"You've seen an example of an early saurischian in those little coelophysids, which aren't big enough to bother you. We call that bipedal, flesh-eating stem of the saurischians the theropods, the coelophysids being one branch and the carnosaurs, like the famous tyrannosaur, the other. The other saurischian stem is made up of plant eaters ancestral to the sauropods, which became the biggest land animals ever. Those from this period look a little like long-necked versions of those cow dicynodonts we saw yesterday. All the rest of the so-called dinosaurs are herbivorous ornithischians.
"True, in the later Triassic beds one finds fragments of carnosaurs, such as the European Teratosaurus, large enough to be dangerous. But I don't know that such organisms existed at the time we are now in; and even if they did, whether they ever got to these lands before Pangaea broke up."
As we sat around, talking and examining equipment and listening to Sir Edred lecture, I began to sense a restlessness among the sahibs: After a number of these safaris—an Arab client on one of them said the correct plural was safariin—one comes to recognize the symptoms. Carlyle in particular seemed out of sorts, prowling about, cleaning and re-cleaning his gun, and generally acting like a caged animal. I heard him mutter:
"I've got to kill something!"
The Raja and I decided to lead the party next day northwest. We had gone pretty much due north on the meat hunt; so by going round the compass we could cover the territory within a radius of twenty or twenty-five kilometers from our base camp.
That night went off peacefully enough, if you don't count the shrieks of those giant crickets advertising for a mate and the other rustles, grunts, and hisses of a Mesozoic night.
Next day we hiked as planned. We saw more dicynodonts, in fact whole herds. When we had finished our lunch and were plowing on a little farther before taming back, Inez Alvarado said:
"Reggie, would you mind taking the rest on without me for a bit? I'll catch up."
"AH right," I said, knowing that ladies, too, have calls of nature. We set out at a leisurely pace but had been out of sight of Inez for not more than ten or fifteen minutes when we heard her shriek:
"Help! Help!"
We raced back through the brush. She was standing before a little group of cycads, swinging her rifle—the nine-millimeter Mannlicher I had rented the Alvarados—by the barrel at a group of three quadrupedal flesh-eaters, which Ngata identified as rauisuchids.
They were the size of a large dog, with thicker limbs and a body that tapered lizardwise into a thick tail. They had heads like carnosaurs of that size, with a mouthful of fangs.
Carlyle proved the fastest runner. When I puffed up after him, he already had his gun up. At the first shot, one rauisuchid flopped over, writhing and snapping. Bang! Down went another. The third seemed to get the idea, because it ran off. When I came up, I said:
"For God's sake, Inez, why didn't you shoot?"
"When I reached into my ammunition pouch, I found I'd left all my cartridges back at the camp. I'm sorry to be so stupid."
I just sighed. This is the sort of thing one has to put up with in my trade, and fussing and fuming won't help. "Oh, well, it's time to start for home anyway. Want a trophy, Desmond?"
"You bet!" said Carlyle, and got to work on one of the carcasses with a big sheath knife.
Pretty soon, with help from the Raja, he had the head off. We set out with him carrying it in a scarf he wore. The scarf got bloodsoaked; but since the animal lacked hair and external ears, there wasn't any other easy way to hold it.
I suppose he could have put his fingers into the open mouth; but reptiles don't die all at once. This fellow's jaws kept snapping now and then for at least a quarter-hour after its head had been cut off. Or he could have whittled a point on a stick and impaled the head on it. The thought, when it came, reminded me unpleasantly of those French revolutionaries who made such a point of carrying people's heads around on the points of spears. Bad taste, eh?
This time there was no problem with getting everyone tucked into bed early. As usual, the Raja and I took watch and watch through the night. When the sky was lightening before dawn, who should pop out of Inez Alvarado's tent but young Willard Smith!
"Hey!" I said. "What the devil ..."
"Just me," said Smith, "getting up to take a piss." (Excuse me, Ms. Brownlee.)
"But what were you doing in that tent?"
He scuffed his feet, twisted his hands, and generally acted as if caught in the act of breaking all Ten Commandments, including worshiping graven images. If the light had been stronger, I'm sure I should have seen him blushing.
"Ah—Mr. Rivers," he choked out at last. "There wasn't anybody in that tent."
"You were," I said.
"Sure. But that was just because Mrs. Alvarado asked me to trade places with her. So I—well, what else could I do?"
"You could have asked me before making any change," I began, "and let me as leader decide—"
Just then an angry shout aroused the camp, followed by yells and curses. Some sort of commotion was going on in and around the tent assigned to Smith and Carlyle. I got there in a dead heat with the Raja, who had been taking his turn to sleep.
The tent was heaving like a hooked fish, and as we arrived it collapsed. Out from the wreckage crawled Tom Alvarado and Desmond Carlyle, both in their underwear. No sooner had they cast off the folds of canvas than Alvarado sprang at Carlyle, grabbing for his throat.
As I said, Alvarado was a bit on the corpulent side, while Carlyle was in whipcord-tight physical shape, being in fact something of a fitness fanatic. Carlyle blocked Tom's attempt to strangle him and knocked him down. Alvarado landed on something hard. He felt around beneath his body and came up with Carlyle's big sheath knife. In no time he had it out and was lunging at Carlyle.
Meanwhile, Carlyle grabbed an edge of the Canvas and threw it back, reaching for his rifle. In casting off the canvas he also uncovered Inez Alvarado, curled up on one of the bunks and naked as a frog. Before Alvarado got within stabbing distance, Carlyle stood up with his rifle.
The Raja tackled Alvarado, while I grabbed Carlyle's gun and twisted it to point up. It went off with a bang, fortunately without hitting anything, and with another wrench I got it away from him.
I stepped away to cover both. The Raja had wrested the knife from Alvarado, though he got a cut on the arm in doing so.
"All right, you idiots!" I said. "Stand with your hands clasped behind your necks, or by God I'll shoot off a member or two! Now, what's the story? You first, Tom!"
Tom was so enraged that for the moment he forgot his excellent English. "Este cabrón cqje mi mujer!" He shouted, waving his fists and dancing about. He followed it with a translation, which I won't trouble a lady's ears with. Then Mrs. Alvarado, who stood up with a sheet wrapped around her, screamed:
"Ya no estoy su mujer! Hago lo que quiero!"
The two kept shouting until they ran out of breath. She argued that as a single woman she had the right to a trot in the sheets whenever and with whomever she liked. Besides, Tom had been pestering her to marry her again, and she wanted to sample the field to have a standard of comparison.
When his turn came, Carlyle shrugged the whole thing off. "What do you expect?" he said. "I knew they weren't married. Even if they had been, what normal man would turn down such an offer?"