My pulse quickened. There was a hypnotic quality to the tale that increased second by second.
“When he woke, the sun was rising and he was walking, streaked with blood, a black tooth clutched in his fist. He called it the Black Beauty.”
The shock of recognition was so strong, I had to work hard to compose my face. The black tooth. My tooth. I listened, rapt, as Thomas said the tooth had magical powers, could be shot like an arrow. Its owner became a great hunter and warrior.
“They buried him with the tooth,” Thomas said, “and set his funeral platform apart from the others.”
My eyes flicked from Thomas to Withrow to Papa. Like me, he must’ve known this was the story of our tooth, but he looked remarkably relaxed—amused, even.
“Extraordinary tale,” he said pleasantly.
Withrow held up a hand. “I don’t expect you to believe all of it. The supernatural properties of the tooth, shooting like an arrow, all that. But I can’t help thinking that this fellow must’ve stumbled on a dinosaur fossil.”
“Without seeing the tooth itself,” Papa said bluffly, “it would be difficult to assess its true character. You’ve never seen this tooth yourself, I’m assuming?”
“I have not.”
“The Plains Indians seem to have yes yes a great respect for visions, but this man might have brought back nothing more than an interestingly shaped stone.”
“There are bones everywhere here,” said Thomas placidly. “When I was young, I saw many. My people said they were the bones of sky and water monsters.”
“Let’s just say our boy was on one of their vision quests, and had an encounter with a dinosaur fossil,” Withrow said, leaning forward. “That seems plausible to me. Are you aware, Professor, of any creature that has teeth that size? It must have been a real monster!”
“We’re only just starting to see the full variety of these creatures, Mr. Withrow. Certainly I know of no creature with black bones!”
“Well, I was wondering if they might have been colored by the rock around it. Is that possible?”
It was completely possible, and my father and I both knew it.
“It’s been known to happen,” my father said. Maybe his professor’s heart couldn’t bear an outright lie.
“Maybe coal? I see the layers in the buttes all round here. Or shale? Limestone?”
Withrow was definitely more knowledgeable than he’d let on earlier. He watched my father intently.
“Possibly,” Papa said.
“What do you think, Professor? An intriguing lead?”
“Are you saying your friend Thomas here knows where this tooth might have come from?”
I watched Withrow tensely and felt myself sag when he shook his head regretfully.
“No. No, we don’t know that. But we’re willing to work our hardest, and under your direction. With the understanding that if we found it, you’d be credited with the discovery. You’d get to name it, and study it—”
“But the bones would be yours.”
“And the fame and finder’s fee yours.”
It didn’t sound like such a bad bargain to me, but I knew Papa would never be parted from his fossils. He hoarded them in the locked basement of the university and was very choosy about whom he entrusted with the key.
“I wish you luck, Mr. Withrow. Alas, we already have enough work under way here to keep us busy all season. I ask only that you respect our quarries. You’ll find the area quite crowded already. Professor Bolt from Philadelphia is also digging here.”
Withrow’s eyebrows lifted. “Is he?”
I was surprised at the pang I felt. I wished Papa hadn’t told him that. Bolt might very well take Withrow up on his offer to get more prospectors and . . . have a better chance of finding their rex. For the first time I realized how much I wanted it too. Why should it belong to Samuel and his father any more than to me and mine? We each had a tooth—if that was any claim at all. I wished Samuel the best, but I didn’t want him to have an advantage over me.
“Yes. Just downriver. You should go talk to him. Perhaps he’d be more amenable to your proposal.”
“Maybe so,” he said.
“I doubt you’ll find him any more receptive,” I said abruptly, and Papa gave me a curious look. “These scientists are very high-minded.”
“Ha. Well, thank you for your time, Professor. Miss Cartland. Our paths may cross again in the badlands.”
14.
WORDPLAY
HE CAME TO US, TOO,” I SAID, WHEN SHE started telling me about her visit from Ethan Withrow.
