TED'S FOSSIL DINOSAUR
An hour later two famished and exhausted boys were peering at the huge
bon-fire by which Norris and Long Lester had decided to camp till dawn.
"Wal, durn yer hide, I'm that glad to see you I've a notion to wallop
you," the old guide welcomed them. "But I'm not a-goin' to ask you a
single word till you've et," and he proceeded to build up a brighter
fire. "Peel off them duds, and roll up here in our blankets whilst we dry
things for you."
The bedraggled boys allowed Norris to help them out of their heavy,
water-soaked clothing, for their hike down the mountainside in the night
wind had fairly stiffened their joints. First Long Lester administered a
quart apiece of scalding tea, then insisted that, fagged as they were,
they bathe their feet. "A camper is as good as his feet," and Pedro had
yet to be located.
It was decided that, as they were all of them worn out, and Pedro,
wherever he was, would likely sleep himself when night came, they would
wait till dawn to search for him and the Mexicans. While it was a
question as to whether they were still in the cave, it seemed best to
search there first.
At the moment of the earthquake, Pedro had been crawling through a narrow
passageway, bed of some former watercourse, whose walls dripped black in
the glow of his dying torch. Then came a crash before him!--A chunk of
rock had fallen from the roof into the passageway. When the alarming
swaying motion and the thunder of the bowlder's fall had subsided, and he
had relighted the torch, (which had been extinguished), he found his
forward progress effectually blocked. Behind were the Mexicans,--Sanchez
possibly still plugging the opening into the passageway. He was a
prisoner! He was entombed!
At first, utter panic possessed him. In like situation, those of weak,
nervous timbre have been known to go insane. Then he got a grip on
himself and reasoned that Norris and the rest would not leave him to his
fate. They would never give him up till they had searched the cave
thoroughly, and had he not left his bandanna at one turn, his
handkerchief at another, and the end of a freshly charred torch at a
third? Besides, (he smiled grimly), if his own party did not find him,
the Mexicans might. Or if they captured the Mexicans, they would wring
from them a confession of his near whereabouts. (This time he laughed
outright at thought of Sanchez the Stout still dangling his helpless legs
when the Ranger found him. The sound echoed and reechoed weirdly.)
This experience had done much for Pedro's untried courage. For after all,
is it not the unknown that terrifies us rather than the actual calamity
to be faced? Another thing that helped the Spanish boy to be reasonably
philosophical,--probably the biggest factor, after all,--was Nature's
medicine, his extreme physical fatigue. Thrusting his hat through a
narrow crevice so that it would be seen and recognized by any one coming
that way, he stretched himself out flat on his back on a bit of smooth,
dry rock, thriftily extinguished the remaining bit of torch, and was
instantly asleep.
He awoke, he knew not how much later,--but he felt refreshed,--to hear
the sound of voices echoing and reechoing faintly, far down the
passageway. Fumbling frantically for a match, he yelled for help with all
the power of his trained voice. (And the sound echoed back and forth.) At
first Norris and the boys could not tell from which direction it came.
Then Long Lester, who was in advance, saw the hat, and it but remained to
remove the bowlder.
Now it was that they had use for their ingenuity, for their combined
efforts did not suffice to budge the fallen rock. The cavern in which
Pedro had become immured was off a lateral passageway leading,--if he had
taken the turn to the right instead of the one to the left,--to the very
cave mouth by which the rescue party had reentered; for Long Lester had
found, not far from the waterway through which the two boys had
come,--but on a higher level,--some scratches on the rocks and a heel
print in the scanty soil that told the old mountaineer as plain as words
that that was the way Radcliffe had come. Every heel in the party was
different, one having Hungarian hob-nails set in a semi-circle, another a
solid design in the same nails, a third the larger hobs, a fourth none.
