October skies

He turned his pony away, wary that tongues amongst the neighbouring Mormon wagons might start wagging if he loitered too close and for too long beside the Dreytons.

‘I’ll bid you good morning.’ Ben doffed his broad-brimmed felt hat.

Sam called out to him. ‘Will you take a mug of coffee with us, Mr Lambert? When we stop at noon?’

The young man’s mother looked sharply at her son with steel-grey eyes.

Ben nodded. ‘That’s kind of you, Sam, but maybe not today.’

He turned round and, with a jab of his knees, urged his pony to break into a lethargic trot, taking him up to the front of the column where the small contingent of wagons under Keats rolled on, through the dust.

CHAPTER 6

Saturday

Blue Valley National Parks Camp Site, California

They emerged from the woods and onto the gravel parking area just as the pallid autumnal sun dipped down behind the brow of tree tops. There were only two vehicles parked up here — Grace’s Cherokee, marked with the National Parks Service logo, and the Toyota Prius Julian had rented from Hertz.

They exchanged goodbyes, and Grace gave them her home and mobile numbers to call when they were ready to trek out there again. She firmly reminded them both that she was going to do the right thing and call in the find to the park’s manager in a fortnight’s time… and no later.

Julian and Rose thanked her, watching her dump her pack in the boot and carefully put away the Parks Service issued hunting rifle in a case on the back seat. She climbed in, offered them a wave, started up the Cherokee and swung out of the parking area, kicking up a rooster tail of stones and grit, onto a single lane of road that wound its way down the mountainside to the nearest town, Blue Valley — a half-hour’s drive through some of the most beautiful scenery Julian had ever seen.

‘You think she’ll keep her word?’ asked Julian.

‘Not tell her boss?’ Rose nodded. ‘Yeah, I think so. I think we won her round.’

Julian unlocked the car and dropped his pack on the back seat. ‘Well, Rose… what do you think?’

She carefully placed her camera bag on the back seat, setting the folded-up tripod down beside it. ‘I think we might’ve hit the jackpot,’ she muttered, trying to keep an excited smile off her lips. ‘So we’re going to drop the other project then?’

‘Yup,’ he replied, pulling open the driver-side door and sitting down. ‘It’s a no-brainer,’ he added, squeezing long gangly legs into the space beneath the steering wheel.

‘No discussion about it?’

‘Nope.’

Rose sighed as she sat down heavily beside him, pulled the seat belt down and clicked it home. ‘Yeah, I really like the way this partnership thing works. You decide stuff, and I get to nod dumbly.’

Julian winced guiltily inside. Rose was a one-woman production studio; deft with a camera, a solid sound technician, a shrewd editor — he’d be buggered without her. She was the talent behind the films they had put together over the last few years; Julian was merely the vaguely recognisable TV face fronting their small company, Soup Kitchen Studios.

Business was ticking over, but it wasn’t great. They had a window of time to make their production company work. That window was his rapidly fading C-list celebrity status. The general TV-viewing public still recognised his face; some might even still remember his name..

The Cooke bloke…

Julian had reached what now seemed to have been his showbiz peak five years ago as a regular host on a late-slot, anarchical, current affairs quiz show. The panellists were the usual mixed bag of stand-up comedians, red-top columnists and publicity-hungry MPs. Julian Cooke had, arguably, been a household name for at least a couple of seasons. Prior to that, he had spent about fifteen years working in the BBC as a production assistant, then as a senior researcher. He couldn’t remember exactly how the transition from research-monkey to front-of-camera personality had occurred, but it had happened surprisingly quickly after he’d put together a tongue-in-cheek show reel in his spare time.

The quiz show never really took off, but it led to some work as a presenter on various off-the-wall documentaries. Round about the same time he’d stumbled across Rose — a media graduate knocking out amazingly satirical, biting, short pieces and uploading them onto YouTube. When he first saw her work she was already an established name in the Tube community, routinely getting hundred-thousand-plus views for each of her five-minute films.

For Julian, Soup Kitchen Studios was the right next step; an agile little studio with plenty of technical know-how and a recognisable figurehead and presenter, capable of knocking out TV content quickly and cheaply.