The Secret of the Silver Mines Page 6

  “Just kick the bottom of the door hard and the lock will flip up!” yelled Larocque from the second floor.

  A minute later I was in the darkness of the basement, edging down those stairs that went to nowhere. At the last step I jumped and landed on the concrete. There was the coffin, looming above me, set up on end the way we had left it, “Theobald T. Larocque” written in large black letters on the outside. I looked around for a way to open it and found a simple latch, one that obviously wasn’t intended to be locked. I took a couple of steps back and just stared at it.

  “Well,” I told myself finally, “this really is do or die, isn’t it?”

  Then I took a deep breath and placed my hands on the latch. I undid it, gripped the edge of the coffin’s lid, and began slowly, very slowly, opening it. It creaked as it moved. I turned my head sideways to get a glimpse of what was inside. A corpse? The silver? Maybe it was Theobald T. Larocque himself, and that being upstairs with Wyn was a ghost, the ghost that would forever haunt the silver mines of Cobalt, long after he had thrown my body, and Wyn’s, into the freezing waters of the lake.

  My eyes grew wide as the lid kept creaking open.

  But there was nothing inside. Not a corpse or a treasure or anything. Just a totally empty coffin. I was actually disappointed. What did this mean? Then I spotted it. A little wooden box about the size of two fists resting on the bottom of the coffin, so dark and small that I hadn’t even noticed it. Could this be what Larocque wanted me to fetch? It too had a lock on it, but it was sealed as tight as the Stanley Cup champions’ defence at playoff time.

  Back up the stairs I went with the box in my hands. It looked as antique as everything in the old guy’s room, like something I had retrieved from a time machine.

  When I came within sight of the fireplace I was surprised at what I saw. The old man was actually gazing towards me with a friendly smile on his face. And when I arrived, I was received with a pat on the arm and some praise.

  “Good man, Dylan Maples. You are proving things to me. Sit down.”

  This time I was allowed space on the little sofa. The old man took the box and set it on his lap. He reached into his pants pocket and took out a key. Several times he moved it towards the lock. But finally he stopped, sighed, and turned to us.

  “I don’t know if you should see what is in here.” There was a pause. Then he spoke again.

  “I need to tell you something first anyway. Let me explain how this all came about, why the contents of this box are a key to unlocking the mystery we have before us. One that I doubt will ever have a solution.”

  Then he proceeded to tell us a story. He was a spellbinding tale-teller and he held our rapt attention for over an hour. I felt transported to another time, as if I could smell and hear and see and even taste another world, one I had never known, a romantic world that appeared before me like a huge three-dimensional movie playing on the flames in that big fireplace.

  The old man took us back to the early 1900s. Thirteen years old then, he’d been young and vibrant and full of big dreams and many fears. It had seemed to him then that the whole world was coming to two little outposts in the Canadian wilderness, tough Cobalt and blooming Haileybury. Both places seemed to grow by the day, as hundreds streamed in off the railway cars, pick hammers in their hands and hopes in their hearts, with dreams of becoming millionaires.

  Theo Larocque had been born on the east coast of England, just across the Channel from France, in a place where many inhabitants had French names. His parents had had a good income and had given him a happy childhood, but tragedy had struck overnight and both were dead by the time he was twelve. He wouldn’t say much more about them. He seemed too engulfed by sadness, or something. All he would say was that someone had come to his private school, gotten him up in the middle of the night, and told him that his parents, who had been on a trip to Egypt, had vanished in a desert. From what his father had told him before they left, he wasn’t certain why they had gone there. Was it for business? Or just a holiday? But the purpose of their journey wasn’t important any more—they had disappeared from his life forever, and that was all that really mattered.

  For an instant the old man lost his train of thought, and then he quickly moved on with his story.