He knew the differences in size and the ones that were worn deeper on the
inside of the foot. To him a footprint was as good as a signature, and
better, for like an Indian, a "hill billy" can often read how fast you
were going from a group of two or three footprints, how tired you were,
and much besides. This knowledge had served them in good stead. He now
hurried back to the cave mouth with Ace, found a down log that would
serve as a lever, and they pried away the bowlder that kept Pedro a
prisoner.
Sign of the Mexicans they could not find, save that Sanchez had been
removed from the crevice of the stalactites, (at least he was no longer
there), but whether he had had to fast or not, they could not tell. The
Mexicans evidently knew the cave and they had been near the southern end
of it. Though Long Lester could find no trace of their footprints at
either of the exits they knew, there were doubtless others, and it seemed
the wisest course now to look for them outside. For the boys were still
unwilling to give up the chase.
Reporting back to Radcliffe, they learned, to their amazement, that the
pack burros the Mexicans had left near the northern cave mouth had
disappeared, but where, they could not tell from any sign left on the
charred ground outside.
The Ranger would start a search for them in the DeHaviland, once the fire
was under better control. The Forest Service finds its air service as
useful in keeping track of law breakers as of fires. It would be an
extraordinary thing if the careless camper should escape detection, for
the air men can spy them out as easily as anything. But the fire still
ate angrily through the timber, and would spread in all directions if
left to itself. Fire fighting is sometimes a matter of weeks.
It was a dry summer, and all up and down the Sierras, the Rangers were
kept busy fighting the fires that would break out from one cause or
another. The Service 'planes were all busy.
The five campers were back at fire-fighting headquarters,--and Norris
too,--when Ace had an idea. He and Ted would go in search of the Mexicans
in his little Spanish 'plane. Would Radcliffe let them off the
fire-fighting? He would, though he could not give official sanction to
their plan. It was enough. The two boys were off before he could change
his mind,--to Norris's slight uneasiness and Pedro's envy. (But Pedro was
subject to altitude sickness.)
Sometime, Norris had promised Ted, they would go back into the cave and
look for his fossil. But that could wait.
All that afternoon the two boys curveted over the surrounding
scenery,--careful to keep their distance from the whirlwind of
fire-heated air, for they were flying low. The most minute search failed
to reveal the fire setters, but Ace only set his jaw the more
determinedly.
They returned to sleep twelve hours at a stretch. Aviation is the best
cure yet for insomnia, and neither Ace nor Ted had ever been troubled
with that malady. The next day they flew farther, carrying with them an
emergency camp kit. They landed about every two hours, rested awhile, and
finally went into camp about four in the afternoon, intending to take a
look in the night to see if the fugitives would betray themselves by a
bon-fire. They camped in a meadow where they had seen something like
smoke arising. This proved to be steam from a hot spring, and they
thought with longing how fine their chilled bones would feel in a good
hot bath. But the spring water came too hot. (If they had had eggs, they
could have cooked them in it.)
Then it occurred to them to dig a little trench, line it with stones, and
carry the spring water by the folding canvas pailful to fill it. It would
quickly cool to the right temperature. The scheme worked wonderfully.
The water had a strong mineral taste, not altogether agreeable, but its
effect on aching bones was wonderful. A flint arrowhead buried in the
soil they excavated told its tale of Indians, who must have valued the
spring and fought for its possession against covetous tribes.
"What makes these hot springs, anyway?" asked Ted. "Have you had that yet
in your geology?"
"Yes, but you'll understand better when Norris tells us the story he's
promised about the formation of the earth. I'm no professor." And he
turned a former laugh on Ted. "Tell you what, Old Top, once we get these
fire bugs located for our Uncle Sammy, what say we fly up and have a look
at Lassen volcano before I send the 'plane back?"
"Bully! I'd like to fly over a glacier, too, and see what it looks like.
Can you go that high?"
"I--guess so. Never tried it! We will, though!"
"Gee! Wouldn't this be a great way to teach geography--from an aeroplane!"
"Sure would!--Great way to go camping, too."
