Barkerville Gold (5 page)

Katie wrinkled her brow. Sheila looked blank.

“The ghost from last night! He went into the Wake-Up Jake.”

“He's not a ghost,” Katie reminded him. “Haven't you figured that out yet? There's no such thing as ghosts.”

“You're sure it was him?” Sheila asked. “All the men who work here wear clothes like that. And most of them have beards too.”

“Yeah, but they're all way younger than him. And that footprint in the barbershop? It exactly matches the print we saw last night.”

“So I guess that proves he's real,” Katie said. “Whoever heard of a ghost that leaves footprints or, for that matter, goes to restaurants? Why should he need to eat if he doesn't have a real body?”

While Rusty thought this over, Katie's eyes slid across the street. “Let's go see if he's still there.”

“No!” Rusty absolutely could not go back. What if that man was still there? That huge angry security guard with scalded pants? And then there was the waitress. “I want to see the blacksmith shop.”

“You can see that any time. We need to check out your Prospector Man before he leaves.” Katie set off across the street without looking back.

“But…” Sheila's eyes darted from one cousin to the other, “we have to stick together,” she pleaded. “We promised.”

“Then come with me,” Katie called over her shoulder. Almost halfway across the dusty road, she stopped to let a stagecoach rumble past.

“Please, Rusty!” Sheila pleaded.

He folded his arms across his chest. “We're supposed to go to the blacksmith shop,” he said stubbornly.

“Okay, we'll go there, I promise. Just come across the street with us first. We can't let Katie go wandering off alone. You know what she's like—she'll probably think she's on the trail of some weird mystery, and the next thing we know we'll all be in trouble, just like before.”

Rusty hesitated. He didn't want to follow his cousin, but he hated to see Sheila so upset. And he knew she was right. There was no telling what trouble Katie might stir up if left to her own devices. She was already on the steps in front of the Wake-Up Jake...and they did promise GJ.

“Please, Rusty? You don't have to come inside if you don't want. Just walk across the street with me?”

“Oh, all right,” he grumbled.

Outside the Wake-Up Jake, Rusty sank onto a bench, stared at the boardwalk in front of his sneakers and tried to imagine he was totally and completely invisible. Sheila hesitated in front of the open door, took a quick breath and stepped inside.

Ten seconds later the white-bearded man stepped out. He paused, plopped his hat over his thick gray hair and turned away from Rusty toward the barbershop next door.

Katie darted out and followed. Two steps behind her, Sheila glanced at Rusty, made a face, jerked her head toward Katie and took off after her friend. Rusty eased to his feet and trailed behind.

He caught up with the girls at the barber pole. “Okay,” Sheila was saying, “we came with you. Now you have to go with us to the blacksmith shop.”

“But he's in there.” Katie nodded toward the barbershop. She pressed her face against the window. “And he's looking at the Hair Invigorator!”

“So what? He's a tourist. Looking at stuff is what tourists do. Katie, he's just a man dressed as a prospector which, believe it or not, is not a crime.”

“C'mon, Katie,” Rusty said. “Gram and GJ will be back soon and we're supposed to be over at the blacksmith shop.”

Katie's dark eyes narrowed. She squinted from Sheila to Rusty to the open shop door, but when Sheila and Rusty started down the stairs from the boardwalk, she followed. “He's up to something, I just know it,” she whispered.

“Like what?” Sheila asked.

“I don't know, but I have this
feeling
.”

“Right. Katie Reid, Private Investigator—with Feelings.”

Katie didn't seem to hear. “Something weird is happening and it has to do with those dusty bottles of Hair Invigorator.”

“Yeah,” Rusty agreed, “Frizzy Hair sure freaked out about them.”

“Hey!” Katie said. “What if your ghost put them there last night?”

Sheila rolled her eyes. “I can't believe this. It's two stupid bottles of Hair Invigorator, guys, simple as that.”

“And a bootprint,” Rusty reminded her.

“Exactly,” Katie said. “So tonight we keep watch until midnight.”

