My Short Short Camp 16 Story for the Day

“See, I told you they were down here.”  The voice was loud breaking abruptly into the silence.

Cinder and I both jumped but quickly recovered when we saw it was Jonas and Shane.  Cinder stood up brushing her pants off and turning to face them.  I was a little slower in getting up, shy about meeting Shane’s eyes.  His smile brought a blush to my cheeks and I looked away quickly intent on dusting my pants off.

“So you want to go for a hike?”  Jonas asked.

“Sure.”  Cinder replied.  “Where to?”

“There’s supposed to be an old cave up there on that mountain.”  Jonas said as he started to walk.  Cinder fell in step beside him.

“Hi.”  Shane said once I finally dared to look at him again.

“Hi.”  I replied trying to smile casually.

“It’s supposed to be haunted, you know.”  Jonas said.

“Oh, yeah?”  Cinder gave him a sideways glance.

“Yeah.  The story is that some old prospector was panning for gold but even thought winter was approaching he refused to leave.  He was afraid someone else would come in and steal all his gold so he camped out the entire winter.  That cave is where he lived for months, in the snow and ice and freezing cold.”  Jonas talked as we hiked.  “It was summer before anyone ventured up there and all that was left were his bones.  And that’s not all.  There was a knife sticking out of his chest.”

“No way.”  Cinder said.  “Who killed him?”

“That’s the mystery.  No one knows.”  Jonas climbed over a fallen tree and helped Cinder while Shane offered me his hand.  “He was seen in town getting supplies towards the end of fall but then no one saw him again.  A deputy was out tracking a cougar when he came across the cave.  He thought the cougar may have holed up in there for the winter but when he went in, there was Old Jim or what was left of him.”

“Oh, that’s horrible.”  Cinder said.

“Did they find the gold?”  I asked.

“Nope.  Never found any gold in the cave or in the stream.”  Jonas said.