Drought (34 page)

Although it was still so warm, Martin lowered the Eldorado's top. Three turkey vultures were circling high above them, keeping up with them as they slowly crawled eastward.

‘I guess you have to admire the Indians who first came this way,' said Martin. ‘They wouldn't have known where the hell they were going, or what they were going to find when they got there. All they had to guide them was some legend about the arrowhead.'

‘Do
you
know where the hell we're going?' asked Saskia. ‘I just hope to God Santos does.'

From the position of the sun behind them, Martin realized that Santos was gradually leading them north-eastward instead of due east. He knew that there were several camping grounds in the park, and ranger stations, but even though they were probably unoccupied, because of the drought, Santos was making sure that he gave them all a wide berth, so that nobody would be able to report that they had seen them passing by. They had crossed over one narrow tarmac road as they made their way further into the desert, but they had been careful to ensure that no other vehicles were in sight in either direction.

The mountains at last appeared to be coming nearer. After another half hour, the ground began to rise, and they found themselves bumping over bare, rectangular slabs of granite, like giants' paving stones. Their engines began to labor as their ascent grew steeper, and the suspension of Martin's car was knocking so loudly that he was sure that one of his rear shock absorbers had collapsed. Eventually, however, they reached the opening to a wide dry wash. Its bed was filled with smooth oval pebbles which had been sluiced down it over thousands of years by recurrent floods, but its gradient was far less punishing, and it formed a natural pathway up toward the skyline.

It took them at least fifteen more minutes to reach the crest of the slope, their engines still whining and their tires crunching and slithering on the pebbles. When they finally got to the top, Santos stopped his truck and Peta and Martin pulled up close behind him. They didn't have to get out to ask Santos where they were, and how much longer they would have to keep driving. They could see the valley ahead of them and they knew that they had arrived.

The valley was very deep, and because the sun was now so low it was filled up with shadow. Its sides were sheer but its lower slopes were covered with teddy-bear cholla and creosote bush and bursage, all growing so thickly and so close together that there must be water there, under the ground. A pungent smell of desert vegetation was rising from the darkness as the air began to cool.

Ella opened her eyes, sat up and looked around. ‘Are we there yet?' she asked. ‘Is this it?'

‘I guess so,' said Martin. Although they had arrived at their destination, he was suddenly feeling tired and dispirited and very far from any kind of civilization. This valley was spectacular, but he had never imagined that he could miss his apartment in Hummingbird Haven so much. Right now he would have given anything to pry off his shoes, take a beer out of the fridge, and collapse into his armchair in front of the television.

Santos started up his truck again and they began a slow, unsteady descent. The cholla cactus and the creosote bushes were so dense that it was like submerging beneath the surface of a dark, prickly ocean. They all switched on their headlights but even then they were driving through such a mass of branches and cactus stems that it was almost impossible to see where they were going. Martin realized now why so few people knew about the existence of Lost Girl Lake, and how much they had needed Santos to guide them here. The noise of the cholla scraping against the sides of their vehicles set his teeth on edge. They appeared to be soft and furry, which was why they were called ‘teddy bear' cholla, but what looked like fur was sharp silvery spines.

Ella reached out to touch one, but Martin glanced across and saw what she was doing. ‘Ella –
no
! Don't!' he warned her. ‘Those cholla prickles, they're like fish hooks! Once they're stuck to your skin you can't pull them off !'

‘Oh, my God,' said Saskia, immediately taking her bare elbow from where she had been resting it on top of the door. ‘And we're supposed to make
camp
here?'

‘Well, if nothing else, the cholla will keep other people away,' said Martin. ‘Desert rats collect cholla balls and pile them up around their nests to protect them from predators.'

‘Really? How do you
know
that? That's so – I don't know –
ethological
.'

Martin gave her a smile. ‘The Marine Corps trained us for Afghanistan in the Mojave Desert. One of my friends threw a cholla stem at me and it stuck to my back. They had to use a hair-comb to pull it off and then tweezers to pick all of the rest of the spines out. It hurt like hell. My back was sore and all swelled up for days.'

