Dinosaur Lake (15 page)

“Naw, I don’t think they will. Not tonight, anyway. If they’re smart, they’ll want to discuss the situation before they do anything rash. They must realize there’s a good reason we came all the way out here to chase them off. Or, at least, that’s what I’m counting on.

“Now what they do tomorrow,” Henry grinned, “that’s another matter.”

“You know, there’s going to be more like them,” Justin told him as they got into the jeep. “You can’t stop the flood of publicity seekers with only a handful of rangers. The town’s seething with gossip about the thing in the lake and the wall of bones. People can’t resist paranormal mysteries and there’s good money in lake monsters. They’ll all be trying to get pictures of the American Loch Ness Monster.”

“Appropriate name for it, I guess. But Nessie hasn’t killed anyone, that’s ever been reported anyway. Not like this creature. And I know there’ll be more gawkers. I’ll handle them as they come.” He started the vehicle, but instead of going home, he maneuvered it along the narrow drive that wound its way along the top of the rim, and parked.

“I have to make another stop,” he disclosed, getting out of the jeep.

“The dig, right?”

“You got it.” He knew Justin had been there every day unearthing, packaging and tagging the fossil imprints for transport, but that the young man hadn’t tempted fate by staying past dusk. He’d been there so much, and with Laura in the evenings, Henry had hardly seen him since their breakfast four days earlier, though, they’d talked by phone several times. “I have some bones to pick with Harris.”

Justin’s lips curved up a moment at Henry’s pun.

“And, you want to warn them one more time about taking precautions, even if they don’t believe in the lake creature?”

“Yeah, but fat good it’ll do. As you pointed out, Justin, there’s money in them bones. But they’ve been dynamiting too much. Dr. Harris promised it’d only last a day or two. Well, it’s been three.”

“Harris won’t listen. He’s dynamiting because he needs to, so he can uncover more fossils, quicker. He doesn’t believe in our monster. He thinks we invented it to scare them away and keep this paleontological
discovery to ourselves.”

“What an idiot,” growled Henry.

“Yes, but a brilliant, well-connected idiot.”

They hiked down the rim’s trail and entered a village of tents and RVs. Some of the scientists and their assistants were staying below at the lodge, but about a third were camping out around the excavation site so they could be close to and protect the place.

Henry spotted Dr. Harris. He was relaxing in a lawn chair in front of his RV, chatting with a couple of colleagues. A bottle of root beer balanced in one hand, a dog-eared notebook in the other. The man looked perplexed. His face was sunburned around his beard, across his high forehead and the bald spot on top of his head.

Henry also recognized Dr. Daniel Alonso, and Tony Bracco, Dr. Harris’s assistants, from an earlier visit, but had no idea who the older gray-haired woman in the khaki top, shorts and wide-brimmed straw hat was. The woman stalked off as Henry and Justin arrived.

Dr. Harris shaded his eyes with a hand, smiling as they stood above him. He remembered him from his previous visits.

Working the dig together Justin had become friendly with Harris. After all, they were both respected paleontologists. There were only forty or so of them in the world in Justin and Harris’s league, and most of them knew each other. Just like Justin, Dr. Harris had been all over the planet. China, Canada, England. Wherever they uncovered buried dinosaur fossils. But unlike Justin, who was amiably humble, Henry had found Harris to be an arrogant stuffed peacock.

“What’s she mad about?” Henry inquired, indicating the retreating woman with a jab of his thumb.

“The new procedures.” Dr. Harris closed the notebook in his lap. “The guards I’ve posted since your last visit and other safety precautions. She doesn’t feel they’re necessary and resents the intrusion into her privacy.”

Dr. Harris’ colleagues stood up after acknowledging their arrival and wandered away.

Dr. Harris motioned for him and Justin to have a seat beside him. They did.

“Better safe than dead, I always say.” Henry stretched out his legs and took note of how low the sun was getting. He removed his hat and placed it in his lap.

