CHAPTER 24
The next morning Kit awoke to the twittering of the tiny pterodactyl family outside her open window. She noticed the sun streaking in at a steep angle and realized she had overslept. She sat up in bed and stretched, appreciating just how much she had needed a good night’s sleep and a morning without a catastrophe.
She went to the window in her nightshirt, sat on the bench and leaned out to watch the tiny winged creatures scuttle over the pine logs. Their mouse-like nervous energy kept them in constant, noisy motion.
“Too cute for words,” she smiled. They leaped off the wall in unison at the sound of her voice but buzzed right back when they saw she was no threat. They were all beaks and tiny fingers and toes and fuzzy leather wings and little short-tailed butts. The babies had grown since she saw them last and were nearly as big as their mother. She was the black-headed, white-bodied center around which the little mouse-brown things came and went, crawling, hopping, flitting, or clinging to the wood upside down, right side up or sideways, quick and lively as chickadees.
The buzzing of yet another pair of wings heralded the arrival of one more member of the little flock. “There’s Daddy!” Kit exclaimed as another black-and-white flyer landed on the wall. He was the most colorful character of the bunch, sporting a red topknot on his head like a woodpecker. He carried a large green caterpillar that wriggled in his toothy beak. The baby pterodactyls rushed to surround him, fluttering their wings and begging like infant birds—if infant birds could cling to the vertical wall of a house. The father chose the widest mouth, stuffed in the caterpillar, and then buzzed off on another hunt.
Kit smiled at the tiny family’s antics. The last time she had seen them they had been scattered by the winged hunter. Now they were reunited and chattier than ever.
She looked up at Sandstone Mountain. It loomed tall above her, golden-hued in the morning sun, but it had changed. The top of the mountain, once a single peak, was cleft by the explosions she had set off inside. Wisps of smoke still rose between the two new crags, giving the mountain a volcanic look.
She slipped into her jeans, western shirt, and boots, and trotted downstairs, discovering along the way that her gimpy knee already felt much better.
Her father was in the kitchen clearing breakfast dishes from the table. “Big crew to cook for this morning,” he smiled. “And that Gar sure eats a lot of breakfast steak. I saved you some, along with some scrambled eggs and potatoes. Have a seat and I’ll dish it up.”
She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in the patched-up breakfast nook. As her father put a plate of hot food in front of her she quipped, “You’re feeling pretty chipper for an escaped prisoner.”
“Yes, I am, Little Girl. I expected this place to be a lot worse off than it is, with all the shooting and bombing.”
“We’re lucky,” she agreed. She watched his face as he loaded the dishwasher. The traumas of the last week hadn’t changed him much, except he looked a little thinner and his white buzz-cut hair was longer. “You know,” she began, “we still have some things to talk about.”
“I know, Kit. You want to be a paleontologist. I had a lotta time to think things over while I was stuck in that cage. I decided you’d best do what’s right for you. I’ll manage the ranch somehow.”
“But things have changed, Daddy. I have a new respect for all the work you’ve put into this place. It was one of the things that made our survival possible. I think I see what Dorothy meant in the Wizard of Oz. There’s no place like home.”
“Yeah, but a father ain’t got no right to tell his daughter what to do. You gotta follow your nose. Go ahead and do whatever you want. Go and study paleontology. Be whoever you want—”
“Shut up and listen, would you, Daddy? Maybe doing what I want means staying right at home. There are plenty of dinosaurs to study around here, or hadn’t you noticed?”
He put a pan in the sink and started scrubbing. “I’m just saying I realize how important school is to you.”
She looked at his care-worn, weathered face and said, “I love you, Daddy.”
He kept scrubbing. “I love you too, Little Girl.”
Hearing voices outside, she took a last sip of coffee and went out onto the back porch. Ogilvey, Chase and Gar were gathered around the fighting machine like teenaged boys with a hot car. Chase had his cap turned around backwards and he and Ogilvey were listening closely as Gar, who sat in the driver’s seat spoke into his radio transmitter.
A good morning in Kra-naga seemed in order, so Kit called out a phrase Ogilvey had taught her. “Ula-kannek!”
