“What are your plans now?” Cope asked cheerfully, stirring a dollop of black molasses in his coffee.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“That hardly seems necessary now that the old schemer has left you behind. What are your plans now?”
“I don’t know. I have no plans.” Johnson looked around the nearly empty dining room. “I seem to have been separated from my party.”
“Separated? He abandoned you.”
“Why would he do that?” Johnson asked.
“He thought you were a spy, of course.”
“But I’m not a spy.”
Cope smiled. “I know that, Mr. Johnson, and you know that. Everyone knows that except Mr. Marsh. It is just one of the many thousands of things he does not know, yet assumes he does.”
Johnson was confused, and it must have shown on his face.
“Which fantasy did he tell you about me?” Cope asked, still cheerful. “Wife beater? Thief? Philanderer? Ax murderer?” The whole business seemed to amuse him.
“He doesn’t have a high opinion of you.”
Cope’s inky fingers fluttered in the air, a dismissing gesture. “Marsh is a godless man, cut loose from all moorings. His mind is active and sick. I have known him for some time. In fact, we were friends once. We both studied in Germany during the Civil War. And later we dug fossils together in New Jersey, in fact. But that was a long time ago.”
The food came. Johnson realized that he was hungry.
“That’s better,” Cope said, watching him eat. “Now, I understand that you are a photographer. I can use a photographer. I am on my way to the far West, to dig for dinosaur bones with a party of students from the University of Pennsylvania.”
“Just like Professor Marsh,” Johnson said.
“Not quite like Professor Marsh. We do not travel everywhere with special rates and government favors. And my students are not chosen for wealth and connection, but rather for their interest in science. Ours is not a self-aggrandizing publicity junket, but a serious expedition.” Cope paused, studying Johnson’s earnest attention. “We’re a small party and it will be rough going, but you are welcome to come, if you care to.”
And that was how William Johnson found himself, at noon, standing on the platform of the Cheyenne railroad station with his equipment stacked at his side, waiting for the train to carry him west, in the party of Edward Drinker Cope.
Cope’s Expedition
It was immediately clear that Cope’s party lacked the military precision that characterized Marsh’s every undertaking. His group straggled into the station singly and in pairs: first Cope and his charming wife, Annie, who greeted Johnson warmly and would not be drawn to say anything against Marsh, despite the prompting of her husband.
Then a barrel-chested man of twenty-six named Charles H. Sternberg, a fossil hunter from Kansas who had worked for Cope the previous year. Charlie Sternberg walked with a limp, the result of a childhood accident; he could not shake hands because of a “felon,” a fistula in his palm; and he was subject to occasional bouts of malaria, but he exuded an air of practical competence and wry humor.
Next, another young man, J.C. Isaac (“it just stands for J.C.”), who was Indian shy; six weeks earlier, he had been among a party of friends attacked by Indians. The others had been shot down and scalped, and only Isaac escaped, leaving him with a deep fear, and a facial tic around the eyes.
There were three students: Leander “Toad” Davis, a puffy, asthmatic, bespectacled boy with protuberant eyes. Toad was particularly interested in Indian society, and seemed to know a lot about it. And George Morton, a sallow, silent young man from Yale who sketched constantly and announced that he intended to be an artist or a minister like his father; he wasn’t sure yet. Morton was withdrawn, rather sullen, and Johnson did not care for him. And finally Harold Chapman from Pennsylvania, a brightly talkative young man with an interest in bones. After being introduced to Johnson he almost immediately wandered off to poke through some bleached buffalo bones stacked near the station platform.
Johnson’s favorite of the group was the lovely Mrs. Cope, who was anything but the deluded invalid Marsh had claimed. She would accompany them only as far as Utah. Then the six men—with Johnson making seven—would set out for the Judith River basin of northern Montana Territory, to hunt for Cretaceous fossils.
“Montana!” Johnson said, remembering what Sheridan had said about staying away from Montana and Wyoming. “Do you really mean to go to Montana?”
“Yes, of course, it’s tremendously exciting,” Cope said, his face and manner radiating his enthusiasm. “No one has been there since Ferdinand Hayden discovered the area back in ’55 and noted great quantities of fossils.”
“What happened to Hayden?” Johnson asked.
“Oh, he was driven off by the Blackfeet,” Cope said. “They made him run for his life.”
And Cope laughed.
West with Cope
Johnson awoke in inky blackness, hearing the roar of the train. He fumbled for his pocket watch; it said ten o’clock. For a confused moment, he thought it was ten at night. Then the darkness broke with a shaft of brilliant light, and another, and flickering shafts illuminated his sleeping compartment: the train was thundering through long snow sheds as it crossed the Rocky Mountains. He saw fields of snow in late June, the brilliance so dazzling it hurt his eyes.
Ten o’clock! He threw on his clothes, hurried out of the compartment, and found Cope staring out the window, drumming his stained fingers impatiently on the sill. “I’m sorry I overslept, Professor, if only someone had awakened me, I—”
“Why?” Cope asked. “What difference does it make that you slept?”
“Well, I mean, I—it’s so late—”
“We are still two hours from Salt Lake,” Cope said. “And you slept because you were tired, an excellent reason for sleeping.” Cope smiled. “Or did you think I would leave you, too?”
Confused, Johnson said nothing. Cope continued to smile. And then, after a moment, he bent over the sketch pad in his lap, took up his pen, and drew with his ink-stained fingers. Without looking up, he said, “I believe Mrs. Cope has arranged for a pot of coffee.”