“I’ve punched cattle since I was a shaver seven years old,” Round-up Dick answered, “an’ I’m hopin’ to wear spurs as long as there’s a township o’ range without barbed wire.”
“When your train came in, Perry,” put in Antoine, eager not to lose the chance of learning more about a possible fossil find, “I was just hearing about a bone outcrop.”
He turned to the range-rider.
“Won’t you tell me some more about that?” he asked.
“I was remarkin’,” the cow-puncher repeated, “that up to the head o’ No Wood Draw, as I was eatin’ dust to try an’ head off a maverick heifer that was headed for China, I run across a critter that looked as if it had been buried in the rock an’ was just workin’ its way out. It was standin’ straight up like as it was alive. I c’d nigh have touched the hoof with my hands as I rode by.”
“How big?” the boy queried eagerly.
The Westerner looked at the boy’s enthusiastic face and repeated his slow smile.
“The mere idee gits you all worked up, son, doesn’t it?” he said. “You looks like Hard Mouth Bill when he first prospects a faro lay-out after a couple o’ months on the range. How big, you asks? ‘Bout as big as a yearling.”
“What did it look like?”
“Looked same as any bones would. Hold up your cards a minute!” The speaker knitted his brows in perplexity. “Which I’m seemin’ to remember I did see three toes.”