CHAPTER IX
TED'S FOSSIL DINOSAUR
An hour later two famished and exhausted boys were peering at the hugebon-fire by which Norris and Long Lester had decided to camp till dawn.
"Wal, durn yer hide, I'm that glad to see you I've a notion to wallopyou," the old guide welcomed them. "But I'm not a-goin' to ask you asingle word till you've et," and he proceeded to build up a brighterfire. "Peel off them duds, and roll up here in our blankets whilst we drythings for you."
The bedraggled boys allowed Norris to help them out of their heavy,water-soaked clothing, for their hike down the mountainside in the nightwind had fairly stiffened their joints. First Long Lester administered aquart apiece of scalding tea, then insisted that, fagged as they were,they bathe their feet. "A camper is as good as his feet," and Pedro hadyet to be located.
It was decided that, as they were all of them worn out, and Pedro,wherever he was, would likely sleep himself when night came, they wouldwait till dawn to search for him and the Mexicans. While it was aquestion as to whether they were still in the cave, it seemed best tosearch there first.
At the moment of the earthquake, Pedro had been crawling through a narrowpassageway, bed of some former watercourse, whose walls dripped black inthe glow of his dying torch. Then came a crash before him!--A chunk ofrock had fallen from the roof into the passageway. When the alarmingswaying motion and the thunder of the bowlder's fall had subsided, and hehad relighted the torch, (which had been extinguished), he found hisforward progress effectually blocked. Behind were the Mexicans,--Sanchezpossibly still plugging the opening into the passageway. He was aprisoner! He was entombed!
At first, utter panic possessed him. In like situation, those of weak,nervous timbre have been known to go insane. Then he got a grip onhimself and reasoned that Norris and the rest would not leave him to hisfate. They would never give him up till they had searched the cavethoroughly, and had he not left his bandanna at one turn, hishandkerchief at another, and the end of a freshly charred torch at athird? Besides, (he smiled grimly), if his own party did not find him,the Mexicans might. Or if they captured the Mexicans, they would wringfrom them a confession of his near whereabouts. (This time he laughedoutright at thought of Sanchez the Stout still dangling his helpless legswhen the Ranger found him. The sound echoed and reechoed weirdly.)
This experience had done much for Pedro's untried courage. For after all,is it not the unknown that terrifies us rather than the actual calamityto be faced? Another thing that helped the Spanish boy to be reasonablyphilosophical,--probably the biggest factor, after all,--was Nature'smedicine, his extreme physical fatigue. Thrusting his hat through anarrow crevice so that it would be seen and recognized by any one comingthat way, he stretched himself out flat on his back on a bit of smooth,dry rock, thriftily extinguished the remaining bit of torch, and wasinstantly asleep.
He awoke, he knew not how much later,--but he felt refreshed,--to hearthe sound of voices echoing and reechoing faintly, far down thepassageway. Fumbling frantically for a match, he yelled for help with allthe power of his trained voice. (And the sound echoed back and forth.) Atfirst Norris and the boys could not tell from which direction it came.Then Long Lester, who was in advance, saw the hat, and it but remained toremove the bowlder.
Now it was that they had use for their ingenuity, for their combinedefforts did not suffice to budge the fallen rock. The cavern in whichPedro had become immured was off a lateral passageway leading,--if he hadtaken the turn to the right instead of the one to the left,--to the verycave mouth by which the rescue party had reentered; for Long Lester hadfound, not far from the waterway through which the two boys hadcome,--but on a higher level,--some scratches on the rocks and a heelprint in the scanty soil that told the old mountaineer as plain as wordsthat that was the way Radcliffe had come. Every heel in the party wasdifferent, one having Hungarian hob-nails set in a semi-circle, another asolid design in the same nails, a third the larger hobs, a fourth none.He knew the differences in size and the ones that were worn deeper on theinside of the foot. To him a footprint was as good as a signature, andbetter, for like an Indian, a "hill billy" can often read how fast youwere going from a group of two or three footprints, how tired you were,and much besides. This knowledge had served them in good stead. He nowhurried back to the cave mouth with Ace, found a down log that wouldserve as a lever, and they pried away the bowlder that kept Pedro aprisoner.
Sign of the Mexicans they could not find, save that Sanchez had beenremoved from the crevice of the stalactites, (at least he was no longerthere), but whether he had had to fast or not, they could not tell. TheMexicans evidently knew the cave and they had been near the southern endof it. Though Long Lester could find no trace of their footprints ateither of the exits they knew, there were doubtless others, and it seemedthe wisest course now to look for them outside. For the boys were stillunwilling to give up the chase.
Reporting back to Radcliffe, they learned, to their amazement, that thepack burros the Mexicans had left near the northern cave mouth haddisappeared, but where, they could not tell from any sign left on thecharred ground outside.
The Ranger would start a search for them in the DeHaviland, once the firewas under better control. The Forest Service finds its air service asuseful in keeping track of law breakers as of fires. It would be anextraordinary thing if the careless camper should escape detection, forthe air men can spy them out as easily as anything. But the fire stillate angrily through the timber, and would spread in all directions ifleft to itself. Fire fighting is sometimes a matter of weeks.
It was a dry summer, and all up and down the Sierras, the Rangers werekept busy fighting the fires that would break out from one cause oranother. The Service 'planes were all busy.
The five campers were back at fire-fighting headquarters,--and Norristoo,--when Ace had an idea. He and Ted would go in search of the Mexicansin his little Spanish 'plane. Would Radcliffe let them off thefire-fighting? He would, though he could not give official sanction totheir plan. It was enough. The two boys were off before he could changehis mind,--to Norris's slight uneasiness and Pedro's envy. (But Pedro wassubject to altitude sickness.)
Sometime, Norris had promised Ted, they would go back into the cave andlook for his fossil. But that could wait.
