The Dinosaur Hunter (2 page)

I found three dead mice beside the refrigerator, gifts from Rage and Fury. I thanked them, let them out to go back to the barn, percolated some stout coffee, chowed down on some burnt toast well buttered, and then went outside, carrying my second cup of joe. After a rain, it makes for tricky walking because of the gumbo, our black, clay soil that gets hard as a brick when it's dry and slicker than a Hollywood lawyer when wet. Gumbo also has the strange quality of being as sticky as it's slick. Walk on it if you can without falling down and pretty soon you're picking up about a foot of the stuff glued to your boots. Try to drive on it and it builds up on your tires until your truck engine fries itself. Bottom line: It's nasty stuff.

To get up to the barn without busting my tail, I walked along the edge of the road where there was some grass. Along the way, I was joined by Soupy, the Square C's resident black-and-white cowdog. Soupy's real name is Superdog. Like most Fillmore County ranch dogs, he came from a long line of black-and-white canines, had more than a little border collie in him, and took no guff off any cow, yet was always gentle with humans. I respected Soupy and I guess he tolerated me. His true love, of course, was Jeanette, which I understood. She was mine, too.

Soupy and I found our boss lady standing outside the barn jotting down a note in the little notebook she always carried with her. I guess everything that had happened on the Square C during the entire year was in that notebook, every calf dropped, every well fixed, phone numbers of folks she was supposed to call (but probably hadn't), numbers on the cows to sell, number of hay bales off which fields, and so forth. She was bundled up in Bill's ancient canvas barn coat, a coat two sizes too big for her and covered with ranch badges of honor—rips from barb wire fences, tractor grease, and dried cow manure. She loved that old coat. Maybe it made her feel a little closer to her late husband, I don't know.

Jeanette tucked away her notebook and acknowledged my presence with a curt nod. I thought she looked a bit melancholy. She might have been thinking about Bill or maybe the price of beef, there was no way to tell and she surely wasn't about to cry on my shoulder. I stood beside her, had myself a sip of joe, and took a look around. The Square C was soaked but I reckoned if the sun came out, it might dry enough to drive on, a requirement if I was going to go out and finally catch that damn bull that had impregnated our little C-sectioned heifer.

Ray came out with his school backpack and handed Jeanette a mug of coffee. I could smell it and I knew he'd made it strong enough to float horseshoes, just the way his mom liked it. “Fixed you some eggs when you want 'em,” he said.

“You driving Bob?” Jeanette asked, referring to the old pickup named after the fellow who'd sold it to Bill a quarter century ago.

“Naw. I'd get stuck for sure. Mr. Thomason got his tractor out. Amelia just called. They're on their way.”

“See you,” Jeanette said as Ray carefully edged down the road, trying to keep his boots out of the mud. “See you,” Ray said over his shoulder. There were never wasted words on the Square C. To translate, what Jeanette and Ray had just said was: “I love you, I will always love you, and I would die for you in a heartbeat.” I said, “See you,” too, meaning the same to both of them.

The tractor arrived, driven by our neighbor Buddy Thomason, with his daughter Amelia sitting beside him. She was sort of Ray's girlfriend. I could tell because Ray blushed furiously anytime Amelia's name was mentioned. Jeanette and I waved at Buddy who touched his hat to us while Ray climbed up into the cab. Amelia turned her face toward him and gave him a big smile but Ray just looked straight ahead. I thought to myself that maybe I needed to give that boy some advice about women but then, it wasn't my place unless he came asking. Also, truth was I hadn't been all that successful with females myself.

After the tractor ground on down the road, Jeanette and I got to work. She headed inside the house and I went inside the barn to pull on some coveralls and finish the job I'd started the day before on her tractor. One of the lift cylinder seals on the loader boom had blown out. Luckily, I had some extra seals but it was still an oily mess requiring lots of pinched fingers and cussing. Throughout the day, I kept checking on the little heifer and her calf and they kept being fine. The sun blazed away all day, too, and by noon, the gumbo had turned hard again and everything was back to normal, if such a thing existed on the Square C.

