The Dinosaur Hunter Read Free Page B

to lighten things up a bit, I stuck out my paw. “Mike Wire,” I said. “I’m the hired hand.”
    His grip was satisfactorily manly, even by Fillmore County standards. “Nice to meet you, Mike. I’m called Pick.”
    â€œPick,” I said, testing the name. “Sounds like a good name for a man who digs up fossils.”
    He smiled tolerantly. “I don’t dig. I like to say that’s why God makes grad students. I just hunt and find. I’m very good at finding.” He shifted back to Jeanette. “Mrs. Coulter, those fossils your son wrote about might be important to science. If I could just look at them, I won’t take more than ten minutes of your time, I promise.”
    There was something about Pick that made me want to help him. I was also curious about those fossils. “What could it hurt?” I asked Jeanette.
    Jeanette shot me a look, but I could tell she was wavering. I guess she was curious herself. She said, “All right, come on inside. I’ll let you have a gander. And you can come along, too, Mike. That way I won’t have to explain everything to you later.”
    â€œThank you, Mrs. Coulter,” Pick said but it was to Jeanette’s back. She was already walking across the yard, her arms crossed, her head down, and I could tell she just wanted to get this over with.
    We went inside the house, which was its usual mess. I was a little embarrassed for Jeanette when Pick walked in and looked around her dilapidated living room, furnished with an old sofa, a couple of overstuffed chairs with the stuffing peeking out of them in a couple of places, two mismatched end tables, and an old brass lamp with a tattered, dirty lampshade.
    Jeanette led us into the kitchen and pointed at the coffee pot and then the kitchen table, which I guess would have been in fashion when Eisenhower was President. The chairs around the table didn’t match. Likely, old Bill had picked them up alongside the road where they’d been pitched. “Mike, pour the man some coffee,” Jeanette said. To the paleontologist, she said, “Have a seat. I’ll get the fossils.”
    I did as I was told and silently handed the young scientist a mug of hot joe along with the sugar bowl and some pouches of fake cream Jeanette had carried out of a diner in Miles City. He spooned in a couple dollops of sugar and used all the ersatz cream. Even cut, Ray’s coffee was a spine stiffener and when Pick took a sip, he kind of shuddered. I allowed myself a chuckle.
    Jeanette returned with a battered old cardboard box with the misspelled word FOSILS hand-printed on its side. She placed it on the table and I moved to look over Pick’s shoulder as he reached into the box to pick up a smooth, curiously shaped object that I thought looked like the end of a leg bone. I was disappointed when he said, “This is a sandstone concretion. Not a bone.”
    â€œHow do you know?” I asked.
    â€œI have a PhD in paleontology and a master’s degree in geology, Mike. I know bones and rocks.”
    Pick rooted around some more in the box and brought out a quarter-sized fragment of yellow rock. “Bone,” he said. He plucked out three other such pieces, all about the same size, then put one against his tongue. “A field test,” he explained. “If it’s sticky to the tongue, it’s probably bone. These little pieces are what we call float, a generic term for indistinct bone fragments falling down a hill from an unknown fossil horizon. Your husband has a good eye to find them, Mrs. Coulter.”
    â€œI’m a widow,” Jeanette replied. “What kind of dinosaur is it?”
    â€œToo small to tell,” Pick said, then picked up another fragment about the size of a shot glass “This is the vertebra of a Champsosaur. Notice the hour-glass configuration along the dorsal edge of the centrum? That’s the tell-tale clue. Not a