  Having no immediate relatives, he had been put in an orphanage, but he’d soon escaped. Walking across southern England to the port city of Southampton, he’d found his way down to the docks and stowed away on a boat, not even knowing where it was going. Weeks later in Halifax, cold and hungry, he’d slipped ashore undetected. It was April, and the boy had expected warm spring weather. The cold air shocked him. Barely able to survive, and without money, he travelled into the interior of Canada by ship and train, always as a stowaway. Up through New Brunswick he went, and then west along the St. Lawrence River. Several times he was caught and deposited in towns where he was a complete stranger. But he would be back on the road again before long, intent on getting to Toronto or Montreal, one of the big cities where he was told he might find work. Canada to him was an exotic place and a land of opportunity, so he didn’t give up. Poor men travelling the way he did would give him crusts of bread, and from time to time he stole food from town markets. Most days he felt sad, lonely, and very frightened. But he was determined to survive.

  Then came a revelation. The day after he arrived in Montreal, he found an article on the front page of The Gazette that changed not only his plans of hitching a ride on the next train to Toronto but his entire life. Splashed across the paper was the latest news of more fabulous silver finds in northern Ontario, in two little towns recently christened Cobalt and Haileybury. He instantly knew this was for him. Here was something that would give him a chance to make a success of himself. He was determined to get to that wilderness place of dreams and make his fortune.

  Later that day he slipped into the boxcar of a freight train going to Ottawa. It pulled in near the beautiful Parliament Buildings, and he was awestruck. Then it was up the Ottawa River into the deep north. The scenery grew thick with evergreen trees, and he often spotted animals near the tracks that had been laid in right-of-ways that led through the huge forests like tunnels: beavers and fox and even a bear or two, animals he had seen only in books. Canada seemed like a rough place, but absolutely filled with life.

  In North Bay he had to get out and change trains, but just a single day later he was in Cobalt, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. The trip through the rugged north along the tracks of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway had promised very little. There had seemed to be no sign of human existence, not even a shack. But suddenly the forest opened up and Cobalt appeared like an oasis in a desert. Theo was so stunned that he forgot his situation and stepped out onto the platform without trying to conceal his presence. No one seemed to care. And that was the way it was in Cobalt—the law was loose and riches were just around the corner for everyone.

  The railway station was a beautiful brick building, brand new, like most everything else in Cobalt. There was a flurry of activity everywhere you went, people moving at top speed, rushing around in a town that was being built as they moved, or scurrying into the outlying woods in search of silver. Along the main street of Cobalt and up along the rocky hill by the beautiful lake, buildings were sprouting like flowers in a wasteland: log homes, wooden-frame stores and businesses. He heard the tap of pick hammers and hand-held drills on the hard rock, and every now and then an explosion. Everywhere else Theo had gone he had stood out like a sore thumb. Even in Montreal he had been the object of many nasty looks and frowns, a desperate boy in rags on the run. But here no one even noticed him. There was too much to do, too much excitement.

  He spent his first day just walking around town. It seemed like whole sections were being built in a day. The streets were wide and made of dirt, or, more often than not, mud. The plank sidewalks were elevated nearly half the height of a man in places, and the stores,
mostly jammed along curving Lang Street near the lake, were two and three storeys high and just filled with people. There were mining-supply stores, land offices, an opera house, and banks, banks, and more banks. In the town square near the railway station people gathered to talk and compare notes in numbers that stunned the young boy. And they were a colourful lot. Most of them were men, many wearing cowboy hats, some with a horse or donkey in tow and prospector’s picks hanging from their saddlebags. There were rumours in the streets of famous people who were either already there or headed their way. Tree stumps still sat on the main roads, and crude signs told you where Prospect Avenue was (straight up the hill) or Silver Street. Nailed to a tree right downtown, the boy saw a telephone, its silver bells shining in the sunlight. The whole place just smelled of adventure.

