Dinosaurs!

by Jack Dann

  "I need a guide to Coyote, where I must meet a Mr. Doppler."

  The silence became a horrified mutter, and the crowd melted away until only Marsh and one other stood there. The stranger was over six feet tall, redolent of whiskey, and dressed like a Texas ranger—high-heeled boots with huge spurs, bright red sash with a brace of pistols, and broad-brimmed hat. He said, "Who yuh wanta meet?"

  "A Mister Charles Doppler."

  "Charley?" He shook his head incredulously. "Charley? He ain't much."

  "You are acquainted with him?"

  "Acquai—acquait—he's muh cousin! I stole Charley his first long pants."

  "Will you take me to him?" Marsh held up a shiny dollar. "It is worth $3 per day. Mister . . . ?"

  "Savage. Red-Eye Dave Savage. Maybe you seen a novel about me? You can call me Red-Eye." He grabbed at the coin.

  "Fine, Red-Eye. Now let us see to procuring supplies." They began walking down the street, Marsh saying, "You know, I am a personal friend of Buffalo Bill Cody . . ."

  Heading north of the tracks, the neatly-dressed gentleman was presented with a vista of well-tended plank houses and empty streets. Two saddled horses nibbled the grass growing beside a church. A buckskinned, long-haired scout with hat over face leaned against a post. An Indian woman sat beside the scout, nursing a chubby baby which rather resembled a beardless President Grant. The man paused to admire the anthropologically-interesting scene.

  Without looking up, the squaw asked, "May I be of service?"

  He jerked back in surprise. "Uh, yes. Do you know the way to Coyote?" His pronunciation had the three syllables used in the Southwest and Pacific Coast.

  "Certainly I do."

  He sighed. "What is the way to Coyote?"

  The woman smiled sweetly. "The way out of Coyote is in a coffin. Horse in, hearse out."

  He said, "Madam, a scientist is prepared to face the dangers of the unknown in order to acquire knowledge."

  The scout stirred, and muttered a question in Lakota. The Indian woman listened, then asked, "Do you mean that you are a Natural Philosopher?"

  "I have been elected fellow of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Edward Drinker Cope, madam, at your service." He bowed, freezing the moment in his mind so that he could send a humorous description of it to his daughter.

  The scout again spoke Lakota into the hat. The woman translated. "Are you familiar with Man Who Picks Up Bones Running?"

  "Frederick Hay den? I was on his survey."

  More mumbling.

  "Do you know Perfesser Leidy?"

  "I studied under him. In fact, I am here because of a letter he received."

  The scout sprung upright, revealing a tanned, scarred face with delicate female features. "I done scouted for Man Who Picks Up Bones Running in '68." She stuck out a hand for a vigorous shaking.

  Cope said delightedly, "Then you must be Chokecherry Sairie, the Wilderness Philosopher." He had seen dime-novels devoted to her adventures. The petite, corsetted women of the illustrations bore not the slightest resemblance to their inspiration.

  The Indian also introduced herself. "I'm Jessie Crooked-Knife. My husband is a perfesser also—Perfesser Lancelot D'arcy Daid, manufacturer and proprietor of Essence of Frankincense, the Old Indian Princess' Authentic Miracle Cure for Whatever Ails You and Female Troubles As Well. I'm the Indian Princess."

  Cope bowed once again.

  Sairie was twisting the fringe on her left sleeve. "Y'come to see Charley's lizard? Let's go." She spoke rapidly to Jessie in Lakota, then lashed Cope's carpet bag behind the saddle of a Roman-nosed bay mare.

  Jessie said, "Sairie was headed south to visit Frisco Flush and the Goodenough Kid, but she has changed her plans. She has always enjoyed scouting for scientific parties. You are borrowing my horse Boadicea; watch out, she puffs when you girth her. Sairie doesn't speak English very well; she was raised by wolves, you know."

  On that surprising note Sairie leapt onto her small paint gelding, gestured for Cope to swing aboard the mare, and trotted off. Jessie Crooked-Knife switched her baby to her right arm, and waved goodbye.

  As they trotted along the high prairie, Cope acquired the story of the giant lizard, monosyllable by monosyllable. The Doppler Gang had found a herd of the lizards, or "thunder horses" as Sairie called them, grazing peacefully in a deserted area near Foulwater. Johnny and Dave had left all but one for the buzzards.

