This was certainly still so in 1876. Much earlier in the century, Thomas Jefferson had carefully concealed his own view that fossils represented extinct creatures. In Jefferson’s day, public espousal of belief in extinction was considered heresy. Attitudes had since changed in many places, but not everywhere. It was still controversial to espouse evolution in certain parts of the United States.
Soon after the fight ended, the steamboat, the Lizzie B., rounded the bend and whistled her imminent arrival. All eyes were on the boat, except for those of one soldier who glanced back across the plains and shouted, “Look there! Horses!”
And from across the plains, two riderless horses approached.
“My heart sank,” Cope wrote in his journal, “to imagine what this might mean.”
They quickly mounted up and rode out to meet them. As they came closer they saw Cookie, bent over, clutching the saddle, near death. A half dozen Indian arrows pierced his body; blood streamed freely from his wounds. The other horse belonged to Johnson: there was blood on the saddle, and arrows were stuck in the leather.
The army soldiers got Cookie off the horse and laid him on the ground. His lips were swollen and crusted dry; they gave him sips from the canteen until he could speak.
“What happened?” Cope said.
“Indians,” Cookie said. “Damn Indians. Nothing we could—”
And he coughed blood, fitfully, writhing with the effort, and died.
“We must return at once and search for survivors,” Cope said. “And our bones.”
Captain Lawson shook his head. He yanked one arrow from the saddle. “These’re Sioux arrows,” he said.
“So?”
The captain nodded toward the plains. “There won’t be anything to go back for, Professor. I’m sorry, but if you find your friends at all—which I doubt—they’ll be scalped and mutilated and left to rot on the plains.”
“There must be something we can do.”
“Bury this ’un and say a prayer for the others is about all,” Captain Lawson said.
The next morning, they mournfully loaded their fossils onto the steamboat and headed back down the Missouri. The nearest telegraph station was in Bismarck, Dakota Territory, which was nearly five hundred miles to the east, on the Missouri. When the Lizzie B. stopped there, Cope sent the following cable to Johnson’s family in Philadelphia:
I profoundly regret to inform you of the death of your son William and three other men yesterday, August 27, in the Bad Lands of the Judith Basin, Montana Territory, at the hands of hostile Sioux Indians. My sincere condolences.
Edward Drinker Cope, U.S. Paleontologist.
Part III
Dragon Teeth
On the Plains
From the journal of William Johnson:
Our enthusiasm was absolute, as we set out on the morning of August 27 to collect the remainder of the fossils. There were four in our party: Little Wind, the Crow scout, Toad and myself, riding a little behind, surveying the ground ahead with watchful eyes, and finally Cookie, the teamster, whipping and cursing his animals as he drove the wagon across the prairie. Our journey would take us twelve miles to the Bad Lands, and twelve miles back again. We rode quickly in order to get there and back to Cow Island by dark.
It was a clear, chill, beautiful morning. Feathery cirrus clouds streaked the blue dome of the sky. The Rocky Mountains directly before us gleamed with white snow, which now reached down from the peaks to the deep crevices. The plains grass whispered in a gentle wind. Herds of pale antelope leapt across the distant horizon.
Toad and I imagined ourselves as pioneers, leading our little expedition into the wilderness, into excitement and dangers to be met bravely. For two Eastern college students of eighteen years, it was hugely exciting. We sat straight in our saddles; we scanned the horizon with narrowed eyes; we kept our hands on our pistol butts and our minds on the business at hand.
As the morning continued, we saw a tremendous amount of game—not only antelope, but elk and bison as well. It was far more game than we had seen in our previous weeks on the plain, and we commented on it to each other.
We had traveled no more than half the distance to the camp—perhaps six miles or so, out into the plains—when Cookie called for a halt. I refused. “No halts until we reach camp,” I said.
“You little bastards will halt if I say so,” Cookie said.
I turned and saw that Cookie was leveling a shotgun at our midsections. That gave him a deal of authority. We halted.
“What is the meaning of this?” I demanded, in a loud voice.
“Shut up, you little blanking blanking so-and-so,” Cookie said, climbing off the wagon. “Now get off your horses, boys.”
I looked at Little Wind, but he avoided our eyes.
“Come on, off of your horses!” Cookie snarled, so we dismounted.
“What do you mean by this outrage?” Toad said, blinking his eyes rapidly.
“End of the line, boys,” Cookie said, shaking his head. “This is where I get off.”
“Where you get off?”
“I can’t help it if you’re too stupid to see the noses on your faces. You seeing all the game today?”
“What about it?”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why you’re seeing so much game? It’s being driven north, that’s why. Look there.” He pointed to the south.
We looked. Streaky lines of smoke rose into the sky in the distance.
“That’s the Sioux camp, you damn fools. That’s Sitting Bull.” Cookie was taking our horses, mounting up.
I looked again. The fires—if that is what they were—were very far away. “But that must be at least a day away from here,” I protested. “We can make our camp, load up, and be back to Cow Island before they reach us.”
“You boys go right ahead,” Cookie said. He was mounted on Toad’s horse, and leading my own.
I looked at Little Wind, but he would not meet my eyes. He shook his head. “Bad day now. Many Sioux warriors in Sitting Bull camp. Kill all Crows. Kill all white men.”
“You heard the man,” Cookie said. “Me, I value my scalp. See you, boys. Come on, Little Wind.” And he started to ride off to the north. A moment later, Little Wind wheeled his horse around and rode off with him.
Toad and I stood by the wagon and watched them leave.
“They planned this,” Toad said. He shook his fist at them as they disappeared toward the horizon. “Bastards! Bastards!”
As for me, my good spirits evaporated. I suddenly realized our predicament—we were two boys alone on the vast and empty plains of the West. “What do we do now?”
Toad was still angry. “Cope paid them in advance, otherwise they would never dare to do this.”
“I know,” I said, “but what are we going to do now?”
Toad squinted at the lines of smoke to the south. “Do you really think those camps are a day away?”
“How would I know?” I cried. “I just said that so they wouldn’t leave.”
“Because the thing about Indians is,” Toad said, “that when they have a large camp, like Sitting Bull’s, they keep hunting and raiding parties out in front of the main camp.”
“How far out in front?” I asked.
“Sometimes one, two days.”
We both stared at the fires again. “I make it six fires, maybe seven,” Toad said. “So that can’t be the main camp. The main camp’d have hundreds of fires.”
I made up my own mind. I was not going to return to Cow Island without the fossils. I could not face the Professor. “We have to get the fossils,” I said.