The Dinosaur Hunter (10 page)

“Thank you,” she said, smiling at him. I looked over and Ray was gritting his teeth. I felt sorry for him but there was nothing I could do. Ray sat there for a few more minutes, just staring at the fire, then got up and went to his tent. Amelia pretended not to notice. Before long, we all made our way to our sleeping bags. I slept like a rock except I was awakened once by a distant grumble of an engine. It sounded too guttural for a four-wheeler but sound can play tricks in the badlands. I would have thought about it more except I couldn't keep my eyes open. My last thought before I went back to sleep wasn't the odd engine noises but Jeanette. What was she doing back on the ranch? Did she miss me? I knew in my heart she didn't, except for the work that wasn't getting done, but I wondered just the same.

The second week didn't change much except I ran out of gin. That meant beer in the evening. Nice, but not the same. Ray, Amelia, and I dug out the Trike with either Laura or Tanya supervising. We had exposed a femur and a tibia and a number of vertebrae. Laura said she was sure we were going to find a sacrum. Part of the skull had also been exposed, including the frill but Laura had decided to go after it last. “The rest of this animal we can move bit by bit,” she said. “But the skull is going to be huge. I have no idea how we're going to move it.”

Mostly, I loved the evenings. Tanya, Laura, Ray, Amelia, and I shared cooking duties, our meals simple but nutritious. Afterward, we retired to the fire pit, drinking beer (Ray and Amelia got soft drinks) and talking. Both Laura and Tanya were full of stories—mostly with Pick as the hero—of their expeditions in Mongolia, China, Argentina, and Tunisia. In almost every story, they arrived at their foreign destination, were escorted to the happy dinosaur hunting grounds, realized they had been taken to a place where it was all hunted out, and Pick went on to make a dazzling find. At the end of one such story, told by Tanya and featuring an adventure in China where they had given their escorts the slip and discovered a new feathered dinosaur only to have it taken away before they could present it to the world, I asked, “Tanya, what's your story?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, how did you become a paleontologist?”

She looked a bit flustered, then said, “I am not a paleontologist, Mike.”

“She's a first-class digger,” Pick chimed in, “and a great assistant.”

“I am Russian,” she said, quietly. “I have a green card. I will apply for citizenship.”

“I didn't mean to snoop,” I apologized.

“It is all right,” Tanya said and gave me a small smile.

Of course, eventually the talk turned to me and I gave them my quick spiel. I had been raised all around the world, with my father being in the Air Force. When Dad retired, he took a job in California and we settled in. Eventually, I joined the army, and afterward, went to junior college, then joined the force as a rookie cop. I rose to detective but a bullet from a bad guy shortened my career. After that, I spent three years being an investigative gofer for the major film studios and a couple of Indies. In between all that, I married a couple of times to good women who, after a time, wised up to my bullshit and threw me out. I had come to Montana to escape life in general and met Bill Coulter who agreed to make me into a cowboy. That had been a decade ago and I had not left since except for brief forays to Las Vegas.

We also talked about dinosaurs and what they were like and why they were so fascinating. When Ray asked what killed them, Laura, Tanya, and Pick said, almost in unison, “We don't care. We only care how they lived.” It seemed a mantra they had settled on.

Summer in Montana means long hours of daylight but when the sun finally set, the full glory of the sky was ours to admire as we sat around the fire pit, the twisted little cedar sticks turned to glowing embers. Not only the stars, planets, and the edge of our galaxy were on full display but multiple satellites as well. One flew over every few minutes and from all directions. They were fascinating to watch. Laura, it turned out, was a space buff and could accurately predict the arrival of the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. The latter looked like a gigantic, sparkling city passing overhead and all we could do was watch with open-mouthed awe. “I wish I could go up there,” Amelia said after a dramatic pass.

“Is there anything you don't want to do?” Ray demanded. “I mean other than stay around here?”

“Ray,” Laura said quietly, “let Amelia be what she wants to be.”

“Who am I to stop her?” Ray griped, then got up and went to bed.