  Sairie tried to describe the beasts. "Big feet. Eyes like bird. Hips sort of like bird, but got four legs." She paused, frustrated, and waved her arms about.

  "I think I understand," Cope said encouragingly. He didn't.

  "Real big. Teeth like horse, not wolf."

  "An herbivore—vegetarian—grass eater?"

  "Yeah. Like big bones all over, but smaller."

  "Big . . . ?"

  She held her arm up a good eight feet from the ground. "Bones, real big. All over. Get in way/'

  Cope's eyes lit up with something between avarice and glee.

  They camped at dusk and ate a meal of pemmican. Cope stared at the spectacular sunset and began to talk of his rival.

  "Marsh is curator of the museum at Yale only because his uncle built it and pays his allowance. The man won't stir into Indian territory without an army escort."

  "You?"

  "Yes, I have done so. I'm a Quaker; I don't bear arms. Once I pacified a war party with my false teeth . . ."

  Sairie sat up happily. "Magic Tooth!"

  Content that his reputation had preceded him, Cope continued. "Marsh purchases so many fossils that some have never been unpacked. He does not understand anatomy—an army of myrmidons studies his specimens and writes his papers. They are negligently paid and forbidden to carry on their own researches . . ." He did not include the fact that he had attempted to stir them to revolt.

  "Marsh doesn't read the journals, leading him to duplicate others' work. Yet, with all this, they call him a scientist! In '72 Mudge intended to send me the 'bird with teeth' which has made Marsh's reputation. Marsh heard of the fossils and convinced Mudge to give them to him. At Bridger Basin his men took my bones. And he has instructed his collectors to smash duplicates and other bones—to actually destroy fossils to keep them from me!"

  Sairie, listening to this tirade in the flickering of the dying campfire, muttered "hang him." As a consequence of that comment, after a sleep punctuated with nightmares in which the originals of his fossils tormented him, Cope greeted Sairie with "I wish thee a pleasant morning. Shall I name the giant lizard in thy honor, Miss Chokecherry?"

  "Already named Joe. For Joe." She patted her pinto's neck.

  Cope said, "Hmmn. Josaurus. Why not? It will send them scurrying to their Greek lexicons. I once named a species Cophater, and a friend, in desperation, asked me what it meant. I told him it was in honor of the Cope haters."

  They rode on towards Coyote, comparing their knowledge of the animals they saw. Cope would furnish their genus and species as well as details of their evolutionary adaptations; Sairie would supply their personal habits, and a judgment on how they tasted.

  Twenty-five miles nearer Zak City, Marsh was also enjoying his morning. The previous day had been spent in the purchase of supplies: a large wagon, harness and four-horse team, $520; provisions and camp utensils, $175; riding horse, $75. The new horse was tied behind the wagon with Red-Eye Dave Savage's chestnut Lightning. Red-Eye drove and his employer rode shotgun.

  Marsh was an accomplished raconteur, with a fund of exciting anecdotes from his earlier western expeditions. Red-Eye, however, had spent his advance the night before, and was not the best of audiences. Every so often he took a swig of Essence of Frankincense, its herbs helping not so much as its alcoholic content.

  ". . . the colonel and his officers all complimented me on my feat. And I am now an army legend, the only man to shoot three buffa
lo from an ambulance. It happened in '70 but is still a topic of . . . Stop!"

  Red-Eye pulled back on the reins and grabbed for a pistol. "Injuns? Rannies?"

  "Sshh." Marsh pointed to a lone buffalo, grazing some distance away. Raising his carbine, he took careful aim and fired. The animal sank to its knees, mooed once, and died.

  "Dang if you don't shoot like a Missouri bushwhacker!" Red-Eye crowed.

  Marsh dissected out the buffalo's tongue, wrapping it in cloth. They enjoyed it that night at supper, while Marsh ran through an inventory of his friends. "Darwin, you've heard of Darwin? Well, he's quite important. He sent me congratulations on a paper. Huxley also greatly admires my work, especially my studies on the evolution of horses."

  Red-Eye Dave was taken aback by that phrase. He looked over at Lightning, hobbled near the wagon, suspicious that at any second the beast might evolve, whatever that was. He was thankful for the security of the bottle of Essence of Frankincense clasped firmly in his hand.

  "In fact, my elucidation of equine evolution has won me praise from all quarters, many unique. Brigham Young . . ."

  "I hearda him," Red-Eye muttered.

