Stella guided the truck with white-knuckle concentration along the creek. After they’d driven for about another hour, to their left the gentle mounds of the colorful Painted Hills changed to taller, jagged peaks that had a predominately greenish-gray tint. Suddenly Stella braked.
“Holy fucking shit! That’s it. That’s where we settle.” Stella put the truck into neutral, engaged the emergency brake, and then left the cab without even shutting the door behind her.
“Let’s go!” Mercury slid past the steering wheel and hurried to catch Stella as Ford quickly exited the passenger side. Mercury heard the tailgate open and knew the rest of their group—their family—was piling out of the bed to join them.
“There.” Stella lifted her arm and pointed.
At first the shadows cast by the setting sun were distracting, and Mercury couldn’t see what Stella meant. And then she gasped in happy surprise. The slope of the craggy hill in front of them—the one whose base gently kissed the bank of Bridge Creek—was split open to expose the mouth of a huge cave. Glimmers of light could be seen within the cave, which meant it provided shelter but would also allow the smoke of much-needed campfires to escape.
“It’s incredible,” Imani said. “So, so beautiful.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this land.” Karen spoke reverently as she touched her crucifix, closed her eyes, and mouthed a silent prayer of thanks.
“It’s so pretty!” Georgie stood between her brothers with her arms draped over their shoulders.
“I hiked the Painted Hills with my parents,” Gemma said. “But this wasn’t here before. I’m sure of it.”
“So am I,” said Ford. “I’ve backpacked through here many times. This cave, or at least the exposure of it, is new.”
“And new means no one knows about it,” said Mercury. She met Stella’s gaze. “It’s our place. I can feel it, too.”
“This is it?” Imani’s voice was bright with excitement. “Are we done traveling? Have we found it?”
Stella turned to face them. Her cheeks were wet with tears, but the light of her smile put the setting sun to shame. “It won’t be easy, but it will be perfect. We’ll make our homes on cliffsides from the living clay that surrounds us, like the Pueblos did in Mesa Verde.”
Imani bounced on her toes. “We know how to do that! Remember that workshop we met in?”
Stella grinned. “I’ve never been happier that teachers learn a bunch of stuff people think of as useless. We’ll use all of it—all of the things we’ve learned from years of teaching. We will build in harmony with the earth. That is also how we will live, and it will be unimaginably beautiful. We make our new life here. We are done traveling.”
“Teachers for the win!” Mercury fisted her hand over her head.
“Teachers for the win!” The group echoed her cheer.
It didn’t take long for the truck to reach the cave. Stella parked so that the headlights illuminated the entrance, though Ford and Gemma quickly made three circular stone areas in the hard clay floor of the cave. Everyone collected brush and dry juniper branches, and within minutes they had cheerful fires burning. They discovered that there were two easy entrances to the cave and that from one of them a mountain stream tumbled clear and cold into the creek—which made Stella squeal like a preteen at a boy band concert.
There was a sense of relief that permeated everything they did that night. It didn’t take Ford long to use the tarps from the truck and his own camping supplies to create a tentlike structure within the cave, so as the night lengthened and the temperature dropped, the little group was snuggly sheltered.
Stella took charge of dinner, and somehow she made canned chili, rice, and the rest of the fresh veggies into a delicious meal. The children ate until their stomachs were full, and then Imani took the one lantern they had and led them to an area well outside the cave that Ford had designated as where he would dig their latrines. The kids put on their pajamas—something they’d refused to do for the two nights Stella, Mercury, Ford, and Karen had been in Madras—and the three of them fell instantly and soundly asleep.
Stella produced two bottles of rich cabernet sauvignon, which she opened and began sharing.
“Did you say that town’s name is Mitchell?” Stella asked Ford as she handed him a bottle of cabernet.
“I did,” he said and sipped the wine.
“Do you think we can find some stemware there? We’re starting the world over, but there’s no reason for us to be barbarous.”
Ford chuckled. “I remember a few little stores. A couple restaurants, B&Bs, and such. We should be able to find something. Hey, how much wine do you have anyway?”
Stella’s brow arched. “Well, I lined each of the four sides of the bed of the truck with bubble wrap before firmly packing wine bottles, then more bubble wrap, then our suitcases, groceries, and supplies against them so they would not break. There were sixty-eight bottles in total, and that doesn’t count the three I put in my backpack. One we drank in Madras, and these are the other two.”
Ford whistled in appreciation, which made Stella grin.
“I also absconded with two bottles of top-shelf tequila and three of twenty-five-year-old Macallan Scotch.”
“Wow!” Ford said.
“And we have reefer,” Gemma added. “Lots of reefer—including seeds.”