THE CAVE OF THE DINOSAUR

It had been arranged with the Chief that the girls were to wait at the Crossbar until they heard from him, and not attempt making the trip over to the gulch unless they were sure he and the Doctor would be there to meet them.

It was hard being patient, but after their morning dip down at the swimming place, Jean kept them busy getting the sheep wagon ready for the camping trip. They took clean papers, and tacked them evenly inside the cupboards and lockers under the seats, and made a regular inventory of everything they would need. Ruth took charge of this, and would check off each article as it went into the wagon.

The heavy things, such as tents, bedding, cooking utensils, and so on, were to follow in what Don called the grub wagon.

Sally Lost Moon was to stay at the ranch and do the cooking and housework for the boys, and it had been decided to let the girls ride their ponies. When one of them grew tired, she could ride in the wagon. The girls were delighted at this prospect. Of all the outdoor pleasures they had enjoyed at the ranch, the riding came first of all. There was something so exhilarating and healthful about it. The trouting was good sport and plenty of fun, and the long tramps they took nearly every day out to the Indian graves, or over old Topnotch’s twisted trails, or far down along the river to the lower rapids, each held a special enjoyment all its own, but there was something so novel and exciting about the pony riding that it excelled all other sports.

Polly had been delighted too, the first time that Jinks whinnied to her, and showed plainly he felt on friendly terms. By the third week, all of the ponies were quite willing to respond to the petting and overtures of friendship that had been lavished on them.

“I do really believe they all know us by now,” Ted had declared, that morning. “Don let me help rub Shoofly down yesterday morning, and he understood everything I said to him.”

“Who, Don?” queried Sue, in a muffled tone, as she knelt by a locker, and dug down under towels and mosquito netting to be sure that she had not packed the kodak at the very bottom.

“No, goose. The pony. I wish I could take him back home. I shall miss him so, and the riding, and oh—I don’t know what to call it—the wideness of everything.”

“Glorious expanse, she means, Sue,” Isabel explained. “Where did you pack my hand mirror?”

“It is not packed, Lady Vanitas,” retorted Sue, firmly. “We are to wash at pools and river brinks, and other handy wet spots en route, and you’ll just have to peek over at yourself like Narcissus when you want to see how you look.”

“Don’t you worry, Isabel,” Polly called cheerily. “I saw Peggie drop a three-cornered looking glass in the box with the dishes. We’ll nail it up on a tree. Oh, girls, I wish we had some lightweight rifles, not to shoot with—”

“Not shoot with?” repeated Ted, indignantly. “For what, then?”

“Practice and defence,” replied Polly. “We won’t want to stay around the camp every minute, and if we stray off any distance, some wild animal might appear, and where would we be?”

quoted Sue solemnly.

“Sue, I’m surprised,” laughed Polly. “Wouldn’t I love to see Miss Calvert’s face if she heard that.”

“She would laugh, too—now.” Sue made a significant pause. “Here they come. I heard the wheels on the bridge over the creek.”

So then they all left the sheep wagon, and their camp outfitting, to go and greet the visitors from the Alameda. There was a tinge of color in Miss Honoria’s delicate cheeks, and she looked around at her girls with a happy smile that spoke volumes.

“I wanted her to rest after her long journey,” Mrs. Sandy said, tenderly, “but she said she’d rather come over. Sister, you’d better sit up on the stoop where it’s cool.”

Honoria smiled proudly, and obeyed.

“She has mothered me every minute since I arrived, Mrs. Murray,” she exclaimed. “And the girls all know well how self-reliant I am.”

“Don’t you love to be mothered, though?” asked Polly, eagerly. “I do.”

“We all do,” declared Mrs. Sandy. “And the oldest ones are always the ones that need it most.”

“Who wants to ride with me?” called out the Chief. “Room for three here.”

Isabel, Jean, and Ruth took advantage of the surrey, but the rest of the girls were glad to wait while Don saddled up the ponies for them.

“The Doctor left us at the Forks back yonder,” said Sandy, driving on with a salute to the group up on the low stoop. “He’s riding too. Said he never sat in a vehicle when he could get a saddle and anything beneath it with four legs. The Fork trail is a good short cut to the Gulch, and he can’t miss the way. We’ll find him sitting on old Zed’s doorstep just like a forest foundling.”

The girls laughed heartily at the picture. It was a splendid day. The wind rippled the leaves of the cottonwoods along the river, and sent their bits of down sailing away into the air. The far-off mountain range to the northwest seemed incredibly near, and for once its trailing robes of violet and gray were laid aside. Every peak stood out distinctly. Down in the valley Archie was hammering at a new bar gate, and every blow seemed to rouse a hundred echoes from old Topnotch’s crags and precipices.

“We haven’t brought anything to dig with,” said Ruth, in her quiet, dry way. “There are some old picks at the shack, I think. We can use those if the Doctor wants us to help him.”

“Old-time poll picks, those are,” the Chief explained. “Zed used to go around, digging one prospecting hole after another. It’s a wonder he never found the skeleton himself.”

“I think it must have been covered up until the big storm,” Peggie called from her saddle. “Don and I have been down through the valley lots and lots of times, and we’d never noticed that great ledge of rock before. We would surely have seen it.”

It was past noon when they finally reached the gulch, and just as the Chief had predicted, they found the Doctor sitting on the doorstep, smoking his short brier-wood very peacefully, and reading from a pocket edition of some favorite author. It was characteristic of him to be so occupied just on the brink of a discovery.

