As if he had been shot, the man jumped from the box and exclaimed in accents of heartfelt contrition, “It was me. I was out here digging roots to build a fire with, and ran across them. I didn’t know they had any value, and I wanted to see what was inside of them and dug into them.”
His surprise and dismay were so comical that the murder vanished from my heart, and overwrought as I was, I broke out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter which used me up for the rest of the day.
Another time I had a rather unusual experience. My assistant, a Mr. Wright, and I were digging out rhinoceros bones on Sappa Creek. We had noticed a house on the other side of the creek, although dense timber cut off most of its surroundings, and happening to look toward it once, we saw a girl of about sixteen years rush out from the timber and begin to climb the steep hill toward us. I never saw anyone run so fast up so steep a hill. Her strength failed her, however, when she got to us, and it was some time before she could tell her story. It seems that her mother had gone out to milk, and as the ground was slippery from a rain of the night before, she had fallen and dislocated one of the bones in the palm of her hand.
All the men were away and had taken all the horses, and it was seventeen miles to the nearest doctor. The girl, knowing that we were digging up bones, had concluded that we could set them, and had come to us for help. Although I had never attempted anything of the kind before, I could not resist the poor child’s appeal and went to the house. The mother lay moaning on her bed, and would answer nothing when I asked whether I should try to set her hand. But as the girl was very desirous that I should make the attempt, I decided to do so. So while Mr. Wright held the arm, I put splints and a roller bandage under the hand, which was laid on a table, and then forcibly pushed the bone back into its natural position. After which I bandaged the hand tightly. I left directions with the girl to hang a can of water with a small hole in it over the hand, so that the water might drip on it and by evaporation cool it and prevent inflammation. My instructions were carried out by the brave girl, and her mother’s hand was soon as well as ever.
In these last chapters I have often wandered far afield, for it would have taken too long to relate all the events of my various expeditions in consecutive order. Hoping that my readers will pardon the digressions, I return to the expedition of 1877.
Russell Hill proved a most efficient assistant, and it has always grieved me that he should in later years have given up work in the fossil fields for the practice of medicine. Will Brouse, too, was an enthusiastic worker; he was not satisfied to be relegated to the pots and kettles and horses, and not only did his duty as our teamster and cook, but soon accomplished almost, if not quite as much in the field as any one of us. I never had a more congenial party in all the years of my field work.
But one day in August I received a bulky letter from Professor Cope. “Turn over all the outfit to Mr. Hill,” he wrote, “and go at once to a new field discovered in the desert of eastern Oregon. Go to Fort Klamath, Oregon, and from there to Silver Lake, to a man by the name of Duncan, the postmaster. He will guide you to the fossil bed in the heart of the sage-brush desert. You will likely find human implements mingled with extinct animals. You are to go secretly; tell no one where you are going. Have your mail sent by a circuitous route, so you cannot be traced.”
I received the Professor’s order with excitement and great joy; but in spite of his injunction to start at once and without communicating my intention to anyone, I could not bring myself to leave for the Pacific Coast, to be gone for an indefinite time, without bidding good-by to my father and mother, and I concluded that even if someone should find out where I was going and try to follow me I could easily give him the slip and get to the field first.
Buffalo, the nearest railway station, was seventy-five miles away, a two days’ journey, with our big load of fossils. So I mounted my riding pony and made the long trip the next day, reaching the station at sunset, tired and sore. My pony, however, endowed with the enduring power characteristic of a good Indian pony, was still fresh enough to shy at a rattlesnake in the road, and as I happened to be sitting sideways in the saddle, throw me to the ground within a few feet of the snake.
That night I went to my home in Ellsworth County, bade my dear ones good-by for an indefinite length of time, and was back at Buffalo again at midnight of the following day. My boys met me at the station with my roll of blankets, tools, and baggage, and away I went to “fresh fields and pastures new.”