Dinosaur Summer (16 page)

Three hours into the journey, the train crossed a log trestle bridge over a tributary feeding into the Caron� The tributary tumbled white and slick green and black over rocks two hundred feet below the laboring train. There would be many more such rushing tributaries and trestle bridges the next few miles.

Shellabarger came awake and went to the rear to look out over the flatcars. When he returned, he lit up a cigar he had bought in Puerto Ordaz. The smoke swirling through the car smelled worse than old tires burning, but Peter did not dare complain.

"Lots of plants and small animals here come from the tepuis, particularly from El Grande," Shellabarger said. "Bugs, flowers, orchids--hardwoods--nuts no white man's ever tasted. Worth a hell of a lot more than gold. Someday, somebody's going to see the value."

"A bit hypocritical for acircus man, don't you think?" Wetherford inquired, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the back of the next seat. He surveyed Shellabarger coolly.

"Guilty as charged," Shellabarger said, unruffled. Wetherford seemed to rank somewhere behind the ants in his estimation, not worth being impolite to. The Englishman did not appear to be bothered by this.

"Yes, well, at least you're trying to make amends."

"So," Anthony said, "what is your line of work, Mr. Wetherford?"

"Guilty, myself, truly guilty," Wetherford said. "Until recently I worked as a secretary for Creole Oil. Mr. Shellabarger, have you a fag to spare?"

Shellabarger handed him a pack of cigarettes and he took two. "Blessings of the New World, tobacco," Wetherford said, lighting up. "Or better yet, revenge. And a match?"

They reached a leveling out of the landscape and the jungle thinned, giving way to broad expanses of grassland. Anthony and OBie pored over a map and agreed that they were now on a lava ledge that had risen up beneath El Grande and pushed it several hundred feet higher, "Hundreds of millions of years ago," Anthony said.

Wetherford leaned over the map with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He puffed several times and narrowed his eyes against the smoke, then plucked away the cigarette and said, "Recent thinking says it could have been over a billion years ago."

"You're a geologist?" Anthony asked.

"I listened to the oil men. When they left, I stayed, because . . . you see"--he waved the cigarette with self-conscious style--"they were ever so much smarter than me."

"The plateaus of El Grande are cut through with lava flows, like marbling in ice cream," Anthony said. "Some of it seeped out to form caps, and erosion has worked all the way around them, like big mushrooms."

"All true, and wonderful stuff," Wetherford said. "You worked for oil men, too, eh?"

Anthony smiled. "Guilty as charged." Peter did not know whether to like the Englishman or not. He stared out the left side of the train at El Grande, now so huge a presence that it blocked the sky to the east. Ledges in the escarpment supported whole forests, rising in narrow terraces to the clouds.

Billie walked forward, staring out the windows at the scattering of trees along the relatively barren highlands. He sat down next to Peter. "Look outside," he said quietly, and waved at the window on the left side, then made a graceful flip of the hand toward the front of the train.

Peter looked but saw nothing.

"There," Billie said. Peter suddenly spotted a lone naked brown man just yards below the window, with a neatly cut bowl of black hair, standing in tall grass, carrying a gourd, a black bag, and a bow. The man watched the train pass, then dropped to his knees and vanished. Billie smiled at Peter. "More, soon," he said.

"I'll bet Monte and Coop are both at Uruyen," OBie said. Uruyen was the closest airstrip, about eight miles from the railhead. "I'll bet they've flown in to meet us. That would be grand."

***

They reached the railhead after six hours. Shellabarger paced for the last hour, sick with worry about the dinosaurs. "They've gone hours without water, much longer than I planned," he said. As soon as the train had stopped, they all disembarked from the passenger car. Shellabarger ordered the roustabouts to bring barrels of water up from the last car, which carried their supplies.

Peter held his hand above his eyes to block out the sun until Anthony slapped a floppy bush hat over his head. The railhead team--a crowd of at least twenty Indians and mestizos, dressed in white trousers and baggy white shirts--smiled and shook hands with the new arrivals. They gestured at the waiting trucks, and Billie and the four pilots, now drivers, inspected the big muddy vehicles with critical eyes, exchanging questions and comments.

Peter looked up and saw a large wooden crane newly erected by the side of the tracks. Besides the crane and three shacks roofed with palm leaves and one ramshackle building covered with corrugated steel, the railhead was a void butted against thick forest.

