“It’s a curious fact. I thought you might enjoy it.”
“If a cow can be bled to death, I don’t like my chances!”
On my other side Mr. Plaskett looked over and winked. “There’s things you can do. Bacon grease, applied nice and thick.”
I nodded eagerly. If it worked, I’d gladly smell like a rancid frying pan.
“Not much longer now,” he said.
We’d set out from Crowe at first light, and the grassland seemed endless. But after another few minutes, a crack appeared in the prairie. As we trotted closer, with every second the crack widened and deepened into a vast canyon that spread to the horizon.
A sunken world within our own. Water and glaciers and time had scooped it out, leaving behind a windy river and tall weathered buttes and mazes of ravines. The steep slopes showed all their ancient layers—tawny, black, gray, red—like the diagrams in Father’s geology books. It was a landscape I’d never seen, but the rock formations had a weirdly familiar architecture. Some of the stepped buttes looked like Mayan temples. There were gaunt castles. Archways and spires of a great Gothic cathedral. A domed mosque with teetery minarets. It was like the whole history of mankind and all its creations were already here, seventy million years ago, and now ruined.
“There’s an easier way for the wagon,” said Ned Plaskett, leading us along the rim of the prairie. “We’ll likely still have to help ease it down.”
I could barely tear my gaze away. Neither could Father. It was a fossil hunter’s paradise. All that stone with its deep secrets. You could look and dig for years and discover only a fraction. I wanted to get down there and start right away.
But there was the wagon to get down first, and we spent an agonizing hour easing it with ropes. As promised, Hitch was strong and very good with the horses.
The prairie above us quickly disappeared from sight, and it really did feel like we were entering another world. At first it was rocky, just scraggy brush and small cacti. Lower down it got greener. There’d been plenty of rain this spring, Ned said, much more than usual.
It was surprisingly lush along the brown, slow-curving river lined with cottonwoods and tall grass and flowers. In the sun’s low evening light, the stone was rich yellow and peach and purple. The wind made a pleasant dry rustle in the cottonwoods. The grasshoppers were so loud they could’ve been snakes. Birds trilled and chuckled.
“There’s a good spot up ahead to make camp,” said Plaskett, and he led us to a grassy patch near the river. Two antelope looked up, unconcerned. “We won’t go hungry, either,” he added.
“Can we see where you found the tooth?” I asked.
Plaskett looked at the sun. “Only got an hour or so of light left.”
“Is it far?” Father asked. He was as eager as me, I could tell.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Just a quick look,” I said. “If Cartland’s coming, we’d better lay claim as fast as we can.”
Hitch was already tending to the team. It was a wonder to watch how quickly he could remove the tack from the horses, his hands quick and confident with the straps and buckles. It was obvious he loved the animals, stroking and talking to them as he worked.
The three of us set off on our saddle ponies, Plaskett leading us along twisting ravines. My heart beat fast. We were about to see the owner of that colossal tooth that had bewitched me the moment I’d held it.
The ground was scattered with rocks of all shapes and sizes, gray basalt and pink granite and yellowy limestone and great speckled silver hunks and creamy pebbles, all broken and crushed by glaciers and rounded and smoothed by rivers over thousands of years. There were green sage and spiky cactus and clumps of perfectly spherical deer droppings.
“Almost there,” said Plaskett.
I looked over at my father and could see the same impatient excitement in his face. After a day’s riding from Crowe, my shirt was plastered to my back, the headband of my hat sodden. Nearby a grasshopper rattled and made me feel thirstier. Almost there. It would be the biggest dinosaur ever to be discovered, and, if Father kept his promise, it would bear my name.
Finally Plaskett stopped and dismounted. Father and I swung ourselves off our ponies, then clambered up a butte to a ledge. Scaly rock was piled up on either side of a shallow excavation into the slope.