Peggie led the way up to the cavern, and all, even Sandy himself, followed after her. The horses were hobbled in Zed’s little clearing, and the surrey team was hitched to a tree. Behind Peggie trod the Doctor, then Polly and Jean, last of all, the Chief, and his three scouts, as he called them. It was an important and solemn occasion, and even the irrepressible Ted and Sue walked soberly, and refrained from any giggles. They all realized fully just what the discovery would mean if it turned out to be authentic and valuable. The Murrays were far from being even well-to-do. There were too many mouths to feed, too many school bills to cover. And to Peggie belonged the credit of first discovery. Some share of the reward must be hers too, they knew.

“If any old deer or buffalo has dared to crawl ’way into that cave to die,” said Polly, as they all paused to rest at one place, “I shall give up all hope of founding the Sisters of the Geological Society, Doctor.”

“I think it’s a tidy little mastodon myself,” Ted remarked. “Nobody’s asked me what my opinion is, but I’m sure it’s a mastodon.”

“Mastodons are very ordinary, Ted,” Ruth said. “They’ve been found even in New York State.”

“Truly? Dead ones?” cried Ted, and they all laughed at her earnestness.

“What other kind do you suppose, Edwina?” asked the Doctor, severely. “A mastodon was dug up at Newburg, along in the forties.”

But here Peggie started ahead once more, so conversation was checked. Only once the Doctor spoke.

“It will be difficult getting it out.”

That gave Polly courage. Surely, unless there was good ground for hope, he would not have said that. The Doctor was very quiet, very non-committal, she knew. She could hardly wait to get to the cave, and watch him. She was sure she could tell right away, whether or not there was hope, just from the expression of his face.

“There it is,” said Peggie finally, with a little throb of happy pride in her tone, as she stopped short and pointed to the great jaw-like opening a few yards away. “It’s inside there.”

Instead of going into the cave at once, as the girls expected him to do, the Doctor paused at the opening to look at the rock formation of the ledge.

“It is limestone, isn’t it?” asked Polly. “And it is certainly blue. They call this other kind of rock that crumbles, shale.”

“It’s good stuff,” the Doctor said approvingly. “Very good stuff. Now, let us go in and look at Exhibit A.”

There was no need of a light. The cave, as the girls called it, was really nothing but the great space left under the ledge by the tearing away of a mass of the earth. Peggie scrambled over the rough ground until she came to the precious bones, then stopped.

“There they are!” she cried.

Every one was wonderfully silent now. The Doctor’s face was grave too, but behind his eyeglasses his gray eyes looked keen and bright. He laid his cap to one side, and sat down deliberately beside the remains. And he “handled them, and dandled them,” as Polly said afterwards, as happily and contentedly as a mother with a brand-new baby.

“Want a pick Doctor?” called Sandy. “I can give you a hand too, if you want to dig.”

“I wouldn’t disturb it for worlds,” returned the Doctor, “I want some of my colleagues to see it, just like that. I believe we’ve struck into the perfect Jurassic drift, unsuspected in this section entirely.”

“But what is it?” asked Polly, anxiously.

“Just what you said it was, Polly, child. A part of the vertebrÆ of a dinosaurus, I feel sure. It is not a ninety-foot one, by any means, but if we can judge from this section here, it must be at least thirty to thirty-five feet long—long enough to justify a good leap in the dark if you saw one coming at you.”

“How long has it been there, do you suppose?” asked Sue, in an awed tone. It seemed so wonderful to think that the discovery was really authentic. All along, they had half-questioned it, except Ruth and Polly.

“Sue, we don’t know,” returned the Doctor, musingly, as he took a penknife out of his pocket, and scraped at the bone. “We’re trying to find out just such things as that, we old chaps who prowl around the face of the earth, and try to win Mother Nature’s confidence. It may be ten million years ago, some say ten thousand. When we start and figure how long it takes for the Colorado River to eat its way through even an inch deeper in the Grand Canyon, we begin to realize how many years it must have taken for it to cut down all the way from the top.”

“It makes me feel dizzy,” said Ted, emphatically.

“It has made wiser heads than yours feel dizzy, child,” returned the Doctor, gently. “And we are only children that He holds in His hand. When I begin to feel pretty good, and well satisfied with myself, I go away quietly, and read over that chapter in Job that has more geological data in it than anything I know of.”

“I know,” said Polly. “‘Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?’”

“Exactly. Where were we? It takes all the conceit out of me when I consider a bit. Mr. MacDowell, this gulch belongs to you, doesn’t it?”

“I’m sorry to say it does,” said the Chief, fervently. “I just wish that poor old Zed were here to claim his own. He put all his love into this old strip of land for years, and it never opened its heart to him.”

“Purpose in all things,” protested the old Doctor, cheerily. “Maybe he would have buried the cash receipts in a tin can, for all we know. You have a better use for them. I want to send a telegram as soon as we can get to a station. We’ll get some more authority on the remains than my own, and then come to terms. How’s that? In the meantime, let’s go back to dinner, for I am starved.”

In the ride back, the Doctor and Ruth went ahead, for Ruth was fairly bursting with questions she wanted to ask. Polly and Peggie were last of all. Sue had changed places with Ruth, and was in the surrey, letting Ruth ride her pony.

“Sandy says I’m to have a third of whatever he gets,” Peggie said, her cheeks pink with excitement. “He says one third goes to me for finding it, and one third to Mrs. Sandy, and one third for him.”

“Oh, Peg, I’m so glad for you,” cried Polly, joyfully. “Will you come to school with us? Will you, Peggie? We’d take you into our club, and have the best times.”

Peggie smiled radiantly.

“I will if mother says so,” she promised.