***
The second story of the ranch house was a comforting hideaway for Kit. Her mother had decorated the three bedrooms and upstairs bath in old-fashioned flowery wallpaper that matched the house’s early 1900s vintage. Kit’s room was papered with a floral print in tones of cream and canary yellow and the hallway outside her door was done in pale yellow and white stripes. Kit had retreated to these bright warm spaces many times in the years since her mother’s car crash to find the afterglow of a mother’s love. The happy parasaurolophus family had reminded her how much she had lost. Not only her mother but now her father too. Her hopes that he was alive were dimming. The upper prairie was only five miles away. Nothing could keep him out this long except… she didn’t want to think about it.
She sat on the bench by her open window with her elbows on the sill and her chin resting on the backs of her hands while a light breeze fluttered the sheer curtains. Sandstone Mountain dominated the view and its craggy beauty reminded her that one thing was permanent in her life: Twin Creeks Ranch.
Below Kit’s window scarlet columbine bloomed in the flower garden that had been her mother’s pride and joy. The garden conjured memories of how her mother had oohed and aahed over every bloom, and it brought back strong memories of her father as well. As a child she had watched him work the soil with a shovel, turning it over with sweat soaking his shirt. His strong hands had gripped the shovel with fingers thickened by years of hard labor in summer heat and winter frost. His weathered forehead had been framed by unruly red hair then, which had since thinned and gone white. She recalled the stern creases furrowing that brow, the squint lines that narrowed his blue eyes to slits. Once, when he had noticed her at the garden gate, she remembered how his hard face had softened with a warm smile.
“Hi, Little Girl,” he’d said and invited her into the garden, where she had looked for bugs in the overturned dirt.
But that was an eternity ago.
Kit sighed. Except for Sandstone Mountain, everything outside her window had the stamp of Will Daniels on it. The barn neatly painted red with white trim, sheds and outbuildings full of well-maintained farming equipment, the neat picket fence around the flower garden, everything built, bought or horse-traded by him with help only from family and friends. He kept everything in good repair, from the buildings to the machinery to the gas-powered electricity generator with its 500-gallon tank. Twin Creeks Ranch was a fine, secure place to live, independent from the rest of the world. Even if larger society was in ruin, the ranch Will Daniels built could sustain her indefinitely. But it seemed cruel that the person who had made survival possible was not here now.
A pang of regret welled up inside her as she thought of her last conversation with her father. Why had it been so unpleasant?
This year, her sophomore year in college at Bozeman, she had been pretty rebellious. She had made up her mind to study paleontology against her father’s wishes. He wanted her to learn agriculture and animal husbandry but she had found broader horizons at the university. Yesterday morning after they loaded the bull into the livestock trailer she had finally told him flat out he should quit expecting her to take charge of the ranch someday.
A set-jawed, stubborn look came over his face but she had been surprised by how weary he looked. His shoulders had slumped and his face had seemed older or more weather-beaten than ever. The big man she had always known seemed to shrink a little.
He’d stewed while she fetched Lucky from the pasture and begun saddling her. He’d leaned against the trailer and said, “It was a good enough life for your mother, God rest her.”
That was a low blow, bringing up Mom when Kit was fighting for the right to live her own life. “I may be a rancher’s daughter,” she had blurted, “but I’ll never be a rancher’s wife!”
He had looked at his boots for a moment and then spat some tobacco juice on the driveway gravel. “It’s a shame. You can ride better’n any man I know and rope a steer better too.”
“I ride because I love horses, Daddy, especially Lucky. And I learned to rope steers just to help you.”
“I always expected you’d inherit this ranch when I’m gone.”
“I think you’d better look for someone else. I’m just not interested.”
“I don’t see what kind of life you’re getting yourself into.”
“But I do, Daddy, that’s just it. It’s the life I want.”
“You’re gonna end up like that old nut, Ogilvey, livin’ out of a tent all summer and workin’ in a dusty museum every winter.”
“Sounds good to me, Daddy. Dinosaurs interest me. They had their own lives, habits, mothers, babies…”
He’d spat again and shot her an angry glance. “Ever since that Ogilvey fool set up his tents in my hunting camp you’ve spent every spare day digging in the dirt with him and talking dinosaurs. Maybe the boys around here would pay you some attention if you didn’t act like such a snooty little dinosaur-head. You’re good-looking enough to get any fella you want.”
“I’m not interested in any of the locals.”
“Locals? That’s the way you think of us now, huh?” She had hurt him and he lashed back like a stepped-on rattler. “You think we’re a bunch of hayseeds, do you?”
“No. I didn’t say that.”
“Look, Little Girl. All’s I’m saying is, hangin’ out with a crazy old dinosaur digger ain’t gonna win you no popularity contests. You had some nice young fellas coming around when you were in high school. I’d-a thought one of them would catch your eye.”
“Oh yeah,” she’d sassed. “Every time Bobby Everett stopped by in his pickup truck you practically wanted to give away the bride. I just don’t see myself marrying somebody like him. He’s a big dorky hog with a buzz cut, a neck like a bull and fat fingers.”
Her father had run a thick, callused hand over his own white buzz cut. “You could do worse. Their ranch is next to ours. You two kids could combine for quite a spread.”
“He’s a stupid son of a rancher.”
“So what am I?” He’d banged a fist down on the trailer’s fender, startling a surprised moo out of the bull hitched at the fence by a rope through his nose ring. Realizing she’d cut him to the quick, she shut up for a moment. Then she had said, “Sorry, Daddy. I’ve just got other plans for my life.”
