Barkerville Gold Read online

  Barkerville Gold

  Barkerville Gold

  Dayle Campbell Gaetz

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2004 Dayle Campbell Gaetz

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Gaetz, Dayle, 1947-

  Barkerville gold / Dayle Campbell Gaetz.

  ISBN 1-55143-306-0

  1. Barkerville (B.C.)--History--Juvenile fiction. 2. Cariboo (B.C. :

  Regional district)--Gold discoveries--Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  PS8563.A25317B37 2004 C813’.54 C2004-902150-8

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2004105087

  Summary: Rusty, Katie and Sheila journey to historic Barkerville where they become involved in a search for missing gold.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Cover design by Lynn O’Rourke

  Cover illustration by Ljuba Levstek

  In Canada:

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  BOX 5626 STN.B

  VICTORIA, BC CANADA

  V8R 6S4

  In the United States:

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  CUSTER, WA USA

  98240-0468

  08 07 06 05 04 • 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed and bound in Canada

  To Tsitika

  CONTENTS

  1 Run Out of Town

  2 Three Finger’s Story

  3 A Ghost at Midnight

  4 Dusty Prints

  5 Wake-Up Jake

  6 Two Dusty Bottles

  7 Prospector Man

  8 The Map

  9 Spy or Be Spied Upon

  10 Three Whiskey Bottles

  11 A Letter and a Map

  12 A Map and a Curse

  13 Books, Beards and Boots

  14 Frizzy Hair

  15 Up the Gulch

  16 The Lure of Gold

  17 Outsmarting Outlaws

  1

  Run Out of Town

  Rusty squeezed farther into the corner and stared gloomily out the narrow window beside him. He wished he was somewhere else, anywhere but squished into the backseat of his grandparents’ crew-cab truck. Okay, he did want to see Barkerville—but not like this, with these two girls for company. He glanced sideways at Sheila. She looked like some weird visitor from deep space. Bright yellow earphones stuck out from each side of her freckled face, and the headpiece squashed her short, honey-gold hair, making it poke out like horns above her eyes. Sheila’s head bobbed up and down in time to rock music no one else could hear. Music, sports and animals—that was all Sheila cared about.

  Rusty leaned forward to see Katie, her nose buried in yet another mystery novel, and a small, exasperated groan escaped his lips. So what if his cousin solved one stupid mystery last week? Did that make her some big detective? Katie turned a page and noticed Rusty staring at her. She wrinkled her brow, narrowed her dark brown eyes in warning and returned to her book.

  Instead of the fun visit he and his parents had planned, this was going to be torture. Katie and Sheila didn’t want him tagging along any more than he wanted to be here. He sighed and turned back to the window. A small stream ran beside the road. Beyond it was a forest of firs and pines that seemed small and stunted compared to the towering conifers Rusty was used to on the coast. Above the trees a broad-winged bird soared against a background of pure blue sky. A hawk? An eagle? A raven? Rusty had no idea. Sheila would know, but he couldn’t be bothered asking her.

  He tried to imagine something worse than being stuck in a truck with a music-loving, athletic, wildlife nut and a self-appointed brilliant detective. Jamie Sloan. The name slid into his brain and made his stomach twist. Jamie the Jock, the kid who made Rusty dread going to school every single day. Jamie saw to it that Rusty was last to be chosen for every team in every gym class. Rusty Geek, Jamie called him, instead of Rusty Gates. Rusty Geek likes history better than hockey.

  Which wasn’t true. Maybe he couldn’t play very well, but Rusty loved watching hockey on TV. So what if he loved history too? Was that a crime? His dad worked at the archives and kept coming home with fascinating stories from the past. His mom wrote about history in books and magazines and often had a funny history story to share at the dinner table. Which is why, for the past year, Rusty and his parents had been planning a trip to the restored gold-rush town of Barkerville. They read everything they could find about it, shared stories about some of the weird characters who once lived there, and looked forward to exploring the little town together.

  How could they do this to him?

  Rusty drummed his fingers on the armrest. It wasn’t fair the way his parents ganged up with Katie’s parents and Sheila’s mom to send the three of them out of town for the entire summer. For your own safety, they said. Yeah, right.

  The really annoying thing was—they had no good reason.

  Well, okay, maybe one small reason if you count almost getting themselves killed in the first few days of summer holidays. But, hey, it’s not like they were planning to do that every week. Besides, hadn’t they outwitted the bad guys and brought them to justice? They should be treated like heroes. “You aren’t supposed to run the good guys out of town,” Rusty said, but his voice was overpowered by the hourly news blasting out of the truck radio.

  Rusty’s fingers drummed harder against the armrest. He was sick of sitting here with no one to talk to and nothing to see but trees, the back of a bucket seat and one monster yellow earphone. Nothing to listen to but CBC Radio. His mind strayed to the book his parents had given him just before he left home. Rusty had been so mad he refused to look at it. But now he leaned forward and pulled the large book from his backpack on the floor.