The only sour note was the appearance of a short, stocky Army officer and three of his men. Their uniforms were rumpled and their broad belts and black shoes scuffed and covered with specks of mud and mold. Two of the soldiers wore dusty, dented helmets. The third went bareheaded. The officer waved papers with their orders. They were to verify that the visitors were all legitimate, authorized by the government in Caracas. The Indian and mestizo workers seemed to make them nervous. Shellabarger told the officer politely enough that he could verify all he wanted, they could not stop now or the animals would suffer.

"Would you want the animals to die and everybody around the world to know it was you that made them die?" he asked the stocky officer coldly.

The man drew himself up, took a deep breath, and said, "Se�I am a mild man, but thecolonel is most irritable. He is on Pico Poco now. I please him, not history. Nevertheless, I will do my best to hurry."

The tarps were removed from the cages, and the animals got their first clear sight of El Grande. Blinking in the sun, they made quite an uproar. Dagger slapped his tail against the cage, making it rattle alarmingly. One by one, the roustabouts poured water from drums into their drinking troughs. The Indians gathered around, their faces filled with fear and reverence.

"The muse calls," Anthony said, lifting his camera. He smiled at Peter and ran off to take more pictures.

Peter wondered what he was supposed to do. Shellabarger hadn't called for him, and he did not want to be in the way. He decided to climb up on the flatbed car beside Sammy and keep him company.

Wetherford and Ray walked by, talking about the trees. "Hundreds of species of hardwoods," Wetherford said, "and figs and of course the lianas, the creepers . . ." The Englishman looked up, shading his eyes against the sun. His eyes met Peter's. "Take a walk down to the river?" he asked. Peter looked for OBie. The film crew was unloading the camera cases again and OBie was already heading down the trail.

"We're going to scout," Ray said.

"I'll stay here," Peter said. He felt the dinosaurs might need him--Shellabarger might call for him. Or he might see something else he could do.

"All right," Wetherford said. Ray tipped his hat and they followed OBie.

"Peter!" Shellabarger called. Peter answered and the trainer came up to the car, frowning and squinting at the jungle. "The animals can eat some of this stuff," he said. "Sammy can eat just about anything and survive. Fill his cage with creepers and leaves. Give him a small log if you find one. He won't eat what he can't tolerate. Fresh food will do the herbivores a lot of good."

"What about Dagger?" Peter asked.

"Last side of beef until El Grande," Shellabarger said. Keller and Kasem walked up beside him.

"Real ripe." The head roustabout pinched his nose. "Just the way he likes it."

"If you find any bugs, give 'em to the struthios," Shellabarger added. "A couple more days on the river, and then we're at Washington Falls. Where's your father?"

"Taking pictures."

"He needs to sign some chits. Find him, then help pick foliage."

Peter picked vegetation and piled it in the cage for Sammy. He found a few impressive-looking beetles and cockroaches, but Dip and Casso took little interest in them.

After he was done, he walked with his father, Ray, and Wetherford down to the water. OBie stood at the river's edge, stamping his feet to test the ground. The Indian foreman of the crew that had erected the crane stamped his foot also and smiled at OBie. He spoke in a language none of them knew, and OBie kept shaking his head. "You speak Indian?" he asked Wetherford.

"Sorry, no, but it sounds like Camaracotas."

"Well, my Spanish is poor, and my Indian is nonexistent," OBie said.

Shellabarger and Billie came down the trail last. Billie stepped in to interpret. "This man's name is Jorge," he said. "He is thejefe here."

"I gathered as much," Shellabarger said, lighting up another terrible cigar. "He speaks Camaracotas and a little Spanish and Portuguese. He came here from Roraima in Brazil when he heard there was work. He is an expert woodworker, and he says not to worry about the mud, because there will be a log road by the end of the day."

"Well, I see how we'll lift the boats off the train cars," Shellabarger said, "but how will we get them down here?"

Billie spoke to Jorge and listened with his head cocked to one side. "With ropes and log rollers. He says it is no problem. They loaded the trucks onto motorized rafts two weeks ago and it worked fine, but the river rose and floated the log road away. So they will build it again." Jorge spoke again, and Billie added, "There has been much rain on El Grande. He says the falls will be spectacular."