  ". . .has named me a Defender of the Faith. It appears that The Book of Mormon mentioned horses in ancient America, and my fossil studies have inadvertently supported his religion. I had quite a friendly welcome in Salt Lake City . . ."

  Red-Eye shuddered. Salt Lake made him think of polygamy, polygamy made him think of wives, and wives made him think of Kate, who was waiting at their destination and who would, no doubt, have things to say to him. He chugged some more healing brew.

  That sunset found Cope and Sairie at the Doppler ranch, a couple miles out of Coyote. The log cabin, Kate Savage's sod dugout, and the palatial barn were surrounded by a wooden palisade in moderate disrepair. The gate had fallen off the hinges and was pushed to one side.

  Charley sat hunkered up to the table. He had never been so excited in his life; even killing his first (and so far only) man during the Hoedown Showdown had not been so thrilling as this conversation with a real live Natural Philosopher. Cope was discussing the wagon they would need to transport the lizard to the railroad. Charley broke in, "I c'n go, Ma, really, can't I?"

  Ma Doppler, looking up from her dogeared copy of Beachs Home Eclectic Doctor, said. "I don't know, Charley. You're young to go traipsing off to Philadelphy.

  "But someone's gotta take care of Joe, and Doc here says he'll innerduce me to the Academy and I c'n go to college."

  "Don't fret yore Ma, Charley." Johnny's voice was like a file scratching a notch in cold gun metal.

  "I didn't mean no wrong," Charley whined.

  Cope finished a sketch of the prehistoric sloth he had been describing, and passed it to the boy. He had drawn Charley, recognizable even without the label in Cope's illegible handwriting, beside the sloth to show the scale. Charley passed it around.

  "I'd like t'hunt that," Johnny said. "Where'd I find him?"

  "I fear the last died many, many years ago."

  "Couldn't fit aboard the Ark in the Deluge," Ma Doppler said. "Remember your Bible, son." Cope smiled slightly. His own religious convictions had led him to discount Darwin for Lamarckian or "mechanical" evolution.

  The door swung open and Johnny spun a pistol to cover it. Sairie entered carrying a child, age and sex indeterminate. She held it up for their inspection.

  "That's little Johnny, or maybe Sue," Ma hazarded.

  "I'm Li'l Kitty," the child howled in protest.

  Sairie said, "Don't fool with horses." She dropped Kitty, who landed on her feet and scooted out of the cabin. Charley leaned towards the astonished Cope. "That's one of Red-Eye Dave and Kate's. There's round about twelve Savage kids."

  "Dinopaed," the scholar muttered. Sairie snorted with laughter, startling Cope. "Thee understands Greek, Miss Chokecherry ?"

  "Jes' some."

  Charley said with admiration, "Sairie attended Union Grammar School in Frisco for two years, right afore they stopped letting in girls."

  Cope shook his head. The frontier was a fount of surprises.

  At first light they rode over to Doc Watson's house. The homeopathic physician asked, "Long as you're here, need any medicine?"

  "No, thank you," Cope answered. "I never travel without this." He held up a handy bottle of belladonna, quinine, and opium.

  "Well, if you get to feeling poorly . . ." The doctor took a wake-up swallow of Essence of Frankincense.

  Charley led the way along Watson Crick to a small valley. It was strewn with huge fossilized bones which had been used to build a fence and a hut. Charley dodged under a fence rung—a humerus suspended between heaped vertebrae—and walked towards the lean-to. "Here Joe, here Joe . . ."

  A triangular head peeked out from the door of the hut, followed by a long cylindrical neck. It fixed one unblinking eye on Charley, turned its head and stared with the other. Then Joe exited the hut, revealing a barrel-like body, thick legs with flat feet, and a long, dragging tail, and lumbered towards the boy. An astonished Cope watched as the boy fed the animal a carrot.

  "Grow 'em myself," he said proudly.

  "It's . . . tall."

  "Tall as me. The grownup ones were two, three times as big. Here, you feed him one. Mind your fingers."

  Cope held the carrot gingerly. Joe's head snaked out, yanked the carrot from his fingers, and munched contentedly as Charley tied on a rope halter.

  Sairie leaned against a fence post. "Gettin' thin." Charley ran one hand through the downy brown fuzz. "You're right. I can feel his ribs. I better feed him more."

  Cope was examining the bones of the hut. "These fossils are clearly from creatures like Joe, only larger. His ancestors perhaps." The remainder of the morning was spent with Cope studying the bones, identifying them, pointing out similar ones in human construction, demonstrating muscle and tendon insertions, and then referring to Joe for confirmation. Finally, replete with anatomical speculations, the three turned toward Coyote for a cool drink.