  He studied the black-and-white photograph on the front cover. It showed a narrow dirt road, the original Cariboo Wagon Road, with a stagecoach being pulled by six powerful horses whose hooves stirred up a cloud of dust. Barnard’s Express was written on the stagecoach door.

  Standing beside the road, just ahead of the stage, was a ragged-looking man. He was bone thin, with a bushy beard and a wild look in his eyes. His flat-topped hat was falling apart, his thin jacket full of holes, and his pants ripped and torn. Even the man’s boots gaped open at the toes. He leaned heavily on a crooked walking stick with one hand, but held the other outstretched, palm upward, toward the approaching stagecoach, as if begging for money. The really weird thing was that you could almost, but not completely, see right through this man, as if he weren’t quite there at all.

  Rusty ran his fingers over the book’s title, printed in tall, wobbly letters. “Spirits of the Cariboo,” he whispered, “by I.B. Spectre.” The spine creaked as Rusty opened the book for the very first time and an inky-papery smell filled his nostrils. When he turned to the table of contents, one title practically leaped off the page at him “Barkerville’s Most Notorious Ghost.” He turned to page 52.

  2

  Three Finger’s Story

  Barkerville’s Most Notorious Ghost

  I.B. Spectre

  James Evans was born in Cornwall, Ontario, on September 17, 1826. In 1856, at the age of thirty, he married Emily McTavish and the couple settled down to live and work together on his family’s farm. In 1859, t
hey had a son who they named James, after his father.

  Evans was a small thin man who worked hard but tended to be rather clumsy.

  Just like me, Rusty thought and wondered if James Evans was clumsy for the same reason: because he couldn’t stop daydreaming. He turned back to the book.

  All his life Evans had one accident after another, most of them insignificant. In the autumn of 1862, however, while cutting firewood for the winter, he managed to chop two fingers off his left hand. The injury took a long time to heal, and even after it did, Evans had difficulty doing many of the chores required of a farmer.

  In 1864 he met John “Cariboo” Cameron, who had just returned from the Cariboo, bringing the bodies of his wife, Sophia, who died in Barkerville, and their small daughter, who died in Victoria. Cameron had promised Sophia he would bury them both at home. In spite of his terrible losses, Cariboo Cameron had struck it rich and would never need to farm again. Talking with Cameron set Evans to thinking.

  That same year, Evans left his wife, young son and newborn daughter at home and set off for the Cariboo. He promised to send for his family when he was a wealthy man, likely by the following spring.

  Unfortunately, by the time Evans arrived in Barkerville, all of the rich gold-bearing claims were already staked. To make matters worse, the loose placer gold available in sand and gravel was gone. Any remaining gold was buried deep underground and to mine it required expensive equipment for digging shafts and tunnels. So James Evans ended up working for others. Almost inevitably he became known as “Three Finger” Evans.

  Although he wrote often to Emily, as hard as he worked, Three Finger could not earn enough money to send for her. In fact, he didn’t even have enough to pay his own way home. This was partly because Three Finger kept having one mishap after another.

  In the winter of 1865, he got caught in a blizzard overnight and, as a result, lost three toes to frostbite.

  They must have called him “Three Finger–Two Toe” after that, Rusty thought, and he read on to find out what other appendages James Evans lost.

  In the spring of 1867, Three Finger was limping around in the dark of night when he tumbled into an abandoned mine shaft. Luckily for him it had been partially filled in with dirt, so the shaft was fairly shallow and contained no water at the bottom. Three Finger was not killed, but because the shaft was high on the hillside above Stout’s Gulch, no one heard his cries for help. He spent a long night at the bottom of the shaft with a broken leg.

  Suddenly Rusty was there. Falling, falling down and down into a cold, dark, underground shaft. He was stuck, unable to move. He made a sound in his throat, almost a scream. Then he shuddered and tried to push aside the memory. He returned to the book.

  The next morning, Evans’ friend, Kees van der Boorg, tracked him down and helped get him out. But Three Finger’s leg never healed properly. For the remainder of his life, he limped badly.

  Three Finger–Two Toe–Gimpy Leg, Rusty thought. The man’s name kept getting longer. What else could Evans do to himself?

  Three Finger began to age quickly. His hair turned completely gray and began to fall out. Over the next year and a half, rumors started to spread. Miners and mine owners noticed that, slowly but steadily, gold nuggets were disappearing from one mine after another. Every time this happened, Chinese workers were blamed and immediately fired.

  However, recently discovered old account books reveal something no one appeared to notice at the time. Every time a mine had problems with theft, Three Finger Evans was on the payroll.

  In the spring of 1868, Three Finger told van der Boorg he was determined to return home that year no matter what. Although he worked hard all summer, Three Finger was slower than bigger, stronger, younger men who had ten fingers, ten toes and two good legs. He earned scarcely enough money to buy food and clothing for himself. Van der Boorg could not believe his friend would ever earn enough money to buy his passage home.

  On September 10, 1868, a story appeared in the Cariboo Sentinel. It stated: “One well-known mine owner has accused a certain James ‘Three Finger’ Evans of pilfering a fortune in gold, a few nuggets at a time, hidden carefully within his undergarments. He threatened to run Evans out of town.”

