Laura rolled her eyes, then got up. “Amelia,” she said, “let’s see what we can do.”
Even though she hadn’t asked me to help, I went down the hill to see what was up with these two, leaving Ray to scrape, chisel, and brush on his own. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, in the last couple of days, he’d seemed almost cheerful. Mostly, he and Amelia weren’t talking, which maybe was helping his attitude. Or not. I couldn’t figure those two out.
Laura squatted beside the brothers, felt their foreheads, checked their pulses, and said, “You’re both into heat exhaustion. Can you walk a bit farther? You need to get in the shade and cool down.”
Numbly, both boys nodded their heads and staggered to their feet. Amelia and Laura led them back to camp with me pulling up the rear with their backpacks. When they rounded a curve and were out of sight, I set the packs down and opened them. Inside were BLM maps, empty water bottles (only two small ones per pack, the saps), a couple of half-melted granola bars, and notebooks. Philip’s notebook was blank except for some phone numbers. Brian’s was a daily log and what was in it gave me a chuckle. Apparently, the two were going from block to block on the BLM, counting cows and cow pies. One entry, pretty much typical, said:
No cow seen on this grid. 14 cow excrement documented. Especially large and smelly. See GPS chart.
These guys were a hoot. If they wanted to see cow doo, I could have helped them out. I knew where a lot of it was. Why they wanted to see it I guessed had something to do with them trying to document that we ranchers were fouling the people’s land with our nasty old cows. Yeah, right.
Laura and Amelia had the two brothers lie down beneath the cook tent awning, then gave them water and salt. Brian subsequently started screaming about having cramps. He grabbed his legs and rocked from side to side, his eyes slits of pain. Philip similarly groaned. “The cramps will pass,” Laura said, fanning them with a magazine. I sat there and looked at these two doofuses and reflected that they represented so many indoors environmentalists—filled with a fantasy of what the outdoors was really like but, once out there, pretty much disasters to themselves and the environment. Brian proved this by pooping in his pants.
“Whoa,” I said, wrinkling up my nose at the smell.
Laura allowed a grin. “Another symptom of heat exhaustion,” then pulled off Brian’s pants, got a basin of water, and helped him clean himself up. Brian kept moaning, then seemed to lapse into a coma. I worried about him until he started snoring, which I took as a good sign. I made a GPS reading, then retrieved Brian’s log from his backpack and made a note, doing my best to copy his printing style:
1 Human excrement documented. Especially large and smelly. See GPS chart or look in my pants.
I knew it was stupid but at least it made me laugh. “What are you laughing at?” Laura asked and I showed her the notebook. She called me a goofball.
There was something I needed to know so I asked Philip, “How did you get here?”
“We rented a pontoon boat at the marina,” he answered, “and came across the lake. Then we hiked into the BLM. We had no idea the terrain was so rugged.”
“Do you have a rifle? Any firearms?”
“No. You mean like to kill bears?”
“There are no bears out here but there are cows. You ever kill one?”
Philip closed his eyes while a wave of pain shuddered through him. “I’m really sick.”
I didn’t care how sick he was. “Have you ever shot a cow out here?”
“No. Of course not.”
“You’re telling me you never shot a cow, or cows, out here and left a card behind calling yourself the Green Monkey Wrench Gang?”
“Man, this has to be a bad dream,” Philip said, then curled up into a ball.
“Brian, how about you? You shoot any cows?” Unhappily, Brian was spreadeagled on the ground, still unconscious. “Brian?”
“Mike, for God’s sake, leave them alone!” Laura admonished. “What are you talking about, anyway?”
“I’m suspicious of these guys. Somebody’s been killing cows out here. Shooting them, then cutting their throats. They were already under suspicion when we let them go.” I told her about the meeting in town where they’d shown up. “So why are they still here?”
“Well, they’re not up for interrogation in their condition,” she said, then shooed me away.
I went back to work at the Trike site where I was surprised to discover that Pick and Tanya had shown up. “This is going to be one of the most complete Triceratops specimens every recovered,” Pick gushed. Then he said, “Mike, a word, if you don’t mind.”