The Dinosaur Hunter

by Homer Hickam

  “So do ranchers. You ought to hear Jeanette and the other owners when they get going talking about things like the estimated breeding value of a bull and the most probable producing capability of a cow. Most folks wouldn’t have a clue what they were talking about.”

  Pick politely mulled this over, then asked, “Do you want to hear more about Pachycephalosaurus?”

  “Sure.”

  “They were odd, even by dinosaur standards. By their size and strength and by those big domes on their heads, you’d think they’d be aggressive but all they had were tiny leaf-shaped teeth, suitable for not much more than chewing on ferns. Their domes were surrounded by pebble-like bumps and prominent osteoderms along the sides of the squamosal that gave them a dragon-like appearance.”

  “Ostie what on squamie huh?” I asked.

  “They had spikes and bony structures covering their snouts and along their mouths. They were also ornithischians, that is to say they had bird-like hips like the Trikes and duckbills. The meat-eaters, by the way, had lizard-like hips, making them saurischians, even though they’re much more closely related to birds then lizards. That is a quirk of evolution. Although lay people often think it’s confusing, we paleontologists divide dinosaurs into two main groups based on their hip structures.”

  I let that one ride and Pick went on. “I believe Packys liked to roam in family groups, were cooperative, and ate well. I also think their domes were mostly for sexual display. Some say they used them to butt like mountain goats for sexual dominance but I doubt it. There’s nothing in their design otherwise to absorb the shock of using their heads as battering rams. Maybe they weren’t particularly good to eat and therefore didn’t have to fight very much. Or maybe they had stink glands like skunks. Or even quills like porcupines.”

  I asked, “Is there more of the Packy-seffy-thing up there?”

  “No. The domes were especially suited to survive over the ages but its other bones weren’t. This tells us their skeletons were probably not particularly robust. In fact, we’ve never found a complete skeleton, only ones of similar animals. In China, for instance.”

  “So you’re not sure what they looked like.”

  He peered at me, like he was pitying my ignorance. Finally, he said, “I have faith in my vision of the Pachycephalosaurus.”

  This struck me as weird. “Faith? Vision? Is paleontology a science or a religion?”

  Pick smiled. “Although I would probably be beat up at the next Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting if anyone heard me say this, there is a point in our studies where we go beyond the pedantic and venture forth into the realm of the imagination.”

  “I do the same thing when I think about sex,” I offered.

  This made Pick laugh. “Let me turn you into a dinosaur hunter, Mike,” he said. “Look around. Within fifty feet of where we’re standing, there is a significant dinosaur bone. Find it for me.”

  I was willing to play his game so I looked around the jumble of rocks, pebbles, scrub pine and juniper, amidst the glaring sun and deep shadows of the BLM. I didn’t see anything except exactly what I’d seen a lot of during the last ten years. Mostly dirt.

  “Remember those puzzles when you were a kid where you had to pick out something that didn’t fit?” he asked. “Approach your search in that spirit.”

  I gave it another try and still didn’t see any dinosaur bones. Finally, he said, “Look at that little drainage over there.”

  He was referring to a narrow channel that ran from the top of the hill all the way to the base. At the bottom were a jumble of small rocks and pebbles which were brown, red, yellow, and black except for one. I saw now that the coloration of that rock was different from the rest, a pale yellow. When I studied it, I saw that it also had symmetry. “You see it now, don’t you?” Pick asked, quietly.

  I walked over to the thing and picked it up. It was about the size of my fist, was oval in shape, and there were places on it where it looked like something had broken off. “What is it?” I asked, bringing it back for him to inspect.

  “It is the caudal vertebra of a small Hadrosaur. Probably an Edmontosaurus, the most common duckbill found in this formation. Caudal means its tail.”

  “It sure looks beat up.”

  “It is. There’s only the centrum left. Broken off are the arch that protected the spinal cord and the spines that connected it to the tendons that gave the tail its strength. Every bone has its own history. Mostly that history is one of violence.”

  “Like getting killed and eaten,” I said.

