The Dinosaur Hunter(21)

“Mom told me about finding it.” he said. “Could hitting a big old bull on the head with a shovel really kill him?”

“He died of a cut throat,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but to cut his throat, you’d have to knock him senseless. Could a shovel really do that? Anyway, I didn’t see any big dent in his head when Amelia and I stopped to look at him.”

I gave Ray’s observation some thought, recalling that time when one of our bulls had run head-on into a concrete post. After a shake of his head, he had barreled on, none the worse for wear. “You have a point, Ray,” I admitted.

“I know,” he rejoined and had himself a swig of cola.

Ray left soon after and I sat there, contemplating that “from the mouths of babes” thing. I also recalled that his mom had made a similar observation when I’d reported the bull’s death to her. Our bull could not have been knocked out by that thin-handled shovel unless something else had happened to it first. That’s when I knew it was time to get the tractor out. There was more to this dead bull than had yet been seen.





8




The day after we’d been out to see his Triceratops, Pick drove in, saying he needed to call his crew. Jeanette and Ray were out and about so I let him into the house to make his call. Afterward, he didn’t seem to want to stick around so I opened the gate for him and off he went on the rutted track back to the BLM. This time, he turned the correct way.

It was three days before I got the time to go out to bury the dead bull. That morning, after we’d done everything else, I got Ray to help me put the scoop on the tractor. Jeanette saw what we were doing and came over. “What are you doing with my John Deere?”

I answered, “Ray and I are going to bury that dead bull.”

She nodded, then said, “I’ll follow on a four-wheeler, then go on out to the BLM. I’m wondering about our dinosaur hunter.”

“Well, wonder no more,” I said, “because there he is.”

And there he was, indeed, opening the gate of the Mulhaden pasture to drive his pickup through. He did so, got out, closed the gate, got back in, spotted us, and drove over. “Hello,” he said, getting out of his truck. “Have you seen my crew?”

Jeanette said we hadn’t and Pick replied, “They should be here today.”

“You hungry?” Jeanette asked, which I thought was kind of astonishing. She never asked Ray or me if we were hungry and she rarely, if ever, cooked. Ray did most of it, far as I knew. Of course, I was always on my own. Jeanette roundly disapproved of what she considered my vegetarian quirk. I never told her it had started with the bullet that curtailed my promising LAPD career. It’s hard to eat meat when there’s a hole in your colon. Maybe I should have told her that was why I stopped eating meat, but I liked being a little “Hollywood” around her, don’t ask me why.

Anyway, Pick said that he might indeed be hungry and Jeanette invited him in for breakfast, promising him some scrambled eggs, ham, and buttered toast. All Ray and I could do was gawk and wonder what alien had taken over Jeanette’s body.

“We’re ready to go out to the bull,” I said but it was to Jeanette’s back since she was leading Pick toward the house.

Ray and I looked at each other again, then mutually shrugged. “Heck, she don’t even know where the frying pan is,” Ray said, then dropped the subject.

I wasn’t surprised when Amelia arrived in her daddy’s truck. “What are you doing?” she asked Ray who was greasing the hinges on the scoop we’d just attached. “Nothing,” he said.

“What are you going to do with that scoop?”

“We’re going to bury that dead bull,” I told her when it was clear Ray was intent on ignoring her.

“Can I go?”

That was, in my opinion, a lovely response. After all, where can you find a beautiful teenage girl who would be thrilled at the prospect of seeing a dead bull buried? Not too many places but Fillmore County. Or maybe, she just wanted to be with Ray.

With Ray driving the tractor, Amelia sitting beside him, and me riding shotgun, we ran on out to the bull. When we got there, we only had to follow our noses to find it. Nothing had bothered it as far as I could tell except the flies and time. I guess it stunk too much for even the coyotes. I took the controls and maneuvered the tractor to get its scoop under the deceased animal but rather than pick it up, I turned it over instead.

“What are you doing?” Ray asked when I got off the tractor and walked up to the bull.

“I need to see its other side,” I answered. While Ray and Amelia wisely kept their distance, I got up close and personal with a very nasty corpse. What I expected to see was there. At the base of its neck was a bullet hole. I got out a hunting knife I’d brought along and cut into it.