There were more than twelve people in the arena now! As I turned in the face-off circle, my hands freezing in my gloves, I could hear a roar from what seemed like more than a hundred voices. For a major bantam game? Man, this Cobalt versus Haileybury thing must be a pretty big deal!
The puck dropped and I wasn’t even ready. I figured the referee did it on purpose. But in seconds I could have cared less. I was in the game. It didn’t matter where I was any more. I could have been in Cobalt, Toronto, or Whitehorse. It put a smile on my face in my little world underneath my shield. I darted around, enjoying the freedom of playing centre ice. On the first shift I carried the puck quite a bit, but when I was in close I always looked for Frank and Joe, trying to set them up.
On the bench the three of us sat together. And for the first time the other two didn’t seem to be looking away from me or glaring at me. We all watched the game, our shoulders touching. The speed of the play was a little surprising. Though I was certainly one of the better players I wasn’t totally outclassing anyone. And the other team had one whiz. A skinny player, a playmaker, not overly powerful, but as fast as a bullet. I loved to key on the best player on the other team. “Take out their number-one guy, dominate him, and you take the heart right out of the opposition,” my coach used to say.
Next time on the ice things started to click. First Frank got knocked down and I immediately decked the kid who’d made the hit, swiped the puck just like it had been swiped from Frank, and turned up ice. I spotted Joe cutting through the centre and labelled the biscuit right onto the tape of his stick. Joe flashed over the blue line, zigging in front of me while I zagged the other way, right behind him, a perfect criss-cross. As Joe headed for the corner I shouted for the puck, and Joe dropped it back, setting it on my stick like a feather on a pillow. I looked up. One defenceman to beat and then, in alone. I dipped my shoulder and swept sideways, bursting past the last guy. And there I was, right in the slot, ten feet out, eyeball to eyeball with the Cobalt goalie. I feinted on my forehand, looking upstairs over the goalie’s left shoulder, and then deked him, a perfect move that actually pulled him off balance. But at the last second, just as I darted past the open net, hoping I could jam it in from a tough angle, I sensed something—or someone, to be more exact. It was Frank, who had jumped to his feet in his own end and pursued the play like a demon. Frank was across the goalmouth, right in the clear! I turned my wrist and flicked the puck on my backhand, straight across the goal crease onto Frank’s stick! He banged it in!
“Yeah!” shouted Frank, “YEAH!!!” He pumped one arm in the air. Joe whipped over and grabbed him, both their sticks up in salute. Then they turned and skated towards me. For a second they hesitated, and then Frank slammed his stick across my pads. “Nice pass!” he said. And he meant it.
Despite bulging the twine three times that game, our line’s work didn’t get us the victory. We had one big problem we just couldn’t overcome. It was that “Bullet” on the other team. He set up every single goal, almost tap-ins for his teammates. I started hoping the coach would get me on the ice against this kid. I wanted to go one-on-one with him. Then finally, towards the end, it happened.
The Bullet had the puck and was coming up ice when Haileybury’s other centreman, winded, headed for the bench. I saw my chance. I jumped over the boards and made a beeline for my opponent. The guy seemed to be looking down and I lined him up. But then something like magic happened. At the last second, he turned as he moved forward and I nearly went on my face trying to nail him.
“Oh yeah?” I said to myself with a grin. I looked up and saw Frank and Joe piling over the boards. “Let’s do some damage here.” I turned on the jets and actually caught the Bullet, lifted his stick from behind, and stole the puck. Turning on a dime I rifled a pass cross-ice, without looking, to Joe on the left wing; Joe got it to Frank in a flash. It was 3-3 now and time was running out. This might be our last chance. I flew over the blue line and yelled for the puck. Frank put it on my tape. I looked up and saw I had a clear shot. Stick side, low. It was open. I pulled my stick back and leaned into my shot. One of those old-fashioned Toronto wrist shots, I told myself. Here it comes.
WHAM!
Out of the blue someone had deposited me on the ice. It was a clean, hard check. Looking up I noticed who it was: the Bullet, now turning and going the other way, fast. This time he didn’t pass. He deked one, two, three players and swept in on the Haileybury goaltender. He pulled him one way, then the other, and slipped it in.
I got to my feet and looked at the clock. Seven seconds left. It was over. I leaned on my stick, the sweat pouring down my face.
Moments later the teams shook hands. I could hardly wait to look the Bullet in the eye. But the hand I shook didn’t feel like I thought it would: it was soft and actually small. As I glanced up, the Bullet pulled off his helmet, letting his long, blond, wavy hair fall down.
“Hey,” said Wynona Dixon, “good game.”
I couldn’t believe it.
Back in the dressing room, Frank tried to make me feel better. “Yeah, she’s all right, but in a year or two we’ll have about a foot on her and about thirty pounds. Then we’ll see who’s the best.”
I didn’t care about two years from now. Wyn Dixon had just kicked our butts. Good and hard. This north country just seemed full of surprises.
