I believe that this story-telling of which he was so fond was for Cope a form of relaxation from his heavy work in the study, and that his ability to give himself up so thoroughly to it in his leisure hours was what enabled him to accomplish in his life an amount of work such as few men have ever accomplished. It would take a volume even to name the titles of all the products of his industrious brain. One of them alone, the great Volume III of the “Tertiary Vertebrata,” often called “Cope’s Bible,” has over a thousand pages of text, beside many fine plates. It was published by the Government, in 1884.
Before starting back to outfit another expedition to the Kansas Chalk, I secured the services of Mr. Russell T. Hill, an able young man who was working in the Academy under the Jesup Fund; and upon our arrival at Manhattan, I hired Mr. A. W. Brouse as teamster and cook.
About the last of March we started with a team of ponies and a light spring wagon upon our long and extremely tedious journey across the state of Kansas, to our headquarters at Buffalo Park. At Chapman Creek, a few miles from Junction City, we were stopped by high water. A raging torrent twenty feet deep filled the bed of the creek; neither man nor beast could have crossed it alive. We were, therefore, horrified to see a farmer, sitting on a seat on top of two sets of side-boards in a lumber wagon, come driving down into this fearful flood. I called to him to stop, and asked him what he was going to do.
“I must come over,” he shouted.
“Why,” I answered, “the water is twenty feet deep, and running like a mill race. You’ll be swept away.”
“But I have not had my mail for a week. I must come over,” he shouted back.
“Well,” said I, “you big fool, why don’t you go down to the railroad bridge, just below here, and walk over?”
“By Chimmeny,” he said, “I hadn’t thought of that!”
As we were now in the antelope country, we were rarely out of antelope meat. One morning we saw a buck antelope standing close to the railroad track, watching an incoming train. I remarked, as I urged the driver to hurry up his horses, that perhaps someone would shoot the animal from the train. And sure enough, as the train passed, a window flew up, and a man with a revolver shot the buck through the neck. It began to describe a circle, its feet planted together, and springing from the wagon, I cut its throat with a butcher knife, while the boys held its horns.
Another time, as we were traveling along over the prairie, we suddenly came upon a young antelope hidden securely in the center of a bunch of grass. We should not have seen him at all from the ground, but being above him on the wagon seat, we looked right down on him. The boys jumped out, and approaching the little chap carefully, were just spreading out their arms so as to be ready to grab him, when he sprang to his feet so quickly that their hands were thrown into the air, and darted off. The boys started after him at the top of their speed, but they might as well have tried to catch a streak of lightning.