October skies

Julian turned round to look at the park ranger, then turned to look directly at the camera, his mouth a rounded ‘O’, those brows quizzically arched and his eyes wide like a nervous child’s.

Rose giggled silently. Jules had the kind of comedian’s face the camera loved.

CHAPTER 2

Friday

Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

Julian was woken by his aching groin.

Oh great, I need a piss.

He realised that he was going to have to step outside the tent.

‘Bollocks,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Shit and bloody bollocks.’

The campfire would be no more than glowing embers now and both Grace, with her reassuringly large hunting rifle, and Rosie were fast asleep, tucked away in their own tents. He really wasn’t that keen on the idea of wandering over to the tree line for a necessary piss. But Grace had warned them to pee well away from the tents, as the smell of urine could confuse a bear — could be construed as territorial marking.

‘Oh, come on, you wimp,’ he chided himself.

He wrestled his way out of the bag, fumbled for the torch and then, having found it and snapped it on, fumbled for his glasses.

‘Two minutes and you’ll be back in bed, snug as a bloody bug.’

He squeezed out of his tiny tent and panned the torch around the clearing, Grace’s parting words for the night still playing around with his over-active mind.

Did you know grizzlies can run as fast as a horse? Oh… and the smaller ones can climb trees?

Julian grimaced. ‘Yeah, thanks for that, Grace,’ he hissed, watching the plume of his breath quickly dissipate in the crisp night air.

He stepped lightly across the clearing, navigating his way over the lumps and bumps of long-dead and fallen trees. The beam of his torch flickered like a light sabre through the wispy night mist, picking out the uneven floor of the clearing, carpeted in a thick, spongy layer of moss. He was surprised at how much it undulated and guessed that perhaps some time in the past someone had been logging here, but never got round to finishing the job, leaving an assault course of rotting trunks and branches for him to awkwardly clamber over.

He made his way to the far side of the clearing and came to a halt on the edge, staring uneasily at a tangle of brambles and undergrowth leading up towards a wall of dense foliage — the start of the wood.

He turned to look back at the tents.

Sixty feet… is that far enough away?

He decided it would have to do. There was no way on earth he was actually going to step through the dense web of undergrowth ahead of him and into the woods. No way.

This is good enough.

He unzipped, feeling a sudden gotta-go rush that he couldn’t contain any longer, and, with a long groan of satisfaction, he let rip. His torch picked out the steaming silver arc and he watched with detached interest as the jet of piss stripped away — like a pressure hose cleaning a graffiti-covered wall — the delicate blanket of moss on a rounded log in front of him.

It wasn’t until he’d shaken off and tucked away, and then played his torch more thoroughly across the small arc of exposed dark wood, that his curiosity was piqued enough to take a step forward.

The exposed wood was curiously smooth, not natural. He reached out with his fingers and ran them along the surface. It was old and evenly curved. He rubbed a little further along the exposed arc, moss rolling off effortlessly into little doughy balls under his fingers. By the torchlight he could see the remains of a rusted metal band, dislodged dark brown flakes tumbling from it. He ran his torch down and noticed several unnaturally straight ridges in the mossy surface, converging on a bumpy hub. He rubbed the moss off one of the ridges to find the smooth, weathered form of what quite clearly was wood once turned on a lathe.

A spoke?

He straightened up. ‘That’s a wheel. That’s a wagon wheel.’

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?’