From time to time Bitan halted and peered ahead with binoculars.
“I’ll be damned,” he said at one of these stops. “Take a look.”
He handed the binoculars to Skip. In the distance, at the edge of the mesa, he could see a broken tower of stone.
“The watchtower,” he said.
“Here we are, only pretending to look for it, and yet we found it! I take it as a sign we’ll be lucky in what we are looking for.” He hastened forward, Skip following.
The tower was circular, built of rough stone blocks mortared with adobe. Most of it had fallen down the cliffside, while other stones lay strewn about. Inside there was just enough shade for them to hunker down and have a drink of water. Mitty lapped his share furiously from a collapsible bowl.
Skip noticed some green-glazed potsherds and picked one up.
“What’s that?”
Skip handed it to Bitan. “Spanish pottery, I would think.”
Bitan turned it over. “Keep it. We’ll show it to your sister. Maybe she can identify it.”
Skip hunted around and found a few larger pieces, some with yellow designs, and slipped them in his pocket.
After a short rest, they walked past the tower and discovered the remains of an ancient trail going down into the valley. As they descended toward the base of the cliffs, the wind started picking up, carrying white dust from the dry lake bed. The temperature gradually rose. Bitan finally seemed to run out of conversation. When they had gotten back on course, they set off across the Plains of Atalaya toward the distant hills, Bitan periodically checking his GPS. After another two hours or so he halted. The hills were much closer now, and Skip could see they were covered with grass and dotted with low, twisted oak trees.
“We’ve reached the southern edge of the oval,” Bitan said. “Time to split up and begin searching. We’ll meet back here at five.”
Five. That would give them three hours to get back to camp before nightfall. This was cutting it close, but Skip decided not to mention it.
Bitan went over the search pattern Skip was to follow: a downloaded Google Earth file that showed his location and suggested path. Even though they were out of cell range, the satellite coverage was good, and the GPS was working well. But as Skip looked ahead at the hot alkali flats where his search was to begin, his heart sank a little. Already, they’d hiked quite a distance in the growing heat. But it would get better, he told himself, when he reached those grassy hills. Mitty was still going strong, and Skip was glad to have him along.
Bitan, obviously in a hurry, went off with only a few more words, toward his half of the search pattern. Skip began tracing his own, hiking first one way, then the other. Bitan soon dwindled to a black dot on the plains, and then he vanished entirely.
After noon, the heat came up and at length Skip decided to take a rest and eat his lunch. He was starving and wolfed down the duck rillettes and Camembert sandwich he had prepared on French bread. Mitty got sardines in olive oil. Even though Skip was in good shape, he was starting to feel the trek in his legs.
He continued on, Mitty now following behind, long red tongue dangling. There was nothing to see, no indication of a UFO crash, just a flat white alkali crust that seemed to go on forever; but as he went back and forth, the inviting-looking hills got closer, and finally, around four o’clock, he entered them. At the first corkscrew oak, he took another rest in the shade, drinking the now-hot water from his canteen and sharing more with Mitty. He was starting to regret bringing the dog; it was so hot. Bitan was nowhere to be seen, but Skip wasn’t worried: he knew exactly where he himself was, his position indicated by a little blue dot on the Google Earth image.
He went on. The hills were magical, covered with deep grasses that swayed and rippled in the wind, filling the air with the scent of verdure, the scattering of oak trees giving the landscape a parklike feel. And it was cooler, thank God. The buttes and mountains beyond formed a dramatic backdrop. He began to encounter faint trails winding this way and that, and quickly realized they were not human, but horse trails—wild horses. It excited him to think he might glimpse some. Horse Heaven Hills—the place lived up to the name.
The only problem was, as he tramped the hills, he could see no sign of an alien crash site. He checked his watch and, at four thirty, realized it was time to make a beeline back to their rendezvous point. He dropped a Google Earth pin to note where he was on the search pattern so he could resume later and headed back out of the hills.
He arrived at the rendezvous point at five sharp. There was no sign of Bitan. He checked his phone, but of course there was no cell reception.