Dragon Teeth Read online

  “Bad thing,” he said. “Tomorrow water is good.”

  He stared off across the plains.

  “We go find those white men?” Johnson said.

  “I go,” Little Wind said.

  “Me, too,” Johnson said.

  They rode at a gallop for nearly an hour in the yellowing afternoon light, and soon they were far from camp. It would be difficult, Johnson realized, to make it back by nightfall.

  Periodically, Little Wind would pause, dismount, check the ground, and mount up again.

  “How much farther?”

  “Soon.”

  They rode on.

  The sun dropped behind the peaks of the Rockies, and still they rode. Johnson began to worry. He had never been out on the plains at night before, and Cope had repeatedly warned him always to return to camp before dark.

  “How much farther?”

  “Soon.”

  They rode for perhaps fifteen minutes more and stopped again. Little Wind seemed to be stopping more often. Johnson thought it was because it was too dark to see the ground clearly.

  “How much farther?”

  “You want go back?”

  “Me? No, I was just asking how much farther.”

  Little Wind smiled. “Get dark, you afraid.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I was just asking. Is it much farther, do you think?”

  “No,” Little Wind said. He pointed. “There.”

  Beyond a far ridge, they saw a thin line of gray smoke climbing straight into the sky. A campfire.

  “Leave horses,” Little Wind said, dismounting. He pulled up a bunch of grass, let the blades fall in the wind. They drifted south. Little Wind nodded, and explained that they must approach the camp downwind or the other men’s horses would smell them.

  They crept forward, over the next ridge, lay on their stomachs, and looked down into the valley below.

  In the deepening twilight, two men, a tent, a glowing fire. Six horses picketed behind the tent. One of the men was stocky, the other tall. They were cooking an antelope they had killed. Johnson could not see their faces well.

  But he found the sight of this solitary camp, surrounded in all directions by miles of open plains, oddly disturbing. Why were they here?

  “These men want bones,” Little Wind said, echoing his own thoughts.

  And then the tall man leaned close to the fire as he adjusted the leg on the spit, and Johnson saw a face he knew. It was the tough man he had spoken to in the Omaha train station. The man Marsh had spoken to near the cornfields. Navy Joe Benedict.

  And then they heard a murmuring voice. The tent flap opened, and a balding, heavyset man emerged. He was rubbing something in his hands—spectacles he was cleaning. The man spoke again, and even from a distance Johnson recognized the slight halt, the formality of the speech.

  It was Marsh.

  Cope clapped his hands in delight. “So! The learned professor of Copeology has followed us here! What better proof of what I have been saying? The man is not a scientist—he is a dog in the manger. He does not pursue his own discoveries—he seeks to spy on mine. I have neither time nor inclination to spy on him. But Daddy Marsh can come all the way from Yale College to the Territory of Montana just to keep track of me!” He shook his head. “The asylum will yet receive him.”

  “You seem amused, Professor,” Johnson said.

  “Of course I am amused! Not only is my theory of the man’s dementia amply confirmed—but so long as he is tracking me, he cannot be finding any new bones of his own!”

  “I doubt that follows,” Sternberg said soberly. “Marsh has nothing if not money, and his students are not with him. He is probably paying his bone hunters to dig for him simultaneously in three or four territories, even as we speak.”

  Sternberg had done some work for Marsh several years before, in Kansas. He was undoubtedly right, and Cope stopped smiling.

  “Speaking of finds,” Cookie said, “how did he find us?”

  “Little Wind said that these are the same men that were following us back at Dog Creek.”

  Isaac leapt up. “See? I told you we were being followed!”

  “Sit down, J.C.,” Cope said. He was frowning now, his good humor vanished.

  “What are they doing here, anyway?” Cookie said. “They’re not on the square. They’re gonna kill us and take the bones.”

  “They’re not going to kill us,” Cope said.

  “Well then, take the bones, for sure.”

  “They wouldn’t dare. Even Marsh wouldn’t dare.”

  But in the darkness of the plains, he sounded unconvinced. There was a silence. They listened to the moan of the night wind.

  “They poisoned the water,” Johnson said.

  “Yes,” Cope said. “They did.”

  “I wouldn’t call that neighborly,” Cookie said.

  “True . . .”

  “You’ve made some important discoveries, Professor. Discoveries any scientist’d give his left arm to claim as his own.”

  “True.”

  There was another long silence.

  “We surely are a long way from home, out here,” Isaac said. “If something happened to us, who’d be the wiser? They’d just blame the Indians if we never showed back in Fort Benton.”

  “They blame Indians.” Little Wind nodded.

  “Quite true.”

  “Better do something about them,” Isaac said.

  “You’re right,” Cope said finally. He stared at the campfire. “We will do something. We will invite them to dinner tomorrow night.”

  Dinner with Cope and Marsh

  The search for fossils was abandoned the next day in feverish preparation for Marsh. The camp was cleaned, clothes and bodies washed. Sternberg shot a deer for dinner and Cookie roasted it.

  Cope was busy with preparations of his own. He picked through the piles of fossils they had found, selecting a piece here, a piece there, setting them aside.