  “Yes, predation is certainly a factor. The bones of animals killed by other animals get ingested, stepped on, or strewn around as the skeleton is passed from the top to the bottom of the predator chain, that is to say from the animal that killed it to the scavengers. Or the animal may have been torn apart by a sudden flood, or burned to a crisp by volcanic ash, or maybe it simply fell off a cliff into a river and was ripped apart by rocks and currents. Whatever happened to it, natural forces tend to move skeletons around until the individual bones are far apart or completely destroyed. That’s why discovering an intact animal is so rare.”

  I held up the vertebra. “Can I have it?”

  “No. You have to have a permit.” He held out his hand and I reluctantly placed the vertebra in it.

  Sort of hooked on this finding dino bones thing, I started looking closer at my surroundings. On a little ledge, about a third of the way up the hill, I spotted another rock the same subtle shade of yellow as my duckbill vertebra. I climbed up to it, slipping and sliding, and picked the thing up. About four inches long, it kind of looked like a chicken drumstick. I brought it back down and handed over my find.

  Pick admired it which I have to confess pleased me. “Very nice. Where’s the rest of it?” This must have been a paleontology joke because he chuckled before saying, “This is a fragment of a toe bone of a Oviraptorid. A theropod. Note that it’s hollow? That’s the clue we have that it’s a meat-eater. Even the T. rex had hollow bones.”

  I looked around some more while Pick made a GPS reading, jotted something in his little notebook, then said, “We’d best get to the truck,” and started walking. Once again, it was the wrong way. I caught up with him and pointed in the correct direction. “Why don’t you use the GPS to find your truck?” I asked.

  He looked sheepish. “I forgot to mark it.”

  “You get lost out here, you’re going to die.”

  “I always find my way back, eventually. For a paleontologist, being lost is not necessarily a bad thing. It means I see places I wouldn’t otherwise see.”

  I gave that some thought. “You’re dangerous, Pick,” I concluded, “mostly to yourself.”

  Off we went again, this time successfully reaching the truck where he put the Packy dome, my duckbill vertebra, and the thessy-whatever toe bone in a plastic storage box, then opened the glove compartment, took out a folded document, and handed it to me. There were two sheets in the document. The top one was a letter with the official letterhead of the BLM signed by Ted Brescoe. The letter said, in effect, that the names on the attached sheet, all representing Yosemite University, had permission to go on BLM land and collect fossils. When I turned to the second sheet, I saw the names of Dr. Norman Pickford, Tanya Simius, and Laura Wilson. All had the same address: Department of Paleontology, Yosemite University, California. No town. No zip code.

  “I’m not familiar with Yosemite University,” I said.

  “It’s up north,” Pick replied. “Near Oregon.”

  “Is it part of the University of California system?”

  “Affiliated.”

  “I thought you said you were from UC Berkeley.”

  He shrugged. “I was kind of blowing smoke. It sounds better than Yosemite. But I did graduate from Berkeley.”

  I handed the document back. “OK, thanks.”

  “Is that all?” he asked, looking surprised.

  “That’s all.”

  I looked into
Pick’s eyes and saw relief. I remembered teaching a rookie cop one time a very important lesson of interrogation: Tell a guilty man you’re through with your questions and you’ll see relief in his eyes. Every time. He just can’t hide it.

  9

  Shortly after Pick and I got back to the dig site, Montana did its thing. Even though we were into June, the weather blew up cold and started pouring rain, which then proceeded to turn into sleet. Jeanette and Amelia jumped on her four-wheeler and got the heck out of there before they got stuck in the gumbo. Ray and I hoofed it back to the tractor, then drove back to the barn. The last I saw of the three paleontologists was Pick sitting in the girls’ truck, safe and dry, while Laura and Tanya were putting up a tent. My guess it was Pick’s.

  The skies stayed a sullen gray for the next two days and even spat a little snow. We didn’t hear a word from Pick and his ladies and we assumed they were hunkered down. Jeanette used the time to pay some bills and ordered me inside to help her. She had an old computer with some accounting software on it, which was hooked to a cranky printer. Of course, I knew the drill. Since Jeanette had never really learned to type, she wanted me to key the receipts and bills into the computer while she sat at the kitchen table and read them out. She also wanted me to listen while she griped about every one of the expenses. We were both very good at these jobs.

