“Before we set off to find Ms. Badger,” said Uncle Richie, “we should quickly rebury this quartz vein. After all, what we are offering in exchange for the opal is information about its location.”
“Good point,” said Storm. She started kicking sand on top of the glittering bank of stone.
We all grabbed our shovels and joined in.
Tommy, who was working harder and faster than anybody (probably to pump up his muscles even more before the visit with Charlotte Badger), took a quick break to lean against his shovel and swipe away some of the sweat dripping down his brow.
“Hey, you guys?” he said.
We all stopped shoveling.
Tommy was gazing up to the crest of a hill on the far side of the valley.
“I just saw a glint of glass up on that bluff,” said Tommy. “Like off a pair of binoculars or a spyglass. Somebody’s up there watching us.”
CHAPTER 53
“No worries, mate,” said Koa, squinting up at the ridge. “Those are my associates.”
He pulled a slim silver mirror out of his pocket and flashed some kind of signal up to whoever was spying on us from the horizon. The spies flashed back.
“It’s some fair dinkum friends from my village,” Koa continued. “The ones who have been keeping an eye on your pirate lady, Ms. Badger. They’re telling me that she is now only one kilometer away, just on the opposite side of that ridge.”
“Frightfully convenient!” said Uncle Richie, smiling broadly. “We shan’t have far to travel for our parley.”
“When you parley, does that mean you guys are gonna talk French?” asked Tommy.
This time, Uncle Richie just nodded. “Indeed, we might, Tommy. After all, it is the international language of diplomacy.”
“Uncle Richie?” said Terry. “Might we borrow your satellite phone to call Tasmania?”
“We’d like to alert our family that we should be home shortly,” added Tabitha.
“Mum and Dad like to hide all the breakable objects in cabinets when we’re there,” said Terry.
“They also lock up all the soda with caffeine,” added Tabitha. “The sugary snacks, too.”
Uncle Richie nodded. “Wise precautions, I suppose, for any home with active and imaginative young children.” He handed them his phone. “Kindly give your parents my fondest regards. And please tell them how valuable you two have been on this treasure quest.”
“Will do.”
The two twins scurried off so they could talk to their mother and father in private.
“Do you know Morse code?” asked Koa.
“Of course,” said Storm.
“Bonzer! I will camel-trot up that crest and join my friends. When you are ready to set off for your meeting with Ms. Badger, signal me. I will signal back her final coordinates.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Tommy. “Thanks, man. And thanks for all the jokes. They made the five-mile camel ride just fly by.”
Beck and I looked at each other.
Sometimes our big brother is way nicer than he should be.
Koa waved, tapped his camel with a flick of his wispy whip, and scurried off to join his fellow Arrerntes up on the ridge.
I went over to Uncle Richie. I had to try one last time. “Um, is there any way we can keep the gold and get the opals? Maybe pull some kind of switcheroo on Charlotte Badger? After all, we’re treasure hunters, not treasure-give-away-ers.”
He shook his head. “We won’t do that, Bickford. Always remember: ‘Honesty first; then courage; then brains—and all are indispensable.’”
“Did, uh, Teddy Roosevelt tell you that?”
“Not directly. Besides, don’t your parents often donate much of the treasure the Kidd family locates to museums and deserving locals?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They do. It’s kind of their thing.”
“Well, then—I suggest we make it our ‘thing’ too, eh?”
Beck came over to join us.
“You guys? I’m pumped. This is so going to work. We’ll show Charlotte Badger our sample of Lasseter’s Gold and, BAM! She’s going to give us that opal faster than you can say ‘Betty Botter bought a bit of butter.’”
“We ready to rock?” said Tommy, holding the leather leads for four camels.
“Totally,” said Beck. “Stack them high, watch them fly. On the floor, out the door…”
“Huh?”
“Just a few motivational quotes that we salespeople employ, Tommy. ABC, bro. Always be closing. Because every no gets me closer to yes…”
I could tell: Beck was psyching herself up for her “parley” with Charlotte Badger. Getting into sales maven mode.