  Oh, man! Rusty thought. Run out of town, just like me. He was beginning to feel a certain kinship with Three Finger Evans.

  A few days later, the Cariboo Sentinel published another story telling of unsolved crimes: “On the nights of September 12, 13 and 14, an odd assortment of items disappeared from various establishments around town. The first night, two bottles of Hair Invigorator were taken from W.D. Moses’ barbershop; the next, three bottles of whiskey vanished from Barry and Adler’s Saloon; on the third night, four leather pouches for carrying gold bullion disappeared from Mason and Daly General Merchants.”

  Some folks began to view Three Finger with suspicion. His hair definitely needed invigorating, he certainly enjoyed his whiskey, and if he stole all that gold, wouldn’t he need something to put it in? However, most people, without any real evidence to back them up, blamed a young Chinese man, Eng Quan, who was often seen walking the streets at night and so could very well have robbed the stores.

  This is too cool, Rusty thought and put down the book. Katie was still concentrating on her mystery novel and he wanted to tell her that here, in his book, was a real live mystery to solve. But he couldn’t say anything now, with their grandparents in the front seat, not after they had promised not to worry Gram and GJ by getting involved in another mystery. He picked up the book again.

  On the afternoon of September 16, 1868, Three Finger was at Barry and Adler’s Saloon along with the usual crowd of miners and “Hurdy Gurdy,” or dancing, girls. Three Finger told van der Boorg that he had finally saved up enough money to go home. “My backpack is ready, loaded with enough food and drink for the trail and stashed behind my outhouse where no one’s likely to steal it. Tonight, at midnight, I’m leaving this town forever.”

  No one knows exactly what happened that day, but the story goes that a miner, trying to force a Hurdy Gurdy girl to kiss him, bumped against the woodstove and knocked a hot pipe against the canvas ceiling. In minutes the saloon was ablaze. Flames leaped across the street and quickly spread through the town, which was built entirely of wood, tinder dry after a long drought.

  People scrambled to gather their possessions, which they placed in Williams Creek. Then someone remembered that fifty kegs of blasting powder were sitting in a store, and everyone rushed to move them into a dry shaft so they would not explode.

  In slightly over an hour it was all over. No one was hurt, but the lower part of town was destroyed. When people returned to retrieve their meager possessions from the creek, they discovered that even as the fire raged, someone had crept in and gone through their belongings. Gold nuggets they had carefully saved were missing. Most blamed the Chinese who lived in the upper town, scarcely touched by the fire.

  But a few miners, facing a long cold night with no shelter and few blankets to keep them warm, got to talking. They decided that Three Finger was a likely culprit.

  They drank some whiskey to help keep warm and talked some more. Hidden by darkness, van der Boorg heard all of this and sneaked off to warn his friend. By moonlight he climbed the trail northwest of Barkerville, up toward Lowhee Creek, and arrived at the cabin long before midnight. Finding no sign of Three Finger, van der Boorg hoped he had already left town. He made his way to the outhouse and was dismayed to find Three Finger’s backpack behind it. That’s when he heard familiar voices. The angry miners had come after Three Finger. Clutching the pack, van der Boorg disappeared into the woods.

  Next morning, when Three Finger did not show up, van der Boorg searched down mine shafts, at the bottom of the canyon, throughout the surrounding woods and finally inside the outhouse, but Three Finger had disappeared, never to be seen alive again.

  However, one of the leather pouches stolen from Mason and Daly’s was found half buried under the b
ack stairs of the apothecary shop owned by Eng Chung, the father of Eng Quan. The pouch contained traces of gold dust.

  Three Finger was instantly forgotten, and blame shifted back to Eng Quan, who lived with his elderly father above the apothecary shop. When miners went to find him, Eng Quan was gone. His broken body was later found at the base of a cliff.

  It is probable that Three Finger also perished in the rugged terrain surrounding Barkerville. Without supplies, unable to show his face on the road, even an expert woodsman didn’t stand much of a chance. And Three Finger was no expert.

  For years men searched for the gold, believing that whichever man stole it, he must have buried it in a safe place until he was ready to leave town. However, it was never recovered.

  Soon after Three Finger’s disappearance, some folks began to see, at midnight, a small thin man wearing a wide-brimmed hat, bandanna, vest, plaid shirt, pants and heavy boots limp his solitary way between Stout’s Gulch Trail and the Lowhee Trail. Even today, he is occasionally spotted on moonlit nights, at midnight. Perhaps James Evans is still searching for his fortune in gold so that he can finally go home.

  “We’re here!” GJ called out. He slowed the truck and steered onto a narrow road leading into a provincial campground. “Keep your eyes peeled for a good campsite.”

  Rusty read the wooden sign near the gate: Lowhee Campground. He closed his book.

  3

  A Ghost at Midnight

  After dinner that evening, Rusty settled outside on a folding chair to sketch Three Finger Evans. He started with the hat: round, flat top, wide brim.