The Berenstain Bears Chapter Book: The G-Rex Bones (3 page)

Chapter 3

Watched?

Ralph wasted no time putting his plan into action. And it worked like a charm—at least, up to the point of burying the dinosaur bones. There were so many of them and they were so big that the Bogg Brothers had to make three separate round trips to the desert in their pickup truck.

Finally, the third and final trip was almost done. The last shovels full of sandy streambed dirt had been tamped down over the buried dinosaur bones with the backs of five shovels. The five bears holding the shovels wiped their sweaty brows and looked at one another with satisfaction.

“That crazy doctor will be pleased as heck when I tell him these phony bones are safely in the ground,” said Ralph Ripoff.

“Not half as pleased as I am,” wheezed Sandcrab Jones, rubbing his aching old back.

The three Bogg Brothers, who were rubbing their backs too, nodded.

“You three have no right to complain,” groused Ralph, “riding in that comfy cab while I bounced around with the bones in the back of the truck! Well, let’s hit the road. See you tomorrow, Sandcrab, with an entire media crew.”

Ralph handed the hermit thirty dollars.

“Thanks, sonny,” said Sandcrab. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Ralph. Ralph Ripoff. You remember me, don’t you? I’m the guy you bought that termite insurance from. Well, happy fossil huntin’, old-timer.”

“No time like the present, I guess,” said Sandcrab, plunging the blade of his shovel into the newly tamped-down earth. But then he stopped and looked up. And looked all around.

“What’s wrong?” asked Ralph.

“Maybe nothin’,” said the old hermit. “But I just got a funny feelin’ we’re bein’ watched. Right at this very moment.”

Ralph looked all around. Even though they were standing in a shallow gulch where the streambed was, he could see for miles in every direction. And all he saw was sand, rocks, cactuses, and, in the distance, a few of those flat-topped reddish hills called mesas. He looked back into Sandcrab’s blurry eyes. “Your eyesight is as bad as your memory, old-timer,” he said. “There’s no one out there.”

“I didn’t say I
saw
anyone out there,” protested Sandcrab. “I said I had a
feelin
’.”

“Well,” said Ralph, “if we can’t see them, they can’t see us. Okay, we’re outta here.”

Ralph looked back at Sandcrab Jones from the back of the pickup as it followed its own sandy tire tracks back to the highway. “Feeble old guy,” he said to himself. “All these years alone out here in the desert sun must have made him crazier than a bedbug.”

Chapter 4

Seen

But Ralph was wrong about Sandcrab Jones. Dead wrong. Sandcrab was no crazier than you or I. And though his memory and eyesight
had
grown a bit feeble with age, he was the exact opposite of feeble in some other important ways. He had a kind of sixth sense about certain things. For instance, he could predict right to the minute when the rare, sudden desert rains would come. And he could always tell you, right to the day, when the big cactus outside his shack would push out its tiny pink flowers. And, like most bears who spend almost all their time alone, he always knew when he was being watched.

Just minutes before Sandcrab made his surprising statement, a small group of cubs was scanning the horizon with binoculars from the top of a mesa about a mile away. They were from Teacher Bob’s and Teacher Jane’s classes at Bear Country School in Beartown, and they were out in the desert on a nature hike. Twenty minutes earlier they had chased a roadrunner down into a gorge while the rest of the group drifted off. And now they were lost.

“I say we go east,” said Brother Bear, lowering his binoculars.

“Why east?” asked Sister.

“I just remembered,” said Brother. “When we started out, Teacher Bob said we were headed west from the highway. Who’s got a compass? I forgot mine.”

“I forgot mine, too,” said Sister.

“I left mine on the bus,” said Lizzy Bruin. “It felt all lumpy in my pocket.”

Brother looked hopefully at Cousin Fred. Surely a semi-nerd like Fred would bring a compass on a nature hike. But Fred felt in his pocket, only to pull it inside out with a sigh. There was a big hole in it.

