Chapter Thirteen
Although a Texas Ranger didn’t wear a lawman’s badge, a few carried stars from their past employment as cow-town peace officers, and Tim Adams was one of them. When he was within hailing distance of the horseless wagon, he held aloft a silver star in a circle and yelled, “Hold up there, in the name of the law!”
Red Ryan thought it unlikely that Adams’s voice could be heard above the hissing, belching, clanking din of the steam carriage, but up front a woman wearing goggles worked a series of levers and the machine ground to a shuddering halt.
The strange vehicle was made of blue-painted steel plates and was about fifty feet long from the flagpole at the front to the rear of its towed wood tender. For all the world it looked like an elongated and broadened wagon, but with six massive wrought iron wheels driven by a steam boiler and its attached firebox. A tangled maze of brass and copper tubes carried steam through the system, and a tall chimney, painted bright red, expelled smoke and soot. Toward the rear of the vehicle was a blue pagoda that looked large enough to afford sleeping accommodation for four.
In all, it was a contraption that moved Ranger Adams to say that he’d never, in all his born days, seen such a sight. And Red readily agreed with him.
Three men and a woman rose from throne-like seats and bowed. The men, alike as peas in a pod, each sported white hair and beards and wore safari clothing of tan-colored canvas, breeches of the same color shoved into the tops of black, knee-high boots. Like Hannah Huckabee, all wore pith helmets with goggles and field glasses hung on their chests. Red pegged the men as adventurers, though they looked decidedly elderly to engage in such a pursuit. The female driver was tall, shapely, dressed like the men but looked thirty years younger. Red thought her a handsome woman, though her black eyebrows were a shade too thick and her eyes too fierce to be pretty . . . until she smiled at him and winked and his heart almost stopped beating. Like her male companions, the woman awkwardly held a light sporting rifle that she obviously had no idea how to use.
Red slid off the rump of the ranger’s horse and then waited as one of the men, spryer than he’d expected, climbed out of the wagon, held up his hand in a peace gesture, and said to Adams, “My name is Professor Sir Richard Owen of the British Paleontological Society. Are you a member of the local constabulary?”
Behind him the steam carriage hissed and groaned like an angry dragon.
“I’m a Texas Ranger, name is Tim Adams. And this here is Red Ryan, he’s a shotgun guard.”
“For the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company,” Red said.
“What was all the shooting about?” Adams said.
Owen pointed to the horsemen, who kept their distance and seemed to be observing the proceedings with keen interest.
“I’ll tell you what all the shooting was about, Texas Ranger,” Owen said. “We were set upon by yon scoundrels. Yes, I say scoundrels, sir, but they’re worse than scoundrels. Knaves, jackanapes, villains, blackguards, thieves, the lowest of the low . . . dash it all, sir, words fail me.”
“Outlaws?” Red offered.
“Yes, that too. Their leader is Professor Edward Drinker Cope, and he’s trying to steal from me, the rapscallion.”
“What does he want to steal from you?” Adams said.
“I assure you, something more precious than silver or gold,” Owen said.
The ranger jerked his chin in the direction of the steam carriage. “That thing?”
“No, sir, not that thing. He wishes to steal my reputation as a paleontologist, sir!” Owen said.
“Your reputation as a what?”
“As a paleontologist.”
Red Ryan was as puzzled as Ranger Adams. “What is that?” he said. Then a light went off in his brain. “Oh, hold up for a second. I know. You and them other boys collect butterflies, huh?”
Sir Richard Owen was outraged, and his florid face turned purple. “Butterflies? Butterflies! My dear sir, my colleagues and I hunt thunder lizards. Dinosaurs, sir. In 1841, that’s the name I bestowed on those terrifying monsters of the ancient past.”
“Hell, Professor, I’ve never seen one of them in Texas, or anywhere else come to that,” Adams said. “Do you mean Gila monsters?—because if you do, there’s none of them out here.”
“Of course, I don’t. I mean dinosaurs, sir, dinosaurs. And if you haven’t seen any it’s because the terrible lizards died out millions of years ago, and now their bones lie buried deep in the ground,” Owen said.
Adams said, “Then why are you and what’s-his-name—”
“Professor Cope,” Owen said.
“—shooting at one another?”
“Because we’re at war, sir,” Owen said. “The newspapers of the more sensational sort call it the Bone Wars, and I suppose that name is as good as any. It’s a war between the righteous, myself and my colleagues, and those who would try to steal credit for our fieldwork. . . black-hearted Professor Edward Drinker Cope and his evil band of acolytes.”
“So, all that shooting is about bones?” the ranger said.
“Not just any bones. Dinosaur bones,” Owen said. “Make the distinction, man.”
Tim Adams shook his head. He nodded in the direction of the four horsemen and said to Red, “Take my bay and bring those birds in, Ryan. I want to talk with them.”
“Suppose they don’t want to come?” Red said.
“Then tell Cope I’ll arrest him for disturbing the peace, and I can guarantee him six months at hard labor in Huntsville.”
“I guess that ought to do it,” Red said.
He swung into the saddle and headed for the mounted men at a trot.
* * *
“Are you an emissary from that damned rogue, Sir Richard Owen?” said the man who rode out to meet Red Ryan and had introduced himself as Professor Edward Drinker Cope of Yale University and the leader of the expedition.
Red shook his head. “No, I’m an emissary from Texas Ranger Tim Adams. He says to put those guns away and go talk to him.”
“And if I don’t choose to?” Cope said. He was a good-looking man, younger than Owen, and his clean-shaven face held a tight, obstinate expression.
“That’s the very question I asked Ranger Adams,” Red said.
“And what did he tell you?”
“That if you don’t do as he says he can guarantee you six months of breaking rocks in Huntsville.” Red smiled. “Huntsville is the state penitentiary, Professor, and it’s nothing at all like Yale.”
“Edward, better do as he says,” a gray-haired man said. “The treacherous Owen has led us into a trap. You go with this fellow, and I’ll fetch up the packhorse.”
“Then it seems that I have no alternative but to put my head into the noose,” Cope said to Red. “Tell me, fellow, are you a police officer?”
“No. My name is Red Ryan, and I’m a shotgun guard with the Abe Patterson Stage and Express Company.” Then, since the four men were well-dressed and obviously of more than sufficient means, he added, “You can trust the Patterson stage line for all your future travel needs.”
Cope introduced the men with him, all of them graybeards: Professor Thomas Anderson of Yale, Professor Algernon Makepeace of Oxford, and finally Doctor Oscar Turner of Princeton, who’d left to fetch the packhorse.
“And I’m right pleased to meet your acquaintances,” Red said. “Now case those rifles and come with me.” He believed a warning was in order. “No sudden moves, gents. Texas Rangers are not the most trusting of men, and we don’t want any unfortunate accidents.”