Dinosaur Blackout (17 page)

“They’ll store them in our garage for now – it can be locked – and Dactyl will keep guard in the yard. We’ll hear him bark,” explained Daniel. “Then they’ll see what Mr. Pederson wants to do with them. I know he wanted them to go to the Royal Saskatchewan Museum eventually, but I don’t know if they were to go to the field station at Eastend or the Regina headquarters.”

“Sounds like things are well in hand. See you later, young man!” Dr. Roost gave him a tap with her cane.

Daniel watched the tractors, flatbed and other equipment arrive, along with several other men in trucks, including Herb Milner, and someone on a horse. Although they struggled at first to lever the fossils to haul them out, once they had a system in place, the whole operation went fairly quickly. Seeing them in daylight, they found the plaster of Paris jackets were in worse shape than they’d hoped. As Daniel had expected, some were cracked and badly banged up, because the thieves had rolled them into the root cellar without worrying about how they landed.

“Someone sure didn’t know what they were doing,” said Dad. “Or how valuable these pieces were.”

“They didn’t care about destroying other possible finds at the quarry, either,” said Daniel saddened by the destruction. “I still don’t understand why anyone would do it.”

“They wanted to hurt us in some way, I suppose,” Dad said. “Though why, I wouldn’t know.”

When they were almost finished loading the pieces, Daniel happened to catch a flash of bright light from across the pasture. He pulled out his binoculars and watched carefully. When it happened again, he pinpointed the place and studied it. At last, he saw other movement and realized it was someone with a telephoto lens on a camera, reflecting in the sun. Whoever it was crept closer on foot, attempting to hide behind bits of scrubby sagebrush and small bushes.

Daniel sidled over to Corporal Fraser, handed him the binoculars and indicated with a slow nod for him to look at the glinting in the distance. Corporal Fraser moved behind a protruding chunk of debris and studied the area.

“Adrian McDermott,” guessed Daniel.

“Yes, I do believe it is,” answered Corporal Fraser. “Now, how do you suppose he knew where to find us? Most people only know of the two ways of getting in here. I definitely need to pay that man a visit sometime soon and find out what he knows from his ‘sources.
’
”

Daniel took the binoculars back from Corporal Fraser, who went back to finish supervising the task of gathering the smaller pieces. When they were ready to leave, Daniel at first rode slowly behind the caravan of Jeeps, atvs, tractors and flatbed led by Corporal Fraser. But Gypsy seemed ready for another good run, so he galloped across the hills. Partway across the pasture, he doubled back to the site of the old falling-down shack.

He surprised Adrian McDermott, who was taking photographs of the site. McDermott tried to run and hide when he heard Daniel coming, but he was no match for Gypsy’s speed. Besides, he had nowhere to hide where Daniel couldn’t find him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Daniel demanded, drawing up beside him.

“Getting my story on the missing
Stygimoloch
,” Adrian McDermott said.

“How did you get here?” asked Daniel, knowing he hadn’t come by either of the two usual routes.

“I’m good at my job and I do my research.” The reporter turned smug.

Daniel suddenly remembered Adrian McDermott telling someone he was doing a project on old abandoned places. He must have found another way in.

“And just how do you know so much about what’s going on here?” Daniel circled Gypsy around the reporter.

“I told you, I have my sources.” The reporter relaxed a little.

“What sources? No outsiders know about the
Stygimoloch,
” Daniel insisted, brushing closer to McDermott. “Let’s hear about them.”

“Yes, let’s,” said the voice of Corporal Fraser, suddenly stepping out from the pile of weathered boards.

Daniel let out a little yelp. He hadn’t heard Corporal Fraser’s return. He must have looped back around on a borrowed horse. McDermott tensed, his eyes became wary. He gave a quick glance around, looking for a way to escape.

“I don’t have to tell you anything!” he retorted.

“I think your knowledge has nothing to do with protecting the sources for your story,” said Corporal Fraser, moving closer to McDermott. “I insist you join me right now for a little chat.”

McDermott seemed to wither. He sighed and returned his camera to the bag. “Fine,” he said.

“Daniel, how about you head for home and I’ll drop by in a while,” suggested the Corporal.

Daniel nodded, giving McDermott one last piercing look. Corporal Fraser would get the truth from the reporter. Daniel turned Gypsy around and headed for home. Maybe the Nelwin brothers were there by now.

He was just in time to see the flatbed backed securely into the garage. Everyone congratulated themselves on a job well done and disappeared from the yard in a short time. Daniel cooled Gypsy down and stabled her with fresh water and her evening feed. Then he did his barn chores.

He kept looking through the open barn doors, hoping to see the Nelwins arrive, but they never did. His desire to ask Todd what he might know about his father’s possible involvement in the theft was not going to be satisfied that night. Dad came to help him finish the chores and together they returned to the house for supper.

Daniel was just about to head for bed later that night, when he finally heard Dr. Roost arrive back in their yard. He scurried over to her parked truck and knocked on her camper door. She stepped out, greeting Daniel with discouragement in her eyes.

“Ole still hasn’t returned,” she said. “I checked a few of the spots in case he took a sudden desire to go into the past tonight, but I’m sure he hasn’t gone yet. Something must have held him up in town. I didn’t want to wait for him all night, so I left him a note pinned to his door,” explained Dr. Roost. “I told him the fossils had been found.”

“I guess there’s nothing more we can do,” Daniel said. “He surely won’t want to go when it’s dark.”

“I’ll take first watch in the morning,” said Dr. Roost. “That way you can get your chores done.”

