Pa, the Bad Boy and a Band of Cowboys Go in Search of a Live
Dinosaurus--The Expedition is Captured by a Gang of Train Robbers and Pa
is Held for Ransom.
When I saw Pa clinging to the saddle, which had got loose from the horse
that he was riding when he lassoed the black steer around the belly,
and the steer was running away, dragging Pa and the saddle across the
plains, I thought I never would see him alive again. But the cowboys
said they would bring his remains back all right. When they rode away to
capture the steer and release pa, I stopped crying and laid down under
the chuck wagon with the dogs, to think over what I would do, alone in
the world, and I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew
the dogs barked and woke me up, and I looked off to the south and the
cowboys were coming back with pa's remains on a buckboard.
I went up to the wagon to see if Pa looked natural, and he raised up,
like a corpse coming to, and said: “Hennery, did you notice how I roped
the black steer?” and I said: “Yes, pa, I saw the whole business, and
saw you start south, chasing the steer, armed only with a saddle, and
what is the news from Texas?”
Pa said: “Look-a-here, I don't want to hear any funny business. I
delivered the goods all right, and if the cinch of the saddle had held
out faithful to the end, I would have tied the steer in record time, but
man proposes and the rest you have to leave to luck. I was out of luck,
that is all, but the ride I had across the prairie has given me some
ideas about flying machines that will be worked into our show next
year.”
Pa got up off the buckboard and shook himself, and he was just as well
and hearty as ever, and the cowboys got around him, and told him he
was a wonder, and that Buffalo Bill couldn't hold a candle to him as an
all-around rough rider and cowboy combined. So pa hired about a dozen
of the cowboys to go with our show, and then we went into camp for the
night, and the cowboys told of a place about 20 miles away, where some
scientists had a camp, where they were excavating to dig out petrified
bone of animals supposed to be extinct, like the dinosaurus and the
hoday, and Pa wanted to go there and see about it, and the next day we
took half a dozen of the cowboys Pa had hired, and we rode to the camp.
Gee, but I never believed that such animals ever did exist in this
country, but the scientists had one animal picture that showed the
dinosaurus as he existed when alive, an animal over 70 feet long, that
would weigh as much as a dozen of our largest elephants, with a neck as
long as 15 giraffes, and then they showed us bones of these animals that
they dug out and put together, and the completed mess of bones showed
that the dinosaurus could eat out of a six-story window, and pa's
circus instinct told him that if he could find such an animal alive, and
capture it for the show, our fortunes would be made.
We stayed there all night, and Pa asked questions about the probability
of there being such animals alive at this day, and the scientists
promptly told Pa these animals only existed ages and ages ago, when the
country was covered with water and was a part of the ocean, and that the
animals lived on the high places, but when the water receded, and the
ocean became a desert, the dinosaurus died of a broken heart, and all we
had to show for it was these petrified bones.
Pa ought to have believed the scientists, 'cause they know all about
their business, but after the scientists had gone to bed the cowboys
began to string pa. They told him that about a hundred miles to the
north, in a valley in the mountains, the dinosaurus still existed,
alive, and that no man dare go there. One cowboy said he was herding
a bunch of cattle in a valley up there once, and the bunch got into
a drove of dinosauruses, and the first thing he knew a big dinosaurus
reached out his neck and picked up a steer, raised it in the air
about 80 feet, as easy as a derrick would pick up a dog house, and the
dinosaurus swallowed the steer whole, and the other dinosauruses each
swallowed a steer. The cowboy said before he knew it his whole bunch of
steers was swallowed whole, and they would have swallowed him and his
horse if he hadn't skinned out on a gallop. He said he could hear the
dinosauruses for miles, making a noise like distant thunder, whether
from eating the steers, giving them a pain, or whether bidding defiance
to him and his horse, he never could make out but he said nothing but
money could ever induce him to go into that valley again.
[Illustration: A Boy Dinosaurus Reached Out His Neck and Picked Up a
Steer.]
Pa asked the other cowboys if they had ever been to that dinosaurus
valley, and they winked at each other and said they had heard of it,
but there was not money enough to hire them to go there, 'cause they had
heard that a man's life was not safe a minute. Bill, who had told the
story, was the only man who had ever been there, and the only man living
that had seen a live dinosaurus.
