October skies

CHAPTER 3

Friday

Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

‘See?’ he said, waving at the clearing.

Grace and Rose looked around. Through the morning mist they could see it was about a hundred yards in diameter, and roughly elliptical in shape. The floor of the clearing seemed to be one large, rumpled, emerald-green quilt draped delicately over the messy floor of a child’s bedroom.

‘Whoa… the whole clearing’s…?’

‘One big camp.’

Rose panned her camera round in a slow, steady loop.

Julian stepped towards a rounded hump, knelt down beside it, and rubbed away the covering moss, exposing the spokes of another wheel. ‘Another wagon,’ he said, and surveyed the clearing. ‘There must be several dozen wagons buried here.’

Grace’s eyes narrowed. She pulled off her ranger’s cap and tucked a loose tress of silver hair behind one ear. ‘My God,’ she said, blowing cigarette smoke out of her nostrils. ‘A whole wagon train, up here in our mountains. Sheeesh… been walking these woods for years’ — she turned to Julian — ‘never knew this was here.’

Rose looked at Grace. ‘This is quite a find, isn’t it?’

Grace nodded silently. ‘Hell, could be another Donner Party.’

‘Donner Party?’

‘Party of emigrants that went missing on the way to Oregon in the 1850s. They were too slow making for the pass and got snowed into the mountains. Not too far from here — about a hundred miles further south.’

‘I’ve heard of that,’ said Julian.

She nodded. ‘Helluva grim story. They went missing over the winter, but were found come spring. What was left of them.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Rose.

‘Yeah.’ Grace nodded. ‘They resorted to cannibalism. The papers at the time were full of made-up variations of that tale. People scared their kids with the story for generations after.’

They studied the clearing in silence, their eyes making sense of — telling stories with — the contours hidden beneath a century and a half of growth and organic detritus.

‘What we got here,’ uttered Grace, ‘is a heritage site. That means I’ve got to call this in to the National Parks Service.’

Julian bit his lip in thought. ‘Grace, will you excuse me and Rose for a moment?’

‘Change of plan,’ he said quietly to her. ‘Okay, we came out here to basically poke fun at a whole load of gullible straw-chewing rednecks and their stories of abductions and Big Foot sightings and Glowy Things In The Sky.’

Rose nodded. ‘Yeah. I’m guessing we aren’t doing that now?’

Julian grinned. ‘Christ, no. That’s the sort of bottom-shelf schedule-filler I’d love us to leave behind. This’ — he gestured at the clearing around them — ‘is like finding the bloody Titanic.’

‘But we won’t have it to ourselves for long if she’s calling it in, Jules.’

‘I know. Grace is a good ol’ girl and wants to do the right thing. After all, in US terms, this is ancient history. To them it’ll be like finding Stonehenge.’

‘That’s my point, though. This site will be crawling with archaeology students and American history lecturers.’

Julian nodded. ‘But we found it, so surely we deserve the scoop, do we not?’

Rose nodded. ‘That would be nice.’

‘There’ll be a human-interest story here, Rose. A powerfully strong one. And if we can find out who they were and how they ended up here, and if they survived…?’ He looked around at the uneven floor of the clearing. ‘There’ll be all sorts of personal artefacts buried here to give us names. There’s bound to be family these people left behind, descendants today who’ll have a curious family story of their great-great-uncle Bill who travelled west to the promised land and was never heard from again.’ Julian turned to her. ‘I say we drop the stupid bloody project we were doing and instead let’s dig up what we can on this.’

‘Errrm.’ Rose tapped her chin with her finger. ‘Didn’t someone commission this stupid bloody project. You know… money? A paying customer?’

‘Stuff that. RealityUK are a truly shit reality channel paying us a piss-poor commission for this. Not to put too fine a point on it — screw them.’

Rose looked sceptical. ‘But it’s money.’