My heart gave a big happy contraction. A long stretch of purplish-brown femur, fractured in only a couple places, had been partially exposed. Its big knobbed head rested close to a massive piece of pelvic girdle. At the opposite end of the femur were the twin swells of the lateral and medial epicondyle, made to grip the tibia. It wasn’t just the length of the bone, but the sheer girth. Stand it up and it would be half of me.
“It’s a mighty big thighbone,” Plaskett said proudly.
“It is indeed,” said my father, but right away I knew something was bothering him. His eyes darted back and forth across the span of the bone.
“How long would you say it is?” he asked.
“Three and a half?” Plaskett guessed, and I knew he was off.
From a pocket my father took his cloth measuring tape and held it end to end. “Not even. Three feet, one and a half inches.”
I let out a big breath. “You think it’s too small.”
“It should be at least four and a half by my reckoning. And much, much thicker.”
I remembered all his detailed calculations when we first got the tooth.
“Still,” I said, “that method only gives an esti—”
“I’m sure,” he snapped. “Anyone could see that. The proportions are all wrong.”
I hated it when he told me off, but right now I was far more crushed that the rex might not be where it was supposed to be.
Looking baffled, Plaskett said, “I don’t understand. What are you saying, Professor?
“That these bones do not belong to the tooth you sent us.”
“But I found it right here!” he protested.
“No doubt,” Father said, scratching at his beard. “But that doesn’t mean they belong together.”
“Where did you find the tooth exactly?” I asked Plaskett.
He pointed to one of the spots where the femur was fractured. I leaned in close in the fading light. Near the broken edge of the femur was a sizeable, smooth-edged puncture mark. I waved my father over.
“Tooth mark?” I said.
He nodded. “Good.”
“There was a battle here,” I told Plaskett. “The owner of the tooth must’ve fought this creature. Bit him in the leg, here. See? Might’ve snapped the bone clean through, but he lost a tooth in the bargain. That’s probably why it was in three pieces when you found it.”
“I’d never considered that,” said Plaskett. “But maybe he got wounded himself. Fatally. We might still find him here. Mixed in together.”
I hoped so too, but my father grimaced.
“Doubtful,” my father said. “It’s unusual in the animal kingdom for the predator to be killed by its prey. Our rex would have eaten what he wanted, left the carcass scattered, and moved on. But if these were his hunting grounds, there’s a fair chance he died in the area.”
Ned looked utterly crestfallen. “I’m sorry I misled you, Professor. I feel I’ve been nothing but a disappointment to you so far.”
“Nonsense, Ned,” Father said graciously. “A common mistake. And this is a good find. An excellent find. We’ll quarry it out. Whatever this creature is, it’ll bear your name.”
I glanced at Father. Was he going to hand out dinosaurs to everyone?
“Thank you, Professor, but that’s not necessary.”
“Nonsense. Fair’s fair. Now, let’s get a good night’s sleep. At first light we’ll start quarrying and find out what this is.”
I lifted my eyes to the hills and buttes that rose all around us, creating labyrinth after labyrinth of rock. So many surfaces. And behind one of them, maybe just an inch out of sight, were the bones of my rex, curled up like a colossal baby nestled in a ston
e womb.
10.
BONE
IT’S A TOOTH,” I SAID TO PAPA.
Firelight ran like liquid over its smooth surface. We’d pitched our camp for the night and were sitting by a fire after dinner. I’d been waiting to present it to him in a quiet moment when he could appreciate it fully—and also appreciate that it was my find. He took the massive tooth in his hands and looked at me wonderingly.
“It was wrapped up with the body,” I said. “I thought it was a knife at first. It’s been snapped off—look—or it would be even longer. You can feel the serrations here.” I moved the pads of my fingers along the sides to the tip. Little notches for gripping prey.
I felt out of breath as I watched Papa’s face for his reaction. Our expedition had barely begun, and I’d made an incredible discovery. I felt queasy about how I’d gotten it, but it was too amazing a fossil to pass up.
“My dear,” he said, “this is quite, quite extraordinary.”
“A saber-toothed tiger, Professor?” one of his students asked, coming closer.