“Let’s go see Charlotte Badger!” I said, because I knew my twin sib was ready to make her pitch and close the deal.
“Bully!” cried Uncle Richie.
“Okay, you guys,” said Tommy, shielding his eyes with his hand. “Looks like Koa’s up on the ridge. He’s signaling us with his mirror. No, wait. That’s the reflection off a chrome fender. On a motorcycle. Looks like Koa is coming back. On a Harley. And he’s bringing like a dozen motorcycle friends. Huh. One of them has bouncy dreadlocks sticking out of her helmet.”
Yep. Koa was coming back with Charlotte Badger, Croc, Banjo, and about nine other pretty skeevy-looking dudes and dudettes, all of them on roaring motorcycles.
CHAPTER 54
“Those guys weren’t keeping an eye on Charlotte Badger!” I shouted over the whine and grind of the gear-shifting motorcycles. “They were keeping an eye on us! For Charlotte Badger.”
Terry and Tabitha came running over to join us. Storm, too.
“Koa has betrayed us!” shouted Terry.
“He also made us listen to all those bad camel jokes,” added Tabitha.
“The man is pure evil,” said Storm.
Terry tossed the satellite phone back to Uncle Richie. “Sorry about this, you guys,” he said.
“We didn’t know Koa was a spy!” said Tabitha. “Honest. We thought he was just one of our cousins with camels.”
“And,” added Terry, “the corniest comedian in the Outback.”
We formed a tight clump as the marauding motorcyclists started circling us. The rumble of their engines scared our cluster of camels. The animals brayed awful, lip-wiggling honks and sprayed the air with camel spittle.
After churning up a whirlwind of sand, Charlotte Badger raised her right arm and the dozen motorcyclists skidded to a stop.
We were surrounded.
“How dare you, cousin Koa!” shouted Terry and Tabitha.
“This is why I wear two watches, boys and girls,” said Koa with a booming laugh. “I’m a two-timer.”
“You’re also not very funny,” said Storm, who can be blunt, especially when she’s mad, which we all were.
Beck swaggered forward. She was still in killer shark sales mode.
“Nice entrance,” she said to Charlotte Badger, who’d just peeled off her helmet and shaken out her dreadlocks. “Impressive. But I can show you something even more impressive. I’m talking about a rich gold deposit first discovered by Lewis Harold Bell Lasseter in 1929. A whole reef of gold, stretching for maybe a mile, or you know…”
“One point six zero nine three four kilometers,” said Storm.
Beck snapped her fingers. “Exactly. I’m talking about the long-lost and legendary treasure known throughout Australia as Lasseter’s Gold. Why, it’s the biggest plunder in the land down under. And it’s all yours, Charlotte Badger, today only, for the low, low price of just one opal.”
Beck gestured toward the velvet pouch tied to Badger’s wide swashbuckler belt.
“So, do we have a deal?” said Beck. “This is a limited time only offer. Void where prohibited. Actual size of gold reef may vary.”
Charlotte Badger started clapping. Sarcastically.
I don’t think she was buying what Beck was selling!
CHAPTER 55
“Nice sales pitch, kid,” Charlott
e Badger said to Beck. “You should be on TV. Speaking of opals…” She glared at Terry and Tabitha. “Where’s the one you two little Tasmanian devils stole from me on the cliffs?”
“We, uh, lost it,” said Terry.
“And, we’re not devils,” said Tabitha. “We are Aboriginals from Tasmania. Our mother is a proud Palawa!”
“Crikey. All you little nippers are full of useless information, aren’t you, now?”
“Don’t worry about the opals,” said Tommy, sauntering forward, wiggling his eyebrows the way he does when he’s trying to flirt with a pretty girl. “I’ll pick up something even shinier for you the next time I’m diving for treasure—at the jewelry store.”
“Ha,” laughed Croc. “Listen to this one.”
“A right little Romeo,” chuckled Banjo.
“I don’t need your shiny baubles, little boy,” Charlotte hissed at Tommy.
“Um, I’m actually a teenager, not a boy…”
Charlotte Badger ignored Tommy, swiveled in her motorcycle seat, and turned on Beck.
