Humbug Mountain by Sid Fleischman

he’s not going to be the most sociable companion. On the other hand, he won’t keep you awake snoring. And he’ll be safe. An aborigine, from the looks of him. Might be two, three thousand years old.”
    â€œWe can cover him with a sheet,” Glorietta said.
    I tossed her a glance. I didn’t want her to think the sight of that ancient dead man rattled me. “Oh, it’s just a hunk of stone,” I said. “No need to cover him.”
    It took ropes and all of us pulling to haul the mighty weight of him up the stairway. Once inside the pilothouse Pa and Mr. Slathers stood the petrified man at a corner window so I wouldn’t trip over him in the dark. His eyes were tight shut, like someone asleep. Even then it was as if he were gazing out at the miners in the dry riverbed tearing up the earth. I wondered what thoughts had turned to stone in his head.
    â€œColonel,” said Mr. Slathers. “If we could get some of those men to help us we’ve got cut lumber aboard for a ten-room hotel. Give some of the poor fools out there a roof over their heads.”
    But the miners were in such a gold fever that none of them was willing to lay down his pick and shovel and lend a hand. Pa and Mr. Slathers and Glorietta and I began toting lumber and rolling kegs of nails ashore.
    The trouble was, Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer had burned the blueprints.
    â€œIt’s going to take some doing to figure out what goes where,” said Mr. Slathers. “And they burned up sticks of lumber with the blueprints. Pieces of the hotel are going to turn up missing.”
    We meant to start with the hotel, but it turned out to take on more of the shape of an opera house. Pa and Mr. Slathers kept sorting through the lumber and started another building.
    â€œI do believe this piece belongs to the hotel,” Pa said.
    â€œIf it fits, nail it down.”
    Glorietta and I helped try to sort out the puzzle of studs, windows, and doors. Ma too, when she and Pa weren’t setting type for the newspaper. But it wasn’t long before Mr. Slathers stood back to study the two buildings going up.
    â€œColonel, I think we’ve got a hotel that’s part opera house, and an opera house that’s part hotel.”
    Pa tipped back his hat. “Opera house,” he muttered. “Then there must be an asbestos curtain to go with it.”
    â€œOf course there is. All rolled up.”
    â€œFine. Splendid!” I knew the look in Pa’s eyes. Some rollicking idea had come to him. “I’ve a two-inch hole to fill in the newspaper. And I know just how to fill it.”
    With fourteen miners sleeping aboard and taking breakfast and supper with us, Ma was running out of food again. It was mostly catfish every day. I’m certain we snared a rabbit now and then, but the men living along the riverbank stole them out from under us. Ma’s chickens might have disappeared too if she hadn’t penned them up on the freight deck. Mr. Johnson, too. The idea of roast goose must have set many a mouth to watering. The only times Ma marched them ashore to grub around was when we were hammering away at the hotel and opera house, and could keep an eye on them.
    Glorietta and I hardly had a moment of time to add buffalo bones to our heap. But we did slip away occasionally.
    â€œMust be near a ton by now,” Glorietta said.
    â€œA ton, easy. Maybe two.”
    â€œWe’d better keep a sharp lookout for Captain Cully.”
    â€œWear your specs,” I said.
    She bridled. “You wear ’em. There’s nothing out here to see. Anyway, we ought to be able to hear Captain Cully. The Prairie Buzzard rattles up more noise than a peddler’s load of teakettles.”
    Not a day went by but more gold-seekers turned up. They began arriving on steamboats heading upriver. News of that confounded lump of gold had shot to great distances. Those miners would skin me alive if they knew