  Soon Theo started looking for a place to sleep and was told to head out of the main part of town and look for a large collection of tents. It didn’t take him long to find them. There were whole tent villages on the sides of hills, or growing, it seemed, in the woods. Here adventurers pitched their little homes and either stuck with their gamble through ups and downs or gave up and took the next train back south. Theo soon discovered that there were many empty tents, abandoned ones he could claim, and that if he went to one of the campfires at night someone was sure to feed him. Through such discoveries, some petty thievery, and doing menial jobs for others, he lasted an entire month. He told other men he was sixteen years old. They either believed him or didn’t care if he lied.

  It wasn’t long before he’d earned a reputation as a hard worker. Mining companies liked to hire him from time to time because he seemed particularly good at digging holes and had an amazing ability to crawl into the smallest spaces. Being underground didn’t bother him. The older men gave him a nickname: “the Mole.”

  A couple of times he walked the eight kilometres north to Haileybury to see the owners’ mansions rising on beautiful lots overlooking Lake Temiskaming. On this classier town’s streets he saw the many big hotels, brand spanking new and equipped with huge bars. There were saloons with swinging doors, just like ones he’d read of in cowboy books about the Wild West. When they swung open he often glimpsed spectacular-looking ladies, wearing loud dresses, sometimes hitched up above their knees as they sat upon men’s laps.

  Often at night he missed his parents. Especially when the men got drunk and fought. At times he would cry himself to sleep. But during the day he seemed to be able to keep those thoughts away, and he worked hard during every spare moment he had to find a strike of silver. He even saved enough to buy his own pick hammer.

  One day in early June, during a hot afternoon when the swarming mosquitoes just seemed too much, and everywhere he went another prospector seemed to be finding the fortune that he so desperately needed, he broke down and wept. To hide his despair, he tucked his pick into his belt loop and ran as hard as he could into the woods, trying to run away from the world. When he was so distant that he couldn’t even hear the voices of the others, he pulled out the pick hammer and threw it far into the woods. Then he collapsed on the ground and cried his heart out.

  An hour later he rose. Where was his pick hammer? Stumbling through the thick woods he walked in the direction he had thrown it. A sharp-looking fox scurried by. His eyes followed it and then, suddenly, through the trees, he saw something glinting. He moved closer.

  Slowly, a dream was unveiled before him. The hill in front of him was a wall of silver! It flowed down the side of the rock like a waterfall, a waterfall of wealth beyond his wildest imaginings. Theobald T. Larocque, Jr., age thirteen, was fabulously rich.

  Then he did something stupid. He shouted, shouted at the top of his lungs. Luckily, a voice in his head told him to stop, immediately. In the silence of the woods he waited for a good five minutes without moving an inch. No one came. His fortune was safe.

  But how was he to claim it? An underaged, inexperienced runaway orphan had little or no chance of getting away with this. He had to think. He sat down, but couldn’t concentrate. He was just too excited. Running through the trees back towards the others he leapt and jumped for joy, never once letting out a single sound. When he at last appeared in the opening where the others were, he assumed his quiet ways once more. But he never cried at night again.

  Each day he would slip away and just look at his silver treasure. And then he’d worry that someone else might find it. He was racking his brains to figure out how he might put in a claim. Should he trust someone as a partner? Should he fake a birth certificate? He was anxious to act, but afraid to lose it all.

  About three weeks later, he was about to slip into the woods to see his silver when he noticed a small, thin man with circular wire-rimmed glasses staring at him. His face was the shape of a squirrel’s and he wore a suit and tie and a brown fedora. Theo was petrified. The man kept his squirrelly eyes on him as he walked through a crowd of prospectors towards the woods. And when Theo stopped suddenly and stared back, the man lowered his head and walked away.

  For an entire week he resisted visiting his treasure. Each day the man watched him. But now it was worse: the squirrel didn’t walk away or lower his head, but just stared with an unrelenting gaze and a smirk on his face. Then late one night, as Theo trudged back to his tent, he noticed the man standing beside his little canvas doorway. He said nothing as Theo approached. Then he handed him a business card. Theo looked at it. “Brown Industries,” it read. He glanced up to the man’s eyes and was met with a glare. “Call on me,” the man said in a squeaky voice. “I’m at the Matabanick Hotel, Haileybury. Call on me…or lose it all.”