  Johnson asked if he could help, but Cope shook his head. “This is a job for an expert.”

  “You are selecting finds to show Marsh?”

  “In a way. I am making a new creature: Dinosaurus marshiensis vulgaris.”

  By the end of the day he had assembled from fragments a passable skull, with two horned projections that stuck out laterally from the jaw like curving tusks.

  Isaac said it looked like a wild boar, or a warthog.

  “Exactly,” Cope said, excited. “A prehistoric porcine giant. A piglike dinosaur! A pig for a pig!”

  “It’s nice,” Sternberg allowed, “but it won’t stand close scrutiny from Marsh.”

  “It won’t have to.”

  Cope ordered them to lift the skull, which was held together with paste, and under his instructions they moved it first farther from the fire, then closer, then farther again. Next to one side, and to another. Cope stood by the fire, squinted, and then ordered it moved again.

  “He’s like a woman decorating his house, and we’re movin’ the furniture,” Cookie said, panting.

  It was late afternoon when Cope pronounced himself satisfied with the skull’s position. They all went off to clean up, and Little Wind was dispatched to invite the other camp to join them for dinner. He returned a few minutes later to say that three riders were approaching the camp.

  Cope smiled grimly. “I should have known he’d invite himself.”

  “There was a theatrical aspect to both men,” observed Sternberg, who had worked for both, “although it manifested differently. Professor Marsh was heavy and solemn, a man of judicious pauses. He spoke slowly and had a way of making the listener hang on his next words. Professor Cope was the opposite—his words came in a tumbling rush, his movements were quick and nervous, and he captivated attention as a hummingbird does, so brilliantly quick you did not want to miss anything. At this meeting—the only face-to-face encounter I ever witnessed—it was clear no love was lost between them, though they were at pains to hide this fact in frosty Eastern f
ormality.”

  “To what do we owe this honor, Professor Marsh?” Cope asked when the three men had ridden into camp and dismounted.

  “A social visit, Professor Cope,” Marsh said. “We happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  “Quite extraordinary, Professor Marsh, considering how large a neighborhood it is.”

  “Similar interests, Professor Cope, lead down similar paths.”

  “I am astonished you even knew we were here.”

  “We didn’t know,” Marsh said. “But we saw your cook fire and came to investigate.”

  “Your attention honors us,” Cope said. “You must stay to dinner, of course.”

  “We have no wish to intrude,” Marsh said, his eyes darting around the camp.

  “And likewise, I am sure we have no wish to detain you on your journey—”

  “Since you insist, we will be delighted to stay to dinner, Professor Cope. We accept with gratitude.”

  Cookie produced some decent bourbon; as they drank, Marsh continued to look around the camp. His gaze fell on several fossils, and at length, the unusual tusked skull set off to one side. His eyes widened.

  “I see you are looking around—” Cope began.

  “No, no—”

  “Ours must strike you as a very small expedition, compared to the grand scale of your own endeavors.”

  “Your outfit appears efficient and compact.”

  “We have been fortunate to make one or two significant finds.”

  “I’m certain you have,” Marsh said. He spilled his bourbon nervously, and wiped his chin with the heel of his hand.

  “As one colleague to another, perhaps you’d enjoy a tour of our little camp, Professor Marsh.”

  Marsh’s excitement was palpable, but all he said was, “Oh, I don’t want to pry.”

  “I can’t tempt you?”

  “I wouldn’t want to be accused of anything improper,” Marsh said, smiling.

  “On second thought,” Cope said, “you are correct as always. Let’s forgo a tour, and simply have dinner.”

  In that instant, Marsh shot him a look of such murderous hatred that it chilled Johnson to see it.

  “More whiskey?” Cope asked.

  “Yes, I will have more,” Marsh said, and he extended his glass.

  Dinner was a comedy of diplomacy. Marsh reminded Cope of the details of their past friendship, which had begun, of course, in Berlin, of all places, when both men were much younger and the Civil War raged. Cope hastened to add his own warm, confirming anecdotes; they fell all over each other in eagerness to declare their fervent admiration for one another.

  “Professor Cope has probably told you how I got him his first job,” Marsh said.

  They demurred politely: they had not heard.

  “Well, not quite his first job,” Marsh said. “Professor Cope had quit his position as zoology professor at Haverford—quit rather suddenly, as I recall—and in 1868 he was looking to go west. True, Professor Cope?”

  “True, Professor Marsh.”

  “So I took him down to Washington to meet Ferdinand Hayden, who was planning the Geological Survey expedition. He and Hayden liked each other, and Professor Cope signed on as expedition paleontologist.”

  “Very true.”

  “Though you never actually accompanied the expedition, I believe,” Marsh said.

  “No,” Cope said. “My baby daughter was ill, and my own health not excellent, so I worked from Philadelphia, cataloging the bones the expedition sent back.”

  “You have the most extraordinary ability to draw deductions from bones without benefit of having seen them in the actual site or having dug them out yourself.”

  Marsh managed to turn this compliment into an insult.

  “You are no less talented in just that way, Professor Marsh,” Cope said quickly. “I often wish I had, like you, the ample funds from multiple patrons needed to pay for the large network of bone hunters and fossil scouts you employ. It must be difficult for you to keep up with the quantities of bones sent you in New Haven, and to write all the papers yourself.”

