Sure enough, at the bottom of the pool, with its head tucked in under its huge body, lay a specimen of the strange prehistoric monster which Dick and Charley had come up into the Bad Lands to find.
CHAPTER XXI.
LASSOING OLD P. D.
“Is it asleep or is it dead?” asked Clara, after they had watched the Plesiosaurus for several moments in silence.
“Asleep,” said Charley, decidedly. “It moved twice while I was watching it. Now, Dick, this is only part of my discovery. I——”
“Yes, and I can tell you the rest,” said Dick, pointing over toward the rocky ridge beyond the pool. “We are not the first ones who have been here.”
“Indeed we are not,” replied Charley. “You see?”
There was a rude hut near the ridge and lying on the ground outside were two huge coils of rope, one almost as big round as a steamer’s hawser.
Charley led the way around the pool and when they got to the hut Dick saw that a stout post ten feet high had been driven into the ground with big notches cut into it. In the hut were axes, crowbars and other tools; also a great roll of canvas and various other things. Charley explained that he found the lantern here.
“Looks to me as though some one had brought all these things here for the express purpose of capturing old P. D.,” said Dick, “but they have been here a long while, Charley.”
“For several years,” said Doctor Dan. “Strange that I never heard of this and I thought I knew the Bad Lands pretty well, too.”