“I’m sorry, children,” said Uncle Richie. “However, I must insist that we make camp, right here, and work out a five-day ration plan with our remaining food and water.”
So that’s what we did.
When the sun set, we ate a very light dinner and forgot about sucking milk through cookies.
I figured Beck and I would launch into a Twin Tirade. But we didn’t. We just didn’t have the energy.
Especially when Tommy came to our tent around midnight to give us even more bad news.
“You guys?” he said. “Terry and Tabitha are gone. And, it looks like they took the second opal with them.”
CHAPTER 48
“I knew we couldn’t trust those two Tasmanian terrors!” I shouted.
“Since when?” asked Beck.
“Since Tommy said they stole our opal.”
“Actually,” said Storm, “they were the ones who retrieved the opal off Charlotte Badger’s belt. They have as much claim to it as any of us.”
“Nuh-uh,” I said. “Do not.”
“Way mature, Bickford,” said Beck.
She was right. I was just frustrated, angry, and tired of my clothes looking reddish because of the Outback sand. I was starting to look like a walking cinnamon cookie with a bad rash.
“What’s all the hub-bub, children?” asked Uncle Richie, coming over to join us. He was dressed in pajamas, a robe, and a floppy nightcap. What can I say? The guy is stylish, even when he’s asleep.
“Terry and Tabitha took off with our opal!” I blurted.
“Actually…” Storm started.
“Fine! They took off with the opal.”
“We should go after them!” said Beck. “We could follow their tracks.”
“Chya!” said Tommy. “Just like we followed Charlotte Badger’s tracks down at Port Phillip Bay!”
Storm raised a finger to make a point. “Um, when we were on the cliffs near Port Phillip Bay, Terry and Tabitha were the ones who did the tracking for us.”
“Oh,” said Tommy. “Right. Forgot that part.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We should split up! Tommy and Uncle Richie can go after the Tasmanian Twins and our opal.”
“Totally,” said Tommy, turning to Uncle Richie. “You might want to change first. Pajamas and a bathrobe are super comfy but they’re not the best search and rescue gear. Plus, it could get hotter. The sun might come up.”
Uncle Richie nodded. “As it seems to do every day, Thomas.”
“Chya.”
“While you guys are hunting down our jewel thieves,” I said, “Beck, Storm, and I will hike the final five miles over to that buried quartz reef and dig up Lasseter’s Gold so we can bargain for the third opal! We should leave now. Like Tommy said, we need to do this before the sun comes up.”
“Definitely,” said Beck. “We have to hike by night. Tomorrow, the temperature could hit forty degrees!”
“Really?” I said. “That’s all? That sounds kind of chilly…”
“I’m doing Celsius, Bick, because that’s how they measure temperatures in Australia.”
“Oh. Right. So what’s forty degrees translate into in American temperatures?”
“You mean Fahrenheit? How about one hundred and four?”
I nodded. “So, it’s like the desert has a fever…”
“Exactly.”
“Nobody’s going anywhere!” said Storm, stomping the ground with her booted feet. Even though it was dark, I could see the angry thunderheads forming behind her eyes. Yep. That’s why Mom and Dad gave her the nickname Storm. She doesn’t get angry often, but when she does? It’s usually a category five rage alert. “Not tonight, not tomorrow, not the day or night after tomorrow! If you do, you’ll die.”
“Not necessarily,” I protested—as quietly as I could.
“Oh yes you will, Bickford,” replied Storm. “Heat exhaustion. Dehydration. Poisonous snakes. Poisonous spiders. The Australian Outback sun will hit your skin and it will get hot. The tissue under your skin will also get hot. Super hot. Then your bones will start sizzling. You leave this camp, you die!”
CHAPTER 49
We listened to Storm.
We didn’t venture out into the Outback. We stayed right where we were.
Which, by the way, also almost got us killed.
Because the next morning, a swarm of black-and-white birds with beady red eyes started dive-bombing our camp and pecking at us with their pointy beaks. I think they wanted to turn our eyeballs red, too.
