“Who’s that from?” I asked.
“The postmaster yes yes in Crowe.”
His eyes marched across the lines. “It seems our friend Bolt has been most active.”
“What is it you’re reading?”
Without looking up, he said, “I came to an arrangement with the postmaster to let me know when Bolt was shipping freight or sending telegrams back east.”
“Papa! That’s private business!”
He glanced up irritably. “Not in Crowe it seems. He’s been kind enough to send me a transcript here.” He looked back down. “Bolt has a mosasaur, nothing new there . . . oh, and yes yes he’s been naming species already . . . Monoclonius crassus, very nice . . .”
His voice was calm, but his high domed forehead was flushed, and I knew he was furious that his rival had claimed a new species before him.
“. . . working in his usual slapdash way. I should have known this would be his modus operandi. Laying claim even before he left the field. It’ll all have to be redone properly by others like myself at some point—”
When he stopped abruptly, brow furrowed, I knew something had upset him even more.
“What?” I demanded.
“. . . partial skull, scapula, humerus, ulna, fourth metacarpal, four phalanges . . .” He looked up, his face suddenly drained of color. “He has a pterodactylus with a wingspan of possibly thirty feet. He has a wing and a head! And he has named it Quetzalcoatlus Bolt!”
“No.” Samuel would’ve told me if they’d found a pterodactylus. Unless all this had happened in the last five days when I hadn’t see him. Could they have found and quarried out an entire specimen in so few days?
In a clenched voice my father said, “He has poached my fossil!”
“What?” I said, still so bewildered I wasn’t even sure what he meant. “Stolen it?”
“From our quarry.”
“No one would do such a thing!”
“No? Perhaps this explains why we found no skull and only one arm.”
“We would’ve noticed, wouldn’t we?”
“Not if he came in the night yes yes. I wouldn’t put it past Bolt. He’s a skillful digger; we might not have noticed his workings. The Yalies kept the quarry so messy there was debris everywhere.” He looked at me sharply. “Have you seen his boy? Told him anything?”
“Of course not!” I was shocked by his insinuation—and my own quick lie.
The doubt had always been there, dormant in my mind, and now it began to germinate and send out tendrils. Had everything I’d told Sam been relayed straight to his father? Was he just spying after all? What else had he lied about?
“Isn’t it possible,” I said hopefully, “they just found one of their own?”
My father paced. His head rode atop his shoulders like a fierce cannonball. “I find that very hard to believe. I’ll confront him!”
“And admit you’ve been reading his telegrams? I think that’s a crime.”
“There are no Union laws out here yet,” my father said evasively, but his temper seemed to cool. “Bolt’s a thief, no question, but it’s impossible to prove right now. No point pursuing it. In any event, he’ll find all his rash haste is fruitless.”
“Why’s that?”
“Before we left Crowe, I telegraphed the editor of American Philosophical, and we came to an understanding he’d publish only my finds during this season. Bolt will have to secure publication elsewhere.”
My face must have radiated my astonishment, for he said, “Don’t worry, my dear. There’s nothing nefarious in it. It’s a perfectly yes yes legitimate arrangement. Bolt will have his finds published, only in some other journal, and later than he might like. Much later perhaps.”
He walked off, leaving me tangled up in my own thoughts and wondering who was less trustworthy: my father or Samuel Bolt.
I’d barely said hello to her before she asked, “Did you find a pterodactylus?”
Her piercing look made me feel instantly guilty. “No. I would’ve told you!”
“And you didn’t tell your father about ours?”
I shook my head. “What’s wrong?”
She looked miserable. “I don’t know if you’re telling the truth.”
“I am! What’s going on?”
Suddenly she seemed like the guilty one. “My father . . .” Her eyes dropped, and she tried again. “He’s paid the postmaster in Crowe to show him your father’s telegrams.”
“What!” I’d always thought my father was exaggerating, the way he raged about Cartland’s scheming. But this was despicable! Before I could say anything else, Rachel was lifting her hand, beseeching.
“I know, it’s terrible, but please listen. In the telegram your father says he found a new species of pterodactylus. It sounds exactly like ours, except he has the head and left wing—the parts we’re missing.”
I felt a hot rush of outrage. “And you think my father stole from your quarry?”
“Why didn’t he tell you he found a flying reptile?”
“The only thief’s your father!” I countered. “Has he ever told you what he did at the New Jersey marl pits? No? Going behind my father’s back with the pit owner to sneak out the best fossils?”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
Both of us went silent. My head raged. Was Cartland inventing some crime of my father’s? To explain his incomplete skeleton? If yes, it was a wicked lie to hammer together and tell his own daughter.
“Some of the students say they saw him from a distance,” she said.
“All right, let’s say my father saw the quarry. How could he dig it up with your people there all the time?”
“At night.”
It stung me, her assumption my father was guilty. But already I was rummaging through my memories. And came to those nights I’d woken and Father hadn’t been beside me in our tent. That one time especially I’d found him poking at the campfire, bedraggled and dusty, before even Hitch was awake. He was always an early riser, and a restless sleeper, and I’d just assumed he was getting some fresh air.