  I was always astonished at the amount of money required to keep the Square C operating. Electricity, maintenance and repair of the equipment, medicine for the cows, fencing, fuel, insurance, feed—it all added up. The last thing a rancher ever spends money on is himself and I was pretty sure Jeanette had not bought herself any new clothes since Bill had died. Ray got some for school, of course, mainly because he outgrew what he had.

  About halfway through the receipts, I remembered I’d forgotten to tell Jeanette something. “Pick showed me his permission to be on the BLM. Ted Brescoe signed it. It said he’s from Yosemite University in California, which, according to him, is in northern California near the Oregon border. I never heard of it.”

  She peered over her half-glasses at me. “Sounds like you don’t believe him.”

  “I don’t know why he’d lie about it,” I replied.

  She tapped her pencil on the table. “What are you thinking?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not thinking anything, Jeanette. I’m just telling you what I found out.”

  Jeanette pondered a bit more, then said, “I like that fellow but I’m not sure why.”

  “Some men just need a mother, I guess,” I said.

  Jeanette looked at me, then said, “Maybe that’s it.”

  We went back to work.

  On the night before our branding day, the temperatures dropped into the 30s and I half expected it to start sleeting again but then the sun came booming up and it turned into a pretty day. To get the calves in the branding pen, it was necessary to also bring in their moms. Ray, Soupy, and I went out and gathered in the first bunch of pairs. Amelia and Buddy, her dad, were there to help. Then along came Cade Morgan, looking a bit lost, driving up in his Mercedes. Then, Pick, Laura, and Tanya came trundling in from the direction of the BLM. We were going to have quite the eclectic crew.

  Ray and I got off our horses and he went over to have a word with Amelia and her dad. I was curious as to why Cade Morgan was there so I walked up to him and held out my hand. Cade was wearing crisp, clean jeans, a white shirt, expensive running shoes, and a straw hat. Bill Coulter always said never hire a man with a straw hat because he’d spend all day chasing it.

  We shook hands and I asked, “You come to help us brand, Cade?”

  The Californian gave me a two-hundred-watt grin, the kind a man gives you when he’s after your wallet or your girl. “I just came to watch,” he said, then added before I made a comment, “Jeanette said it was OK.”

  I was in the mood to give Mr. Cade Morgan a little bit of a third degree. “Have you seen anything strange out your way?” I asked. “People you’ve never seen on the road or trucks, four-wheelers, anything?”

  “I’m at the end of the road,” he said, accurately. “You’d see them before me.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “On the other hand, we’re working and you’re not.”

  “Oh, I work,” he said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Screenplays.”

  “Any film I’d know?”

  Cade’s grin faded. “Why the interrogation, Mike?”

  “One bull and one cow dead with cut throats and a note from the Green Monkey Wrench Gang. You know anything about that?”

  Cade shook his head. “You going back to being a detective?”

  “Maybe. How’s Toby?”

  “Gone. Decided to scout locations in South Dakota. He’s a director.”

  “He ever direct a movie I might know?”

  Cade squinted at me, then said, “Mike, I wouldn’t be surprised,” then walked away, leaving me thinking I needed to find out more about Cade Morgan and Toby whatever-his-name was.

  Jeanette fired up the propane branding pot and pointed one of the Square C brands at me. “Mike you gonna just stand around scratching your butt?”

  I touched my hat to my observant boss, stopped scratching my mental butt, and got after the work at hand. The first chore was to separate the calves from their moms. Ray and Amelia did this job on foot, sending the calves through an alley into the branding pen. Jeanette told Laura to pair with Tanya, and me with Pick. We have a calf table which is the easiest way to brand but Jeanette likes to do the first few calves the old-fashioned way. Sizing up Laura and Tanya, Jeanette said, “Let me show you gals how to do it. Come in here, Amelia.”