  I felt a shiver run down my spine. I glanced at Wyn, who was staring up at her great-grandfather. And in the old man’s eyes a tear seemed to be welling up.

  “That’s enough for today,” he said briskly, “maybe enough forever. I’ve told you too much. Go home.”

  The force in his voice made us move instantly. But Wyn reached out and touched her great-grandfather’s arm gently as she got up, and as we approached the top of the stairs we heard him say, so softly we could barely make out his words, “Come back tomorrow…if you like.”

  9

  Cheated

  We had so much to say on the way home that we barely let each other speak. First among our interests was that little box. What was in it? And what did it have to do with the story he was telling us?

  “I wonder what’s going to happen,” I said.

  “You mean you wonder what did happen,” Wyn corrected me.

  “Yeah, oh yeah, you’re right.”

  We made a vow to tell no one of our night’s adventure and to meet at the same time tomorrow at old man Larocque’s house. It would take some doing, some good excuses for our parents, but we both knew we were up to the task. We were going to accept that invitation back into the haunted house if it killed us.

  That night I dreamed of Cobalt nearly one hundred years ago. Only this time it wasn’t Theo Larocque who arrived cold and hungry and in search of treasure, but Dylan Maples. I saw it all for myself—the railway station, the stores and houses under construction, the saloons in Haileybury, and all the amazing characters, some on horseback, wearing suspenders and cowboy hats, filling the muddy streets and streaming over the rocks in search of silver. This certainly wasn’t Hicksville—it was the most exciting place I had ever been. There was silver everywhere.

  Slowly it dawned on me that everything was made of silver—all the buildings gleamed in the northern sun. I walked up to one store and used a hammer and drill to chip off a piece. But when I turned, the man from Brown Industries was right behind me, chewing gum like a squirrel would chew nuts, pointing a loaded pistol right at my forehead. When he fired, I woke up, screaming.

  “Are you all right?” asked Mom at breakfast the next morning.

  “Sure.

  “Have a good sleep?” asked Dad.

  “Sure.”


  “You know,” said Mom, “I never really think of screaming at the top of your lungs as something you do during a good night’s sleep.”

  Uh-oh. I didn’t say anything.

  “Being chased by a cute blond girl from the north?” asked Dad.

  “No,” I said bluntly, “by Edison Brown.” I wasn’t sure if I should have said that. It probably hurt Dad. But I wasn’t feeling very proud of him right now. There was silence for a moment.

  “Sorry,” said Dad, “that was a bit out of line. I don’t blame you for taking a shot at me.”

  That made me feel really guilty. Sure, Dad was doing something that I was beginning to think wasn’t right, but he was my dad after all. And I felt even guiltier when I thought of the situation I was in. Not only was I getting to talk to the man Dad so desperately wanted to interview, but now I had to lie to my parents. And Dad was actually apologizing to me.

  “Um,” I said, “I have to go out tonight after supper.”

  “You do?” asked Mom.

  “Yeah…uh…Wyn and I are working on a school project…at the library, the public library.” That was what we had agreed to say. I would have preferred to tell them that I was going out with Frank and Joe, but that would have meant getting two more people involved, and it also would have called for a more complicated lie. This one was bad enough.

  The parental units smiled at each other.

  “Fine with us,” said Dad.

  But moms often seem to have a sort of sixth sense about their kids, as if they can read their minds. I had noticed that in several sticky situations before, and I couldn’t help glancing at her after I finished my little speech. She was looking right at me. But at least she was smiling.

  When I went to leave, my parents were arguing again about Larocque. They weren’t the sort who argued often, but this case really disturbed them both. Mom was saying, for what Dad said was the “umpteenth” time, that she hated working on it.