“Well, in part I agree with you, and in respect for your concern, and for the well-being of my associates here, I’m insisting all but a few–to guard the dig, you understand–spend the nights at the lodge below, to be safe. They can work the dig during the day, but at twilight, I want them to leave. I was just getting ready to scoot them all out of here for the night.”

The lodge wasn’t much safer than the rim, but Henry let that slide. Surprised at the change of strategy, he inquired, “Has something happened?”

Justin listened, his expression troubled.

“Well, not exactly.” Harris reneged on his denial when his eyes locked with the ranger’s. “All right. Yes, something has. Nothing truly horrific, though. We’ve been hearing some mighty peculiar noises coming in off the lake at night. That’s all. As you said, better safe than sorry.”

“Noises, huh? Care to elaborate?”

“Oh, you’re probably thinking it’s that mysterious monster of yours,” Dr. Harris’ tonewas somehow unsure, and without half the sarcasm that had been there days before. He made a reticent gesture with the hand holding the root beer.

“I’m sure it was just some normal park critter. Unhappy, perhaps, or in pain. But it’s spooked some of my people, so I’m being cautious. A rabid bear or a rogue cougar could wreak untold damage on our expedition here.”

Henry glowered at the man. He still believed he and Justin had invented (for whatever reason) the lake creature. “You could stop dynamiting.” Henry snorted. “Maybe that’d shut up the lake creature. Could be it doesn’t like that noise.”

Justin hid his grin behind a hand.

“We have to break up the rock. It’s the only way to get the fossils out.” Dr. Harris raised his other hand, palm towards Henry. “But after tomorrow, no more dynamiting. We’ll be finished for a while.”

“Good,” Henry said. Tomorrow was better than next week, and not worth pulling rank over, but was it soon enough? He almost said something else to Harris, then thought better of it. The man was insufferable. He’d do what he wanted anyway. By the time Henry had permission to shut the dynamiting down it’d be tomorrow.

“What about the strange animal noises? Can you tell me anything more about them?”

Harris complied. “They began last night and continued on and off until early this morning. The best way I can describe them, they were a sort of a roaring sound. Maddeningly persistent and exceptionally loud. Amplified, no doubt, by the caldera’s echoes. They were unusually unnatural sounds altogether. Quite extraordinary, in fact. I’ve never heard anything like them.” His voice lowered, “It almost makes me believe in that lake monster of yours.” He laughed.

Henry and Justin didn’t.

“Of course, no offense to what you and Maltin here thought you saw in the lake last week. I’m not saying you’re lying, Ranger Shore. I respect you and my fellow paleontologist. I’m merely saying that you couldn’t have seen what you claim to have seen. It was the night and the fog inciting your imaginations. Who can hold credence that there’s a live prehistoric creature paddling around in the water below us? Preposterous. Not that I’m saying I wouldn’t love to see a real dinosaur myself. Don’t get me wrong. What an astounding opportunity it would be. What a treasure. A live, breathing dinosaur!” Harris’s eyes shone like any zealot’s and gave Henry a dark glimpse into the man’s mind.

At that moment he had a sinking feeling.

Harris was the type who’d want to capture the damn thing, cage it, probe and prod it. Run tests and try to clone it. Exactly what Henry would have wanted to do before he’d had the run in with it, and had seen those men’s bloody body parts in the woods. Now Henry was sure such an anachronistic bloodthirsty creature couldn’t coexist with them in their world. It’d be like trapping a malignant virus in a test tube and putting it on display, one if ever released could kill countless people. The risk wasn’t worth it.

“Yeah, and wouldn’t it be an astounding opportunity if the creature turned out to be a deadly predator dinosaur with uncanny intelligence that loved to hunt, kill and gobble up human beings and was extremely good at it? How would you fight such a creature?” Henry couldn’t help but pose the scenario, to see how Harris would respond.

“Fight it?” Dr. Harris’s voice shook. “If there truly was a
live
dinosaur in the lake, Ranger Shore, we couldn’t hurt it. We’d have to capture it. Study it. It would be incredible to have a breathing one in captivity! Think of all the things we could learn.”

