The Range Rover cruised south on Palm Canyon Drive and just kept going, to the Indian canyons. Clive Devon was going into the reservation, he and the young woman's big brown dog.
Jack Graves wondered what he was doing with the woman's animal. She'd have to come back to get it, or maybe Clive Devon and she were going to meet up for a desert picnic like the one Lynn had described. Jack Graves hoped there'd be other cars by the Indians' toll booth, but there was only one vehicle on that narrow road. He decided to hang back and allow the Pace Arrow RV to pass, separating him from the black Range Rover. He paid $3.25 admission fee to a huge Indian woman sitting inside a wooden shack.
When the Range Rover got to the fork and turned right into Murray Canyon, Jack Graves stopped his Mazda and waited, letting a station wagon pass him. Then he too made the turn, staying behind the wagon. There were mostly four-wheel drives and station wagons in Murray Canyon that day, and Jack Graves counted at least fifteen hikers already up on the rocks and trails, so he felt safe when he pulled into the unpaved parking area with the other cars.
Jack Graves was wearing his hiking boots and a floppy hat. He'd brought a small canteen and a day-pack. He was ready to cover some ground but he didn't believe that Clive Devon would attempt a strenuous hike. Certainly not to Upper Palm Canyon Falls.
Jack hadn't seen those falls in several years, not since the drought. White water used to drop straight down in a serpentine, between gashes in the granite, and when the light hit the falls just right, the chunky rock glinted like quartz. Cactus and wild-flowers shot out wherever the gashes were wide enough to trap sand and seed. Clumps of leaning yucca lined the granite rock face, lending the oasis effect that made it one of the most photographed sites in the valley. But that was before the five-year drought.
Upper Palm Canyon Falls had always been Jack Graves' favorite spot in all the world. He could stay forever, there by the falls, if such a thing were possible. That's what he'd always thought.
As soon as Clive Devon and the dog began walking, the animal started to bark and romped into a tiny patch of desert sunflowers, Indian yellow, interspersed with the violet-rose of the verbena. Jack Graves watched through binoculars as Clive Devon whistled for the dog, obviously not wanting him to paw the ground like a young bull and destroy the lovely wildflowers. The flowers were very early, believing spring had arrived.
As soon as he'd offered the minor correction, Clive Devon knelt and roughed up the dog's ears and hugged him. Then they were off again, the man hiking briskly, the brown dog frolicking like a pup, bounding into the cold water of Andreas Creek, which meandered down from the mountains and passed through the palm-shrouded canyon oasis where the rocky cliffs jutted out at 45-degree angles. In past years, Jack Graves had spent hours picking out the profiles of people or the heads of animals in them, nature-carved.
He hiked into Andreas Canyon alongside a group of a dozen riders on horseback, men and women in western garb, two of them on the most beautiful Appaloosas he'd ever seen. There were many places of concealment within the tunnels of palm and rock that sheltered those canyons.
In the afternoon Clive Devon removed his day-pack and shared a picnic lunch with the dog. Using the pack as a pillow, the man reclined on the hillside with the dog's head on his chest and fed the dog tidbits from his hand. Jack Graves watched from the crest of a terra cotta hill of rock and sand, a hundred yards above them.
Then Jack Graves dug out a nest for himself behind a shelf of rock the color of iron ore, near some Neowashingtonia Filifera palms, seventy feet in height and up to two centuries old. The fan palms were native to the valley, and their presence assured that there was sufficient water either on the ground or close underneath.
He smelled sage, and saw bluebirds overhead, and several waxwings carrying palm fruit. As he watched, a falcon hovered high, then dropped like a rock, swooping up just before crashing into the face of the cliff, snatching something from the crevices that no man could see.
Sometimes he'd been lucky enough to spot some of the endangered bighorn sheep, most of them wearing transmitter collars attached by state conservationists who were trying to guarantee the sheep's comeback. They were majestic beasts, the rams in particular, with their curled, furrowed horns and snowy haunches.
The elusive cougar was probably gone forever except for an occasional cat who'd roamed hundreds of miles from home. Years ago he'd seen one, hiding under the branches of a smoke tree.
He knew there were more than three hundred species of birds in the desert that went unnoticed by the golfing and tennis hordes in the valley below. Jack Graves was glad that the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians were still the proprietors of these canyons as they'd been for centuries. There would be no resorts in this 32,000-acre reservation.