The Dinosaur Hunter

by Homer Hickam

  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:

  No cow seen on this grid. 14 cow excrement documented. Especially large and smelly. See GPS chart.

  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:

  1 Human excrement documented. Especially large and smelly. See GPS chart or look in my pants.

  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?”

  “There are no bears out here but there are cows. You ever kill one?”

  Philip closed his eyes while a wave of pain shuddered through him. “I’m really sick.”

  I didn’t care how sick he was. “Have you ever shot a cow out here?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “You’re telling me you never shot a cow, or cows, out here and left a card behind calling yourself the Green Monkey Wrench Gang?”

  “Man, this has to be a bad dream,” Philip said, then curled up into a ball.

  “Brian, how about you? You shoot any cows?” Unhappily, Brian was spreadeagled on the ground, still unconscious. “Brian?”

  “Mike, for God’s sake, leave them alone!” Laura admonished. “What are you talking about, anyway?”

  “I’m suspicious of these guys. Somebody’s been killing cows out here. Shooting them, then cutting their throats. They were already under suspicion when we let them go.” I told her about the meeting in town where they’d shown up. “So why are they still here?”

  “Well, they’re not up for interrogation in their condition,” she said, then shooed me away.

  I went back to work at the Trike site where I was surprised to discover that Pick and Tanya had shown up. “This is going to be one of the most complete Triceratops specimens every recovered,” Pick gushed. Then he said, “Mike, a word, if you don’t mind.”

  Pick and I went down the hill. “I’ve found something,” he said.

  I asked, “The baby T. rex?”

  This astonished him. “How would you know that?”

  “Because that’s why you’re here. At least, that’s what you told Jeanette the first time we met you.”

  He pondered that, then said, “There’s a problem. Maybe a big problem.”

  I waited but he just stood there, staring at me. Finally, I asked, “OK, Pick. What’s the problem?”

  “Is Blackie Butte on the BLM or your ranch?”

  “I believe part of the north side of Blackie is on BLM,” I said.

  “But the fence goes around it,” Pick said.

  I tried to remember something Bill Coulter had told me once about that fence. “The BLM built the fence,” I said, the memory coming back. “I think they went around it because it was easier that way.”

  “How much of the north side do you think is on the BLM?”

  “Most of it, I think, but I’m really not sure. You’ll have to ask Jeanette. Believe me, she knows exactly where her property line is.”

  “We found something interesting on the south side of Blackie.”

  “Then you’ll most definitely need to talk to her,” I said, adding, “Maybe I ought to go take a look at what you’ve found.”

  He considered that, then said, “OK, but not now. I need to get in the shade for a while.” This comment allowed me to bring up the Green Planet guys. “Where are they?” he asked.

  “At camp, nearly but not quite dead of heat exhaustion when I saw them last.”

  “How did they get here?”

  “By boat across the lake.”

  “What did they have with them?”

  “Backpacks and two liter-sized bottles of water apiece.”

  “In this heat? Are
they idiots?”

  “Why, yes, Pick. I believe they are.”

  “I’d better go see them,” he said and stalked off.

  When he got to the end of the hill, he hesitated and just stood there, looking. I called Ray down from the Trike. “Go show Pick how to get to camp,” I told him.

  “Done,” Ray said and was on his way.

  This left me and Tanya alone, which was fine by me. I clambered up to the Trike and helped her plaster the femur we’d uncovered. We worked quietly for an hour and then I said, “Pick told me what he found on Blackie Butte.”

  “Yes? It’s very exciting, don’t you think? We never expected there to be so many.”

  Her response was confusing. So many what? Baby T. rexes? We worked a little longer. When I came across a metatarsal—a foot bone—Tanya said we should wrap it in paper towels and aluminum foil. This we did and then I asked, “What do you think of the stuff on Blackie Butte?”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s amazing. But I think it will be hard for us to get everything out during the summer. Pick told you that we need more people, yes?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “But not how many.”

  “Well, not so many. Maybe just a few. And maybe some machinery. You know, like that thing you used the other day?”

  “The tractor? Yes, I can see how it might be useful to move dirt.”

  “As long as one is careful. These bones are very fragile. And, of course, there are the possibility of eggs.”

  “Pick didn’t mention anything about eggs.”

  She didn’t look surprised. She said, “Maybe it is because the eggs are not the most important thing. It is the story, all of it put together, of how these creatures lived. And, in this case, how they died, too. I imagine Pick is having to deal with that as well.”

  I kept probing. “Has there ever been anything like this found?”

  My question amused her in a quiet way. “No, Mike, this is a wonder. How could you imagine otherwise?”

  “I’m not a paleontologist,” I reminded her, as if she needed reminding.

  She reached out and took my hand. This was startling but also very nice. “Mike, you are a very funny and nice man. I like you.”