Sometime into the night, I woke, hearing once more a low, almost moaning engine sound. I climbed out of my tent and listened. It was far away, whatever it was, but seemed to be getting closer. I put on my clothes, boots, and some leather gloves then climbed the hill in front of the camp. Everything was immersed in a milky light provided by the moon. The way up wasn't easy, the dirt and rocks slippery, but I took my time. At the top of the hill was a layer of sandstone. I carefully ran my gloved hand over it, checking for snakes, then pulled myself up and over. From the top, which was a small plateau, I could look across a great expanse. A sliver of Fort Peck Lake could be seen, the moon glittering on it. The sound of the machine, whatever it was, continued for only a few seconds, then went abruptly silent. I strained my eyes but could see nothing. Then I wondered if maybe the noise was coming from the lake and what I was hearing was a boat of some kind. I'd never seen anything on the lake bigger than a medium-sized houseboat but Fort Peck was large enough for a small cruise ship. I waited, hoping the sound would start up again but it didn't and I climbed back down. Near the bottom, a rattlesnake buzzed a warning and I jumped about six feet, fell, and landed on my butt. Sore and a little shaky, I climbed back into the sack.

The next morning, over a breakfast of pancakes, I asked Laura if she'd heard any noises. She said she hadn't. No one else had, either. I was beginning to wonder if it was just me.

One night, sitting around the fire pit, Pick said, “Sometimes, I tell a little story about the bones we find according to the evidence. I hope I won't be boring you if I tell one now, will I, Mike?”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. By then, I had a couple of beers under my belt and was ready for anything.

Pick leaned back in his chair. “I think our Triceratops—let's give him a name, Big Ben is what I'm thinking—was probably a bull, old for his species, tired, and, based on the gnarly growth I have observed in his joints, painfully arthritic. As he grew ever older, he slept a lot. We can't say how Trikes slept but most likely, like cattle and other herbivores, he slept standing or kneeling. I am certain Trikes never rolled onto their side to sleep or rest. Much too heavy for that. Their heads were especially heavy and made up nearly half the length of their bodies so, most likely, they let their heads droop to touch the ground. So, let's say, old Ben one day went to sleep, his beak immersed in a meadow of sweet-smelling ferns.”

Pick looked at me. “Grass, Mike, wouldn't be invented for another million years.”

Since Laura had already told me that, I knew it but I let it pass, not wanting to knock him off his story. Pick continued. “When Big Ben woke up on the day he died, he looked around for his herd but found himself all alone. Trikes, we are certain, were herd animals and to be alone is the worse thing that can happen to a creature that depends on others for protection and has the herd instinct. You know that with your cows. Around the pasture was a forest of conifers—pine trees—and angiosperms—flowering plants like maples, oaks, and magnolias—the latter introduced during the late Cretaceous of the American West. Big Ben raised his heavy head and pondered his loneliness. His neck hurt. Probably he hurt all over. Big Ben, alone and frightened, would have called out, hoping to receive a response from his herd. What did he sound like? I think a bit like an elephant. High-pitched screeches and snorts. But there was no answering bleat on that day from a fellow Trike. There was, however, another sound, the hiss of released breath from something very big, something even bigger than Ben.”

Pick stopped his story and looked around our little group. It was very dark, the fire in the pit only glowing embers. Overhead was the river of stars known as the Milky Way. Pick was, in a way, telling a ghost story and, I confess, it was pretty spooky.

He went on. “Ben knew what animal made that sound. It was the enemy he had hated and feared all his life. But now, he discovered he neither hated nor feared it. He welcomed it. He was in pain. He had trouble breathing. He could no longer distinguish the taste of the different varieties of ferns or reach the succulent vegetation on the low limbs of the conifers. The females no longer paid any attention to him. He knew instinctively there was a time to live, and a time to die. He was done. His life was over.”

Pick leaned forward, his face aglow from the fire pit. “Now, he heard its heavy footsteps crunching through the dry pine needles and then going quiet as it came out of the forest onto the soft ferns of the pasture. Big Ben did not try to run. He did not even turn to see his fate coming on two clawed feet. He chose, instead, to look for his herd. Then, through bleary eyes, he saw them far away, and moving placidly, and without fear. Big Ben felt good and warm to see his herd safe.”

Pick took a deep breath and fell quiet, as if he was himself the old Trike, waiting, waiting…“The pain,” he said, “was sudden and it jolted Ben to his knees. Ben cried out but the pain would go away, as happens for many prey. They have programmed in their brains to go into shock at the death bite, to give up, to fall away, to go to sleep, and travel to the other place forever. Except,” Pick paused dramatically, “Ben didn't. He was still alive, in shock, yes, but still alive. His attacker, a fully grown adult T. rex, had been distracted after the first bite.” Pick squinted into the fire pit, as if searching for answers. “I saw the bite mark, not healed, on his pelvis. That can only mean one thing. The T bit him there, then released him. Why, do you suppose?”

