Rita dropped to the ground and pulled Asha down with her so their outlines couldn’t be seen against the sky.
She stared ahead at the flickering glow reflecting off the burnt earth. Rita was twitchy about fires. A few years earlier a bunch of hippies had camped out near the caves and lit a huge fire while out of their heads on mescaline and peyote. The resulting wildfire had come pretty close to the diner before the fire department managed to get it under control. Everything had smelled of smoke for months after and the desert had been left blackened and scorched. The last thing she needed was a fire the night before the auction. Who in their right mind would buy a piece of burning land? Whoever was up ahead was not only trespassing, they were also putting her property and therefore her daughter’s future at risk. And that pissed her off.
‘Stay here,’ she whispered through tight teeth. ‘I’ll go check it out.’
‘No way,’ Asha hissed. ‘I’m not staying here on my own.’
‘Honey, I need to check the fire is safe is all.’
‘Then I’ll come with you.’
Rita looked at her daughter and saw the whites of her wide open eyes standing out against the night. It was easy to forget sometimes, with how sassy she was, that she was still only eight years old.
‘OK, but stay behind me and move slow. And don’t make any sound ’cause noise travels at night. If I hold my hand up for any reason you stop and you hit the deck and you stay there till I tell you to get up again. Clear?’
Asha nodded. Rita turned back to the distant glow and started moving towards it, picking her way carefully along the barely visible trail, listening ahead for any sounds. After a few minutes of careful progress she heard the faint crackle of fire and the pop of coal tar sap in the burning creosote branches. She listened hard but couldn’t hear anything else. No voices. No movement. Nothing.
She moved closer and stopped just short of the caves at a spot where the ground dipped. When Asha joined her Rita leaned in and put her mouth to her daughter’s ear.
‘I’m going to take a look,’ she whispered. ‘Stay out of sight and listen out.’ She pulled her phone from her pocket and pressed it into Asha’s hands, keeping the screen covered so it didn’t leak light. ‘If it sounds like I’m having any trouble, you dial the Sheriff’s office and tell them where we are, OK? But keep quiet and out of sight. Move away before you make the call.’
Rita leaned back and saw her daughter’s eyes had grown wide again. She smiled to reassure her. ‘It’s probably just some kids playing at cowboys. I’ll take a peek, make sure the fire’s safe, then come right back, OK?’
Asha nodded and Rita kissed the tips of her fingers, touched them to her daughter’s forehead then turned and crawled forward on all fours to the edge of the rise, peering into the shallow gulch where the entrance to the cave was hidden.
The fire was bright to Rita’s night-saturated eyes and she had to squint against the flickering glare of it. It had been built in the dead centre of the dip and the ground around had been swept to stop the flames from spreading. The person who had built it clearly knew what they were doing, though whoever it was, there was no sign of them now.
Rita blinked a few times to adjust her eyes and studied the ground. She could make out boot marks in the dirt where the dry straw had been kicked into the centre where the fire now burned. There was also a small pile of dried cactus and a neat stack of mesquite branches lying next to it. Two of the sticks had been laid with their ends in the flames, like someone had been toasting marshmallows and dropped them in the fire. There was nothing else: no backpack, no bedroll, no water jug or provisions of any kind.
She looked across at the entrance to the cave system, a large boulder resting against a smaller one. Whoever had lit the fire had to be inside. She watched for a moment, looking for any flicker of light or movement in the triangle of darkness that formed the entrance, wondering what to do. She should leave, that’s what, go back to Asha and make their way back to the diner. There was still stuff to pack and they had a long day ahead of them tomorrow, driving off to who knew where. The fire was too small and too well set to be dangerous and there was no wind to carry burning embers out onto the wider land. They could always come back here after the auction and get some photos of the cave then. That’s what they’d do. They’d come back tomorrow.
Rita tensed her arms ready to crawl back away from the rim of the hollow when she saw something. A faint flicker in the dark triangle between the two boulders. Someone was in the cave, and they were coming out.
She dropped lower, pressing herself into the ground, and watched the flickering orange get brighter in the black. A small flame appeared between the boulders, curling around the end of a burned stick. Then a tall, thin man appeared and held the flickering branch high over his head to show his face. It was the stranger from earlier.
‘Come and look,’ Solomon said, looking straight at Rita though she knew she was hidden. ‘Bring your daughter. She should see it too.’
He dropped his burning stick into the heart of the fire and took out the two longer ones. He speared a couple of pieces of the broken, dried cactus with the burning points, turned them to spread the flames then headed back to the gap in the boulders, the makeshift torches throwing light all around him as he disappeared back into the cave.