“No,” I said. “The canines of the saber-toothed have a much sharper curve at the tip. And aren’t nearly as thick.”
The student looked at me doubtfully, until my father said, “She’s right. This is the tooth of a carnivorous dinosaur.”
“Imagine its jaws!” I said. “It must have been a brute.”
There was a small group around us now and a moment of silence as we all conjured the creature in our heads.
“Why is it black?” asked our journalist, Mr. Landry.
My father said, “Manganese oxide perhaps, leached into the bone over millions of years. What a find it would be. It would dwarf anything seen so far.”
I thought again of Samuel and the tooth he’d told me about on the train. I didn’t know if this tooth, my tooth, could be from the same species, but I was startled by how badly I wanted to tell him about it. He’d admire it, compliment me, understand my excitement. I felt like my discovery could be fully complete only once I shared it with him.
“Why was it with the Indian’s body, do you think?” I asked.
“An excellent question. Where’s Duellist? Could one of you find him and ask him to come?”
Our expedition was so large that our campsite had almost a fairground atmosphere, with several large bonfires and little groups of soldiers and students smoking and singing bits of Western songs and telling lies about the things they’d done and seen. Earlier some of the students had even cajoled Best-One-of-All to show us a Pawnee dance, which was very impressive.
“Duellist, yes yes, very good,” said my father when he arrived. “Look here. Have you ever seen a tooth this big?”
Duellist crouched down to take a good look, but I noticed he didn’t touch it. He shook his head. “Where did you find this?”
“It was buried with one of the Sioux.”
Duellist took a step back. He glanced up at my father, and then over at me, and I felt another stab of guilt.
“We see these bones in the earth sometimes,” he said, “but most people will not touch them.”
“Why not?” Landry asked, pencil poised.
“They are from the giant men that Tirawa first put on earth.”
“Giant men, not animals?” my father asked.
“Men and women. And when they displeased Tirawa, he sent a flood and fire from the sky to destroy them.”
At the fringes of the campfire I could see some of the students and soldiers smirk at one another, but to me, this Pawnee story didn’t sound very different from Noah’s flood or the Greek Titans getting replaced by the Olympian gods.
“Ah,” said my father. “So your people will not touch the bones because they’re afraid of being punished like the old giants?”
“Unless they have a vision,” said Best-One-of-All, who’d come closer to the fire, but still kept his distance from the tooth. “Like Strong Calf.”
“Will you tell us about him? Please?” I asked. I’d noticed some of the students had lost interest and wandered off now, but I wanted more.
Best-One-of All’s face was lively as he spoke, his eyes wide, his hands helping him tell the story. Strong Calf was a Pawnee man, not so long ago, who dreamed one of the old giants told him to dig up his bones. In the dream Strong Calf was given directions to a hill. And when he dug into the hill, he found a mound of bones so big they could only belong to a giant. After that, apparently, Strong Calf became a great medicine man, and the bone was kept at the back of the lodge in a sacred bundle beside the buffalo skull. He would scrape dust from the bone and make tea that cured the sick. Some said his medicine even cured small pox.
“Do the Sioux use the bones in the same way?” I asked. To steal a knife from a grave was one thing, but something believed by its owner to have mystical powers—that was much worse.
Duellist shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Where might that Sioux have found this tooth?” my father asked, hefting it in his hand.
“Where you’re going, the earth is full of bones.”
“So I hope. Don’t worry yes yes, we won’t make you touch any giant bones!” he added, chuckling. “Thank you for your help.”
My father might not have noticed, but I saw Duellist’s mouth harden as he stood and walked away with Best-One-of-All.
“The bones of giants!” said my father. “Fascinating, these savage superstitions.”
I did not believe in magical bones either, but Papa’s insulting dismissal irked me—maybe because I knew often enough how it felt to be dismissed.
“Are they any more savage and superstitious than that circuit preacher we met at the fort yesterday?” I reminded him. “He didn’t even believe in dinosaurs. He thought they were just the bones of animals heaved off Noah’s ark during the Flood.”