I'm sure I didn't know but Pick thought he did. “I think another T. rex came upon the scene. Maybe a couple of them and they challenged the first T. This was unusual. We are fairly certain that Tyrannosaurs, like most predators, established hunting territories, which were normally respected by others of their species. After all, if every time you went out to hunt, you also had to fight off a number of your own species, you're not going to catch much prey and you're going to be beat up. So what this indicates is that there was a rogue presence and probably not just one rogue, but more like two. Since there are no more bite marks on the pelvis, just the one, I think the attacking T had to go instantly into fight mode. How much of a fight? Probably mostly mock charges, feints, and so forth. Predators don't like to fight other predators. There's no value to it except to get themselves wounded or even killed. Whatever happened, Big Ben was left alone. This was not a blessing. He'd been bitten severely and was dying. Ben lived near the sea and there were swamplands. He went there, where the watery mud supported his great weight, where he always felt better. And there it was he died, bleeding to death in the mud. Around seventy million years later, this is where I found him, still asleep, waiting patiently for all these years to be found.”

The story had apparently come to an end. Laura asked, “Pick, do you think—?”

“Yes,” he said. “I believe there is something terrible about to happen.”

Laura and Tanya nodded thoughtfully while I puzzled over what he'd just said. I looked over and saw Amelia and Ray were both asleep in their chairs. We sat there a while longer, then Pick got up and walked away in the wrong direction before turning around and going to his tent. I woke up the kids and we all turned in. That night, I kept turning over what Pick had said. Something terrible was about to happen. In deep time or in the present? Or, with Pick, was it all the same?

 

Uninvited visitors started to arrive. The first one was Cade Morgan and his buddy, Toby, who was obviously not scouting locations in South Dakota any more. They motored in on four-wheelers to the Trike site, got off, and looked up at us as we looked down on them. “Hello,” Cade finally called out. “What are you doing?”

“Digging for gold,” I called back. “Are you here to jump our claim?”

Cade thought that was pretty funny and laughed out loud. Toby didn't laugh. He only stared up at us, then started climbing. Cade stopped laughing long enough to follow. Towering over us, his big shadow almost heavy on my back, Toby asked in his light accent, “What is it?”

Tanya was supervising our work. “It is a Triceratops,” she answered, then said something to him in Russian.

Toby glared at her, but didn't reply. Cade had worn himself out climbing but finally caught his breath long enough to inquire about the Triceratops and Tanya took a moment, actually several minutes, to patiently explain what the big animal was or had been, long ago.

Amelia added, “Ray and I have learned so much out here already. This is the most fun I've ever had in my life!”

“How about you, Ray?” Cade asked him.

Ray put down the brush he'd been wielding and sat back. “It's been OK but I need to get back to the ranch.”

Amelia sat back, too. “You'd leave me alone out here?”

“You wouldn't be alone.

You'd have everybody, especially Pick.”

“What are you trying to say?” Amelia demanded.

“You're in love with Pick.”

Amelia put down her trowel. “You take that back, Ray Coulter!”

“I will not!”

“Where is Pick?” Toby suddenly demanded in an angry voice. This stopped the lover's quarrel and was also a surprise to me. I didn't even know he knew our dino hunter.

Tanya answered in Russian and Toby glared at her again. Cade said, “I don't think I caught that.”

“He is out there,” Tanya said.

“Where?” Toby insisted.

Tanya waved her hand. “Out there. He hunts dinosaurs. That's what he does. This is one he has already found.”

“Has he found anything else?” Cade asked.

“He always finds dinosaurs,” Tanya answered. “Wherever he goes.”

I stood up. “I didn't know you were into dinosaurs, Cade.”

Cade pointed at the four-wheelers. “I'm not. Those are my new toys. Just thought this would be a good place to try them out.”

“Did you ask Jeanette if you could cross the Square C?”

“Sure did.”

“How is she?”

“She looked fine to me. You missing her?”

“Shut up, Cade.”

“Listen to him,” Cade said, grinning. He cut an eye toward Toby. “Did you know Mike used to be a private dick in Los Angeles? Now, he's a dick, only in Montana.”

