The Dinosaur Hunter(17)

Some more words about the territory we were entering, and the BLM, which runs it. The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for more land than any other agency, government or private, in the United States and maybe the world. At last count, the BLM was responsible for more than two-and-a-half million acres of land, mostly in the Western states. Since Congress doesn’t pay much attention to it, the agency gets only a little legislative pork thrown its way. This is actually fine with the BLM because it makes plenty of money through the sale of gas, oil, uranium, and other energy deposits beneath their lands. It also leases its land to such folks as the owner of the Square C.

This all began with the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, which allowed leases for private ranchers to graze their cattle on the BLM. Since most of the ranchers had already been grazing cattle and sheep out there for generations, the act simply put in code what was already a fact. The difference was the fee. I suspect the size of that fee is one of those things that Westerners and Easterners will argue about until the end of our republic. Mostly, the ranchers of Fillmore County wished the federal government, or any and all governments, would just go away and leave them to do what they do best, raise cattle and sheep, sell them, then raise some more. As usual, Jeanette had the final word on the BLM, saying it meant well and that was the trouble with it.

Once, a couple years ago, I was in the Hell Creek Bar when Ted Brescoe, the local BLM guy who also happens to be the mayor’s husband and therefore the fellow whose wife I’d been in bed with a few times by then, came in. He was already pretty drunk. Ted’s a guy who wears a perpetual sneer on his face. When he lurched up to the bar beside me, just to make conversation, I asked him to tell me what he did out on the BLM. “It ain’t none of your business, asshole,” he said and went back to his booze. Yep, a nasty customer, Ted Brescoe. Although I felt guilty about Edith much of the time we were together, right then I was glad I could give her a little relief from her husband.

So, anyway, there we were on the BLM land which the Square C leased, motoring along on a track that wound through a series of small brown and gray hills, then along the edge of a deep coulee filled with grass and occasional stands of juniper and gnarly limber pine. It was where the coulee necked down near the base of a little hill that we found Pick’s truck. There was a tarp in its bed covering whatever was in there. I lifted it up to inspect the cargo, then put it back. What was there, or, more importantly, what wasn’t there was interesting but I said nothing to Jeanette about it. Nick and Dusty’s hoof prints littered the ground around the truck so we followed them. We had to go a good mile before we found Ray and Amelia. There, we also found Pick.

We drove up to the horses. Nick was looking bored but Dusty was intently watching the three humans who were halfway up a pyramid-shaped hill. I marveled anew how Dusty could be so entertained by herself and her surroundings. Ray saw us and waved. I waved back and we climbed up there. Pick was sitting down, his legs sprawled. Beside him near a pair of leather gloves was a well-used pick, its working end shiny from use. Ray and Amelia were looking at what lay below Pick’s boots, which were shapes in the dirt. “Pick says it’s a Triceratops,” Ray said.

I looked closer and I saw a rock about two feet long that was curved, appeared somewhat cylindrical in shape, and came to a dull point. Its color was only a little different from the dirt around it so I had to look carefully to see it at all. “Tip of an orbital horn,” Pick said when he saw where I was looking. “Be careful where you step. I think there’s nearly an entire adult Triceratops here. If you look closer, you can see the edge of its frill, an occipital condyle just starting to weather out, a couple of ribs, and three dorsal vertebra.”

“Why did a dinosaur climb the side of a hill to die?” I asked.

Pick smiled. “You have to understand nothing that you see now was the same as it was sixty-five million years ago when this animal lived. This is but one layer of many in deep time. When this layer was on top, it was part of a land of rivers, lakes, and rich, green floodplains. Not too many miles away was a vast, inland ocean.”

I had heard something about ancient Montana being a seashore but sixty-five million years was more than my mind could quite wrap itself around. “How do you know how long ago?” I asked.

“We use radiogenic dating,” Pick replied. “That means we measure the amount of decay of a radioactive isotope in a sample.” When he saw my blank stare, he said, “What’s important is what was, still is, or will be. Now, consider this place. What do you see?”