  Meanwhile back at the Doppler ranch, the wagon had arrived. While Red-Eye Dave and his wife held a noisy and acrimonious reunion inside their sod dugout, Marsh held forth for the dozen or so Savage children.

  "Indians believe fossilized bones to be the remnant of an extinct race of giants. They consider me a man of great wisdom, and call me 'Bone Medicine Man' and 'Big Bone Chief.' Chief Red Cloud is my personal friend, as is Buffalo Bill." He paused, waiting.

  The oldest Savage daughter spoke. "Cousin Johnny says Buffalo Bill's a long-hair baby-face sissy."

  "He does? Well . . ."

  "I do," Johnny said, relishing the shiver which his voice brought.

  "Of course, he only scouted for us for one day," Big Bone Chief added hastily. "I really didn't get to know him very well, and first impressions may be deceiving." The Prairie Traveller advised one to humor frontier roughs.

  Dave Savage emerged, shaken, from his house. His wife, pregnant as usual, stood in the doorway and scowled after him. "Howdy, Johnny. Yuh met Perfesser Marsh here? He shoots like a bushwhacker. We coulda used him in the war. He wants that critter of Charley's."

  "I'm sick of Charley's critter."

  "I am prepared to purchase it."

  Johnny smiled a thin-lipped, narrow smile that made the scientist feel like a goose in a store window. "That sounds more like it. That other feller didn't offer nothing."

  "Other . . . ? About so tall—beard—that blaggart! Gad! God damn it! (Begging your pardon, ma'am.) I wish the Lord would take him! He's insane, you know. I doubted his sanity the first time I met him. Berlin in '63; he was in Europe to escape the draft." After his diatribe had run its course, Marsh and Red-Eye Dave headed towards the valley, pausing at Doc Watson's for directions. As he rode, Marsh kept up a constant stream of comments and instructions for his horse, a habit which had earned him yet another Indian nickname, "Heap Whoa Man."

  Doc Watson offered some medicine. Marsh replied, "The Prairie Traveller
says the West's fresh air is the best medicine."

  "Can't sell fresh air."

  "On the other hand," Marsh decided, "it would be a fine addition to my collection of Western memorabilia," and he purchased two bottles at stiff prices. The pleased physician then pointed the way down the creek, to the paddock.

  Joe was in his hut, but Dave shied him out with rocks. Marsh rubbed his hands. "It's better than I'd hoped. A class of beast unknown to modern man."

  "Don't look like much to me." Red-Eye suspected that education destroyed a man's sense of values.

  After a short gloat, Marsh and Red-Eye remounted. "I believe a celebration might be in order, Red-Eye."

  Red-Eye held out an almost full bottle of Essence of Frankincense.

  "No thank you."

  "There's the hotel in Coyote." Red-Eye led the way. The town of Coyote was, basically, the hotel. Cope and Charley were already standing at the bar of Lowland Larry's, alleviating their thirsts with draft beer. Chokecherry Sairie was seconding their toasts with the local whiskey. Johnny Doppler sat alone with his back to the wall; his hand hovered near his holster until he identified the newcomers as his cousin and the stocky greenhorn.

  "Cope!" Marsh snarled.

  Cope turned and graced the other with a winning smile. "Ah, the learned Professor of Copeology at Yale, Othniel Charles Marsh." From the other's flinch, it was evident that he was not fond of his Christian names. "Join us in a toast to Josaurus dakotae Cope, Othniel."

  "Never!"

  Cope glanced sideways at his friends. "You see? He is all I told ye."

  Marsh said, "Did he tell you also how he'd spy on my diggers in '72? My men made a fake skull with parts of a dozen species, buried it, and dug it up while he spied. Then he snuck down that night, examined it, and wrote a paper on the fossil's significance. The brilliant genius Dr. Cope!"

  The accused man shrugged. "To err is human. Of course, the telegraph man was in your pay."

  Marsh hissed, "And did he tell you of this?" He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thin, wrinkled copy of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. XIV. Cope stood, mouth and eyes wide, transfixed. Marsh advanced, brandishing the journal before him like a vampire-hunter brandishing a cross. Cope retreated before the journal, stopping only when he backed into the bar. The other halted before him, Transactions at arm's length, close enough that Cope could read the date.