‘Look, I know money’s tight right now, but I’ll find some other small independents who’ll front some cash for us to work on this. Or better still, I’ll talk to my old contacts at the BBC. I’m still on chatting terms with Sean, and the guys on Panorama. Everyone’s going to want a piece of this.’

He looked across at Grace, who was squatting down and cautiously examining the wheel spokes he’d exposed.

‘We just need a little time,’ he said.

Rose swung the strap of her kit bag off her shoulder and started to unpack her camera. ‘I should grab as much of this on film as I can, you know… whilst it’s still pristine.’

Julian nodded. ‘You’re right. I’ll talk to Grace. See if I can’t convince her to delay a little before calling it in to her boss.’

Grace sucked in cool air through her teeth with a whistling sound. ‘See, I’m gonna have to call this in to the park’s manager. Seeing as this is a heritage site now.’

Julian nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Mind you,’ she sighed, ‘Lord knows what they’ll do with it. Stick a gift shop in the middle of it, I guess; flag it up as a place of interest to hike to,’ she muttered, exhaling a cloud of smoke and vapour and shaking her head. ‘Gotta call it in though.’

The park ranger shook her head. ‘Sorry, I got to inform someone about this. The proper authorities, you understand? Otherwise, when it gets made public, there’ll be all sorts of souvenir hunters out here pickin’ this place to pieces.’

‘I know,’ said Julian, ‘you’re right, I suppose it has to be done. But give us a little time? Just a week or so? Give Rose a chance to film this site properly, as it is now, pristine. Because… even before the Parks Service get a chance to stick up a gift shop and barbecue pits nearby, there’ll be heritage buffs pulling this place apart, marker poles pegged out across it. It’ll look like a bloody building site, with archaeology undergrads and TV news teams tramping carelessly everywhere. ’

Grace regarded him silently with her steel-grey eyes.

‘You know how this’ll go, don’t you?’ asked Julian. ‘Everyone’ll want a piece of this; the Parks Service, state authorities, local press, national press.’

Grace shrugged. The Parks Service had gravelled over a century-old logging camp to build the Blue Valley camp site. They’d even dammed the Tahoe river to produce a scenic lake alongside it. She knew exactly what they’d want to do with this place.

‘Grace, give me a chance to find out who these people were, to find out their stories.’

Her wind-worn face creased with suspicion. ‘You want the scoop?’

Julian offered her a guilty smile. ‘Well, yes.’

She said nothing.

‘Please. We’ll be so very, very careful. I promise you.’

She could already see the gift shop in the very centre, several ‘how-it-must-have-looked’ dioramas dotted around, and to one side, a children’s play area floored with that safety rubber tarmac… and for guest convenience electricity outlets embedded in the trunks of the surrounding trees…

She pursed her lips.

… And discarded Snickers wrappers for miles around this place.

‘I’m a researcher, Grace. I used to work for the BBC. It’s what I do best. I can give faces and voices to the people who lie here, before this place gets trampled.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Look,’ he said, taking a deep breath, ‘what do you think a FOX news team would do with this? If there’s even a hint that these people ended up like the Donner Party, that’s all they’ll focus on. And the likes of the National Enquirer? It’ll just be a sensational story about cannibalism, that’s it. Give me a week, maybe two, and I’ll find out who they were, their dreams, what drove them west, how they ended up trapped here.’

‘Two weeks?’

‘No more. It’s sat here for what? A hundred and fifty years? Is two more weeks’ rest going to do any harm?’

She pulled a face he couldn’t read as she reached for her crumpled packet of cigarettes and eased out another.

‘We’ll not be up here all that time, either. Just today, and maybe come back for another day in a week or two. We’ll let Rose get all the footage she wants, and I’ll try and see if I can unearth any personal effects-’

Grace looked at him sharply.

‘Gently, ever so carefully,’ he said, throwing his hands up in surrender.

‘I don’t want you pulling this place apart,’ she said sternly.

Julian put on his best pleading, beseeching face — a family dog begging beside a laden dinner table.

‘All right,’ she said gruffly as she lit up. ‘You got two weeks.’