‘Whoa… the whole clearing’s…?’

‘One big camp.’

Rose panned her camera round in a slow, steady loop.

Julian stepped towards a rounded hump, knelt down beside it, and rubbed away the covering moss, exposing the spokes of another wheel. ‘Another wagon,’ he said, and surveyed the clearing. ‘There must be several dozen wagons buried here.’

Grace’s eyes narrowed. She pulled off her ranger’s cap and tucked a loose tress of silver hair behind one ear. ‘My God,’ she said, blowing cigarette smoke out of her nostrils. ‘A whole wagon train, up here in our mountains. Sheeesh… been walking these woods for years’ — she turned to Julian — ‘never knew this was here.’

Rose looked at Grace. ‘This is quite a find, isn’t it?’

Grace nodded silently. ‘Hell, could be another Donner Party.’

‘Donner Party?’

‘Party of emigrants that went missing on the way to Oregon in the 1850s. They were too slow making for the pass and got snowed into the mountains. Not too far from here — about a hundred miles further south.’

‘I’ve heard of that,’ said Julian.

She nodded. ‘Helluva grim story. They went missing over the winter, but were found come spring. What was left of them.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Rose.

‘Yeah.’ Grace nodded. ‘They resorted to cannibalism. The papers at the time were full of made-up variations of that tale. People scared their kids with the story for generations after.’

They studied the clearing in silence, their eyes making sense of — telling stories with — the contours hidden beneath a century and a half of growth and organic detritus.

‘What we got here,’ uttered Grace, ‘is a heritage site. That means I’ve got to call this in to the National Parks Service.’

Julian bit his lip in thought. ‘Grace, will you excuse me and Rose for a moment?’

‘Change of plan,’ he said quietly to her. ‘Okay, we came out here to basically poke fun at a whole load of gullible straw-chewing rednecks and their stories of abductions and Big Foot sightings and Glowy Things In The Sky.’