I’d felt the first drops of rain hit my nose when Ryder and I stepped down from the transport to watch the hot pools’ leaping fish leave sparkling rainbow trails in the deepening dusk. The rain held off its fury during my maneuvering the truck out of the creaking forest, and Malone slept through our mad scramble back into the cab, only waking up with a porcine snort when the transport’s heavy tires grabbed at the road when we left the dirt track behind us. Then the sky gods sliced opened their grief and wept. “The water’s pouring down the hills,” Malone observed from the backseat. “It looks like rivers.” “Yeah, not something we want to be in. This area gets flash floods when a storm hits too fast and too hard.” A streak of lightning cut a swath under the bank of granite-hued clouds, forking out to tickle the sky’s belly. “We’ve got one more gulch to go and then we’ll be on the Temecula flats. Water drains off the mesas and into the black rock below. Let’s hope Changa’s got some space for us or we’ll be sleeping in the truck.”
