Weird West 04 - The Doctor and the Dinosaurs Read Free Page B

this country until these two men met.”
    “Cope and Marsh?”
    Edison nodded an affirmative. “Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.”
    “What about them?” asked Holliday.
    “They were both interested in the infant science,” said Edison. “I gather at one point, shortly after the War Between the States, they even went on a dig together.”
    “A dig?” said Holliday, frowning.
    “You don't see dead dinosaurs—or dead men, for that matter—laying on the ground year after year, Doc,” said Buntline. “The earth covers them up. So when you go prospecting for species instead of nuggets, you call it a dig.”
    “And on this dig,” continued Edison, “Cope found a complete dinosaur, which he called a plesiosaur. Marsh said he had the wrong head on it, or on the wrong end of the vertebrae, something like that. Cope said he didn't. They argued, nobody won, and somehow they became mortal enemies. Now, I know that doesn't seem like much to be enemies about, but they were both brilliant, they were both egocentric, and they were both independently wealthy. Marsh was associated with Yale and its museum, Cope with a museum in Pennsylvania, and they each had their museum's clout and money behind them, as well as their own fortunes. And driven on by their mutual hatred, they have managed to discover and name more than a thousand dinosaur species in the last fifteen years, whereas all American paleontology could come up with before their feud was three species.”
    “They're that good?” asked Holliday.
    Edison nodded. “Usually it takes months, often longer, to produce a scientific paper. Cope's already produced more than a thousand of them.”
    “So who's winning?”
    Buntline smiled. “It'll be the last one standing, and that'll be the last one to go broke. They've sued each other, written scandalous and slanderous articles about each other, challenged almost every find the other has made, even tried to get the United States Congress to pass laws against each other.”
    “And now they're both digging up bones in Wyoming,” said Holliday, amused.
    “It's not as simple as that,” said Edison.
    “Oh?”
    “They usually set up shop not too far from one another,” continued Edison. “Do you know what the third most important job on one of their digs is?”
    “Beats me,” said Holliday.
    Edison grinned. “Chief paleontologist.”
    Holliday frowned and poured himself a glass from a whiskey bottle on the table next to him. “And the second?”
    “Riding shotgun to hold the Indians at bay. They do most of their digs in Indian country.”
    Holliday put the bottle back on the table, then leaned forward. “Okay, what's the most important job?”
    “I was hoping you'd ask,” said Edison, still grinning.
    “Well?” demanded Holliday.
    “Saboteur.”
    Holliday stared at Edison for a moment, then lifted his bottle and took another long swig without bothering to pour it into his glass. “I can tell I'm in for a fun time,” he said at last.
    “What's the downside of this?” asked Buntline.
    “I get killed,” said Holliday.
    “I mean, Geronimo's downside,” said Buntline.
    “If I can't stop them from digging in sacred ground, the Comanche medicine men and their allies will bring the dinosaurs to life and kill the two teams…but according to Geronimo, they can't control them once they bring them back, and they're just as likely to wander to Apache land as anywhere else and kill anyone they come across along the way.”
    Buntline got to his feet and began pacing back and forth across the gaudy carpet. “That's a few hundred miles of mighty barren land. What would they live on?”
    “Each other,” answered Edison. “What if they resurrect a couple of thousand dinosaurs, including a few hundred carnivorous ones—and after they kill the paleontologists they head south and west? They might eat a thousand prey dinosaurs along the way, but sooner or later they'll run out, and then they'll kill and