“Ha! Not the most enlightened man, perhaps,” Papa said.
“He called them devil’s chopsticks,” said Mr. Landry, “put here only to lead us astray. I wrote that down.”
He looked at me and gave me a sympathetic smile, and with surprise I wondered if I had an unexpected ally in the journalist.
Father cleared his throat and turned to the lieutenant. “What are the chances of talking to some local Sioux?”
“Not good. They’re the worst of the Indians. Where we’re headed is awfully close to unceded Indian territory.”
“Still, they might be able to tell us where the tooth was found, if we offered them some gifts.”
“Anyone in uniform’s likely to get a very unfriendly reception,” the lieutenant warned.
“Especially if you tell them we cut off the heads of their dead,” I said to Papa.
“And robbed one of their graves,” he replied pointedly.
He didn’t need to remind me. What I’d done stained my thoughts; it was just as bad as what my father had done, maybe even worse.
“I see no reason why we’d need mention either,” he said.
“But if that tooth was special to them somehow,” I said, “they’ll figure it out, won’t they?”
My father ran his hand possessively over the tooth’s enameled surface, like he’d already forgotten it was mine. “Well,” he said, “we’ll just have to find the jaw it came from, then.”
“Bone!” I called out. “It’s bone here!”
My heart hammered. I stepped back as Father hurried over.
He knelt and said, “Good. Let’s have a look. . . .”
With his awl and hammer he carefully chipped away. I looked over at Ned, who watched expectantly, holding the butcher knife he favored for the fine work of sifting through sandstone. Heat battered the back of my neck. By tonight it would be scalded red. I didn’t care. Restlessly I watched as my father exposed more of the bone. It was tapering to a point.
“A tooth!” I cried.
Father had been wrong. This was the rex. Ned had found it! The tooth we were uncovering right now was, if anything, bigger than the first one.
We’d
spent all yesterday with pickaxes and shovels, cutting into the slope where Ned had exposed the first femur. All the overburden sitting atop the fossil needed to be removed. We’d started high, so we wouldn’t accidentally break bones, creating a deep ledge. And then we’d started digging down, inch by inch. This morning we’d traded our shovels and picks for awls and geological hammers and chipped down more carefully. And then I’d spotted the bruise-colored bone.
I watched now as my father chipped and chipped, and the base of the tooth grew larger still.
“Not a tooth,” he said, looking back at us.
“You’re sure?” I said, which was always a foolish thing to ask my father. He hated being doubted. A heavy disappointment sank through my body. I’d wanted another colossal tooth. I’d wanted the rex. Stupid maybe, when I had another dinosaur right here in front of me and was surrounded by a buried treasure trove of new fossils. But it still didn’t stop me wanting the rex more than all the rest.
“I believe,” Father was saying, “this is horn.”
“Horn?”
“See the base here? That’s not the jaw it’s connecting to, it’s the top of the skull. I can see the arch of the antorbital fenestra. There.”
“Do dinosaurs have horns, Professor?” Ned asked, wiping the back of his hand across his brow.
“None that have been discovered,” he said, a smile sweeping his face.
My excitement came flooding back, and I gave a hoot that echoed off the ravine. “The first horned dinosaur!”
“We’re the first,” Father agreed. “Now back to work.”
He had me work on the skull with him, while Ned kept on around what we’d guessed was the hip. Each time I uncovered bone, I felt another jolt. There it is.
We forgot our lunch. We kept working. The mosquitoes were in ecstasy because of all the rain. Even with bacon grease slathered over my face, hands, and wrists, and with my socks pulled over the bottoms of my pant legs, they came relentlessly. They loved it when you stayed in the same place; it gave them plenty of time to settle down to a nice leisurely suck, twenty or thirty of them draining your blood like that cow my father told me about. Couldn’t stop thinking of that blasted cow (even if it was made-up) and how its sides would start to pucker and flap as its blood drained away until it just folded up like a tent, bony legs all askew.