“And I don’t need you to show me where Lasseter’s Gold is buried. Why? Because you already did, lassie, when you blithering duffers dug it up for all to see! I snapped a few photos with my camera. It has a very good, very long telephoto lens on it.”
That’s what Tommy had seen glinting up on the ridge, I realized. A camera lens.
“And I saw where the gold reef is buried, too,” said Koa. “Remember? I was here when you guys dug it up. It’s right there, underneath all that sand!”
He pointed at the dirt to his right.
“Or, it could’ve been under that sand. The stuff over there.”
“You can have the gold!” said Beck. “All of it. Just give us that opal. We need it to free our parents.”
“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” teased Banjo.
“The wittle girl wants to save her mommy and daddy,” added Croc.
Charlotte Badger tossed back her head and laughed. I think she eats a lot of sweets. Her teeth, the ones she had left, were stained brown.
“Sorry,” said Charlotte Badger. “That’s not gonna happen, peach. My sponsor wants all the gold and both the opals, too.” Now she was eyeballing Terry and Tabitha. “He thinks it’ll make a nice story for the telly. Australia’s long-lost treasures found. Two of the Lightning Ridge Opals. All of Lasseter’s Gold.”
“And what, pray tell, is your sponsor giving you in return for all this treasure?” asked Uncle Richie.
“My own TV show,” said Charlotte Badger. “Plus half of the loot.”
“Charlotte’s gonna be the ‘Wonder from Down Under,’” said Croc. “We’re gonna be her sidekicks. On TV!”
“The ladies love the sidekicks,” added Banjo.
“All right, boys,” Charlotte ordered, climbing off her motorcycle. “You go with Koa and start digging. Over there. We need to uncover the whole reef.” Koa and five other bikers dismounted and grabbed tools from our pile. “The rest of you lot? You’re going to help me persuade our two little curly-haired friends here to cough up that opal they stole off my belt!”
Six very scary, very hairy thugs climbed off their rides and started punching their palms with their fists.
Then, following Charlotte Badger, they started to slowly stroll over to Terry and Tabitha.
CHAPTER 56
“We need to do something!” I whispered urgently.
“Actually,” Storm whispered back, even more urgently, “we need to do a series of somethings in a synchronized sequence. Tommy, Bick, Beck, Terry, and Tabitha? Hop on a motorcycle, kick up a dust storm. Uncle Richie?”
“Yes?”
“You and I will go wrangle the camels!”
She gestured to where the eight dromedaries were, unbelievably, calmly hanging out in a clump.
“Capital idea.”
So, while Charlotte Badger and her heavies slowly made their way across the sand with their long coats flapping in the arid breeze (probably because they thought the slow-mo moves made them look super intimidating and cool), Beck, Tommy, Terry, Tabitha, and I dashed off to grab one of the six empty motorbikes the digging crew had left behind.
We were all pretty speedy, too. Especially the Tasmanian twins, who let loose with another war cry as they hopped on the nearest motorcycle and kick-started the gnarly choppers to roaring life. Beck and I are awesome on motorbikes, too. Tommy? He’s probably the most awesome of us all. In no time, the five of us were cutting donuts and kicking up angry clouds of red dust that spewed all over Charlotte Badger and her six sand-sucking minions.
Meanwhile, Uncle Richie and Storm riled up our camel herd and sent them stampeding toward Koa and the bad guys working with picks and shovels, trying to dig up the golden reef.
Koa tried to call off the camel charge with a series of whistles and mouth clicks, but the camels were done paying attention to him. Maybe they knew he was a traitor, too. Anyway, the screeching, honking, spitting, hoof-stomping camels scared Koa and the others right out of their narrow ditch.
While both groups were distracted, Storm slipped her trusty boomerang off of her belt.
“Let ’er rip!” shouted Terry, as his motorcycle fishtailed up another shaft of sand into Charlotte Badger’s eyes.
