The Doctor and the Dinosaurs Read online

  “We are all dying. Do you want an extra year or not?”

  Holliday frowned and sighed deeply.

  “Get out of here,” he said. He turned to close the bathroom door, and when he turned back, the room was empty. He walked to the window just in time to see a huge owl rising out of sight.

  THE TALL MAN WITH THE PROSTHETIC ARM took a last breath of the cool, fresh Colorado air, entered the crowded Monarch Saloon and Casino through its swinging doors, took a step inside, and then paused, looking around, past the long bar, the faro table, the half-dozen poker tables. Finally he saw a thin man dressed like a riverboat gambler, sitting alone at a table with a bottle and a glass in front of him, and walked over to him.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” demanded Holliday, looking up from his drink.

  “I'm glad to see you too,” said Thomas Alva Edison, seating himself opposite the thin man.

  “I thought you and Ned Buntline went back East once Geronimo lifted the curse and the country was able to expand past the Mississippi.”

  “We did,” confirmed Edison.

  “So what's the most famous inventor in the world doing in Leadville, Colorado?” said Holliday.

  Edison smiled. “Believe it or not, Ned and I came to say good-bye to the most famous shootist in the world.”

  “The most famous left alive,” Holliday corrected him.

  “Anyway, we heard that you were dying, and to tell the truth we thought we might be too late.”

  “You damned near were,” said Holliday, pouring himself another drink. “I'd offer you one,” he said, indicating the bottle, “but I only have one glass.”

  “You could ask for another.”

  “Yes, I could,” agreed Holliday. “But you might accept, and I've been too long without this stuff.” He looked around. “Where's Ned?”

  “Back at the hotel,” answered Edison. “It was a long, exhausting trip, especially the last couple of hundred miles, and he didn't want to spend all night searching for you.”

  “Didn't seem to bother you,” noted Holliday.

  “I know your habits,” replied Edison with a smile. “And how many places can you drink all night in a town as small as Leadville?”

  Holliday chuckled. “Well, thanks for coming,” he said. “I'm sorry it was a wasted trip.”

  “Nonsense. We're glad you're alive. I guess they misdiagnosed you.”

  “No, they had it right. At noon today any gambler would have given you even money that I wouldn't be around at noon tomorrow.”

  Suddenly Edison learned forward intently. “You want to tell me about it?”

  “Not much to tell. We both know there's only one man with the power to let a dying man live.”

  “Goyathlay?”

  Holliday nodded his head. “Geronimo.”

  “He had a reason, of course?”

  “Of course,” said Holliday. “The bastard.”

  Edison frowned. “I'm not following this. He brought you back from the precipice. Why is he a bastard?”

  “He didn't restore my health, not that I ever had any by the time I was old enough to shave.”

  “But you were dying, and now you're not!” protested Edison.

  “Oh, I'm dying, all right,” replied Holliday as a gambler at a nearby table let out a triumphant yell. “Just not quite as fast as before.” He took another drink. “He's made me the way I was when I met him. I've still got the consumption, but at least I can function.”

  Edison nodded. “He doesn't want to take that killing edge off you.”

  Holliday stared at him for a long moment. “You too?” he growled.

  “I'm not saying I approve, Doc,” answered Edison. “Just that I understand his reasoning. If he gave you perfect health, you'd be less inclined to risk it.” There was a brief pause. “What does he need you for?”

  “Some foolishness in Wyoming,” said Holliday, frowning. “Hell, it doesn't even concern the Apaches,” He grimaced. “Well, not unless it gets out of hand.”

  “What the hell is in Wyoming?” asked Edison, clearly puzzled. “There's no gold, no major rivers to be diverted, not much of anything valuable to be honest.”

  “There's a graveyard.”

  “I'm sure there are lots of them,” said Edison. “So?”

  “Let me re-word that,” said Holliday. “There's a sacred burial ground.”

  “I'm still confused,” said Edison. “There's no train tracks going through there yet, the way there were down near Lincoln City in Arizona when we got them to re-route it. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there are no Apaches.”

  “You're right,” said Holliday. “There's no Apaches, no railroad, no major rivers, and no gold.”

  “So what is there?”