Henry turned his head, rolling his eyes at the heavens. That’d be all they’d need, someone with political pull wanting to save the creature. Bag it alive. Put it in a cage somewhere on display like a cuddly panda bear. But then, Harris hadn’t seen it or its handiwork. He’d sing a different tune if he ever came face to fang with it.

Dr. Harris’ look of shock relaxed into a sly smile. “You almost had me going again, Ranger. No, it’s impossible. There are no live dinosaurs. They died off millions of years ago. It must be some other large animal making the ruckus and the lake’s caldera, like I said, is distorting its cries. That’s what it is.”

He avoided Henry’s gaze and Henry wondered what, exactly, the doctor wasn’t admitting. That even he was afraid?

“And Justin,” Harris spoke to his associate, “if you did see something out on the lake that night, well, surely it’s all a grand hoax, a joke you’ve been subjected to, a humorous gag or something that some prankster is giggling over at this very moment. A live dinosaur, please!”

Henry was getting angry, but Justin sent him a smile, as if to say,
don’t worry about what he says, we know the truth.
Let it lie.

Harris looked at the tents and the people bustling back and forth from the plots they were sectioning out of the earth. The wall of fossils, once fifteen feet tall in some places, was crumbling, being eaten away by digging tools. There were hunks of dirt, and white plaster bundles of packaged fossils ready for shipping, littering the ground.

“Someone,” Harris was saying, eyes blazing, “perhaps, may even be trying to make us leave. As if we would abandon such a monumental paleontological
find because we were frightened of monster rumors. Ha! This discovery is far too important.
Nothing
would make me pack this camp up and leave now, I promise you. Come here.” Harris abruptly jumped out of his chair and headed for the fossil wall.

Henry and Justin followed.

The site didn’t look the same as when Henry had first seen it. Cordoned off, it was dug up like a terraced farm around and through the hill that contained the fossils. There were fresh strips of dirt and rock stretching away in every direction. People knelt in the earth scraping gently around objects dirt-embedded and scooping bits and pieces of fossilized stone into crate boxes resting on the ground besides them.

Dr. Harris stood above his workers and directed his attention to Henry. “We’ll gently chisel the ground away in pieces around the more delicate artifacts and ship the whole chunk back to John Day’s, or to another University, for further examination and cataloging. There’s already interest in this find all over the country. Ten universities have contacted us and offered support and financial backing for a part of the haul. I’ve never seen such interest before. These fossils are going to set the scientific world on its ear.” The scientist’s expression was jubilant.

A few of the workers waved as Dr. Harris ambled by with his guests, but most of them were too intent on beating the going light and didn’t look up. There was a tangible enthusiasm among the workers, but Henry also sensed anxiety. Some of the diggers glanced too often at the setting sun, their lips drawn tight. The light was receding.

Their skittishness reminded Henry night was coming quickly; that he and Justin should return to the cabin. Ann and Laura would be worrying, and the thought of supper made his stomach growl.

Any other time Henry would have been overjoyed at Harris’s personal tour of an active paleontological site and to see the scientists digging out the precious fossils with their own hands, but his mind was on other things.

It seemed strange he should fear the night. Something he’d always been so fond of, especially in the park, with its velvet calmness. The darkness brought out the night animals, brought rest to the land, and renewed the forest for another day. In the years since he’d come to live there, he’d grown to love taking night walks close by his cabin. Yet, shading his eyes at the falling sun, he was intensely aware of the ominous silence that had fallen over everything. Wasn’t normal. Not a bird was squawking or a squirrel chattering. The rising wind was heavy with unspoken threats.

Dr. Harris, still lecturing, paused in front of a sea of lumpy white bundles laid out on the ground around his feet.

“The fossils we’ve found so far have been wrapped in cheesecloth and strips of burlap dipped in plaster, in preparation for shipping to their destinations,” he explained, his tone full of reverence, as he spread his hands in the air above them. “From what we’ve dug out so far I believe we’ve only touched the surface. No saying what we’ll discover on the lower levels.”