Storm squinted. Took careful aim. Somehow, she located her target in the center of that cyclone cloud of swirling sand and sent her boomerang twirling through the air. The front tip clipped the pouch off Charlotte Badger’s belt. The rear tip snagged its leather strap, which wrapped itself around the boomerang in a tightening loop. Wobbling slightly, the flying wooden wedge brought the opal bag back to Storm and Uncle Richie. It was a genius toss. If Storm had thrown her boomerang in some kind of Olympic competition, she would’ve received tens or, even, elevens from all the judges.
“We have what we came for!” shouted Uncle Richie after Storm unwrapped the pouch from her weapon. “It is time to evacuate this area!”
“Stop them!” screamed Charlotte. “They’re nothin’ but a bunch of jewel thieves.”
Uncle Richie and Storm took off running.
But, to be honest, neither one is very fast. The six guys in the ditch, who didn’t have to worry about our hissing camels any more (they’d kept running for the hills) started chasing after them.
So, the five of us on motorcycles spun out of our circular pattern to go help Storm and Uncle Richie.
But that meant Charlotte Badger and the other goons weren’t being sprayed by sand anymore. They were free to charge after Storm and Uncle Richie, too.
Both of them were chugging as best they could across the desert, but running in sand is sort of like running in the shallow end of a swimming pool. It slows you down.
And we didn’t have enough motorcycles to block all their pursuers.
Two wild-looking guys with shovels were only ten feet behind Storm and Uncle Richie.
Which meant they were only ten feet away from snatching back that opal we so desperately needed!
CHAPTER 57
Suddenly, a shrill war cry screeched up over the horizon.
It was so loud and jarring, it even drowned out the din of our snarling motorcycles. I cut off my engine to try and figure out what was going on.
Those two dudes with the shovels chasing Storm and Uncle Richie?
They were frozen in their tracks because they saw it before I did.
The deafening noise had been warbled up by a hundred or maybe two hundred Aboriginal warriors lining the crest of a sandy knoll in a wild assortment of dune buggies and desert vehicles. The cavalry (whoever they were) had ridden to our rescue. It was like something out of a Hollywood movie.
I noticed that the scary band of marauders charging down the hill had something the pirates had forgotten to bring to the party: weapons! I mean Charlotte Badger, Banjo, and Croc had a couple of swords and daggers, but these guys in the crazy sand buggies had rifles.
We’d all cut off our motorbikes to marvel at the mob charging down into our dusty
valley.
“Who are those guys?” said Beck. “The pirate cavalry?”
“No,” said Terry. “They are our cousins. The first people of the Outback. The Arrernte.”
“Won’t they be on Koa’s side?” I asked. “He’s gone full-blown pirate on us.”
Tabitha shook her head. “No. The leaders of the village warned us about Koa the camel wrangler. Told us to keep our eye on him.”
“So,” said Terry, “when we figured out what he was up to, we borrowed your Uncle Richie’s satellite phone and called our true friends and cousins.”
“They got here pretty quickly,” said Beck.
“Hey, it’s their desert,” said Tabitha. “They know how to rumble across it fast.”
Now Charlotte Badger and her twelve flunkies were the ones penned in by charging marauders. The Arrernte warriors had them surrounded, with like six circles of vehicles and weapons.
A very noble-looking man stood up in one of the vehicles. “Welcome to the Arrernte Nation,” he proclaimed. “This has been our land for more than forty thousand years.”
Tommy whistled. He was impressed.
“That’s Jabiru,” Terry whispered. “He’s like their leader. He was the first one to warn us about Koa.”
“We are seventy-five hundred strong,” the man named Jabiru continued. “You are twelve. You should leave our land.”
“Get out of our desert!” shouted Tabitha.
All the Arrernte warriors laughed when she did.
In the distance, I heard the thumping blades of a heavy helicopter.
“No worries, mate,” Charlotte Badger said with a sly wink to Jabiru. “We’ll be leaving straightaway. Our ride just arrived. Oh, do us a favor: don’t touch our gold while we’re gone.”
Jabiru laughed. “Your gold? Ha. I think you are forgetting who has laid claim to this land for forty thousand years.”
Treasure Hunters--The Plunder Down Under Page 12