After I got the tractor fixed, I started working on the case of the errant bull. I'd decided to take what we called the big truck, an ancient Ford, for my foray into the badlands to chase it down. Heavier than Bob, the big truck would provide extra traction in case there were still some wet spots out there. Before I got too far checking the Ford's fan belts, oil levels, and such, I heard somebody drive into the turnaround. When I stuck my head around the barn, I saw a pickup I didn't recognize. It had probably started out white that morning but the backsplash of red dog and gumbo from Ranchers Road had turned it mostly pinkish-gray. The young fellow who got out of it was wearing cargo pants, a multi-pocketed shirt, and hiking boots, all of which pegged him for a hunter, had it been hunting season. He was also wearing a hat I admired, one of those Indiana Jones-like fedoras with a hat band that had tiger stripes on it. I took right away that this was likely an interesting fellow.

“Howdy!” I called to him, real cowboy-like.

When he turned toward me, I saw he was handsome in a catalog model kind of way, blue eyes that were so blue they were kind of startling, with sandy hair peeking from under his hat. “Is this the Square C Ranch?” he asked.

My response was typical Fillmore County spare. “Yep.”

An expression of relief crossed his face. “I've been driving up and down this road all morning looking for you,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “you're here.”

That's when I saw Jeanette, still in her barn coat, coming out of the house. A glance at her face and the way she was walking told me she was not happy. She opened the yard gate and the young man doffed his hat to her, revealing a pony tail tied with a red rubber band. Jeanette stepped up to him and got right to the point. “The answer is no,” she said. Before our visitor could reply, she added, “You want to pick up fossils on my ranch and I don't have time to mess with you.”

Now, how she knew why that fellow was there, I don't know. Maybe it was instinctive. Anyway, he dug into one of his shirt pockets and produced a folded paper, unfolded it, and handed it to Jeanette. “You're Mrs. Coulter, right? I've been trying to call you for a week but the phone just rang and rang.”

I could have told him the reason for that. We didn't have an answering machine and most of the time during daylight hours everybody was outside working. In the evening, Jeanette sometimes simply chose not to answer the phone. It was just her way.

She reluctantly took the paper, looked it over, and said, “I remember this. Ray's homework from about six months ago. How'd you get it?” When I eased in closer to hear everything, Jeanette gave me a warning look, then filled me in. “For English class, Ray wrote a paper about some fossils his father found.”

“He included some photographs, too,” our visitor said.

Jeanette provided him with the Fillmore County stare, a look that would freeze a man on fire. “I know my son. He wouldn't send this to anyone without my permission. I'll ask you again. How did you get it?”

“Someone e-mailed it to me, an address I didn't recognize. I e-mailed back but got no answer. When I called you and couldn't get through, I decided to come visit. Mrs. Coulter, I'm Dr. Norman Pickford. I'm a paleontologist. The bones described in your son's paper may be very important. That's why I came all the way from Argentina to see them.”

Jeanette absorbed this information. “What were you doing in Argentina?”

“Hunting for dinosaurs. It's what I do.”

In an attempt to lighten things up a bit, I stuck out my paw. “Mike Wire,” I said. “I'm the hired hand.”

His grip was satisfactorily manly, even by Fillmore County standards. “Nice to meet you, Mike. I'm called Pick.”

“Pick,” I said, testing the name. “Sounds like a good name for a man who digs up fossils.”

He smiled tolerantly. “I don't dig. I like to say that's why God makes grad students. I just hunt and find. I'm very good at finding.” He shifted back to Jeanette. “Mrs. Coulter, those fossils your son wrote about might be important to science. If I could just look at them, I won't take more than ten minutes of your time, I promise.”

There was something about Pick that made me want to help him. I was also curious about those fossils. “What could it hurt?” I asked Jeanette.

Jeanette shot me a look, but I could tell she was wavering. I guess she was curious herself. She said, “All right, come on inside. I'll let you have a gander. And you can come along, too, Mike. That way I won't have to explain everything to you later.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Coulter,” Pick said but it was to Jeanette's back. She was already walking across the yard, her arms crossed, her head down, and I could tell she just wanted to get this over with.