“They’re swooping magpies!” shouted Storm. “It’s the biggest wildlife problem in Australia. They think we might harm their newborn chicks! So, they swoop down and attack us before we do!”
“Cover your heads!” shouted Uncle Richie, tossing out pots, pans, and buckets. “The worst thing you can do is fight back!”
“True,” said Storm, her tinny voice reverberating underneath the aluminum water bucket she wore for a helmet. “Throwing rocks or sticks at a swooping magpie will only make it want to swoop more. It’ll think you really are a threat to its babies!”
“Are magpies the four and twenty blackbirds that got baked into a pie?” Tommy wondered aloud. He was wearing a motorcycle helmet because he always knows how to look cool, even during a magpie swoop.
“No,” replied Storm. “But magpies are a protected native species here in Australia, so harming them can lead to penalties and fines.”
Great. They could peck out our eyeballs but if we fought back, we’d get a magpie ticket.
After about thirty minutes, the aerial assault ended. The birds flew off to swoop somebody else. We pulled off our improvised helmets. Tommy smoothed out his hair.
“Awesome,” he said, checking his reflection in the rearview mirror of our broken-down SUV. “It still has a swoop of its own.”
“That settles it,” Uncle Richie announced. “No one is going anywhere until our new vehicles arrive. It’s far too risky. We are stranded here in what Australians call the woop woop: the middle of nowhere. We have to hope that the other twins, being children of this strange and rugged land, know what they’re doing and will, somehow, survive their journey into the scorching desert.”
“I’ll start researching Aboriginal funeral traditions in case they don’t,” said Storm. “We might want to do a ceremony like we did for Dad when we thought he was dead.” She headed off to her tent and laptop to look into Aboriginal death rituals because, yeah, she’s dark like that.
“This is all our fault,” I said to Beck.
“I know,” she said back. “We never should’ve broken off from the group when we were doing that dive off the coast of Tonga.”
“You’re right!” I told her. “That gave Charlotte Badger all the time she needed to plant the purloined opal down in The Room.”
“Yep,” said Beck. “You let her waltz right in and frame Mom and Dad.”
“What? You did it, too! You broke away from the group, too!”
“Only because you did it first.”
Yes, what had started as some kind of mutual misery society had quickly morphed into Twin Tirade 2,016 (or 2,017 if you count that double one we did with the Tasmanian twins; guess we’ll have to give it an asterisk in the record books).
“I don’t think I did anything first,” I told Beck.
“Of course not,” she snapped back. “You’re a follower, not a leader.”
“Hey, I led us back to the shiny stuff on that Tongan dive.”
“True. And I was dumb enough to follow you.”
“So you’re the follower!”
“And you’re the guy who forgot to brush his teeth this morning!”
“I’m conserving water!”
“Oh. Deodorant, too?”
“Deodorant has water in it!”
“You can’t lick a deodorant stick, Bick!”
“I know,” I said, sputtering mad. “So how about, from now on, we try to just work together?”
“Sounds good to me!” screamed Beck.
>
“Good! No more leading!”
“And no more following!”
“From now on,” I hollered, my face turning purple, “we just have peace and harmony!”
“And togetherness!” Beck hollered back.
“We’re on the same team!” I exploded.
“I know!!!”
“Then why are you two beefing it out like a pair of braying kookaburras?” shouted Terry.
That, of course, brought Twin Tirade 2,017* to a screeching halt.
The Tasmanian Twins were back.
And they’d brought camels.
CHAPTER 50
Terry pointed to the east, where the sun was rising like a furious ball of orange fire.
“We found a stone engraved with a carving over that way,” he said.
“It told us that there was a community of our Aboriginal cousins close by,” added Tabitha.
“We followed the signs,” said Terry.
“And found our people,” said Tabitha, pointing to the burly man in a leather cowboy hat riding the lead camel in a string of eight.