“He said he would. Are you going to work with him?”
I shook my head and wondered if she looked relieved. “My father got all pigheaded about it.”
“Did he tell you the legend of the Black Beauty?”
“Incredible, isn’t it? Did you tell him you have the tooth?”
“Of course not!”
I grinned. “Have you noticed yourself having any strange powers yet?”
“I do feel invincible,” she admitted with a smile.
“You always were,” I said, and meant it. To me there was something indestructible about her, like deep down there was this core of confidence and conviction that nothing could harm. “I like the idea of the tooth shooting like an arrow.”
“I’ll have to try it,” she said. “Maybe on one of the singing Yalies.”
As usual I’d found her out prospecting with her little team, and she’d broken away to join me in a large rectangular opening at the base of the butte. The sides and ceiling were so square it looked like it had been chiseled out on purpose, a small stage for the dinosaurs to put on plays for one another. We had to keep our voices low because it was quite echoey inside.
“The Plains Indians,” she said, “they must have come across so many fossils, weathered out, over the centuries. I wonder if that’s what gave them the idea for their giants and monsters. They had proof right at their feet.”
“That’s what Withrow thinks. I didn’t think it was a bad idea, working with him. We could’ve used the help, and the money. He even offered to advance us some to keep us in the field longer. That guide of his, Thomas, he might’ve been able to talk to the local Sioux. To get some information about where the tooth came from.”
“That might not have gone well.”
“Maybe not. I had a run in with a Sioux boy.” I’d been waiting to tell her about it for days.
“Were you frightened?” she said, putting her hand on my arm.
I gave a manly shrug. “No. Well, a bit. He had a bow and a knife.”
“I would’ve been petrified,” she said, then added, almost disappointed, “We haven’t seen anyone yet. Our scouts say they’ve seen campfire smoke from the prairie, which means a village. Although . . .” She looked off, remembering. “I was almost certain I saw a rider on horseback when we were at those funeral platforms.”
“I don’t think they’d come anywhere near you, with half the army in tow.”
Her gaze was still thoughtful. “I feel even guiltier about taking the tooth, now I know how important it was to the man.”
“Sounds like they thought it was a mixed blessing by the end.”
“But they still buried it with him.”
“Maybe to get rid of it. Maybe they thought it was cursed.”
All that was a myth, but I envied her having held it. “Now there’s someone else looking.”
“Could you really have given it away, your rex?” she asked me.
I breathed out. “That would’ve been hard, for sure. Finding it would’ve been the main thing. That moment. That would be a very big, shiny moment. And getting to name it.”
“After you, of course!”
“Of course! I sure don’t want anyone else to name it.”
“It doesn’t seem like Withrow’s very experienced,” she said, “and he has far fewer people than us.”
“But not us,” I reminded her.
“Would you rat
her he found it, or my father?” she asked.
“I’d rather we found it. You and me.” I kissed her.
After a moment she pulled away suddenly. “What would we call it?”
“Something magnificent.” I thought for a moment. “Tyrannosaurus rex! How’s that?”
“Tyrant lizard king. Not bad. And what would you call me?”
I laughed. “For you . . . how about . . . Magevofoterus tigris?”
She frowned, then smiled. “Witch-eyed tiger?”
“I think so.”
“I’m not sure about your Latin and Greek, but I like it.”
“Me now.”
She thought, then said, “Callidosaurus vulpes.”
“I get the last part, but not the first.”
“From callidus. Cunning. Shrewd.”
“Oh, so I’m a clever fox lizard.”
“Exactly.”
“We could be fossil-hunting partners, you and me. Find the Black Beauty and sell it to Mr. Barnum ourselves.”
She laughed. She didn’t realize how serious I was.
“Why don’t we just run away and join the circus?” she said.
“I will if you will.” But I felt a little hurt by her lighthearted dismissal.