All that afternoon the two boys curveted over the surroundingscenery,--careful to keep their distance from the whirlwind offire-heated air, for they were flying low. The most minute search failedto reveal the fire setters, but Ace only set his jaw the moredeterminedly.
They returned to sleep twelve hours at a stretch. Aviation is the bestcure yet for insomnia, and neither Ace nor Ted had ever been troubledwith that malady. The next day they flew farther, carrying with them anemergency camp kit. They landed about every two hours, rested awhile, andfinally went into camp about four in the afternoon, intending to take alook in the night to see if the fugitives would betray themselves by abon-fire. They camped in a meadow where they had seen something likesmoke arising. This proved to be steam from a hot spring, and theythought with longing how fine their chilled bones would feel in a goodhot bath. But the spring water came too hot. (If they had had eggs, theycould have cooked them in it.)
Then it occurred to them to dig a little trench, line it with stones, andcarry the spring water by the folding canvas pailful to fill it. It wouldquickly cool to the right temperature. The scheme worked wonderfully.
The water had a strong mineral taste, not altogether agreeable, but itseffect on aching bones was wonderful. A flint arrowhead buried in thesoil they excavated told its tale of Indians, who must have valued thespring and fought for its possession against covetous tribes.
"What makes these hot springs, anyway?" asked Ted. "Have you had that yetin your geology?"
"Yes, but you'll understand better when Norris tells us the story he'spromised about the formation of the earth. I'm no professor." And heturned a former laugh on Ted. "Tell you what, Old Top, once we get thesefire bugs located for our Unc
le Sammy, what say we fly up and have a lookat Lassen volcano before I send the 'plane back?"
"Bully! I'd like to fly over a glacier, too, and see what it looks like.Can you go that high?"
"I--guess so. Never tried it! We will, though!"
"Gee! Wouldn't this be a great way to teach geography--from an aeroplane!"
"Sure would!--Great way to go camping, too."
"'S right, only--it would be if there was just the two of us," sighedTed ungrammatically. "Could you carry enough grub?"
"We could get fresh supplies every few days, from some ranch."
The next day they went back for the rest of the party and showed themTed's fossil, entering the cave the way Radcliffe had left it. Norris hadspent one summer with fossil hunters in the dry gullies of the Southernend of California, he told them, where through scorching days and thirstynights they had searched for any bit of bone that might lie amid theshale or imbedded in strata the edges of which might be seen on the faceof a sun-baked bluff. The summer before, a group of geology men from arival University had actually camped within a hundred yards of what waslater discovered to be a deposit of rare fossils. It was therefore withheightened satisfaction that their reconnaissance had resulted in thediscovery and excavation, bone by bone, of the complete skeleton ofseveral most interesting prehistoric monsters that had lain all theseages embedded in the shale.
One bone four feet long, he told them, and weighing several hundredpounds, had been found in fragments in the shale, but it had been fittedtogether again, done up in plaster bandages and braced with splints,quite as a surgeon treats a broken leg. Another, found embedded in solidrock, had to be shipped in the rock, each piece being numbered as it wasremoved from the cliff as an aid to fitting it together again. Then withhammer and chisel the delicate feat of cutting away the rock and leavingthe bone exposed was slowly and painstakingly accomplished. Thus have thebones buried before ever man trod the earth been made to tell theirstory. Often it takes more than a single specimen to reconstruct for thescientist the whole of the creature, but relics of fully thirtyTriceratops have been discovered in different parts of the world, andwhere one skull has a broken nose, another shows it intact, and so onthrough its entire anatomy.
Its habits may in part be reasoned out, as for instance, if its hind legsare disproportionately long, it likely walked erect at least sometimes.
"That, as it happens, was not the case with Triceratops," he added."There was only a slight difference between his fore and hind legs.Triceratops had teeth made for browsing, not for rending flesh; hissingle claw, round and blunt, does not indicate any pugnacious tendencyon his part, and the solidity of his bones are found to-day in either avery sluggish animal or a partially aquatic one. The shape and rapidtaper of the tail vertebrae indicates a rather short tail, round ratherthan flat,--ill adapted for swimming,--and so following through the list,till we have a Triceratops elephantine in general build, though more likea rhinoceros in face with a horn over his nose and two over his eyes, ahorn-supported neck ruff, and a generally sluggish mode of life.
"In the coal fields complete imprints of Ichthyosauria have been found,doubtless due to the carbonization of the animal matter. And impressionshave been left in stone of the very feathers worn by some of the nowfossilized creatures."
It was by comparison of fossil remains that the well known evolution ofthe horse from a little fellow the size of a fox was learned. Ted oftenthought of that three-toed Miocene horse, and the giant monsters of histime,--of the upthrust of the Rocky Mountains, cutting off the moist seabreeze from the marshy country to the Eastward and making desert of it.This made life too hard for the heavy, slow-witted creatures, and theyfailed to survive the change. But the nimble footed little horse trottedlong distances with ease, to find food and water.
Norris convulsed them by describing the creature on which he declared theaeroplane was modeled,--the pteranodon, that giant lizard, largest offlying creatures even in Mesozoic age, whose bat-like wings reached 20feet from tip to tip,--as the fossil skeletons plainly prove.
This interesting specimen was a link in the chain between the birds ofto-day and their ancestral archeopteryx, no larger than a crow whosefront legs metamorphosed to short wings, whose skeletons have been foundperfectly preserved in the limestone.
Ted was frantic for fear they would not find the place again, then couldhardly wait to hear the Geological Survey man's pronouncement on hisfind. Norris chipped and chipped, with knife and hammer, till he haduncovered the impress of a great, membranous wing.
It was a fossil dinosaur,--a pterodactyl!
Ted's college education was secure!