“I’m Koa,” the man said with a big smile. “My people are the Arrernte. We’re the original people of the Outback. We’ve been here for tens of thousands of years. Why, we’ve been here so long, I remember when that sand down there used to be a rock.” He tossed back his head and laughed. “Hey, that town you call Alice Springs? It used to be called Mparntwe. Then this lady named Alice moved to town and opened a mattress factory. I kid. I’m a kidder.”
“In addition to being extremely funny,” said Terry (with an eye roll that Koa couldn’t see), “our cousin Koa, here, is an expert camel tour guide.”
“It’s true,” said Koa. “I get nothing but five-star reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor.”
“So, it’s time for us to ride the final five miles over the desert on camelback!” shouted Tabitha. Then she warbled up a triumphant war cry that sent shivers down my spine. If there were any swooping magpies left in the area, Tabitha’s shriek probably sent them swooping off to New Zealand.
“Dudes!” said Tommy, sounding super excited. “We’re gonna go get Lasseter’s Gold the same way he did: with camels! We’re doing it old school!”
“But,” muttered Storm, “hopefully not dying old school like Lasseter did.”
“Bully!” cried Uncle Richie. “Well done, Terry and Tabitha. Once again, you have proven to be this expedition’s heroic saviors. And welcome to you, Koa. I’m sure we’ll find your camel expertise as well as your jocund sense of humor to be a beneficial balm during our arduous journey.”
We all sort of stared at him. Sometimes, Uncle Richie says stuff that only people from around 1901 would understand.
“Very well,” he continued, “we must pack plenty of provisions, especially water. Yes, it’s only five miles to the quartz reef lined with gold, if, of course, Storm’s map proves accurate, which, I have no doubt, it will. But we will need water, my camel-riding compatriots. Lots and lots of water. Unlike our dromedary conveyances, the camels, we don’t have humps to store it in.”
Storm raised her hand.
“Yes?” said Uncle Richie.
“Camels store fat in their humps, not water. If a camel goes without food, its hump will start to shrink. The hump has nothing to do with water.”
“I see,” said Uncle Richie, with a sad sigh. “Alas, another urban, or in this case, desert, legend debunked. Thank you for that, Storm. Hurry up, everybody. We need to pack those provisions and load up the water! Grab the shovels and pick axes, too! Today’s the day we go for the gold!”
CHAPTER 51
As we bobbed on camelback across the scorched Mars landscape that is the Red Centre of Australia, I realized we only had a day and a half to retrieve the third opal, fly it back to Sydney, and present it to Detective Superintendent Jonathan Michael Ruggiere.
Otherwise, he’d be off to Disneyland and Mom and Dad would be off to some kind of Australian maximum-security prison.
“By the way,” Koa announced over his shoulder from his position at the head of our camel line, “the pirate woman you seek is digging for treasure close to where you seem to be headed.”
“You’ve seen Charlotte Badger?” said Tommy, who was on the camel right behind Koa’s.
“Yes. A tall and imposing woman with many knots tied into her locks of hair.”
“Yep. That’s her. Did she have two guys with her?”
Koa nodded. “She sure did. They were digging furiously in the sand, not finding much. Say, do you know how to confuse a gold miner?”
“No. How?”
“Show him a row of shovels and tell him to take his pick!”
Koa boomed up another laugh. Tommy scratched his head. I swatted flies.
Meanwhile, Storm gave her camel a slight kick and trotted up to the head of the line to confer with Koa.
“Here is our treasure map,” she said, showing Koa what she had transcribed onto a roll of leather, because treasure maps always look way more awesome on some kind of scroll than they do on copier paper.
“X marks the spot, eh?” said Koa, studying the marking.
“Yes,” said Storm. “Is Charlotte Badger there?” She tapped the X. “Will she uncover Lasseter’s Gold before us?”
Koa shook his head. “No. She is maybe three kilometers north of where we are headed.”
“That is splendid news!” cried Uncle Richie. “Once we positively identify the location of Lasseter’s gold reef, we will sally forth and parley with Ms. Badger.”