“I don’t believe it,” I said, furious at the possibility. “The only thing we know for sure is your father’s breaking the law to spy on my father. Because he’s jealous we’ll claim things faster. And that’s exactly what we’re doing!”
She looked away. Haltingly she said, “There’s something else,” and told me how Cartland had fixed things with the journal before he’d left Crowe.
“This is too much!” I said. “I’ve got to tell my father.”
She stared at me balefully. “Go ahead. And you can ask him where he got his pterodactylus.”
Again we fell silent. She was right. If I told my father, everything would come spilling out. My meetings with Rachel. All our traded secrets.
“Our fathers . . . ,” I began, and trailed off.
“It’s awful what mine did,” she said. “I’m ashamed of him. But yours—you have to admit, it looks suspicious.”
Miserably I nodded. I knew my father was rash, but the idea of him stealing outright was too painful.
She was quiet a moment, then looked me square in the eye. “You really didn’t know anything about this?”
I squinted. “You’re asking if I helped him now?”
She took her time. “Did you?”
“No! How can I prove it?” I asked, feeling helpless. “Whatever my father did, or didn’t do, I had nothing to do with it.”
I felt like she was watching me from a long way away, and I wanted to bring her back to me. I needed to fix things but didn’t know how.
“I have to go,” she said abruptly. “I think they’re getting suspicious.”
Desolate, I said, “Not yet, not like this.”
“I have to,” she said, and left.
That evening Father was in high spirits. He’d found articulated bone, and so had Ned, who’d returned from Crowe in the early afternoon. As we washed up by the river before dinner, the two of them eag
erly traded details, debated which one we should quarry out first. I said nothing, still deep in the rabbit warren of my own thoughts—until I heard my father say:
“At this rate, we’ll have another three to claim soon.”
Another three. Monoclonius. Mosasaur. And . . .
With a sick feeling I asked, “What was the third?”
My father’s smile contracted. Then he chuckled. “I was thinking about our rex tooth, I suppose.”
“You mentioned the tooth to the journal?” I asked. “A bit early, isn’t it?”
I shot a look at Ned. He looked like he had a big greasy meal sliding around inside him. He said nothing.
“So what was the third?” I persisted.
Ned’s head drooped like a whipped dog. He was too honest to hide a lie.
“I found a partial skeleton of a pterodactylus,” Father said, “and shipped it off last minute. I forgot to tell you.”
This lie hurt me almost the worst. So half hearted. Did he think I was an idiot? Everything we found we talked about. At night we made measurements, imagined anatomy and function. He would never forget to tell me about a find—unless he was hiding it on purpose.
“Where’d you find it?” I demanded. If he was going to drag this out, I wanted to make it as painful as possible.
Father buttoned his shirt, pulled his suspenders up over his shoulders.
“Ned?” I asked.
“Professor,” he said miserably, “I’d feel better if you answered this.”
Father swiped water droplets from his eyebrows. “I found it in one of Cartland’s quarries. They’d made a mess of it. They’d scrounged out a wing and the rear limbs, a fragment of pelvic girdle, but it was obvious they weren’t going to find anything more. Ned and I just had a poke around and caught what they’d missed. We got the skull and another wing.”
“At night.”
“Certainly at night. I wanted to see how he was making out, just have a look. I wasn’t planning on touching anything—but that pterodactyl. It was huge. Nothing like the European ones.”
“What about the agreement? No interfering with each other’s quarries?”
Far from apologetic, his expression was almost pugnacious. “I didn’t tamper with what they’d already uncovered. He’s welcome to his find.”
“I’m sure they would’ve found the skull on their own!”
A dismissive wave of his hand. “Likely I saved those pieces from being forgotten, or mashed to chalk by his ham-fisted students.”
He was a talker, my father. Could spin a story any which way. But even by his standards, this was a stupendous performance.
“You wanted a flier, so you stole his,” I insisted.
“He owed me a specimen after the New Jersey marl pits!”
“Ah, here we go.”
“At least one! I’m setting things right. He wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me—and Ned’s lead. He’s brought more men and money than I could ever muster, and there shouldn’t be any doubt, Samuel, in your mind about his intentions. He means to strip me of as many finds as possible. No, I’ll go further. He means to destroy me.”
I thought of Cartland humiliating him onstage in Philadelphia. Spying on him through the postmaster. Blocking my father’s publications. The word “destroy” didn’t seem so far-fetched right now.
I could tell my father what I knew. If I did, he’d at least find another journal and get his finds published faster. But everything else would come out about me and Rachel. And right now I wasn’t even sure I wanted to help him. I was angry and disgusted by what he’d done, how he was trying to justify it. Even angrier that he’d bashed up things with Rachel. His greed had pushed her away from me. She didn’t even love me, and now she doubted my honesty.
“It’s not right,” I said to him. “It’s shameful!”
He turned to me, such fury in his eyes.
“Watch how you speak to me,” he said coldly. “This has nothing to do with you. This affects only me and my future.”
Heat pulsed at my temples. “Maybe having a thief for a father affects my future too!”
