The Dinosaur Hunter(32)

We dug, picked, scraped, and glued for a bit more, then Laura squinted at the sky where the sun had taken up station, seemingly not moving and just blazing down. “We need to put up an awning,” she said.

We walked back to the camp and she got out a tarp and some poles, ropes, and pegs. It wasn’t easy on the side of that hill but we managed to get the tarp up to provide some shade. When we were finished, Laura pronounced the working day over. “When you get too tired, you start to make mistakes on a dig,” she said. “Want to go prospecting?”

That sounded like fun so I said OK. She filled a pack with water bottles and I did the same. She handed me a small digital camera, a pocket-sized notebook, a pencil, some plastic lock-type sample bags, a permanent marker pen, a two-way radio, and a handheld GPS. After a quick lesson on the GPS, she showed me how to write up any finds I might make, then pointed at a low line of wedding-cake shaped hills. “Those hills look to have some Hell Creek Formation,” she said. “Ever been on them?”

I had not, even though they weren’t that far from the Square C. “They’re on Haxby BLM,” I said. “I wouldn’t even think about going over there without permission.”

“But we have a BLM permit,” she said. “And we won’t cross private land getting to it.”

“You don’t know the Haxbys,” I replied.

Laura looked at the hills longingly. “I’m sure we’d find some good bones there.”

I gave it some thought, mostly focusing on Laura’s unhappy expression. “All right,” I said, finally. “But if anyone comes around, let me do the talking.”

This suited her so we hefted our packs, tested our radios, and off we went, first crossing a field of grass that stopped abruptly at a deep coulee that had been invisible until we were right on top of it. The badlands can fool you that way. What you perceive to be an expanse of flat land can suddenly drop a hundred feet straight down. More than one cow, trundling along, has lost its footing along one of those coulees and taken the tumble of death. We were more careful, clambered down inside it, then walked along its narrow bottom. There was a layer of cracked mud studded with some low reeds, clinging to life. Laura spotted a grayish outcrop of dirt and walked over to it, bent over, and plucked out a bone. She showed it to me. “Theropod toe bone, probably Ornithomimosaur.”

Quoting Pick, I asked, “Where’s the rest of it?”

“That’s always the question, isn’t it?” She gave me a grin, which was nice. Even though we’d just spent all morning digging up bones and erecting an awning in the hot sun, and were now walking in the hottest sun of the day loaded down with packs full of water, Laura was cheerful. I have always believed cheerful is a fine trait in a woman. I reflected that Jeanette was hardly ever cheerful but I didn’t care. I still loved her. Love is weird that way, ain’t it?

We found a way out of the coulee and continued across the field until we reached the hills, which proved to be steeper than they looked from a mile away. “I’ll go that way,” Laura pointed, “you go the other. See that first step? I think if there are any bones, they will be at that level. It’s a bit too steep for me to try to go along there so what I like to do is walk around the base of the hill and look for float at the bottom. If I see anything that looks interesting, then I’ll climb the hill up to the step to see what’s there. You might try the same strategy or just make up your own. There’s no right or wrong way to find bones.”

Although I wasn’t certain it was a good idea for us to split up, considering that we were on Haxby BLM, I went along with it. I went off in the direction she wanted me to go and before long, I was thoroughly enjoying the pleasant stroll at the base of the hill, which was actually several hills with low saddlebacks. I soon came across some float, clambered up to the shelf Laura had suggested, and was rewarded by a pile of shattered bones. There was nothing in the pile that had any shape, just irregular scraps, but there was enough of it to fill up several backpacks. I settled for logging the GPS coordinates in my notebook, photographing the site, taking a sample, and moving on, feeling very much like a true paleontologist. I searched all along the base, finding more float and scraps here and there. Though I climbed up to the step, I found no more piles of bones, just scraps including something that looked like a claw, although the tip was broken off. No matter that I had probably found nothing of importance, I had still discovered the remains of creatures, which had lived very long ago. I sat down on one of the steps and just looked out at a land which should have been familiar to me but now seemed alien, as if I’d been plucked up and set down not only far away but long ago. Maybe I was getting a sense of deep time, I don’t know.