  Holliday stared at him for a moment. “Bones.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I knew you wouldn't believe it,” said Holliday with an amused smile as a happy shout went up from the faro table and one of the gamblers, clutching a wad of cash, offered to buy drinks for the house, then amended it to drinks for the faro players when he saw how crowded the Monarch was.

  “Someone's digging up bones from a Comanche burial ground?” repeated Edison, frowning.

  “That's about it.”

  “But why?”

  “To get at the bones that are beneath them.”

  Suddenly Edison's eyes widened. “Of course!” he exclaimed excitedly. “Cope and Marsh!”

  “Has everyone heard of them except me?”

  “No reason why anyone out here should know the names. I'm surprised Geronimo did. I assume he's the one who told you about them?”

  Holliday nodded. “Right.”

  “Damn! This is exciting!” enthused Edison. “Come back to the hotel with me! Ned'll want to hear about this!”

  “They got any empty rooms?” asked Holliday. “I came right here from the sanitarium, and I'd been there maybe four or five months.”

  “We have a suite. If they don't have any more rooms, you can sleep on the couch in the parlor.”

  “What the hell,” said Holliday, getting to his feet, putting the cork back in the bottle, and picking it up. “I can drink there as well as here.”

  He began walking to the door, followed by Edison. Once they were out in the street, the procedure was reversed and Holliday followed the inventor to the brand-new Delaware Hotel, which boasted the most luxurious wood-paneled rooms in town, each with its own indoor plumbing. They stopped at the front desk long enough for Holliday to rent a room, then climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked to the end of the long corridor, where Edison pulled out a key and unlocked the door. The parlor had Oriental rugs, dark furniture, and the windows were framed by tasseled drapes. Portraits of Victorian ladies and gentlemen, none of whom Holliday recognized, hung on the walls.

  “Back already?” said a familiar voice.

  “Yes,” answered Edison. “And I've brought company.”

  Ned Buntline, portly and mustached, with thick, flowing sideburns, emerged from one of the two bedrooms, took one look at his visitor, and walked over to greet him with arms spread wide.

  “Careful,” warned Holliday. “I'm not that healthy.”

  “At least you're up and around,” said Buntline, settling for shaking his hand. “I don't know if Tom has told you, but I've written some of our—well, your—adventures up in a play.”

  “I hope you get Lillie Langtree to play me.”

  “Lillie Langtree?” repeated Buntline, surprised.

  Holliday shrugged. “She's the only actor whose name I know.”

  Buntline chuckled. “Tell you what: if she's in New York when we're casting, I'll ask her—but don't hold your breath.”

  “It's been twenty years since I could hold my breath,” said Holliday.

  “Well, have a seat, Doc!” said Buntline, indicating a tufted leather chair.

  “I'll take this one, if you don't mind,” said Holliday, carrying an elegantly crafted woo
den chair over from a large dining table. “I have a feeling I'd never get out of that leather one.”

  “Guess what this is all about, Ned?” said Edison enthusiastically.

  “I don't believe in miracle cures,” said Buntline. “I think our Apache friend probably had something to do with it.”

  Edison nodded. “It's his half of a quid pro quo.”

  “And Doc's half?”

  “Ned, it's got to do with Cope and Marsh!”

  “You mean they haven't killed each other yet?” asked Buntline with a smile.

  “Who the hell are they?” demanded Holliday irritably.

  “The two leading paleontologists in the United States!” said Edison.

  Holliday stared at his two companions and frowned. “I've had both a classical and a scientific education—at least as pertains to medicine, dentistry, and literature—but I'll be damned if I ever heard that word before.”

  “No reason why you should,” answered Edison. “I don't think the science had existed for more than ten or fifteen years before you graduated, and it truly wasn't worth the bother to learn about it until these two gentlemen came along.”

  “They're partners, are they?” asked Holliday, and Buntline laughed aloud.

  “They're partners the way the Earps and the Clantons were partners,” said Edison. “I doubt that there are two men anywhere in the world who hate each other more.”

  “Get back to paleo…paleowhatever.”

  “It's the study and science of dinosaurs.”

  “Okay,” said Holliday. “What are dinosaurs?”

