"I think I'd like the rug," said Hofmann. "But it would take us all afternoon to skin it."
"Then," said Standish, "we'd better carry the creature with us until the camp is pitched again."
"Sure," said Hofmann. "We'll sling it on the carrying pole, and Cliff and I will each take one end."
"I don't know," I said. "Better think about what you're letting yourselves in for. The thing must weigh well over a hundred kilos. Oh, Beauregard!"
"Yes, Mr. Rivers?"
"Could we use an ass or two to carry this animal?"
"I don't think so," said Black. "They're scared shitless now, and if we even moved that thing near them, they'd go real sure frantic. Besides, they're full-loaded now, and you gents would have to carry their loads."
We ended by eviscerating the carcass, roping it to the pole, and struggling over many kilometers with the thing on our shoulders. Hofmann and Standish, who had talked boldly of carrying it the whole way, were glad to have little Huang, who was no muscle man, and me spell them with the carrying.
Slowed by this load, we got to the river after sunset. Standish suffered from insect bites. At the new campsite, the mosquitoes went to work on him. After much slapping and cursing, he was at last persuaded to put on a shirt and pants.
"While you're about it," I said, "better take a good look for ticks. With all those long grasses and herbs we've waded through, you should be hosting a few of them."
Sure enough, examination by electric torch showed a dozen or so on Standish's legs, busily drilling away. None had had time to suck much blood yet, and we got them out with a glowing cigarette in Hofmann's hands. We were lucky, since hardly anyone smokes nowadays. If you simply pull a tick out, the head often breaks off and remains in the skin to give you trouble.
Standish said: "Does this mean I'm liable to come down with spotted fever or something?"
"Don't know for sure, but I doubt it," I told him. "So far back, you'll find bloody few microorganisms that can live in a human bloodstream long enough to cause an illness."
Then he complained of sunburn. When he took off his shirt, his face, shoulders, and back were the color of a tropical sunset. As I swabbed him down with lotion, I said:
"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 lip quivered as if he were going to burst into tears.
"Come, come, Cliff!" 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 swam 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 people 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 round 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 caveman 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 a guide!"
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.
"Thought 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 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 modern 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 modern 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.