“Okay,” Daniel agreed, although he hated to miss a moment of keeping watch over Ole Pederson.

Daniel said good night and sauntered back to the house, staring up at the night sky and the constellations. He easily picked out the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. How much had the stars changed over sixty-five million years, he wondered? Had the Cretaceous dinosaurs lived under the same formations? He supposed the constellations must have appeared to have changed position each time a major natural geographical disaster shifted the Earth’s axis – at least that’s what the scientists seemed to believe.

Later, Daniel readied his backpack for the next day’s jaunt to watch over Ole Pederson. He checked his notebook to make sure the leaf was secure, then tucked it into his backpack in the closet, before setting his alarm for four a.m. He didn’t trust Ole Pederson not to leave by daybreak. The old man always rose early and Daniel didn’t know if Dr. Roost would get there fast enough.

When he finished packing his camera, binoculars and a dinosaur book to study, he snuck downstairs. There he readied his jacket and shoes by the back door, making sure he could easily grab some bottles of water from the fridge when he left. Back in his room, he didn’t even get into his pyjamas, not wanting to disturb anyone when he got up. Before he crawled into bed, he checked again to make sure the recently picked prehistoric leaf was secure in his notebook.

Sometime during the night, the wind picked up and rain brushed against the windows. There was still a slow drizzle blown about by a strong wind when Daniel rose. Luckily his rain gear was stored in the porch and he had little trouble finding his poncho and rubber boots. He tucked his sneakers into his backpack for later. He’d let Dr. Roost take over the watch when he left to do chores.

The sky was dark and dreary as Daniel headed over the rolling hills to Mr. Pederson’s shack. He ordered Dactyl to stay home and the dog seemed contented to obey, curling back up in his sleeping spot on some soft straw in the barn just inside the partially open door. Using a flashlight, Daniel stumbled over the uneven ground until the sky lightened to a softer grey and the rain diminished to a few drops now and then.

From several hills away, Daniel could make out the speck of Mr. Pederson’s roofline a little farther down the valley. He pulled out the binoculars. Mr. Pederson’s truck was parked close to the shack. Daniel relaxed. Mr. Pederson was home.

Then he noticed movement and gasped. The old paleontologist was carrying some object from the back of his truck and placing it on something oblong that lay on the ground. Daniel began to run. He lost sight of Pederson when he dipped down into a valley. Panting by the time he made the next rise, he studied the action below.

“No!” he yelled when he saw what Pederson was doing. He was still too far away to stop him and there was no way the old man could hear him over the fury of the wind.

Pederson continued to haul items from his truck, but he was placing them on an inflated rubber dinghy! What looked like ropes and tackle, then a fair-sized canister of something, a spraying machine, a backpack, camera equipment, and other things that Daniel couldn’t quite make out, were stacked evenly at both ends. When the oars were added, Daniel knew Pederson was going to try to land in the river. But what if he didn’t hit the right spot? The dinghy could be overturned, or he could land on the shore. Worse, one of the meat-eating dinosaurs could be having an early morning drink and Mr. Pederson would be a goner. Daniel didn’t even want to think about the creatures lurking in the water.

Daniel pounded across the next hill and raced towards Pederson. But the paleontologist still couldn’t hear or see him. He was intent on donning some kind of overalls and a full-face mask hooked to a small oxygen tank strapped on his back. Frantically, Daniel charged across the top of the last hill and down towards Pederson, waving his arms and yelling. He dug a whistle out of his pocket and began blowing as hard as he could.

Pederson saw him then, but didn’t stop. Instead, he hopped into the dinghy, sat down, and grabbed the oars. Then he picked up something on the seat beside him. A split second later, he was gone.

Chapter Thirteen

“
N
o!” Daniel yelled and kept running.
When he reached the spot where Pederson had disappeared, Daniel hurriedly drew copies of the two area maps out of his backpack. The wind lashed at them as he tried to figure out how he could join Pederson in the past without landing in the river. He didn’t want to be breakfast for meat-eating marine reptiles like the
Mosasaurs
or the three-metre crocodile
Borealosuchus,
nor did he want to be scooped up by an
Ichthyornis
– a powerful seabird with a lower jaw that held at least twenty teeth.

But if he didn’t hurry, Pederson might be swept far down the river and into the sea before he arrived. He decided he needed to be a few metres up the hill above Pederson’s shack, which he hoped would land him on the bank above the river. He pounded his way back uphill, slipping on the rain-soaked grass. Struggling against the wind, with the rain striking his face, he stuffed his maps into his backpack and then dove for his notebook.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he grasped his prehistoric leaf.

~

D
aniel found himself standing on a crumbling piece
of the riverbank in almost complete blackness, with wind-whipped hair in his face and raindrops dripping from his forehead. He scrambled for a better footing and clung to a pine tree, terrified he was exposed prey. He gasped, trying to catch his breath, but bits of something caught in his throat. He swiped his hand across his face to clear the moisture from his field of vision and scoured the dismal, dark location.

At first, he thought the sun had not yet risen.

Then he realized falling debris shrouded the whole environment. He was in the middle of some kind of geological fallout! He wrestled for his water bottle and took big gulps to wash out his mouth and throat. He shrugged out of his poncho and yanked off his t-shirt. Pulling his jacket out of his backpack, he put it on with the rain poncho overtop. Wrapping his t-shirt around his head, he covered his mouth and nose. Next, he pulled his cap down as far as it would go to shield his eyes from grit. The most important thing was to find Mr. Pederson and get back home!