“There’s going to be a par-tay?” said Tommy.
“No, Thomas. A parley. We shall hold a conference with our opposition to discuss terms. We will make a deal with Ms. Badger: our gold for her opal.”
“I wish we didn’t have to give the gold to those pirates,” I whispered to Beck.
“Me, too,” she whispered back.
“Me, three,” whispered Terry.
Tabitha nodded. “Me, four.”
But none of us protested Uncle Richie’s plan. We just kept bouncing up and down as our long-legged rides strode across the red-hot desert.
As we slowly humped our way across the desolate Outback, Uncle Richie used the satellite phone to inform Mom and Dad about our “bully” plan.
“We’re nearly to the gold!” he told them. “Once we pinpoint the location and have proof of treasure, we will organize a ‘business meeting’ with Charlotte Badger. We should have the third opal in our possession before sunset!”
“Wonderful news,” I heard Dad reply. “How are Terry and Tabitha?”
“Fine,” said Uncle Richie. “In fact, time and again, they have proven to be the most valuable members of this expedition.”
“Wonderful.”
“Uncle Richie?” It was Mom.
“Yes, Sue?”
“Please hurry. Detective Superintendent Ruggiere dropped by yesterday. He had brochures for Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. You only have two more days or he and his wife will be gone and Thomas and I will be locked up for at least ten years.”
CHAPTER 52
“This is it!” shouted Storm after we crested a hill and came into a long, narrow valley. “We need to start digging!”
“Um, Storm?” said Tommy.
“Yes?”
“This just looks like another strip of sand.”
“Because the treasure is buried, Tommy! That’s why they call it ‘buried treasure’!”
“Oh. Okay. Cool.”
Our camels took a knee and we all slid out of our saddles.
We grabbed shovels and picks and started digging. Except Koa. He guzzled water and, while we dug, regaled us with the origins of the Australian slang word “digger.”
“The term ‘digger’ is generally accepted as slang for an Australian soldier, and the myth is that it came from Australians digging trenches at the Battle of Gallipoli in World War One…”
Fortunately, Tommy, who was digging like a steam shovel, banged his blade into
something solid before Koa could bore us with more of his history of slang.
“I’ve got something!” he shouted.
We all (except Koa, who’d just found our stash of biscuits/cookies in a saddlebag) raced over to help Tommy uncover whatever it was he’d just hit.
“It’s quartz,” said Terry.
“With gold embedded in it!” added Tabitha.
We brushed away all sorts of sand and exposed a long mound of gold-flecked quartz. Tommy took a pickaxe and gave the glistening vein a good solid whack. A chunk tumbled out.
Storm hoisted it up off the ground, felt its weight, did some quick calculations and gave us her estimate.
“This one piece of quartz?” she said. “There has to be at least a half a million dollars’ worth of gold inside it. And there’s a ton more where that came from. This whole valley? Under all the sand lies Lasseter’s reef of gold worth millions and millions of dollars.”
Uncle Richie scooped up a fistful of sparkling rubble.
“Rebecca?” he said. “As I recall, you are the family’s number one negotiator.”
“Chya,” said Tommy. “Beck’s the best. When we were on The Lost, without Mom or Dad, she worked out all sorts of sweet deals.”
“She could talk a hungry dog off a meat truck,” I said.
Beck dusted herself off a little. “It’s true. I’m good. You want me to negotiate with Charlotte Badger?”
Uncle Richie nodded. “Indeed so.”
“No problem. Who’s coming with me?”
“Me, of course. And, perhaps Bickford and Thomas?”
“I can soften her up a little for you, Beck,” said Tommy. “Show her my gun show.” He proceeded to pump both his biceps while saying, “Ka-pow, ka-pow.”
Terry and Tabitha did the same thing. “Ka-pow! Ka-pow!”
I would’ve joined in but, you know. I don’t do a lot of bicep curls. Just cheese curls.
Treasure Hunters--The Plunder Down Under Page 11