6
Inside the Haunted House
Dad was hard at another game. And Mom was helping him. She hated it. In fact, she had said at first that she wouldn’t lift a finger to help him. But she had taken a leave of absence from her position as head of her school in order to come up to Cobalt and bring me with her, so she wanted this done as quickly as possible. She tried to help without complaining, but I could see how frustrated she was. I know Dad didn’t like doing it either. I think I felt worse for him. He just couldn’t say what he felt in his heart about things.
Their first move was to visit Theobald T. Larocque himself. But the old man wouldn’t answer the door. Not being the types who would break into a house, even if they had the legal right to do it (which they didn’t, yet), they tried to reason with him through the sealed front entrance. But they were met with silence.
The same sort of silence greeted them any time they asked questions about the old man and his activities anywhere else in town. It was like the citizens had all gotten together and decided not to talk about it. Surprisingly, if Mom and Dad kept the conversation away from the case, people were quite friendly. It just seemed to be the natural way up north. People loved to talk, as long as they were talking about the right things.
Only at the Cobalt Public Library, the Haileybury Heritage Museum, and the mining museum in Cobalt did they make any progress. And that was because they could go through old records in those places. But even there, they sometimes had the feeling that some of the things they needed were curiously absent.
I tried to stay out of my father’s case. That sure hadn’t been my plan when he’d first told me the story behind it as we drove up here. Hidden treasure. Man, you have to love that! But I wanted to have some friends. In fact, I was beginning to acquire quite a few, and they were at least as much fun as my buds back home. I didn’t want to blow things. If I stuck to playing hockey (and road hockey was something else up here too), talking about Toronto, and listening to stories about the north, everything seemed fine. So we just hung out and had fun. Frank and Joe and I really started to click, on the ice and off, and we even got some wicked skateboard places going—Cobalt was amazing for that, even in the middle of the winter! We were launching ourselves into the air off huge rocks and old mine foundations and landing in five feet of snow. Very cool.
Wynona Dixon was different, in every way. She seemed a lot more serious than the others. Oh, she was fun too—in fact, she could be more fun than any of the rest of them—but she wasn’t afraid to mention what my father was doing, sometimes right in the middle of the rest
of us having a blast. She seemed to be planning something. I could just tell. It was funny with her, sometimes I felt like I knew what she was thinking. And then one night, totally unannounced, she showed up at our house.
“Uh, Dylan,” said Mom, “there’s, uh, someone here for you.”
I jumped up, switched off the video game, and ran to the door. Had to be Frank and Joe. I was shocked to see Wyn standing there all alone, in that red coat with black buttons, with that blond hair flowing onto her shoulders. She’d never come over on her own before. In fact, no one ever came on their own to anyone’s house. We moved in herds, as Mom liked to say.
“Uh…” Wyn started and then looked up at my mother, who stood there smiling. Finally, dear old Mom clued in.
“Oh, sorry, yes, well, I must have a little job here I have to do. Come on in, Wynona, and make yourself at home.”
“I’d really like Dylan to come out with me, just for a while. I mean, for a walk or something.”
Gulp.
Exit Mrs. Maples.
Moments later, Wyn and I were moving slowly down the steep hill towards the frozen lake.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“About what?” I replied nervously.
“About this thing your dad and mom are doing.”
“It’s mostly just my dad.”
“Whatever. I know the guys won’t talk to you about it, but someone has to. You can’t let your dad do this to the old man. I know he’s a weirdo and everything, but he doesn’t have anything any more. He doesn’t even talk to his sons and daughters. He just lives up there in the old house.”
We stopped and looked over at it. All we could see was that strange glow through one of the upper windows. Every time I saw it, it gave me the creeps.
“We’ve got to go over there,” said Wyn.
“Over where?”
“To old man Larocque’s house…and talk to him.”
“Are you nuts?” I exclaimed. I took two steps away from her and turned around. “Are you nuts?” I said again.
“It’s all right, he’s, uh…related to me.”
“He is?”
“He’s my great-grandfather.”
“So, we’ll just skip up there and he’ll give us milk and cookies, will he?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“But he’s your great-grandfather.”
“I’ve never talked to him, Dylan.”
“You’ve never talked to him! This is too weird. Maybe he’s got bodies in his basement or something. We can’t go into that house. You know, my dad says he’s a thief.”
“Shut up, Maples!”
She turned around, facing the frozen lake, silent. Now I’d done it. I knew I had to explain.
“Well, he stole from the Browns, everybody knows that.”
That was when she turned on me. Her face looked nearly as red as her coat, and I wasn’t sure, but she seemed to be almost on the verge of tears. That was pretty weird for Wyn Dixon.
“That’s my grandpa’s dad you’re talking about, and the Browns just used him and left him here with nothing! You have no idea what you’re saying. So why don’t you just shut your face!”
“He’s got a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of silver, or a billion now, who knows? He’s not so badly off. You just feel sorry for him because he’s old, and he’s your great-grandfather. But my dad always says that justice is what counts.”
