"All right, my lad, that's the last time I shall let you run around all day dressed as Ug-Wug the cave man. If you come down with something serious, aside from my little store of antibiotics, there's not a damned thing I can do for you until the chamber comes back, ten days from now."
With a face as long as a month of Sundays, Standish muttered a surly assent. Then he said: "Maybe the Great Spirit just doesn't want me to be a real barbarian." His lower Up quivered as if he were going to burst into tears.
"Come, come, Clint!" said Hofmann. "You've had your fun. We pale North European types can't take so much sun, because our ancestors lived where it was cloudy most of the time."
The remark showed better sense than I should have expected from that pair. Skinning the hyaenodon kept us busy all evening.
The day after the move, my sahibs were pretty tired, not being hardened to such activity. I gave Hofmann and Standish the day off, but I went after Huang, saying:
"Professor, you've bloody well got to wash those khakis. The blood of that agriochoerid has begun to stink so that all the others are complaining."
He looked vague. "But Mr. Rivers, can you not get one of the camp crew to wash them for us?"
"Not their job, and they've got plenty to do."
"But, sir, I have never washed a garment of my own! I do not know how!"
"I'll give you a hand and show you how. Hey, Beauregard, will you dig us out a scrubbing brush and a piece of soap, please?"
I led Huang, still muttering objections, down to the river. A couple of alligators were sunning on the sandy margin, but they slipped into the water and went away as we approached.
One thing you must remember in going back to former eras is that the animals, never having seen human beings and never having been hunted by them, don't have the built-in fear of them that you find in areas of the present where wild animals are still wild. Instead of running away, as they're apt to do now, they may come sniffing around you to investigate these strange creatures at close quarters. That can be dangerous, even if you have no intention of killing anything.
Huang and I spent a couple of hours at the cleaning job. The blood had dried and so was much harder to get off than if we had done it the day Huang got his clothes mucked up.
Next morning I rose early to get the sahibs up for some animal watching, since the beasts are better seen along the river at this time than during the heat of the day. Standish was already dressing, I was glad to see in his regular khakis, including a safari vest like Hofmann's, and not in his cave-man get-up.
"Where's Frank?" I asked.
"He went out earlier to look at animals on his own."
"Damn!" I said. "He knows he's not supposed to go buzzing round the outback without me—"
I was interrupted by a loud bang from the direction of the river; Hofmann's Bratislava without a doubt. Then came three more shots.
I dashed out of the tent, grabbed my own rifle, and ran toward the sound. As I came in sight of Frank Hofmann, he let off another shot, aimed out into the river.
"What the hell are you doing, Frank?" I shouted. "Just shooting at some alligators," he said. "I think I hit a couple."
"What for?" I asked.
"Though I'd like a couple of skins to take home. But they sink when I hit them, so I don't know how I could recover them"
I gave him an eloquent calling-down for wandering off unescorted. I didn't go into the ethics of killing things of no use to the killer, just for fun. Too much talk of that sort would be bad for our business. I know that's how many people feel nowadays; but I assure them that, since the things we kill are all long extinct anyway, it's not as if we were doing in some endangered species.
Frank Hofmann, I must say, took his wigging very well. He apologized and promised not to do anything like that again. We went back to the camp, ate the breakfast Ming served us, and set out along the east bank, detouring where the gallery forest along the banks grew so thick a dog couldn't bark in it.
We had gone perhaps half a kilometer when Huang and I, in the lead, spotted something moving ahead. When we got closer, I saw an amynodont, a big hippolike herbivore, munching greenery. Beside me, Huang said:
"Mr. Rivers, that is a Metamynodon, of the family Amynodontidae, superfamily Rhinoceroidea, order Perissodactyla. I very much want some pictures." He adjusted his camera. "How close can we get?"
"A hundred meters is considered the minimum safe distance for thick-skinned game like that," I said. "We'd better circle round to the left, to get downwind of him."
The other two had come up with us and were peering through field glasses—Hofmann's pair, which he and Standish looked through alternately.
"Huh!" said Standish. "I don't want him for a trophy; no horns or antlers, and not so spectacular as a modern hippo."
Let me explain, Miss Bergstrom. The Metamynodon is, you might say, a member of a branch of the rhinoceros tribe that tried to evolve into hippopotami and didn't quite make it. In build it is much like a modern rhinoceros, without any horns and not quite so squatty as the modem hippo. The hippo's ears, eyes, and nostrils all open on top of the head, so the animal can lie in the water with only those organs showing. In the Metamynodon, those parts hadn't yet moved so far up the skull.
Its habits seem to have been much like those of the modem hippo. A hippopotamus comes out at night and wanders around, gobbling everything green it can find. Then it goes back in the lake or river and lies there awash all day, digesting that enormous meal.
The Metamynodon follows a similar routine. It has tusks, like a hippo's but not so magnificent.
No, it's not related to the hippo, save in the sense that all animals are related. But you'd have to go back to the Paleocene Epoch to find their common ancestor. It's an odd-toed animal, like horses and tapirs; while the hippo is even-toed and related to the pigs. It's a case of what my scientific friends call parallel or convergent evolution.
To get back to the story: None of my sahibs wished to kill the amynodont, but Huang still wanted his photographs. So I sent him and Hofmann ahead to stalk the brute, warning them to go no closer than a hundred meters. I thought that Huang, with his telephoto lens, could get all the pictures he wanted at that distance. I followed.
We tell the sahibs that we put them in front to give them the first shot. That is true, but it's not the only reason. It's also a fact that every now and then one of these amateur Nimrods trips over a root and stumbles or falls, and if the guide were in front, he might get his bloody head blown off.
"Keep behind me, Clint," I told Standish. "That bow of yours wouldn't make much impression on a thick-skinned bloke like that."
So I stood, gun ready, as Hofmann and Huang walked toward the amynodont. At about a hundred yards, they stopped for Huang to look through his eyepiece. But then they started advancing again, slowly and stealthily. I wanted to call out a warning to go no further; but to do so would only excite the amynodont. It might run away, in which case Huang would not get his pictures; or it might charge, in which case they would have to rely on Hofmann's rifle, with me as a back-up. Having seen Hofmann shoot, I didn't think I had much to worry about on that score; but I started forward, too, keeping a constant distance behind my clients.
They kept stalking closer and closer. They must have covered another fifty meters, and I was filling my lungs to yell "Stop!" when they halted. The amynodont had quit eating and raised its head suspiciously. I snatched a look through my own glasses. Although I know creatures like that don't have facial expressions, I couldn't help thinking that it was glowering at my clients.