Gar raised his head and echoed her greeting. “Ula-kannek tota!” According to Kra custom, Gar accompanied his greeting with a bob of his head. Kit tried to mimic the movement without much success. Kra body language would take a while to get used to. Gar sometimes seemed like an overgrown goose despite the body armor and the overload of teeth and claws.
Ogilvey beamed at the exchange. His whiskery cheeks stretched in a wide grin. “Gar is in contact with the Kra troops,” he explained. “Most of them acknowledge his authority and accept the inevitability of peace. Although he’s still trying to convince Neggok and a few other renegades.”
Rufus was at the barn, raiding the hayloft again. Kit was surprised to see Lucky joining the yearling parasaurolophuses to get a share of the hay. The young duckbills were nearly horse-sized already and Lucky seemed to fit right in. Inside the barn’s main doors, dozens of U.S. Army troops, stragglers who had been trickling down from the prairie in twos and threes, were arranging a temporary bivouac until transport back to NORAD could be arranged. It was heartening that so many had survived the battle. A majority of the troops had pulled through according to Captain Suarez, who was overseeing their reorganization and resupply. It was heartening too, that the soldiers seemed nonchalant regarding Rufus, although they kept clear of him. That was a refreshing contrast to the near-fatal confrontation the last time they had met.
“What a change!” Kit rejoiced. “Such peace and calm. I can hardly stand it.”
“Parasaurolophus family life is beautiful, isn’t it?” Ogilvey observed. “Gar tells me they’ll quite probably find their way right back here after their winter migration.”
“Migration?” Kit questioned. “You mean they won’t be staying with us?”
“No,” replied the paleontologist. “Winter here is too harsh for their young. They’ll migrate down to the grasslands of south of Texas or the bayou country of Louisiana.”
“But that’s a thousand miles away. Can they really go that far?”
“They’re long-legged creatures,” Ogilvey replied. “They migrated from the North Slope of Alaska to the southern bayous in their times. This trip will be just a short commute for them. I suppose the Texans may complain when dinosaurs show up on their doorstep, but they’ll have another reason to claim everything is bigger in their state. And the dinosaurs won’t stay long. Each spring the animals will return to lay eggs and hatch their young here in Montana’s summer heat.”
“I’ll miss Rufus and Henrietta,” Kit lamented. “Are you sure they’ll come back?”
“I think so,” Ogilvey replied. “Modern birds return to the same nesting grounds. Presumably, they’ll do the same. And, if you get lonely for dinosaur company, Gar assures me that quite a few species can brave the cold of Montana’s winters.”
“Really?” said Kit. “Like what?”
“Those wooly pachyrhinosaurs. Gar says there’s never been a better cold-adapted creature in the history of the world. They lived in the Arctic, for goodness sake. They grow heavy winter coats of fur—or dino-fuzz, or proto-feathers, or—”
“We get the picture, Doc,” Chase muttered sarcastically. “And thanks for reminding me about them. I still haven’t told my boss at Yellowstone what happened to the pickup.”
“—and,” Ogilvey continued without noting Chase’s concern, “there are some other cold-hardy species Gar has tried to describe to me without much success. Y
ou see, many dinosaurs never showed up in our fossil collections. Mountain species lived in areas where erosion was the rule rather than sedimentation, so their bones weren’t buried. They disintegrated over time, rather like what will happen to the T rex.”
“The T rex!” Kit said edgily. “What about it?”
“Ahh,” exclaimed Ogilvey. “I should have mentioned it sooner, Kit. Come along with me.”
He walked toward the front of the house, motioning Kit to follow. “And you too, Chase. You should see this.”
Kit and Chase fell in with the professor as he walked to the front of the house. But when he started walking out along the driveway, both of them balked.
“Now wait!” Kit admonished. “Chase didn’t even bring a stick with him.”
Ogilvey chuckled and waved them forward, grinning impishly. “I assure you there’s no danger. Come along.” He led them to the place where the tyrannosaurus had emerged from the woods, and then plunged into the underbrush. Kit and Chase followed cautiously. Ogilvey bumbled ahead of them through the thicket babbling, “I guess we know who’s the top predator in this ecosystem—you, Chase.”