  “Creatures, many of them huge beyond imagining, that walked the Earth long before Man arrived on the scene.”

  “Doesn't Mr. Darwin say that the fittest survive?” asked Holliday. “Seems to me something as big as this hotel is a lot fitter than a consumptive dentist.”

  “That's part of the science,” said Buntline. “Learning everything we can about them, including why we're here and they're not.”

  “And there really were dinosaurs here?” asked Holliday dubiously.

  “Yes.”

  “Why haven't we all heard about it before now? Hell, I not only never heard of the science, I never heard the word dinosaur.”

  “It's a very young field of study,” answered Edison. “And it was going nowhere in 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 eat whatever's available.”

  “I agree,” said Buntline, leaning against an empty bookcase. “I hadn't thought of that.”

  “What does one of these things actually look like?” asked Holliday.

  “Ned, you're the artist,” said Edison.

  Buntline got a pen and a pad of paper and began sketching a carnosaur baring its teeth. When he was done he handed it to Holliday.

  “Mean-looking critter,” opined the dentist. “How big is he?”

  “Oh, probably eight to ten times larger than a horse.”

  “Suddenly that sanitarium is looking a lot better to me,” said Holliday.

  HOLLIDAY WAS NOT HAPPY. The Bunt Line, the horseless coach created by Ned Buntline, terminated at Fort Collins, and he'd had to buy and ride a horse the rest of the way to Cheyenne. He was not fond of horses; he didn't like their smell, he didn't enjoy riding them, and he had a sneaking suspicion that most of them were just waiting for him to fall off so they could trample him.

  He passed out of a sparse forest onto flat, almost barren land, and saw a sign posted that he was three miles from Cheyenne. At least then he could sell the horse and hunt up a horse-drawn stagecoach that would take him to the two paleontologists’ camps. First, though, he planned to stop at a saloon and slake his seemingly endless thirst. He had a canteen, of course, but he figured that water was for bathing, whiskey was for drinking, and only a fool mixed the two up.

  As he entered town he sought out the main street, rode up to the first saloon he could find, thankfully climbed down off his horse, and entered the place. The interior had the usual wooden tables and chairs, a faro
game in the back that no one seemed interested in, and spittoons not just lining the bar but spread through the saloon. There was a huge picture of a shirtless man with his fists doubled up, hanging behind the bar, covering part of a long mirror, and Holliday studied it as he waited for the bartender to approach him.

  “What do you think of him?” asked a man who was standing next to him.

  “I prefer paintings of naked ladies,” answered Holliday.

  “That's our local champion, Bill Smiley,” said the man proudly. “He's the one who's going to knock the great John L. down for the count this afternoon.”

  “Seems to me that people have been trying to do that for twelve or thirteen years now,” replied Holliday, obviously unimpressed.

  “Well, Smiley's the man who can do it,” said the man adamantly. “And he's bringing the championship to Wyoming,” he added, his chest swelling with pride.

  “If you say so,” responded Holliday, trying to cut off any further discussion.

  “You think otherwise?”

  “I'm a stranger here,” said Holliday. “I have no idea.”

  “I've got fifty dollars says that Smiley wins,” said the man pugnaciously, pulling out a fifty-dollar bill and waving it around.

  “I'll take that bet,” said Holliday, pulling out his own cash.

  The expressions of the onlookers said he was throwing his money away, that no intruder was going to beat their local hero on his own turf.

  “We'll let the bartender hold it,” said the man.

  “Fine by me,” said Holliday.

  “I just hope that damned ref isn't as blind as he looks,” muttered the man. “Whoever heard of a referee with spectacles?”

  “Spectacles?” repeated Holliday.

  “Yeah.”

  Suddenly Holliday smiled. “Is he from New York?”

  “That's what they say, though I hear he spent some time in the Dakota Badlands pretending to be a cowboy.”

  “Son of a bitch, I know him!” exclaimed Holliday. “I'll be damned!”

  “If you're who I think you are, that's a given,” said the man.

  The saloon suddenly went completely silent, and every head turned toward Holliday. He stared at the man, then shrugged. “What the hell,” he muttered. “When you're right, you're right. Now, when and where is this fight?”