We went inside the house, which was its usual mess. I was a little embarrassed for Jeanette when Pick walked in and looked around her dilapidated living room, furnished with an old sofa, a couple of overstuffed chairs with the stuffing peeking out of them in a couple of places, two mismatched end tables, and an old brass lamp with a tattered, dirty lampshade.

Jeanette led us into the kitchen and pointed at the coffee pot and then the kitchen table, which I guess would have been in fashion when Eisenhower was President. The chairs around the table didn't match. Likely, old Bill had picked them up alongside the road where they'd been pitched. “Mike, pour the man some coffee,” Jeanette said. To the paleontologist, she said, “Have a seat. I'll get the fossils.”

I did as I was told and silently handed the young scientist a mug of hot joe along with the sugar bowl and some pouches of fake cream Jeanette had carried out of a diner in Miles City. He spooned in a couple dollops of sugar and used all the ersatz cream. Even cut, Ray's coffee was a spine stiffener and when Pick took a sip, he kind of shuddered. I allowed myself a chuckle.

Jeanette returned with a battered old cardboard box with the misspelled word
FOSILS
hand-printed on its side. She placed it on the table and I moved to look over Pick's shoulder as he reached into the box to pick up a smooth, curiously shaped object that I thought looked like the end of a leg bone. I was disappointed when he said, “This is a sandstone concretion. Not a bone.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I have a PhD in paleontology and a master's degree in geology, Mike. I know bones and rocks.”

Pick rooted around some more in the box and brought out a quarter-sized fragment of yellow rock. “Bone,” he said. He plucked out three other such pieces, all about the same size, then put one against his tongue. “A field test,” he explained. “If it's sticky to the tongue, it's probably bone. These little pieces are what we call float, a generic term for indistinct bone fragments falling down a hill from an unknown fossil horizon. Your husband has a good eye to find them, Mrs. Coulter.”

“I'm a widow,” Jeanette replied. “What kind of dinosaur is it?”

“Too small to tell,” Pick said, then picked up another fragment about the size of a shot glass “This is the vertebra of a Champsosaur. Notice the hour-glass configuration along the dorsal edge of the centrum? That's the tell-tale clue. Not a dinosaur but a small crocodile-like reptile. This area was mostly floodplain and lake systems during the Cretaceous. Lots of swampy areas. Perfect for crocs.”

Jeanette arched an eyebrow. “Sometimes when it rains around here for a few days, it's still a swamp.”

Pick gave that some thought, or pretended to, then picked up a chunk of rounded rock about three inches long and two inches in diameter. “This is a portion of a Triceratops horn, likely one of two orbital horns that grew out of its skull above its eyes.”

“What's it worth?” Jeanette asked.

“I don't buy or sell fossils, Mrs. Coulter,” Pick said, “but I guess maybe twenty dollars at a rock show.”

“Is that all?”

“It's not in very good shape. I'm sorry.”

She nodded. “How about those bones you called float? Worth anything?”

“Some people make jewelry out of little pieces of dinosaur bone. Earrings, that kind of thing, but I'm against that.”

Jeanette narrowed her eyes, always a dangerous sign. “What are you for, Dr. Pickford?”

“Truth through science.”

This earned him a mirthless chuckle. “Does truth through science pay your bills?”

Pick thought that over, then said, “I don't need much, Mrs. Coulter. Give me a little food, water, and a place to look for bones and I'm happy.”

He took two more pieces of whatever from the box and separated them from the others. “These belonged to a theropod. Theropods were meat-eating dinosaurs.”

“They look like chicken bones,” I said.

Pick nodded. “We think theropods were distantly related to chickens, only usually a lot bigger and with more brain power. Tyrannosaurus rex is an example of a theropod. You're familiar with T. rex, I'm sure.”

“I saw
Jurassic Park,
” Jeanette volunteered. Her tone had gone dry. I figured she was about five minutes away from kicking me and our pony-tailed paleontologist out of her kitchen.

“Actually,” he said, “T. rex lived during the late Cretaceous, well after the Jurassic. They were one of the last dinosaurs that ever lived. The Triceratops was probably the source of much of its diet. Duckbills, too.” When he saw Jeanette's questioning look, he said, “Hadrosaurs, big dinosaurs with long, flat jaws that gave them a duck-like appearance. They were herbivores. Vegetarians.”