  “A problem you face as well,” Marsh said. “I am amazed you are no more than a year behind in your own reporting. You must often be obliged to work with great haste.”

  “With great speed, certainly,” Cope said.

  “You always had a facile ability,” Marsh said, and he then reminisced about some weeks they had spent as young men in Haddonfield, New Jersey, searching for fossils together. “Those were great times,” he said, beaming.

  “Of course we were younger then, and didn’t know what we know now.”

  “But even then,” Marsh said, “I remember that if we found a fossil, I was obliged to ponder it for days to deduce its meaning, whereas Professor Cope would simply glance at it, snap his fingers, and give it a name. An impressive display of erudition—despite the occasional error.”

  “I recall no errors,” Cope said, “though in the years since then, you have been kind enough to hunt down all my errors and point them out to me.”

  “Science is an exacting mistress, demanding truth above all.”

  “For myself, I’ve always felt that truth is a by-product of a man’s character. An honest man will reveal the truth with every breath he takes, while a dishonest man will distort in the same way. More whiskey?”

  “I believe I’ll have water,” Marsh said. Navy Joe Benedict, sitting by his side, nudged him. “On second thought, whiskey sounds good.”

  “You don’t want water?”

  “The water in the badlands doesn’t always agree with me.”

  “That’s why we draw ours from a spring. Anyway, you were saying, Professor Marsh, about honesty?”

  “No, I believe honesty was your subject, Professor Cope.”

  Johnson later recorded:

  Our fascination at seeing these legendary giants of paleontological science meet head-to-head eventually faded as the evening grew older. It was of interest to note how long they had known each other, and how similar were their backgrounds. Both men had lost their mothers in infancy and had been raised by strict fathers. Both men had evinced a fascination with fossils from early childhood—a fascination that their fathers had opposed. Both men were difficult, lonely personalities—Marsh because he had grown up on a rural farm, Cope because he had been a childhood prodigy who made anatomical notes at the age of six. Both men had followed parallel careers, such that they met in Europe, where they were both abroad studying the fossils of the Continent. At that time, they had been good friends, and now were implacable enemies.

  As the hours passed, interest in their banter faded. We were tired from the exertions of the day, and ready for sleep. On Marsh’s side, his roughneck companions looked equally fatigued. And still Cope and Marsh talked on into the night, sniping, bickering, trading insults as pleasantries.

  Finally, Toad fell asleep, beside the fire. His loud snores were inescapable proof that these two had lost their audience, and having lost the audience to witness their jibes, they seemed to lose interest in each other.

  The evening had dragged to a seemingly undramatic conclusion—no hollering, no gunfire—and too much had been drunk on all sides. Marsh and Cope shook hands, but I noticed that the handshake was extended; one man was holding the other’s hand tightly, not releasing it, as the two men stared hatefully into each other’s eyes, the light from the fire flickering over both their faces. I could not tell which man was the aggressor in this instant, but I could plainly see each man silently swearing his undying enmity toward the other. Then the handshake broke off almost violently and Marsh and his men rode off into the night.

  “Sleep with Your Guns Tonight, Boys”

  No sooner were they gone over the nearest ridge than Cope was wide awake, alert and energized.

  “Break out your guns!” he said. “Sleep with your guns tonight, boys.”

  “Why, what do you mean?”

  “We’ll have visitors tonight, mark my words.” C
ope bunched his fists in his pugilistic way. “That vertebrate vulgarity will be back, crawling in on his belly like a snake for a closer look at my pig skull.”

  “You don’t mean to shoot at them?” Isaac said, horrified.

  “I do,” Cope said. “They have opposed us and impeded us, they have got the army after us, they have poisoned our water and insulted our persons, and now they are going to steal our finds. Yes, I mean to shoot at them.”

  This seemed to them extreme, but Cope was angry and would not be talked out of it.

  An hour passed. Most of the camp fell asleep. Johnson was lying next to Cope, and his twisting and turning kept him awake.

  Thus he was awake when the first dark figure crept over the ridge.

  Cope gave a soft sigh.

  A second figure, then a third. The third was heavyset, lumbering.

  Cope sighed again, and swung his rifle around.

  The figures crept toward the camp, and made for the fossil head.

  Cope raised his rifle to shoot. He was a crack shot, and for a horrified moment Johnson thought he really intended to kill his rival.

  “Now, Professor—”

  “Johnson,” he said quietly, “I have him in my sights. It is within my power to kill a trespassing sneak and thief. Remember this night.”

  And Cope raised his rifle higher into the air, and fired twice at the sky, and shouted, “Indians! Indians!”

  The cry brought the camp to its feet. Soon rifles were discharged from all sides; the night air was clouded with gun smoke, and acrid with the smell of powder.

  Across the camp, they heard the intruders scrambling up the ridge. There was an occasional shout of “Damn you! Damn your eyes!”

  Finally, a deep, distinctive voice cried, “Just your way, Cope! It’s a damnable fake! Just your way! A fake!”

  And the three men were gone.

  The firing stopped.