The search for fossils was abandoned the next day in feverish preparation for Marsh. The camp was cleaned, clothes and bodies washed. Sternberg shot a deer for dinner and Cookie roasted it.
Cope was busy with preparations of his own. He picked through the piles of fossils they had found, selecting a piece here, a piece there, setting them aside.
Johnson asked if he could help, but Cope shook his head. “This is a job for an expert.”
“You are selecting finds to show Marsh?”
“In a way. I am making a new creature: Dinosaurus marshiensis vulgaris.”
By the end of the day he had assembled from fragments a passable skull, with two horned projections that stuck out laterally from the jaw like curving tusks.
Isaac said it looked like a wild boar, or a warthog.
“Exactly,” Cope said, excited. “A prehistoric porcine giant. A piglike dinosaur! A pig for a pig!”
“It’s nice,” Sternberg allowed, “but it won’t stand close scrutiny from Marsh.”
“It won’t have to.”
Cope ordered them to lift the skull, which was held together with paste, and under his instructions they moved it first farther from the fire, then closer, then farther again. Next to one side, and to another. Cope stood by the fire, squinted, and then ordered it moved again.
“He’s like a woman decorating his house, and we’re movin’ the furniture,” Cookie said, panting.
It was late afternoon when Cope pronounced himself satisfied with the skull’s position. They all went off to clean up, and Little Wind was dispatched to invite the other camp to join them for dinner. He returned a few minutes later to say that three riders were approaching the camp.
Cope smiled grimly. “I should have known he’d invite himself.”
“There was a theatrical aspect to both men,” observed Sternberg, who had worked for both, “although it manifested differently. Professor Marsh was heavy and solemn, a man of judicious pauses. He spoke slowly and had a way of making the listener hang on his next words. Professor Cope was the opposite—his words came in a tumbling rush, his movements were quick and nervous, and he captivated attention as a hummingbird does, so brilliantly quick you did not want to miss anything. At this meeting—the only face-to-face encounter I ever witnessed—it was clear no love was lost between them, though they were at pains to hide this fact in frosty Eastern formality.”
“To what do we owe this honor, Professor Marsh?” Cope asked when the three men had ridden into camp and dismounted.
“A social visit, Professor Cope,” Marsh said. “We happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“Quite extraordinary, Professor Marsh, considering how large a neighborhood it is.”
“Similar interests, Professor Cope, lead down similar paths.”
“I am astonished you even knew we were here.”
“We didn’t know,” Marsh said. “But we saw your cook fire and came to investigate.”
“Your attention honors us,” Cope said. “You must stay to dinner, of course.”
“We have no wish to intrude,” Marsh said, his eyes darting around the camp.
“And likewise, I am sure we have no wish to detain you on your journey—”
“Since you insist, we will be delighted to stay to dinner, Professor Cope. We accept with gratitude.”
Cookie produced some decent bourbon; as they drank, Marsh continued to look around the camp. His gaze fell on several fossils, and at length, the unusual tusked skull set off to one side. His eyes widened.
“I see you are looking around—” Cope began.
“No, no—”
“Ours must strike you as a very small expedition, compared to the grand scale of your own endeavors.”
“Your outfit appears efficient and compact.”
“We have been fortunate to make one or two significant finds.”
“I’m certain you have,” Marsh said. He spilled his bourbon nervously, and wiped his chin with the heel of his hand.
“As one colleague to another, perhaps you’d enjoy a tour of our little camp, Professor Marsh.”
Marsh’s excitement was palpable, but all he said was, “Oh, I don’t want to pry.”
“I can’t tempt you?”
“I wouldn’t want to be accused of anything improper,” Marsh said, smiling.
“On second thought,” Cope said, “you are correct as always. Let’s forgo a tour, and simply have dinner.”
In that instant, Marsh shot him a look of such murderous hatred that it chilled Johnson to see it.
“More whiskey?” Cope asked.
“Yes, I will have more,” Marsh said, and he extended his glass.
Dinner was a comedy of diplomacy. Marsh reminded Cope of the details of their past friendship, which had begun, of course, in Berlin, of all places, when both men were much younger and the Civil War raged. Cope hastened to add his own warm, confirming anecdotes; they fell all over each other in eagerness to declare their fervent admiration for one another.
“Professor Cope has probably told you how I got him his first job,” Marsh said.
They demurred politely: they had not heard.
“Well, not quite his first job,” Marsh said. “Professor Cope had quit his position as zoology professor at Haverford—quit rather suddenly, as I recall—and in 1868 he was looking to go west. True, Professor Cope?”
“True, Professor Marsh.”
“So I took him down to Washington to meet Ferdinand Hayden, who was planning the Geological Survey expedition. He and Hayden liked each other, and Professor Cope signed on as expedition paleontologist.”
“Very true.”
“Though you never actually accompanied the expedition, I believe,” Marsh said.
“No,” Cope said. “My baby daughter was ill, and my own health not excellent, so I worked from Philadelphia, cataloging the bones the expedition sent back.”
“You have the most extraordinary ability to draw deductions from bones without benefit of having seen them in the actual site or having dug them out yourself.”
Marsh managed to turn this compliment into an insult.
“You are no less talented in just that way, Professor Marsh,” Cope said quickly. “I often wish I had, like you, the ample funds from multiple patrons needed to pay for the large network of bone hunters and fossil scouts you employ. It must be difficult for you to keep up with the quantities of bones sent you in New Haven, and to write all the papers yourself.”
“A problem you face as well,” Marsh said. “I am amazed you are no more than a year behind in your own reporting. You must often be obliged to work with great haste.”
“With great speed, certainly,” Cope said.
“You always had a facile ability,” Marsh said, and he then reminisced about some weeks they had spent as young men in Haddonfield, New Jersey, searching for fossils together. “Those were great times,” he said, beaming.
“Of course we were younger then, and didn’t know what we know now.”