“Mister Morgan,” Ray said, “I wish you wouldn't use that kind of language in front of Amelia. Or Tanya.”

Cade nodded. “You're right, Ray. I'm sorry.”

I glanced at Amelia and she was looking at Ray. She had a little smile on. Toby said, “Los Angeles is too hot and crowded for me.”

“How about Moscow?” I asked.

Toby didn't answer. He just frowned. I was pretty sure I had him pegged. Certainly, Tanya thought so, even though she hadn't been able to squeeze a Russian word out of him. There are only a couple of reasons why a man would try to hide that he was Russian, neither of them good. One was that he was ashamed of his heritage but Toby didn't look the type who got ashamed about much. The other was that he was dirty, meaning he was either illegally in the country or in the country being illegal, if you get my drift.

Cade said, “We need to see Pick. Would you please tell him, Tanya?”

Tanya didn't answer and I said, “We need to get back to work.”

“Be our guest,” Cade answered, looking put out. Toby just looked like Toby, which meant he looked dangerous.

They climbed back down the hill. Toby lit up a cigarette, then they both climbed aboard their four-wheelers and puttered off.

The next of our uninvited guests were, to my astonishment, the two Green Planet environmentalist brothers, Brian and Philip. They stumbled around the hill and collapsed at the base of it. I was busy pedestaling a tibia at the time but heard a thump and looked down and saw them, sitting next to their packs. They looked sunburnt and generally unhappy. Laura was supervising that day. “Hello,” she called down before I told her who they were.

“Can you help us?” Brian asked. “We're out of water.”

Laura rolled her eyes, then got up. “Amelia,” she said, “let's see what we can do.”

Even though she hadn't asked me to help, I went down the hill to see what was up with these two, leaving Ray to scrape, chisel, and brush on his own. He didn't seem to mind. In fact, in the last couple of days, he'd seemed almost cheerful. Mostly, he and Amelia weren't talking, which maybe was helping his attitude. Or not. I couldn't figure those two out.

Laura squatted beside the brothers, felt their foreheads, checked their pulses, and said, “You're both into heat exhaustion. Can you walk a bit farther? You need to get in the shade and cool down.”

Numbly, both boys nodded their heads and staggered to their feet. Amelia and Laura led them back to camp with me pulling up the rear with their backpacks. When they rounded a curve and were out of sight, I set the packs down and opened them. Inside were BLM maps, empty water bottles (only two small ones per pack, the saps), a couple of half-melted granola bars, and notebooks. Philip's notebook was blank except for some phone numbers. Brian's was a daily log and what was in it gave me a chuckle. Apparently, the two were going from block to block on the BLM, counting cows and cow pies. One entry, pretty much typical, said:

These guys were a hoot. If they wanted to see cow doo, I could have helped them out. I knew where a lot of it was. Why they wanted to see it I guessed had something to do with them trying to document that we ranchers were fouling the people's land with our nasty old cows. Yeah, right.

Laura and Amelia had the two brothers lie down beneath the cook tent awning, then gave them water and salt. Brian subsequently started screaming about having cramps. He grabbed his legs and rocked from side to side, his eyes slits of pain. Philip similarly groaned. “The cramps will pass,” Laura said, fanning them with a magazine. I sat there and looked at these two doofuses and reflected that they represented so many indoors environmentalists—filled with a fantasy of what the outdoors was really like but, once out there, pretty much disasters to themselves and the environment. Brian proved this by pooping in his pants.

“Whoa,” I said, wrinkling up my nose at the smell.

Laura allowed a grin. “Another symptom of heat exhaustion,” then pulled off Brian's pants, got a basin of water, and helped him clean himself up. Brian kept moaning, then seemed to lapse into a coma. I worried about him until he started snoring, which I took as a good sign. I made a GPS reading, then retrieved Brian's log from his backpack and made a note, doing my best to copy his printing style:

I knew it was stupid but at least it made me laugh. “What are you laughing at?” Laura asked and I showed her the notebook. She called me a goofball.

There was something I needed to know so I asked Philip, “How did you get here?”

“We rented a pontoon boat at the marina,” he answered, “and came across the lake. Then we hiked into the BLM. We had no idea the terrain was so rugged.”

“Do you have a rifle? Any firearms?”

“No. You mean like to kill bears?”