The bushes began to thin out, and at last they reached the end of the valley – a triangular area of scrubby open ground, about the same size and shape as a baseball infield, but walled in by two sheer cliffs of whitish-gray granite, at least three hundred feet high, which met together almost at a right angle.

They parked their vehicles side by side, and switched off their engines, and this time everybody wearily climbed out. Santos left his sidelights on because here on the valley floor it was almost completely dark.

Martin looked up to the purple evening sky high above them and saw that the stars were coming out, which made him feel even more isolated from the real world than he had before. The valley was silent, except for an occasional scrabbling noise in the bushes, which could have been anything from wood rats to a desert night lizard.

Santos came over, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘We made it,' he said. ‘I was beginning to think we never would. Welcome to Lost Girl Lake, everybody.'

‘So, where's the lake?' asked Tyler. ‘I don't see any lake.' His face was as pale as a
Twilight
vampire and he had dark shadows around his eyes. In fact, looking around at all the surviving members of their party, Martin could see how much their escape had taken out of them. They all looked exhausted and dirty and demoralized.

George sat down on the ground and folded his arms and announced, ‘I wanna go
home
now!'

‘I want to go home too,' said Nathan. ‘I don't
like
this place. It's too dark! It's too spooky!'

Martin said, ‘Come on, guys. It's much too far to think about going back tonight. And besides, we're having an adventure!'

‘I don't
like
deventures,' said George, emphatically. ‘I want Mom to come back, and Mikey.'

Santos patted the boys' shoulders. ‘Come, and I will show you the lake. Then you will all understand why we have come here, and be glad that we did. Martin – can you bring your flashlight? We're going to need it. Oh – and bring your cellphones, too. They will give us a little more light.'

He turned and started to walk across the triangular open space, directly toward the angle where the two granite rock faces met.

Peta looked up at Martin and said, ‘Where's he going? That's a total dead end.'

‘Oh, it's just a bit of old Indian medicine-man magic,' said Saskia. ‘They can walk through solid rock, didn't you know that? I just hope we palefaces can do the same.'

Santos reached the sheer granite walls, and without any hesitation stepped to the left and disappeared.

‘Where did he go?' asked Ella. ‘One second he was there and then he was gone.'

‘What did I tell you?' said Saskia, although she sounded just as surprised as Ella. ‘Magic.'

Together, they all approached the two rock faces. As they came closer, and Martin shone his flashlight on them, they saw that there was a crevice where they met, about ten feet high and two feet wide. Deep inside the crevice, they could see the beam of Santos' flashlight dancing against a low ceiling of corrugated granite.

‘Come on!' called Santos. Although the crevice was so narrow, his voice was echoing and distorted and oddly amplified, as if he were shouting through a megaphone.

‘I think you'd better go first, Martin,' said Peta.

‘Yes, Martin,' put in Saskia, linking arms with him. ‘You can protect us, can't you?'

Martin's flashlight caught Peta turning her head and giving Saskia a quick, quizzical frown; although she didn't say anything.

Martin pushed his way into the crevice, inching along sideways because the space was so tight. For the first twenty feet he felt severely claustrophobic, especially when the granite walls came even closer together, so that they scraped against his shoulders and his elbows He looked back and saw that Peta was following him, and then Ella, and that Saskia had picked up little Mina so that she could carry her. This wasn't really the time to be thinking about it, but Martin found Saskia such a contradictory character – sarcastic and vexatious and domineering one minute and then tender and considerate the next. He had been involved with several messy and complicated women before he had met Peta, but none as complicated as Saskia.

As he edged his way further, the crevice began to widen, and after a few more feet it opened out into a cavern. With only two criss-crossing flashlights to illuminate it, it was difficult at first for Martin to be able to judge the scale of it, but it felt and sounded vast.