Rusty could not believe how uncomfortable the stagecoach ride was. Even on this relatively smooth dirt road, every bump sent a shudder from the narrow spoke wheels up through the coach, over the impossibly hard wooden seat and into his backside. By the end of a half hour he could hardly wait to get out. He could not imagine spending long hours, day after day, riding over rugged mountain trails on the narrow, rutted Cariboo Wagon Road in a contraption like this, just to reach Barkerville. People must have had tougher butts in those days, he decided and was wondering if they developed calluses when Gram touched his shoulder.

“If we hurry,” she said, “we can catch the mining demonstration down behind town by Williams Creek.”

Rows of benches were set out in front of a tall Cornish waterwheel. A long flume, or wooden trough, ran high above their heads. Supported by tall posts, the flume diverted water from Williams Creek, which was higher up, to spill out directly above the waterwheel.

Two young men wearing white shirts open at the neck, vests, long pants, tall leather boots and the inevitable hats stood beside the wheel, chatting quietly. One had a short thick beard, so dark it appeared almost black. The other had wide, light brown sideburns and a huge handlebar mustache that made Rusty think of a walrus.

The mustached one walked over to stand in front of the benches, crowded with tourists. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “welcome to Barkerville, the largest community west of Toronto and north of San Francisco. Whether you made the long trek here by foot, on horseback or traveling by Barnard's Express, I fear you are bound for bitter disappointment. Thousands have arrived before you only to realize the sad but unavoidable truth. Since the day ‘Dutch' Bill Dietz first struck gold on Williams Creek up at Richfield, things have changed drastically. In this year of 1870, you can no longer stake out a claim on the creek and pan for your fortune in gold. Any gold that remains now lies buried deep beneath the gravel, below the blue clay, on bedrock. To reach it requires the digging of shafts deep underground, which means investing a great deal of money in equipment, such as this Cornish waterwheel and flume you see before you.”

Rusty couldn't take his eyes off the man's mustache. Perched firmly on his upper lip, it wriggled sinuously up and down, forward and back, like a small animal as he talked. Rusty nudged Katie to see if she noticed.

He hardly recognized his cousin. She had the sappiest expression on her face that he had ever seen. Her eyes remained on Mustache Man as she reached over to touch Sheila's arm. This was too weird. Sheila had an identical expression on her face. “He's so cute!” Katie whispered.

Sheila sighed.

Rusty gagged.

He glanced around to see if anyone else was mesmerized by Mustache Man. That's when he noticed someone seated at the far end of the very last bench. Red-and-black-checked shirt, vest, hat and dark sunglasses over a full white beard. In the harsh light of day, Rusty could not believe this was the ghost of Three Finger Evans. What did Katie call him? Prospector Man. Rusty nudged his cousin again. “He's here.”

“Who cares?” Katie sighed.

“But…you're the one who wanted to follow him.”

Katie turned slowly toward Rusty. Gradually her eyes cleared. She frowned. “What?”

“Prospector Man, from Wake-Up Jake's. I thought you wanted to follow him. Don't look, but he's behind us at the end of the back bench.”

Katie's head swiveled around and jerked back again. “He's watching us!” she whispered.

“I told you not to look.”

“Sh!” Gram said from the bench directly behind.

Rusty tried to concentrate as the two men explained how it all worked. The flume carried water from the creek, which fell on the wheel and made it go around, which made the pump work, which carried gravel and water out of the shaft to be placed in a sluice that would capture gold particles while water and lighter gravel flowed back to the creek.

So who was that man at the back? Why was he dressed as a prospector if he didn't work here? Was it him they saw last night and not Three Finger's ghost at all? Rusty glanced over his shoulder. Prospector Man slipped his sunglasses down and peered over them. Slate gray eyes, cold as steel, bored into Rusty's face.

Rusty gulped. Something weird was going on, and he needed time to sort it out.

Earlier, at the restaurant, the waitress had said,
Nice
work!
But did she mean his sketch, which she had obviously looked at because his book was closed when he left it there, or was she commenting on the way he spilled coffee on the big guard's pants? Rusty had no idea, so he switched to something else that needed thinking about.

Where did those two dusty old bottles of Hair Invigorator come from? What did Frizzy Hair know about it? Could the bottles have been put there by the ghost of Three Finger Evans? And if so, why?