He had stalked to the open door of his jeep, grabbed his weather-beaten cowboy hat off the seat and squashed it down on his head. “We got a bull to turn out. You ready?”
That was when Chase Armstrong pulled into the driveway bringing another worry bone for her father to chew on: wolves on the ranch. That had put a new crease in his brow. After he’d given his permission and Chase went off in search of the wolves, she had helped him load the bull in the trailer and then wheedled, “You don’t really need me any more, do you? Zippy can help you turn the bull out and I’d like to go see Dr. O.”
“Fine,” he had grumbled. “Go waste your time.”
That had torn it. Seething, she had mounted up, yanked poor Lucky’s head around and galloped off to Ogilvey’s dig without another word.
What hurt most now, was that yesterday’s fight might be her last memory of her father. Pain cloyed her throat and tears welled. The landscape outside blurred, dissolving the garden’s reds, yellows, and greens into the tan of Sandstone Mountain, until a chirping sound brought Kit back to the present.
She blinked the tears away as a cacophony of twittering tiny voices erupted outside her window. Leaning out, she spotted a group of sparrow-sized creatures under the eaves above her clinging to the vertical surface of the log wall. At first she thought they were birds, but they crawled over the surface in a most un-birdlike way, more like bats. Still, they weren’t bats either, given their long, toothy snouts. It dawned on Kit that these were pterodactyls, another group of new arrivals from ancient times.
There were six or seven of them, more mouse-like than birdy. Their diminutive bodies were covered with fine mouse-colored fur and they had pr
actically no tails at all. Kit laughed at the cuteness of their little rumps as they scrambled hither and thither over the wall’s surface, their furry little bat wings folded back and their tiny, clawed hands and feet scritch-scratching over the logs. They had long black beaks lined with miniscule pointy teeth with which they pecked and poked every chink and crack, and each other as well. There were two slightly bigger animals among the group, with white bodies and black heads. Kit figured these were parents tending their tiny brood. The entire tribe was in constant comical motion, bickering, pecking, and squabbling.
“Hey, little guys,” Kit cooed. “You’re totally cute, aren’tcha? Where’d you come from?”
The whole troop of miniscule busybodies paused to look her over and then flitted into the air one by one, dropping down to settle on the side of the house around her window. One of the adults landed on the sill. Kit smiled at the diminutive visitor, inches from her elbow.
“You’re a curious little thing!”
The creature let out a peep and blinked an orange eye at her.
“Too cute!” Kit exclaimed, beginning to feel better.
Suddenly, the pterodactyl flapped away with an alarmed squawk. A humming drone had started in the air overhead and as it intensified the other pterodactyls shrieked and scattered. Kit looked up just as a dark brown, hawk-sized creature hurtled past on wings that were the source of the droning. It streaked just inches from her face in pursuit of the pterodactyls, snapping after one of the darting creatures then another with horrific reptilian jaws full of jutting fangs. Unlike the pterodactyls, this animal had a long tail ending in a paddle-shaped tip that it used as a lever against the air to change direction almost instantaneously. The whole group, pursuer and prey, veered around the corner of the house and disappeared amid a receding series of screeches and cries.
Alone again, Kit felt emptier than before. The scattering of the pterodactyls underscored how her own family life had come unraveled. The pterodactyls had squabbled just like she and her father until something bigger came and shattered their world.
There was a light knock at her door. She wiped her eyes and turned to see Chase Armstrong standing just outside with concern on his face.
“Can I come in?”
She nodded. His thoughtful, intelligent expression was nothing like Bobby Everett. And those broad shoulders, the uniform, and the tousle of dark hair hanging down from his Park Department cap made him look ten times more handsome than Bobby ever would. But why did she have to meet him under circumstances as bad as these?
Chase hesitated a moment before entering the room. He thought he’d seen her wipe away a tear and crying women weren’t his forte. He was better with lost wolf pups or staring down an angry bear. He went in but stopped a couple paces from her. He said softly, “You took off kinda quickly a while ago.”
“Sorry,” she replied. “I was just thinking about Daddy.” She turned to look out the window again and heaved a sigh. Chase reached out a hand toward her shoulder, wanting to comfort her, but hesitated. With all the trouble they were in he wasn’t still harboring romantic notions was he?
Gingerly, he put his hand on her shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. In response he felt a tremor run through her entire body. She buried her face in her hands and began to cry. “Something terrible has happened to Daddy,” she sputtered. “I just know it.”
“You don’t know for sure,” he said gently, keeping his hand on her shoulder, feeling her tremble like an orphaned wolf pup he’d once picked up. That pup had started out shaking and scared but it he had taken it back to Silver Gate and looked after it until it could fend for itself. Now it was grown and running with the Rose Creek pack.
In a world of troubles, Kit’s pile seemed bigger than his. He searched for a word or two but was interrupted by a noise behind him.
“Ahem.” Dr. Ogilvey stood in the doorway looking inquisitively from Kit to Chase and back. “Am I interrupting something?”
“No,” Chase replied. “She’s just worried about her father.”
Ogilvey studied the two them for a moment and then shrugged. “I suppose we could go up to the prairie and have a look around. Although it might be dangerous with dinosaurs everywhere.”
“I’m not sure we’re much safer here,” Chase responded.
Ogilvey nodded. “I suppose we’re not really safe anywhere, are we?”