“I’ve got mine!” said Barry Bruin. Proudly he held it up for all to see. It was tiny. Sort of a baby compass. Barry looked at it and frowned. He shook it and looked again. “Darn!” he said. “It’s busted!”

“Where did you get that crummy little thing, anyway?” said Sister.

“From a box of Grizzly Jack,” said Barry. “It was the prize. It must have broken when I bit it by accident.”

“Great!” said Sister. “
You’re
a prize, too, Barry.”

“So how do we figure out which way east is?” asked Lizzy.

“I know!” said Fred. “The sun! It rises in the east and sets in the west!”

Shading their eyes, they all looked up. And groaned in unison. The sun was directly overhead.

“That means it’s noon!” cried Barry.

“So what?” said Sister.

Barry shrugged. “So, at least we know what time it is.”

More groans.

“We’re saved!” cried Fred all of a sudden. He pointed at the spot his binoculars were aimed at. “I see the bus! We’re only about a mile from the highway. Let’s get going.”

The cubs headed for the highway side of the mesa. But then they held back. “Come on, Liz!” called Barry.

Lizzy hadn’t budged. She was training her binoculars on something far off in the opposite direction. The others hurried to her side. “What is it, Liz?” asked Brother.

“I see some bears out there,” she said. “In a shallow gulch. Look.”

They scanned the area Lizzy was aiming at until they all found the bears.

“Five of ’em,” said Fred. “And there’s a pickup truck at the edge of the gulch.”

“They’re all holding something,” said Sister. “Shovels, I think. Hey, one of them just looked up. Now he’s looking all around. He’s looking in this direction.”

“Who are they?” Brother asked Lizzy, who had the sharpest eyesight of any of the cubs.

Lizzy peered extra hard through the rising heat waves that made everything wiggly and watery. “I can’t make out any faces,” she said. “But one of them is wearing a straw hat. Now he’s looking around too. He’s got a green suit on. And white things down around his ankles.”

“Spats?” said Fred. “Green suit? Straw hat? You just described Ralph Ripoff.”

“What the heck is Ralph doing way out here in the desert?” said Sister.

“Hmm,” said Brother. “Something tells me that’s for Ralph to know and us to find out.”

“Does that mean you’re gonna call a meeting of the Bear Detectives?” asked Fred eagerly.

“Not yet,” said Brother. “We need more to go on. Maybe something will turn up in the next few days. Meanwhile, let’s get back to the bus. Sooner or later Teacher Bob and Teacher Jane will look for us there.”

Chapter 5

Fossil Furor

It turned out that Brother was right about both things. Teacher Bob and Teacher Jane did eventually check the bus for the lost cubs. And something did turn up about Ralph’s desert trip in the next few days. The very
next
day, in fact.

The Bear family was gathered in front of the TV in the family room after dinner. Papa aimed the remote at the TV and pressed the on button. They were all very excited because they’d just gotten cable. Papa and Mama wanted to watch the Bear News Network (BNN), Brother wanted sports (BSPN), and Sister wanted Bear Music Television (BMTV). But Papa was the supreme lord and master of the remote (at least, whenever Mama let him be). So on came BNN.

A
BNN-Live
telecast was in progress. On camera was some sandy ground, on which rested some very large bones. The camera shifted to a group of bears digging with shovels in the sandy earth.

“Hey, that’s Dan Digger and his team of workbears,” said Papa. “I wonder what they found.”

Then came the voice of Christiane Amanbear, the famous roving newscaster. “I’m out here in Great Grizzly Desert, where an old hermit named Sandcrab Jones has discovered fossils of a dinosaur near his shack.”

The camera shifted to another very recognizable bear, who was more infamous than famous. “Standing next to me,” continued Amanbear, “is Ralph Ripoff, Beartown’s well-known small-time crook and swindler. I understand, Mr. Ripoff, that Sandcrab Jones contacted you soon after he found the dinosaur bones. Is that correct?”