His shoulders tensed. For a second I thought he’d strike me. Instead he turned and walked off. As if I’d done something that needed punishing.
I wasn’t telling him anything about Cartland. I wouldn’t help him. Like he said, it had nothing to do with me. He and Cartland could fight their own battles. Let the best scoundrel win.
16.
PROSPECTING
I SET OUT EARLY, THE EARTH AND GRASS STILL sleepy, exhaling their night sweetness into the air before the heat came. The sun sent its light long, changing everything. The dullest tree trunk, the plainest leaves, the pebbly ground, even my own skin became luminous and charged with beauty. It never lasted long enough, this amazing light.
I was trying hard not to think about Samuel, which only meant that his face and voice flickered constantly in the background of my mind. I’d slept poorly.
On a rise I spotted some figures on a distant butte and was quite certain it was Ethan Withrow and his men. I raised a hand to them, and one of them waved back. I wondered how much luck they’d been having.
Then we were back down into the defiles and onto a new stretch of badlands we hadn’t prospected yet. Two soldiers were with us now, because we were farther from camp. In the saddle, Daniel Simpson made jerky map notations and took compass readings as we went along. Would Sam be able to find me this far out?
We picketed our horses near some grass and went on by foot, scrabbling up a hill to get our bearings. Once you were out of the maze of defiles, the badlands looked almost orderly. I caught myself looking for him.
On the butte’s flat top we discussed how to divide up the terrain for prospecting. I walked off toward the east side and started looking for the easiest place to scramble down into the narrow valley. Sunlight was spreading down the slope, making the sage and the stone glow.
There was a chain of massive, clumped boulders that would make good steps. And then I just stopped, because I realized I wasn’t looking at boulders but at the biggest vertebrae I’d ever seen.
It was four days before I found her, she was so far out. I wondered if she was trying to avoid me. There were more people with her than usual, including soldiers. I’d found a good hiding place atop a nearby butte. The narrow valley made it impossible for me to sneak close enough to toss a pebble at her. She was crouched down with her hammer and awl. Hadn’t looked up once in the whole time I’d been watching.
And the bones—
Magnificent. So big you couldn’t miss them. Great hunks weathered out, definitely vertebrae, and a couple massive thigh bones. I felt weak with desire. The Black Beauty? Had they found it? Crickets settled near me and deafened me. Mosquitoes feasted on me despite the bacon grease. I didn’t care. Their bites didn’t itch as much anymore. I waited almost an hour before Rachel walked away from the others, in search of privacy.
I scrambled backward down the far side of the slope. I stood, realized too late my right foot had fallen asleep. Staggered, fell, and rolled down the hill. Got up streaked with dust and lurched on like a hunchback. When I found her, she was seated primly on a rock, about to pull down her underpants. She gasped when she saw me.
“Just me,” I said.
“I thought you were some crazy hermit.”
I brushed myself off a bit. “You’ve got quite a find there.”
She looked wary. Did she think I was here to spy?
“My father did it,” I blurted, eager to get all this out of the way. “He stole from your quarry.”
She nodded silently. No surprise, but no gloating.
“I had nothing to do with it. I’ve been trying to figure out some way of proving it to you, but I can’t. So I just hope you believe me.”
“I do,” she said.
My head tipped forward in surprise. “Really?”
“Yes. I’m choosing to trust you.”
She made it sound like a co
ol, unemotional decision. I felt a bit uneasy, but I figured I should be grateful.
She said, “I really do need to have some privacy.”
“Oh. Right.” I walked off a bit, back turned.
“Could you go a bit farther, please?”
“Should I find myself a little hermit cave?”
I walked on, and that seemed to satisfy her.
“Did you have a good look at the quarry?” she asked. She didn’t sound suspicious, just excited.
“It’s incredible,” I said. “They’re huge!”
“The vertebrae were just sitting there! They’re not in the best of condition, but just seeing them! You can come back now.”
I turned to see her eyes bright and lively. “The femur was the size of my father. Stand it on end and you’d think it was a tree trunk!”
She told me what else they’d uncovered. In my imagination the creature grew and grew—and my relief grew too. This dinosaur was too big for the rex my father had calculated. So maybe this thing wasn’t the rex, just . . . My spirits sagged. Just the biggest dinosaur yet. And it belonged to Cartland.
“Tell me what you’ve found,” she said.
“Do you think you could love me?” I blurted.
The light in her eyes dimmed. She came close and put her hands lightly on my shoulders. “I don’t know what I feel. Things take a long time for me, and I’m confused. I just want to dig right now and give my full attention to that.”
“Can you actually do that?”
She nodded. “Mostly, yes. When I’m working, I don’t think of much else.”
I nodded, dejected. “I can’t. I’ve been a terrible fossil hunter this past week. If I found the rex’s skull, I’d probably just trip over it and keep going. Too distracted.”
She smiled faintly. “You are a veritable fount of emotion.”
I felt like I was being mocked. I stepped away from her. “At least I have emotions.”
“I can’t say what I don’t feel.”
It hurt me so much to hear this, I barely knew what I was saying next.
“I would’ve thought you’d be grateful—”
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