Chapter 10

We spent the next several days doing what you're supposed to do on vacation – pretty much nothing. We walked or not as we pleased, we slept late or got up early as we pleased, we ate whatever we wanted out of the supplies we had on hand, we talked for hours or remained silent all day just as we pleased. One day we climbed the Grotto Hills, another we followed a gully for miles until we came to its beginning on a little knoll, another we spent a long time observing a desert tortoise from a distance as it went about its business. Once I got lucky and managed to kill a jackrabbit with my gun – a difficult feat, even with the animal sitting still, for a pistol is not a long range weapon. That night we had roasted rabbit for supper, for I'd checked to be sure it was free of ticks and therefore free of spotted fever.

I grew up hunting – mostly rabbits, but occasionally during deer season Tony would take me or one of my cousins into the New York Mountains and get us some venison. We never hunted except for food, and we ate what we killed; none of us ever could see the point in killing something just to let it rot, while its head hung on a wall somewhere.

But when I left the desert I left rifles behind, and haven't owned one since. I don't need a rifle, and the only time I ever kill an animal these days is when the unexpected happens, and I have a chance to hit it with my 9mm. That chance has come up perhaps half a dozen times in the years we've been coming to the desert, and I've actually made the shot only twice or thrice. Cecelia could have probably hit every time, since she's a much better shot than I am at long range – though for a pistol 50 yards is long range – but she has absolutely no interest in shooting animals, even for food. She'll cook it and cheerfully eat it if I shoot it, but she'll never be a hunter.

Darlia might make a hunter though. She likes to stalk animals when we're in the desert, and she's pretty good at it – but then I'm her teacher, and I learned to move quietly, and to use meager cover, growing up in Lanfair Valley. My cousins and I loved to play cowboys and Indians, and they learned to be glad they had superior numbers, for I was the best at the sneaking side of the game, though they were far better than any city kids could ever have been. They were all white, and I was half Indian, and we played out the real history of America's Indians – I could sneak up on them almost every time, but they outnumbered me and usually won by sheer weight of numbers. Anyway, Darlia was learning from me, and while she'd not shown any interest in learning to shoot – though she loves to pick up our brass at the shooting range – if she ever does she'll be able to hunt well enough to survive, if that's ever necessary.

On Wednesday we decided to take out for a long walk – actually we'd decided it the night before, and Wednesday morning the desire was still there. So we loaded ourselves with backpacks that held canteens and food, and we each strapped a canteen around our waist, and set off. I locked the Blazer, since we planned to be gone all day and my gun was under the seat in its clip, with Cecelia's in the glove compartment. Probably no one would come along, and anyone who did would almost certainly not go snooping. But with a gun you don't take chances. Too careful is much better than not careful enough.

It was fairly early, so the sun cast long shadows ahead of us as we walked westward. South of us the great humped shape of the Hackberry Mountains rose, separating us from Fenner Valley. The New York Mountains, with their jagged central peaks, rose to the north, and the Grotto Hills were a low rise behind us. Ahead of us was mostly flat ground for a long way, though slightly south of our path we could see the flat, slanted top of Tabletop Mountain. I've seen it on maps as Table Mountain, but I call it by the name I learned when I was a kid. When the Mojave Indians roamed this country they used it for a lookout, for it's the tallest thing in the valley, and from up there you can see everything that moves.

We didn't keep track of time or distance, measuring our progress only by the changing of the shadows and the sun's position, and the response of our leg muscles to the walking and our shoulder muscles to the weight of our backpacks. I knew where there was water, and so did Cecelia, though I still knew more places than I'd gotten around to showing her, and for that matter Darlia was familiar with the closer springs and waterholes and cattle tanks. We didn't worry about water, therefore, but drank whenever we were thirsty; if we ran out, we'd just refill our canteens.

We weren't, therefore, sure just exactly how far we'd come when I spotted something under an overhanging slab of rock in the bank of a gully. It was a larger gully than most, about five feet deep where we hit it, and in that particular place with bluff banks rather than slopes. I stopped, and so did Cecelia and Darlia. I motioned to them to stay where they were, and moved forward a few feet, crouching down to get a different angle. It looked like...

I jumped down into the sand of the gully, and approached until I was sure. I turned and hollered up at Cecelia, "Stay there, and keep Darlia with you." I pulled my satellite phone out of my pocket and dialed 911, not knowing the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department's non-emergency number. When the operator answered, I said, "My name is Darvin Carpenter. This isn't an emergency. Do I speak with you, or do you transfer me to someone else?"

"I can help you, sir."

"Okay. I'm in Lanfair Valley, and I've just found a body."

"A body, sir?"

"Yes, ma'am. I've about five feet away, but it looks like a male, pretty desiccated. It's under an overhanging bank so there hasn't been much animal activity. I can't guess how long he's been dead, but it's been a while to get so mummified."

"May I have your location?"

"Stand by one."

I checked the GPS locator – a feature that I'd only noted in passing when I got the phone, thinking that if someone busted a leg it could come in useful. It was coming in useful, but not in the way I'd thought. I put the phone back to my ear and rattled off the coordinates. "I know it's going to take forever to get a response out here – probably the nearest deputy is miles away and there isn't a road to this location anyway." I could tell I was more upset than I thought, for my English wasn't its usual mangled mess. Of course being in a law enforcement situation had sparked some of the formal jargon that I'd learned while I was a cop. "You'll probably want to respond a chopper, but you'll have to have the pilot circle and find a clear spot to land far enough away that the downwash won't affect the scene."

I could hear the 911 operator typing on her computer, way over there, I suspected, in San Bernardino – what we'd sneeringly called Berdoo when I was growing up. It's hard to respect a county seat that's closer to LA than to anywhere else, that's on the other side of the San Bernardino Mountains from the rest of the county, and that seems to care nothing for anything east of the mountains. Of course there might be a 911 center closer that had snagged the call, but I wouldn't think so. Where would they put it? Probably anything closer would be in Arizona or Nevada – and we were considerably closer to Arizona, or even Nevada, than we were to Berdoo.