged up the steps two at a time and had almost reached the boardwalk when it suddenly occurred to him that this authentic gold-rush restaurant might serve only authentic gold-rush meals: bacon, beans and biscuits, the staple diet back in gold-rush days. Food was very expensive then because it had to be carried by steamer and pack horses all the way from Victoria. Thinking of this, Rusty stumbled, missed the top step, lurched forward, caught himself, grinned at Gram and eased past her through the open door.

“Try to stay with us, Rusty,” Gram sighed, snatching his baseball cap as he went by, “and watch where you're going!”

So
, Rusty thought,
no more “please.”
Now his grandmother sounded
exactly
like his mother. And they had left Victoria only two days ago. A new personal best.

He plunked himself onto a chair between GJ and Sheila. Gram hung his red baseball cap on the back, and he slipped his sketchbook under the placemat, just in case he felt the urge to draw something in a hurry. He snatched up a menu. “What a relief!” he said. “They have real food here.”

Someone laughed. He glanced up. And his jaw almost hit his collarbone. A waitress, holding a full pot of coffee, hovered close above him. Her chestnut-colored hair was braided at the nape of her neck and she wore a long blue-and-white-checkered dress. Perfect white teeth, laughing brown eyes.
Wow!

“We may look as though we're back in the 1870s,” she said, “but trust me, our food is completely modern. And it's really good too!”

Rusty watched her pour coffee for his grandparents. “I'll give you a few minutes to decide what you want,” she said and winked at him before she hurried away.

“Hey! Look at Rusty,” Katie said in a voice that filled the room. “His face is redder than his hair.” She grinned, leaned closer to Sheila and whispered something. Both girls laughed.

Rusty felt his face turn even redder.

They ate their way through huge stacks of thick, fluffy pancakes floating in maple syrup and butter.

“Do you think that will last you until lunchtime?” GJ asked.

Rusty grinned and patted his belly. “Hope so!”

“Wanna bet he'll be hungry in an hour?” Katie asked.

Rusty glared at the back of her head as Katie hurried outside to join Sheila. The girls stood side by side on the plank sidewalk, squinting against a cloud of dry dust that blew in their faces from the road several feet below.