“Aren't you coming, Rusty?” Katie called.

“Give your head a shake, boy,” GJ whispered and nudged him from behind.

Rusty hurried over to the waterwheel. Mustache Man, Dark Beard, Katie, Sheila and a small woman were already there. The woman was older than Gram and wore sneakers, jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a straw hat with a blue ribbon and oval sunglasses.

Dark Beard picked up a pan that looked like a large pie plate and was filled with water and gravel. “The idea is that gold is heavy,” he explained as he sloshed the water around in the pan. “So it sinks to the bottom while sand and water and gravel spill out. Watch how I do it, then each of you can have a turn.”

Slowly he rotated the pan. The woman stepped closer to Rusty. “It feels so strange to be here after 136 years,” she murmured, seemingly to herself.

Rusty's jaw dropped. He tried not to stare, but couldn't help himself. Obviously she had left a part of her brain somewhere along the road to Barkerville. The woman was old all right, but sure as anything she was nowhere near 136 years old!

“Now it's your turn,” Dark Beard said. “Who's first?”

Rusty dragged his eyes away from the 136-year-old woman. “Me!” he said and reached out with both hands to take the large metal pan. His arms drooped. It was heavier than he expected. Dark Beard showed him how to tip the pan slightly and rotate it in a smooth motion, allowing water and gravel to slosh over its rim. When most of the water and gravel were gone, Rusty looked at what remained. His eyes widened. Like little kernels of popcorn that hadn't popped, a cluster of gold particles had worked their way to the bottom of the pan. “I'm rich!” he shouted.

“Not quite,” Dark Beard told him, snatching the gold pan away. “We mix gold nuggets with the gravel so tourists can see how it works. Besides, any gold you find here belongs to Barkerville Historic Town.”

As Dark Beard refilled the gold pan, Rusty had the feeling that other eyes were watching him. He glanced over his shoulder. Prospector Man was looking directly at him, his eyes impossible to see behind dark sunglasses.

7
Prospector Man

B
y mid-afternoon everyone had done enough sight-seeing for one day, so they climbed wearily onto their bikes and rode back to the campground. After a cold drink and a large snack, Rusty and the girls were full of energy again and decided to take a bike ride around the campground.

“Be sure to be back in an hour,” GJ told them. “We're going to drive up to Bowron Lake and have a swim before dinner.”

The campsites were large and quite private, set back in the trees on both sides of two parallel roads. The roads were joined at each end by a semicircular drive and so formed a long, narrow oval. A short road cut through the center of the oval, running from the campground entrance through to the back road.

Turning left out of their campsite, they rode to the far end of the front road and around the curve to the back one. A campsite on their right had two small yellow tents in it, shaped like igloos. Rusty glanced at a white van as they passed the next campsite to the left. Suddenly Katie screeched to a halt in front of him, leapt off her bike as if she'd been stung, pulled the bike onto the grass beside the road, dropped it and slunk toward the bushes. Rusty stopped to watch.

Farther down the road, Sheila also stopped. She looked back in time to see Katie crouch down and part the low tree branches in front of her. Sheila shook her head sadly and stayed where she was.

Rusty couldn't stand it. He had to know what Katie was looking at. So he dropped his bike near Katie's and crept up behind her. Through a gap in the trees they could see right back to the campsite they had just passed. A shiny white camper van was backed in close to the picnic table where a man was seated. He wore a red checked shirt and brown vest. Wispy strands of white hair snaked out from under his wide-brimmed hat and curled over his ears. A full white beard flowed over his chest, and little square glasses perched on the tip of his nose as he studied a large sheet of paper on the table in front of him. He ran one beefy finger in a wiggly line over the paper.

Prospector Man. Or was he? Rusty spent so much time sketching that he had learned to notice small details most people missed. He realized now that although the man's clothes and beard were the same, something had changed—something in the set of his shoulders, the way they slumped so low over the table. However, he reasoned, that could be due to the way he was sitting, leaning over to study the paper. Or it could be because he was tired. Hadn't the man spent half the night wandering around the campground and most of the day touring Barkerville? That was enough to make anyone's shoulders slump.