“How do you figure—?” Chase began. And then he stopped in his tracks. Ogilvey had swept some brush aside to reveal, laid out on the ground—
“The tyrannosaurus!” Kit gasped. She fell back against Chase, who caught her in his arms. “It’s dead, isn’t it?” she asked. “Not just sleeping?”
“Dead, of course,” said Ogilvey. “I’ve long since checked its pulse.”
Chase released Kit and they went forward to gape at the unmoving giant. “Dead of what?” she wondered.
“I’m not certain,” Ogilvey replied, “but gunshot wounds may have played a role. Either it bled to death, or more likely, it died of a massive infection.”
Kit was puzzled. “Don’t dinosaurs have immunity to modern germs?”
“Certainly,” Ogilvey responded. “This isn’t H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds we’re living through. Rufus and his family would be sick if that were the case. But I suspect this rex may have developed an infection in the wounds on his flank and breast. That’s where you shot him, isn’t it, Chase?”
Chase nodded, staring at the huge carcass morosely.
The animal’s death throes had created a clearing in the woods. Kit, Chase, and Ogilvey circled the body, inspecting it. They moved along the tail, past the immense hind legs and the small front appendages, which were feathered like stubby wings. As they moved past the massive head, which lay outstretched as if still taking its last gasp, Kit shuddered. Staring at the five-foot-long jaws and eight-inch teeth, she murmured, “I remember those jaws coming at me.”
Chase put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I guess it’s not so dangerous now.”
The tyrannosaur’s eyes were partly open, sunken and glazed.
“It’s been dead for more than a day,” Ogilvey declared as he leaned near to study the pattern of heavy scales on one of the brow horns.
Two crows cawed from an overhanging branch, looking eager to get to work on the bounty of carrion.
Chase sighed. “The Tyrant King isn’t so powerful after all, is he?” He stood silently beside the rex with his cap off and his head bowed.
“What’s the matter?” Kit asked, seeing the regret in his face.
“It doesn’t matter how fierce a carnivore seems in life,” he said. “They all look pathetic when they’re dead.”
“Death is a part of life,” Ogilvey asserted.
“Yeah, but this time the bullets are mine. I’m supposed the one who saves carnivores, not kills them. I feel like one of those gun-happy yayhoos that shoot my wolves.”
“On the other hand,” Ogilvey rejoined as he measured the length of a tooth with his thumb and forefinger, “you had a good reason to shoot, or Kit wouldn’t be with us right now.”
Chase nodded in agreement. “If it comes to that, I’d kill a hundred tyrannosaurs.”
“That’s the spirit!” Ogilvey exclaimed. “But it won’t come to that, because we’ll soon have countermeasures to keep rexes at bay. Kra fighting machines can control them as Gar demonstrated so well with the utahraptors. The electric bolt.”
“Don’t forget Rufus,” Kit added. “He and Henrietta make pretty good watchdogs.”
“Watch-ducks,” Ogilvey chuckled. “Furthermore, in the fall the rexes will follow the plant eaters down to the Gulf Coast. You’ll be free of them for the winter, although the Texans may have some issues. Sounds like a negotiation for a species-reintroduction specialist, wouldn’t you agree, Chase?”
“I hadn’t given it much thought,” Chase replied, “but it is the same job I’ve been doing, isn’t it?”
“Now, as to this fellow,” Ogilvey went on, running his hand along the stiff tan-and-brown striped feathers that ridged the back of the rex’s neck, “there’s the little matter of preservation. In a few weeks, the crows and coyotes will leave nothing but bones. Then gnawing rodents, rain and sun will crumble even those. Given enough time, every trace of this magnificent specimen will be lost—unless someone collects it for a museum. Any suggestions as to whom that might be, Kit?”
“Who would do that?” Kit asked without much thought. And then her face lit up. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I would!”
“Yes, yes, my dear,” said the paleontologist. “It is my hope that as society—human-and-Kra-society—gets back on its feet, you will be able to start an undergraduate paleontology project with this specimen. I would be proud to be your faculty advisor. Let me suggest a thesis title: Collecting and Mounting the First One-Hundred-Percent Complete Tyrannosaurus Skeleton. How does that sound? Past generations of paleontologists only dreamed of such a thing. I tell you Kit, it’s the dawn of a new age in paleontology and we’re at the forefront!”