  Amelia climbed into the corral. “That one,” Jeanette said, pointing at the largest calf. Amelia nodded and then she and Jeanette tackled the chosen calf, Jeanette grabbing a rear leg and Amelia a front leg and, in unison, flipping the calf on its side. I advanced with the branding iron and pressed it against the struggling calf’s flank. There’s no way to brand a calf fast. It takes a while to penetrate through its hair into the hide so I held it until an acrid smell told me I’d reached flesh. The calf gasped, I pulled back, and Buddy moved in, his task to vaccinate. He had the needle in and out of the calf before it knew what happened. If it had been a bull, we’d have put bands on its balls but this was a heifer so off she went, kicking and bawling for her mom which answered with a long, withering groan on the other side of the fence. Cows are such good moms.

  “Ladies,” Jeanette said to Laura and Tanya, “you’re next. Try that one.”

  The two dino girls didn’t hesitate. Laura tackled the front of the calf and Tanya the rear and was abruptly rewarded for her choice by a fine spray of manure in her face. Sputtering, she fell back and then the calf, too strong for Laura alone, broke free. “Don’t just sit there,” Jeanette yelled at the two women. “Get her down!”

  Laura and Tanya got up and went after the calf again, this time successfully. I advanced, the hide crackled, Buddy vaccinated, and the calf took off. I was pleased to see Laura and Tanya were laughing with excitement and success. But now it was time for me and Pick to try our luck. I handed the iron over to Jeanette and went over to the paleontologist. “You ready?” I asked.

  “I don’t know if this is my thing, Mike,” he said.

  “You take the back of that little bull, I’ll take his front.”

  He considered that. “Do you mind if I take the front?”

  Well, that showed the boy wasn’t a complete idiot. But I answered, “Yes, I do mind,” and went after the calf, grabbing its front legs and tossing it down. Pick clutched the wriggling calf’s hind legs and when a little excrement got on his face, he sputtered like he’d been hit by a brown tidal wave. Still, he hung on while Jeanette and Buddy moved in and did their thing.

  Jeanette seemed satisfied that her calf catchers had been tormented enough and ordered the calf table activated. A calf table is a wide steel plate on which there are two rails, which form a chute. You pu
sh the calf between the two rails, push over a lever to clamp them against the calf, then pull the whole contraption over, which lowers the trapped calf on its side. After that, you can do pretty much whatever you want with the animal, in our case branding and vaccinating. Laura and Tanya took care of most of the calves for the rest of the day, herding and pushing them onto the table. Pick went over and sat at one of the picnic tables we’d set up in the turnaround for lunch. He didn’t look very happy.

  When lunch time rolled around, at least half of our calves were branded. We were doing well. By then, the noise was deafening. The calves inside the branding pen were crying to their mothers and their moms were responding by bawling hysterically. It was enough to break my heart but at least I knew there would be a happy reunion at the end of the day.

  Aaron and Flora Feldmark had a little side business of providing lunch during brandings. As I came out of the branding pen, I noticed Mayor Edith Brescoe had driven in and was helping the Feldmarks. After I got my plate filled, she sat down beside me while I ate my salad, beans, and macaroni and cheese. “Don’t you ever crave a good steak, Mike?” she asked.

  “All the time,” I said. “Why be a vegetarian if it’s easy?”

  “You’re a nut,” she replied with a smile. Then, she said, “Did I make you happy, Mike?”

  “Sure.” What else was I going to say?

  “I’m glad. It’s good to be happy.”

  She got up and went to help Aaron and Flora, leaving me to wonder if I’d made her happy, too. If so, she hadn’t mentioned it.

  After lunch, I traded places with Ray for a while. Amelia and I were putting some branded calves back with their mamas when one of the calves, for no apparent reason, turned around and started running back into the branding pen. I blocked its way, then pushed it at the shoulder to turn it around. The calf bawled its unhappiness and its mom, hearing this, decided I was required to pay for this affront. She came running, knocking down the other cows between me and her like bowling pins, threw herself into the air, turned halfway around, and kicked me square in the nuts. I went down in a crumpled heap while she flounced off, her head held high and the other cows cheering. Yep. Like Bill Coulter used to say, things can get a little “western” out here.