"Has he seen them?" Shellabarger asked.

"Oh, yes. His father took him there when he was a boy. That is why his name--because of the falls, and because of Professor Challenger. His father remembers you,se� and alsoSe�Gluck."

Jorge smiled proudly and stepped forward to offer his hand. Shellabarger took the hand and shook it firmly. "Tell him the crane looks like good work. His men are fineobreros. I expect the road will be rebuilt just fine."

Billie told Jorge, who nodded vigorously, then went off to instruct his men.

"What about the cages?" OBie asked. "How can we load them on the boats down here?"

"We can't," Shellabarger said, clamping his cigar and chewing its end. A trail of smoke stung Peter's eyes. "We use the crane to unload the boats, we lift the cages and swing them out onto the boats, and then we roll them together right into the water."

Wetherford whistled.

"Yeah," Shellabarger said, "well, if anybody else comes up with something better . . ." He looked up the river. "What about using the radio and finding out how things are up there? Maybe we can talk to the Mendezes, or whatever their name is."

"Our radio is not working,se�" Billie said. "The air, the mountain . . . a storm somewhere north." He shrugged.

"Yeah, well," Shellabarger said, "that's just fine." He looked at Peter and decided the word he really wanted to use was perhaps too strong for this company. "Hell," he muttered, and blew smoke at a cloud of enthusiastic flies.

Wetherford pointed to the soldiers, standing unhappily to one side. "Not too tough to see their problem," he said. "So few of them, and so many Indians."

"The Indians came here to work," Peter said.

"That was just the beginning," Wetherford said. He rubbed the three-day growth of beard on his chin. "El Grande holds them together. Take our friend Billie, for example. An upright, well-educated lad." Wetherford gave Peter a knowing look. "And here we are with all these very interesting animals. Our troubles are not over, young fellow."

The workers had already cut and stacked long, straight white logs in a clearing not far from the railhead. They now hauled the logs down to trackside and began to reconstruct the road, laying them perpendicular to the tracks. Billie watched the workers intently. Peter stood close beside him, hoping to clear up his thinking about what Wetherford had said. Billie frowned as the logs passed.

"To some of the families, the tribes, those trees are sacred," he said to Peter. "They agree to cut them only for the Challenger."

Shellabarger took Peter by the shoulder and kept him close, "For luck," he said, as they tested the crane on a boat. Anthony snapped pictures and Wetherford stayed to one side, keeping his mouth shut for once. Ray recorded the scene.

"OBie told me to stand by here in case something goes wrong," he told Peter as their paths crossed. "I feel like a vulture."

The crane was strong enough to lift the boat clear of the car, and its steel bearings let it swing smoothly over to the log rollers already in place. Workers tied ropes to the boat and put chocks under the supporting rollers.

The struthios went first, silent in their cage. Peter wondered if they were all screeched out, or if they were just fascinated by the constant din of monkeys and macaws. Large black caciques flew around the clearing and the road, looking for scraps. One of them blundered into the venator's cage and the carnivore gulped it down like a fly. After that the other birds stayed away.

When the struthios' cage had been secured, the workers, instructed by Shellabarger through Billie and Jorge, gradually unrolled the long ropes and guided the boat with log poles and frequent stops and readjustments and much shouting down to the water. The boat stuck briefly on the mud, but with twenty men poling and wedging it farther, it floated free. They tethered it to trees on the bank.

"One down," Shellabarger said.

Shellabarger saved the venator cage for the last boat. He had changed the loading scheme and was going to put the venator alone on his own boat. They let the avisaurs out of their cage for exercise, and the bird-lizards rode on the trainer's and Peter's arms, shoulders, and head, down to the water.

Shellabarger and Peter were hidden beneath flapping wings and snapping beaks. None of the birds bit them, however. "They know I taste awful," he said. With the birds under Peter's charge, tied down with ropes around their talons, Anthony, Ray, and three of the workers carried their cage.

When the birds had been shut up once again, Shellabarger retrieved his cigar from Billie and relit it. Billie refused to smoke. His mother was Colombian, he said, and she used to smoke cigarettes and cigars with the burning end in her mouth. "They made her very sick, after a while," Billie said. "Maybe they killed her."