into a euphoria he had never dared envision, much less think, could happen. They were meant for one another, that’s all there was to it. She was the queen of bees, he a king of ranching, and together, their castle, the Three Bars, would flourish, just as their love for one another was doing right now. He could barely keep his head screwed on straight, forcing himself to return to the sniper behind the lines in order to keep them safe, hidden, and hopefully, making that raptor facility by noon.
The heat began to build rapidly as the sun rose. Chase kept up the pace, Cari uncomplaining, keeping up with him. Not many people, even younger people, could do twenty miles in eight hours under normal circumstances. Sweat was running down his face and hours earlier, they had unclasped hands, which were wet with sweat. To his surprise and pleasure, the wash continued in a westerly direction with a few curves here and there. The air was sweltering, heat waves beginning around ten a.m., from his estimation. Slowly, the walls of the wash began to diminish, little by little. Their safety was eroded away as it did so. Still, it was much easier walking on a sandy floor than one with pebbles, cacti, and rocks that one could trip over. There were trade-offs.
Always, Chase kept his ear keyed to hear anything that was out of place. What he dreaded the most was the sound of trucks, truck engines, and anything having to do with human movement out here. At one point, around nine a.m., he’d climbed the slanted wall of the wash, lying on his belly, looking around. The area was flat except for small nobs and sloped hills here and there, some greenery with hardy junipers that had found an underground water source in order to survive. And those long, undulating heat waves surrounded them in every direction. Old Highway 8 was no longer in view, the whole region more or less flat.
He tried to find any dark, rectangular or square shapes on the horizon, hoping to see a building of some sort, but there was none. He’d slid down into the wash again on his belly. Cari was sitting, drinking water, resting in the shade of the wall.
“I don’t see anything,” he told her, kneeling down, taking the bottle she’d offered him.
“No buildings? No roads?”
Shaking his head, he drank deeply, finishing off the last of the water in the bottle, burying it nearby. Taking off his cap, he wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm and then settled it back on his head, the bill shading his eyes from the brightness of the sun. They had no sunglasses, as they had been in the truck. “I’m trying to remember that GPS map on the cell phone,” he told her. “I remember a road. It actually had a name on it: Pitcairn.”
She laughed, hugging the shade of the wash wall, her back against it. “Pitcairn as in the sailors who anchored on that island, mutinied from the Bounty and then went ashore to live there?”
He gave her a humored look. “Well, don’t you think anyone living out in a godforsaken place like this has pretty much mutinied against society? That they want to be left alone on this desert island of sorts?”
Cari nodded, giving him a returning grin. “I’d say that was about right. As a matter of fact? Whoever named this probably has read Mutiny on the Bounty. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, absorbing her sparkling eyes that were filled with such love for him. His chest swelled with such emotion that Chase wished they were anywhere but where they were. How badly he wanted to sweep Cari into his arms, kiss her breathless, love her until they both fainted from mutual pleasure.
“That raptor facility was on another dirt road,” Cari said with a chuckle. “The name of it is Bounty.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I think someone definitely read that book.”
“That book was published in 1932,” Cari said. “The authors, both men, were Hall and Nordhoff.”
“Well,” he said, “maybe their descendants live out here? And that’s how the names came about?”
“I hope we find out pretty soon, don’t you?” Cari giggled.
“By my recollection, we’ve got about two more hours to go, and then we should be close to where that raptor place is located.”
“It would be nice to find a road that went west,” she said, slowly standing.
“If it does,” he chuckled, “it