He had come out on to a wide flat ledge, about seventy-five feet wide. Santos was standing on the opposite side, shining his flashlight to guide him. Beyond the ledge there was a lake. Its water was so still and so clear that it looked as if there were no water there at all. There was no wind to ripple it, after all, and no fish swimming in it. Martin went over to join Santos and shone his flashlight into it, and he could clearly see the bottom of it, even though it must have been at least thirty feet deep.

He directed his flashlight upward. He could just about make out the ceiling of the cavern, which rose higher and higher in a series of rectangular granite pillars, until it disappeared into a darkness which his flashlight was unable to penetrate. He thought that if men in the Stone Age had attempted to build cathedrals, this is what they would have looked like.

The cavern felt cool, and he could detect a very faint current of air blowing through it, like somebody breathing against his face when they were deeply asleep. Apart from the shuffling of their feet and their awed conversation, it was utterly silent.

‘Lost Girl Lake,' said Santos. ‘Like Big Bear Lake, its water all comes from melting snow. But
this
water is filtered through layer after layer of rock, until it is completely pure, and it is never polluted by boats or oil or sewage or weeds. Not even by birds, or rats, or people's dogs, or even by people. Who knows how many millions of gallons of water are here? The caves go back under the mountains, maybe for miles. Nobody has ever explored them. There is probably enough water here to supply the whole city, at least until it rains again.'

Ella went to the very edge of the ledge, knelt down and scooped up a handful of water. She drank some, and then she splashed some in her face. ‘That's wonderful,' she said. ‘Can we wash in it?'

Santos pointed his flashlight off to the left. ‘Over there is a small pool which is separated from the main lake. When my people first settled here, they used it for washing themselves, although the Yuhaviatam men went naked and the women wore mostly deerskins or rabbit fur, so they had no clothes to wash.'

‘So what are we going to do now?' asked Saskia. ‘I vote we make ourselves something to eat and then try to get some sleep.'

‘Seconded,' said Martin.

‘Thirded,' said Tyler. ‘I've never been so bushed in my life.'

Martin and Tyler went out into the darkness to collect cholla stems and creosote bush to make a fire. Meanwhile, Santos and Peta and Ella carried their food supplies into the cavern. They also dragged in all of the blankets that they had brought with them, and folded them into sleeping bags.

It took Martin and Tyler several minutes of strenuous pushing and pulling and silent cursing, but eventually they managed to force enough cactus and wood through the crevice in the rock to build a good fire. They stacked it up in the center of the ledge and Martin flicked his Semper Fi Zippo to set it alight. The cholla flared up first, spitting and crackling with bright white flames, almost as bright as magnesium.

‘My God!' said Saskia, holding up her hand to shield her eyes. ‘I never would have guessed that you could start a fire with a
cactus
! Aren't they full of water?'

‘They are, yes,' said Martin. ‘But teddy bear chollas are incredibly combustible. In fact they're so combustible they're dangerous. Apart from their goddamned prickles, of course.'

They sat around the fire and made themselves a meal of Manhattan clam chowder and meatballs and rigatoni, which they ate from a motley assortment of plastic plates and bowls and coffee mugs, which Martin and Peta had once taken on picnics. The smoke from the fire rose steadily upward and disappeared into the darkness of the cavern's ceiling, and although he couldn't see one, Martin could only suppose that there was an opening up there somewhere, between the rocks. If there was, it would probably be unwise of them to light a fire during the day, in case somebody spotted it.

‘How long are we going to be able to live like this?' asked Peta. ‘We'll have run out of supplies in two or three days.'

‘The Yuhaviatam lived here for several years,' said Santos. ‘It is surprising to many people how rich the desert can be for food, even today. There are many seeds and buds that we can eat. For meat, we can survive on bighorn sheep, or jackrabbits, or kangaroo rats.'

‘
Rats
?' said George, disgustedly. ‘I'm not eating
rats
!'

‘A barbecued rat, George, when you are very hungry, is a great treat,' said Santos. ‘Especially if it is basted in agave syrup.'