Barkerville Gold by Dayle Gaetz Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    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.
    â€œWhere?” Sheila asked.
    â€œBack 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