"'S right, only--it would be if there was just the two of us," sighed
Ted ungrammatically. "Could you carry enough grub?"
"We could get fresh supplies every few days, from some ranch."
The next day they went back for the rest of the party and showed them
Ted's fossil, entering the cave the way Radcliffe had left it. Norris had
spent one summer with fossil hunters in the dry gullies of the Southern
end of California, he told them, where through scorching days and thirsty
nights they had searched for any bit of bone that might lie amid the
shale or imbedded in strata the edges of which might be seen on the face
of a sun-baked bluff. The summer before, a group of geology men from a
rival University had actually camped within a hundred yards of what was
later discovered to be a deposit of rare fossils. It was therefore with
heightened satisfaction that their reconnaissance had resulted in the
discovery and excavation, bone by bone, of the complete skeleton of
several most interesting prehistoric monsters that had lain all these
ages embedded in the shale.
One bone four feet long, he told them, and weighing several hundred
pounds, had been found in fragments in the shale, but it had been fitted
together again, done up in plaster bandages and braced with splints,
quite as a surgeon treats a broken leg. Another, found embedded in solid
rock, had to be shipped in the rock, each piece being numbered as it was
removed from the cliff as an aid to fitting it together again. Then with
hammer and chisel the delicate feat of cutting away the rock and leaving
the bone exposed was slowly and painstakingly accomplished. Thus have the
bones buried before ever man trod the earth been made to tell their
story. Often it takes more than a single specimen to reconstruct for the
scientist the whole of the creature, but relics of fully thirty
Triceratops have been discovered in different parts of the world, and
where one skull has a broken nose, another shows it intact, and so on
through its entire anatomy.
Its habits may in part be reasoned out, as for instance, if its hind legs
are disproportionately long, it likely walked erect at least sometimes.
"That, as it happens, was not the case with Triceratops," he added.
"There was only a slight difference between his fore and hind legs.
Triceratops had teeth made for browsing, not for rending flesh; his
single claw, round and blunt, does not indicate any pugnacious tendency
on his part, and the solidity of his bones are found to-day in either a
very sluggish animal or a partially aquatic one. The shape and rapid
taper of the tail vertebrae indicates a rather short tail, round rather
than flat,--ill adapted for swimming,--and so following through the list,
till we have a Triceratops elephantine in general build, though more like
a rhinoceros in face with a horn over his nose and two over his eyes, a
horn-supported neck ruff, and a generally sluggish mode of life.
"In the coal fields complete imprints of Ichthyosauria have been found,
doubtless due to the carbonization of the animal matter. And impressions
have been left in stone of the very feathers worn by some of the now
fossilized creatures."
It was by comparison of fossil remains that the well known evolution of
the horse from a little fellow the size of a fox was learned. Ted often
thought of that three-toed Miocene horse, and the giant monsters of his
time,--of the upthrust of the Rocky Mountains, cutting off the moist sea
breeze from the marshy country to the Eastward and making desert of it.
This made life too hard for the heavy, slow-witted creatures, and they
failed to survive the change. But the nimble footed little horse trotted
long distances with ease, to find food and water.
Norris convulsed them by describing the creature on which he declared the
aeroplane was modeled,--the pteranodon, that giant lizard, largest of
flying creatures even in Mesozoic age, whose bat-like wings reached 20
feet from tip to tip,--as the fossil skeletons plainly prove.
This interesting specimen was a link in the chain between the birds of
to-day and their ancestral archeopteryx, no larger than a crow whose
front legs metamorphosed to short wings, whose skeletons have been found
perfectly preserved in the limestone.
Ted was frantic for fear they would not find the place again, then could
hardly wait to hear the Geological Survey man's pronouncement on his
find. Norris chipped and chipped, with knife and hammer, till he had
uncovered the impress of a great, membranous wing.
It was a fossil dinosaur,--a pterodactyl!
Ted's college education was secure!