Then we turned in, and Pa never slept a wink all night, thinking of the
rare animals, or insects, or reptiles, or whatever they are, that he
expected to land for the show. He whispered to me in the night and
said: “Hennery, I am on the trail of the dinosaurus, and while I am not
prepared to capture one alive, at this time, I am going to that valley
and see the animals alive, and make plans for their capture, and report
to the management of the show. What do you think about it?”
I told Pa that I thought that cowboy, Bill, was the worst liar that we
had ever run up against, and I knew by studying geography in school
that the dinosaurus was extinct, and had been for thousands of years. Pa
said: “So they say the buffalo is extinct, but you can find 'em, if you
have got the money. Lots of thing are extinct, till some brave explorer
penetrates the fastnesses and finds them. The mastodon is extinct,
according to the scientists, but they are alive in Alaska. The north
pole is extinct, but some dub in a balloon will find it all right. I
tell you, I am going to see a live dinosaurus, or bust. You hear me?”
and Pa heard them cooking breakfast, and we got up.
Before noon Pa had organized a pack train and hired three cowboys, and
got some diagrams and pictures of dinosauruses from the scientists, and
we started north on the biggest fool expedition that ever was, but Pa
was as earnest and excited as Peary planning a north pole expedition,
and as busy as a boy killing snakes. After the cowboys and the
scientists had tried to get Pa to make his will before he went, and got
the addresses where Pa wanted our remains sent to in case of our being
found dried up on the prairie, and our bones polished by wolves, we were
on the move, and Pa was so happy you would think he had already found a
live dinosaurus, and had him in a cage.
For four days we rode along up and down foothills, and divides, and
small mountains, and all the time Pa was telling the boys how, after
we had located our dinosauruses, we would go back east and organize an
expedition with derricks and cages as big as a house, and come back and
drive the animals in. And when we got them with the show people we would
run trains hundreds of miles to see the rarest animals any show ever
exhibited to a discriminating public, and we could charge five dollars
for tickets, and people would mob each other to get up to the ticket
wagon. Then the boys would wink at each other, and tap their foreheads
with their fingers, and look at Pa as though they expected he would
break out violently insane any minute.
Finally we got up on a high ridge, and a beautiful, fertile valley
was unfolded to our view, and Bill, the cowboy who had had his herd of
steers eaten by the dinosaurus, said that was the place, and he began to
shiver like he had the ague. He said he wouldn't go any farther without
another hundred dollars, and Pa asked the other cowboys if they were
afraid, too, and they said they were a little scared, but for another
hundred dollars they would forget it, forget their families, and go down
into the death valley.
Pa paid them the money, and we went down into the valley, and rode
along, expecting to jump a flock of dinosauruses any minute, but the
valley was as still as death, and Pa said to Bill: “Why don't you bring
on your dinosauruses,” and Bill said he guessed by the time we got up
to the far end of the valley we would see something that would make us
stand without hitching.
We went on towards where the valley came to a point where there seemed
to be a hole in the side of the mountain, when all of a sudden four or
five gun shots were heard, and four of our horses dropped dead in their
tracks, and about a dozen men come out of the hole in the wall and told
us to hold up our hands, and when we did so they took our guns away and
told us to come in out of the wet.
[Illustration: We Were Captured by the Curry's Gang.]
We went into a cave and found that we had been captured by Curry's gang
of train robbers, who made their headquarters in the hole in the wall.
The leader searched Pa and took all his money, and told us to make
ourselves at home. Pa protested, and said he was an old showman who had
come to the valley looking for the supposed-to-be-extinct dinosaurus,
to capture one for the show, and the leader of the gang said he was the
only dinosaurus there was, but he hadn't been captured. Then the leader
slapped our cowboys on the shoulders and told them they had done a good
job to bring into camp such a rich old codger as Pa was, and then we
found that the cowboys belonged to Curry's gang, and had roped Pa in in
order to get a ransom.
The leader asked Pa about how much he thought his friends at the east
could raise to get him out, and when Pa found he was in the hands of
bandits, and that the dinosaurus mine was salted, and he had been made
a fool of, he said to me: “Hennery, now, honest, between man and man,
wouldn't this skin you?”
I began to cry and said: “Pa, both of us are skun. How are we going to
get out of this?” and Pa said: “Watch me.”