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The Dinosaur Hunter(108)

By:Homer Hickam


With the slow-motion act of the state and the feds, the bones carried away by the helicopter on the first pass had disappeared. We presumed they were put on a truck, which headed for Mexico and crossed the border. Pick says they are almost assuredly lost forever, disappeared into the black market for dinosaur bones or into a private collection.

Agent Conway was impressed by the evidence littering the Blackie Butte site. There were lots of bullet casings, bullet holes, bloody rags, a tent full of various pistols and automatic weapons, and one rather bent UH-1 helicopter. Agent Conway was so impressed he started yelling at everybody and telling us we were all going to prison for a long time if not forever. We stood there and took it for a while, then Jeanette told him to get serious and bring in somebody who knew what they were doing. When Agent Conway continued to yell, she told me to shoot him because the feds had sent us a turkey. I didn’t shoot the agent, but I did convince him to shut up and call for reinforcements.

Agent Conway called and a platoon of federal agents from the FBI, ATF, and other acronyms related to the Department of Homeland Security arrived. They marveled over the dead Russian mobsters, and then declared everything was a secret and that no one, and they meant NO ONE, was to find out about this by which they meant the press. We managed that quite well because we didn’t want to get in the newspapers or on television and lived in a county where no one wanted it, either. Oh, a few things got out, mainly that Jericho needed a new mayor because the other one had died due to mysterious circumstances. No national news organization picked it up. They don’t care, you see, and that’s fine with us.

The helicopter’s registration proved to be Mexican. Its pilot and co-pilot, presumably working for a shadowy bone collector south of the border, were completely and utterly deceased and therefore unable to testify against their boss. The navy blue paint job on their chopper was, according to my FBI informant, probably for night operations. Unluckily for them, the Haxbys thought it looked black. Black helicopters over eastern Montana. Not a good idea.

The Haxbys are fine even though the feds got a court order to inspect their ranch. Other than their surface-to-air missiles, they owned nothing illegal and opened their bunkers up for inspection. Their remaining missiles, of course, were buried so the Homeland Security folks didn’t find them. Still, the feds threatened the Haxbys, told them that there was evidence of a SAM strike on the helicopter, and if they didn’t confess, they would be locked up forever or at least until they were executed. The Haxbys said nothing and kept saying it. Nice thing, the Constitution of the United States, which the Haxbys had actually read.

Eventually, the Homeland Security folks claimed the Russian bodies and left. Our attorneys in Billings assured us the investigation was over and we could all go about our business. The state of Montana, however, took note of the bones and sent the state paleontologist to have a look. This he did and recommended a careful removal of them for preparation and protection at the Museum of the Rockies. Jeanette and Pick agreed with this plan and a team from the museum soon arrived. The bones are still in Bozeman, being studied. Pick and Laura went with the bones. Laura called just a week ago and said she had taken a position as a research assistant at the Museum of the Rockies. Pick signed a contract with the museum to help catalog the bones and write a description of them. I think he’s found a home but we’ll see. The boy does like to travel.

Brian and Philip Marsh, the two Green Planet brothers, were questioned closely by Homeland Security but, for the most part, kept their traps shut. Both swore they had no idea how the helicopter came to blow up. The downed chopper, by the way, seemed to upset the feds more than having dead mobsters littering the BLM, or the greatest paleontological find of all times discovered and nearly destroyed. Since Brian and Phillip haven’t written, I’ve kind of lost track of them. Maybe they joined the Peace Corps and are using their new expertise with shovels and picks to dig wells for remote villages.

The one aspect of all this that surprised Jeanette (but not me, cynic that I am) was that when the survey was done by the BLM, lo and behold, it was found that Blackie Butte was, just as old Ted suspected, on BLM land and therefore the bones all belonged to the federal government. That’s now tied up in the courts but I don’t expect a good outcome for the Square C. Looks like we’re still going to have to work for a living and not live off the sale of old bones. I don’t much think Jeanette minds losing the bones or even the money but she wants Blackie Butte back. To get it back, she’s got the ear of some state politicians. She’s also supporting a couple of new faces for the U.S. Congress. If that doesn’t work, she might get some dynamite and just blow the hell out of the damn thing so nobody can have it. Don’t ever count Jeanette out when it comes to her land. The powerful environmentalist organizations, their lawyers, and the federal government might consider that as they work to combine the BLM, CMR, Missouri Breaks Monument lands, and private property into a giant swath of buffalo prairie off limits to everybody but themselves. The ranchers aren’t going to just step aside into history. They mean to fight. As Bill Coulter used to say, there’s things a whole helluva lot worse than being dead and one of ’em is not being free.