Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

“Fossil bones are rock.”
“There’s no need to snip.”
“I’m sorry, Emily. But you see, these things have no value at all in Deadwood. They are bones
which have lain in the earth for millions of years and which belonged to creatures long gone. This
bone is from the leg of an animal with a horn on its nose, like a rhinoceros, but much larger.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“That seems wonderful, Bill,” she said, having decided to call him by that name. Her gentle
enthusiasm touched him. She was the first sympathetic person he had come across in a long time.
“I know,” he said, “but no one believes me. The more I explain them, the more they disbelieve.
And eventually they will break in and smash them all, if I don’t get out of Deadwood first.”
And despite himself, tears rolled down one cheek, and he turned away, so that she would not see
him cry.
“Why, Bill, what’s the matter?” she said, sitting down close to him on the bed.
“It’s nothing,” he said, wiping his face and turning back. “It is just that—I never asked for this job,
I just came west and now I am stuck with these bones and they are my responsibility, and I want to
keep them safe so the professor can study them, and people never believe me.”
“I believe you,” she said.
“Then you are the only one in Deadwood who does.”
“Shall I tell you a secret of my own?” she said. “I am not really an orphan.”
He paused, waiting.
“I am from Whitewood, where I have lived since the summer.”
He still said nothing.
She bit her lip. “Dick put me up to it.”
“Put you up to what?” he asked, wondering how she knew Dick.
“He thought you would confide in a lady, and tell me what the crates really contained.”
“So you said you would ask me?” he said, feeling hurt.
She looked down, as if ashamed. “I was curious myself, too.”
“They really contain bones.”
“I see that, now.”
“I don’t want them—I don’t want anything to do with them—but they are my responsibility.”
“I believe you.” She frowned. “Now I must convince Dick. He is a hard man, you know.”
“I know.”
“But I will talk to him,” she said. “I will see you at dinner.”
That night in the Grand Central dining room there were two new visitors. At first glance, they seemed
to be twins, so similar was their appearance: they were both tall, lean, wiry men in their twenties,
with identical broad mustaches, and identical clean white shirts. They were quiet, self-contained men
who emanated a forceful calmness.
“Know who those two are?” Perkins whispered to Johnson, over coffee.
“No.”
“That’s Wyatt Earp and his brother Morgan Earp. Wyatt’s taller.”
At the mention of their names, the two men looked over at Johnson’s table and nodded politely.
“This here’s Foggy Johnson, he’s a photographer from Yale College,” Perkins said.