The Dinosaur Hunter(54)
Laura, Tanya, and Pick had gathered nearby to hear all this. Jeanette turned to them. “It’s all right. Everything is all right. Go back to work.”
We went back to work but when we took breaks, most of the talk was about the BLM agent. The consensus was he was an idiot, which, of course he was, but he was also a powerful one, at least on federal property. I hoped Edith would talk some sense in him. I also hoped he wasn’t right about the boundary lines of the BLM.
17
We kept taking off the top of the butte and, to my surprise, Jeanette stayed out to help. She said she’d asked Buddy Thomason to look after the Square C for a few days and she was ready for a little vacation. She chose to be quite sociable, joining us for our drinks, telling a few funny stories about ranch life and, more seriously, how she’d met Bill Coulter, twenty years older than she, and how they’d taken the Square C from a struggling, backward little ranch into the twenty-first century of animal husbandry. Of course, it was still struggling, she said, but at least she was working with the very latest information provided her by Montana State University and other institutions of higher learning in the state.
“Some day,” she said, wistfully, “we’ll start turning a consistent profit and we’ll prove to the other ranchers they also need to upgrade their methods.”
“It sounds like you nurture the land, Mrs. Coulter,” Brian said.
“I do my best,” Jeanette replied. “All ranchers in Fillmore County do the same.”
“I have to say I have some reservations about tearing this hill down,” Philip said.
“I do as well,” Jeanette responded, “but I’ve been assured the scientific value is the greater interest here.”
I have to say I had never heard Jeanette be so pedantic. I, for one, was impressed and so, apparently, were the brothers who just leaned back with their v&t’s. When she wanted to, Jeanette could charm anyone. Anyway, I think those greenies wanted to get charmed, else they might have asked her about the greater interest called the profit motive. Actually, I think they were enjoying knocking down Blackie Butte and it was fun, make no mistake about that. It made me think of my trip to Delphi in Greece with the second wife. Delphi is a mountain of ancient Greek monuments that are somewhat battered. What had battered them? Our guide said after the classical period, probably goatherds on top of the mountain with nothing better to do than to roll rocks and chunks of monuments down the hill just to see what they’d do. In short, it was fun to make stuff roll down hills and the Marsh brothers were having the time of their lives.
As to Pick, he was apparently shaken by Ted Brescoe’s threats. He had gone very quiet and somber around the fire pit. To cajole him out of his funk, Laura and Tanya were being extra solicitous with him, getting him another drink, making sure he had his favorite food (a cheeseburger), telling stories about what a great dinosaur hunter he was, and urging him to tell some stories of his own. Finally, toward late evening when the rest of us were thinking about our sleeping bags, Pick seemed to snap out of it. “I’ve been thinking about what’s up there,” he said, “and I think I understand part of it.”
Laura and Tanya smiled at one another and sat back. Seeing their reaction, I did, too. Pick was about to tell a story as he had of Big Ben. The others, including Jeanette, waited politely.
“We have a family,” Pick said. “The bones tell me that much. But something happened, maybe more than one thing. I’m studying more than the bones. I’m studying the dirt.”
He let that hang, although Laura cocked her head. Pick went on. “Understand where they were. They lived by a tributary of a vast, inland sea. There were islands, beautifully green like emeralds in the bluest ocean you can imagine. The air was filled with oxygen, more than we have now. Every breath provided streams of energy to all the creatures who lived. The meadows of ferns were an extraordinary green. There were many open spaces. The Triceratops and Hadrosaurs saw to that, eternally grazing on endless pastures, overlooked by rolling highlands. A shallow river ran through the countryside. Butterflies flitted in the ferns and the bromeliads and orchids that coated the land. It was a splendid place for a family of Tyrannosaurs to live.”
“You make it sound like paradise,” Philip said.
“It was,” Pick said, “except, even as big and thick-skinned as these Tyrannosaurs were, they needed always to be wary of creeping things with teeth and poison.”
“I can’t imagine anything could threaten them,” Jeanette said.
“Oh, there were many threats, Mrs. Coulter,” Pick replied with a significant look. “And among them would have been other T. rexes. Rogues. I think there were rogues.”