“I should get back,” she said with a sigh.
I kicked at some rocks. “I hate saying good-bye to you. I never know what to say.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I thought I was cunning and shrewd.”
“Not about this. Just say good-bye.”
In the soft dirt I drew a grid, four columns, four rows, like the game she’d taught me on the train. I wrote a letter in each space. I paid attention to the rules and made sure all the right letters touched.
My pulse kicked hard. I felt like the sky had cracked open and I was naked to the sun and flying, as if on horseback, over the prairie. Fast and warm and scared.
She stared severely at the letters. “It’s too easy.”
I frowned, not understanding what she meant. “I knew that night,” I said, “when we separated our fathers. I knew it would happen. I love you.”
The three words were like a thunderclap in my head. I wanted to say them again and again.
Rachel looked down at her hands. Carefully she said, “Samuel, I am very fond of you. . . .”
“Don’t,” I said, wincing. “Please, just don’t. I’d rather hear nothing.”
Stupid. I’d supposed my love was so huge it would engulf her, and she couldn’t help but feel the same about me. But I was an idiot.
“Let me ask you,” she began. “How many other girls have you said this to?”
Her look demanded truthfulness. “One. All right, two—but I didn’t mean it.”
“So why should I think you mean it now?”
I struggled to untwist my thoughts. “I just thought I loved them. . . . It was childish. Not like this, how I feel about you.”
And I meant it: It felt very different now, saying the words, a sick quaking in my stomach.
“I’m dubious,” she said,
“You don’t believe me?”
Brow creased, her eyes chiseling into me. “It’s too soon. You don’t know me well enough.”
“I know you!” I said.
“Is everything all right, Miss Cartland?” called a voice—Daniel Simpson’s, I thought.
I moved myself deeper into the niche. I didn’t think we’d been heard. They were just checking on her.
“Coming!” Rachel called back. She stood and dusted off her skirt, pushed her hair back into place. And then she gave my hand a quick squeeze and walked away from me.
On the ride back to camp, my mind swarmed with thoughts.
He couldn’t mean it. It was too much, too fast. How could anyone love so quickly? He was hotheaded, rash with everything, especially his feelings. I liked his heat, I did—but I didn’t trust it.
Certainly I was attracted to him, much more than I’d ever imagined being attracted to anyone. What he’d said about me being a brilliant paleontologist—and how we could prospect together—that was very appealing. He’d said it so naturally, so easily, as though he didn’t know how incredibly rare his opinions were. I liked that very much. But love? I wasn’t even sure I knew what love would feel like.
Anything I’d known for sure came slowly—like drawing a fossil in painstaking detail. You got to know every curve and bump and notch. It took time. I had to look a great deal and think a great deal. They were momentous things, those three words “I love you,” and I imagined they could only be uttered with total certainty, and to one person only.
Samuel was all impulse. But his face when he’d told me—so open, like a child’s. And then the way it collapsed when I told him I was fond of him. But what else could I say? Should I have lied? I wouldn’t. That wouldn’t have been fair, not to him, and not to me.
I’d let him get the wrong impression, with all the kissing and touching. Those things would have heralded an engagement back east. But out here I’d been careless, and selfish, too. I liked being kissed and touched. I liked his eyes on me and all his words—even the ridiculous ones, though I suspect he’d told them to his other sweethearts. Sometimes I worried my own good sense might be swept away entirely, unless I anchored myself.
So careless! I would have to be smarter. If we were found out, Papa would certainly ship me back home. And I would have thrown away the thing I’d fought so hard for.
No one had ever told me they loved me. Not that I remembered anyhow. It was possible, I supposed, that my mother had whispered it to my newborn head. But I doubted it. She wasn’t even able to nurse me; Father had said a wet nurse had to be brought in. My mother had always been weak, and my birth had only made her weaker. It was hard to imagine she’d had the energy to spare loving thoughts for me.