“Justice? I’ll bet if we knew the real story, the whole story, you’d change your tune. I’ll bet it’s the Brown family who owe my great-grandpa, not the other way around. And it’s the Brown family who turned him into a weirdo, so that he hasn’t talked to any of us for as long as anyone but Grandpa can remember. That’s how he became the town nutcase. But he was a great man once. He could have done big things for this town.” She paused. “My dad, he’s never really known his own grandpa. People like you and your dad and Edison Brown, you just don’t understand. You’ve got a lot to learn.”
“Don’t lump me in with…with Edison Brown.”
“So, do you really want to know the truth about all this?”
“Sure I do.”
“Do you want to find out what happened to the silver?”
“Sure.”
“Then we’ve got to talk to old man Larocque. Look, people up here have known about the lost silver for a long time. And they’ve known that he didn’t spend it, either. And there are rumours that something funny went on between Larocque and Lyon Brown, that the whole thing isn’t what it seems. But for some reason, my great-grandpa won’t tell anyone what he did with the silver or what went on to make him do what he did. Wouldn’t you think you’d be happy if you got away with a quarter of a million dollars? But he just…disappeared into that house. Does that make any sense? It became so awful for my great-grandma that she died, of sadness. That’s what they all say. And now, everybody is afraid of him. They think he’s some sort of monster. But you know what?”
“What?”
“I have this hunch that he’d talk to us.”
“Why?”
“Because something has to give now, now that your dad is here snooping around. And because if Edison Brown finds out that we are talking to Larocque, he won’t care, he won’t be suspicious of kids—we’ll be able to do whatever we want. But also because my grandpa once told me that he can remember when his dad just loved kids, that he used to laugh a lot, play hockey on the streets whenever he saw a game going, and tell lots of stories about the old days, amazing stories. And he wouldn’t hurt a flea, that’s what my grandpa says. I bet that inside he’s bursting to tell his story, he just can’t figure out how to do it. I think there are reasons why he can’t say anything. But I’ll bet that if we broke into his house—”
“Broke into his house?!”
“—and talked to him face to face, we could solve this thing. I need you because you’re John Maples’s son. You could talk to your dad if we got some evidence. Your dad is the enemy. But he’s our only hope, too.”
“I don’t know, Wyn.”
“If my great-grandpa gets brought to trial, it will shame him and this town. And those big-city lawyers will take everything he’s got, which isn’t much. They’ll even take his pride.”
There was silence for an instant while Wyn waited for my answer. I didn’t know what the heck to say.
“I’ll think about it,” I finally said.
“What?” she said, looking right into my eyes. “Are you chicken?”
That really wasn’t something you wanted to hear from a girl. Especially a girl who had knocked you on your butt and then popped the winning goal on your team.
“Who’s chicken? I’m NOT chicken!”
“All right, prove it. Let’s go.” She looked up towards the haunted house.
“Now?”
“Now.” She turned around and started walking up the hill, making a clucking noise as she went.
I just stood there, my heart beginning to pound. Finally, I moved. I ran up to her and turned her around.
“On one condition. If we see anything really weird, like a ghost, or….”
“A ghost?” asked Wyn, almost laughing. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”
“Well, sort of. You know, a ghost doesn’t have to be something in a white sheet. It just might be something, I don’t know, weird up there. Something from the past.”
“Chicken. I thought so.”
I wasn’t going to let her say that one more time! As she walked away, I caught right up to her. In fact, I almost took the lead. We’d soon see who was chicken!
As we got closer to the old house we found ourselves in almost total darkness: that strange glow inside Larocque’s home didn’t l
ight the yard, and the houses on either side were abandoned. Oh wonderful, I thought, no one will be able to hear us when he’s chasing us around with an axe or tying us up or whatever he’s going to do. To get onto the property we had to climb over a stone wall. When I landed on the other side I stepped on an old, ratty cat. It screamed, and so did I. I couldn’t believe it.
“Relax,” said Wyn. But she was breathing pretty hard herself. Her eyes looked wide and alert.
“Let’s knock,” she whispered.
“Be my guest.”
She knocked. We both stood back. For a long time we listened for movement. Then we heard a mumbling and the sound of footsteps. My heart was really thumping now. I felt like shouting out loud and racing back down the front yard, over that fence in a single bound like Superman, and back home in Olympic-record time. But I was frozen in my tracks. The steps seemed to come closer, then stop. Wynona, that fool, knocked again.
For some reason I looked up. Through a darkened window in an upper room, I thought I saw a pair of eyes looking down. It was hard to tell, but they seemed sad and set inside a face that was like a mask.
“Look!” I said.
Wyn looked up. “What?”
“A face! A face in that window!”
“There’s no face there!” said Wyn, unsure.
It had vanished. A sudden look of hatred had passed through the eyes and then it was gone. We stood in silence for a moment. Then Wyn knocked again. And again. And again. Finally she stopped and made an announcement.
“Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“We go around to the back. Go in through the fruit-cellar door. Grandpa told me about it. He grew up in this house and he knows it like the back of his hand. Then I’ll lead us to the ground floor, and then up to where that light is always on.”
The Secret of the Silver Mines Page 4