My father had certainly never said it to me. That was not his way. Then again, I wasn’t sure I’d heard any father say it to his son. Honestly, they were not words you heard spoken very often, not in public anyway. They were big words. I saw them rising from the horizon like the pillars and arches of an ancient civilization.
I’d wanted to hear her say them. I imagined how her eyes would look. How her lips would move. How her breath would feel against my face.
Riding home at the end of the day, our last conversation echoed in my head, made me more lonesome and desperate. Why hadn’t she said it back? There were not so many possibilities. The likeliest was that she simply didn’t love me. But why not? What had I done or not done? Said or not said?
As a boy, when there was a specimen I wanted, I searched and searched harder until I found it. I’d never been happy until all the spaces in my collection box were filled.
I shouldn’t have told her I loved her. That was too much. Should’ve kept my mouth shut. Maybe I’d wrecked things, and she thought I was foolish now. Maybe I’d scared her away.
I craved those three words more than anything.
15.
THE NAMING OF SPECIES
AT FIRST LIGHT WE WERE UP AND LOADING the crates onto the wagon.
Over the past five days we’d finished quarrying out the monoclonius and the mosasaur. Father had us working such long hours, I hadn’t seen Rachel for nearly a week.
Five days, my hands carefully prizing bones from million-year-old rock. But my mind on Rachel’s mouth. Or the small mole on her neck. Or the light beaming out from her eyes. Thoughts of her punctuated every tap of my awl and hammer, like the spaces between heartbeats. That bit of bone I’d quarried out, that was for Rachel, and the next bit too. Inside my head I was narrating my entire life for her, making lists of things I wanted to ask her, things I wanted to tell her. And always thinking ahead to the moment I’d next see her. That moment when, finally, I’d hear her say she loved me.
The night before, we’d packed the bulky bones in buffalo grass for the journey back to Philadelphia. I’d already helped Father label them and make diagrams of how they were found, so we’d
have an easier time reassembling them when we got home.
As Hitch harnessed the team, Father gave Ned the note to be telegraphed to the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.
“Can you read his handwriting?” I asked Ned.
“The professor’s gone over it with me enough times.”
“Our finds should appear in their next issue,” Father said jovially, “before we’re even home! This is how we do it, gentlemen. We may be outnumbered, but we work faster.”
He looked grave, though, as he counted out money to Ned. After the cost of freight, the sizeable telegram, and another month of supplies and food, we’d be lucky to make it through the summer. And get ourselves home at the end of it. If we sold the team for a decent price, we’d be all right. Still, made me think again about Withrow and his offer.
Father winked at me. “We may have to play some more billiards in Crowe, eh?”
Which did nothing to ease my mind. He still thought I’d won all that money. Another thing he didn’t know: I’d held back some of what Mrs. Cummins had returned to me. Partly I didn’t think it was safe for my father to have it all. He might lose it or pack fossils with it or kindle a fire with it. Partly I just wanted to have some money of my own. All my life I’d been dependent on him, and it made me feel good to be more self-reliant.
After a hasty breakfast, Hitch and Ned loaded the last few items onto the wagon.
“I’ve left my revolver in your bedroll,” Ned told me quietly. “I know your pa doesn’t approve. Just between you and me, all right?”
“Thanks,” I said.
“See you tomorrow.”
I felt a bit nervous watching the wagon disappear. I was worried about their safety and also our own. I thought of the Sioux boy. I thought of wavery lines of smoke rising beyond the badlands. Yes, we were only an hour away from Cartland’s cavalry, but still, our camp had just been cut in half.
In the last light of day, a group of soldiers arrived with a bag of mail from Crowe. To my surprise there was a letter for me from Aunt Berton. It was a single sheet of creamy paper, on which she urged me to return home and expressed her concern for my reputation as a lady, spending so much time among soldiers and savages and dead things. I laughed aloud and was about to read it to Papa, but he was engrossed in his own letter.
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