Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

“Sleep with Your Guns Tonight, Boys”
No sooner were they gone over the nearest ridge than Cope was wide awake, alert and energized.
“Break out your guns!” he said. “Sleep with your guns tonight, boys.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“We’ll have visitors tonight, mark my words.” Cope bunched his fists in his pugilistic way. “That
vertebrate vulgarity will be back, crawling in on his belly like a snake for a closer look at my pig
skull.”
“You don’t mean to shoot at them?” Isaac said, horrified.
“I do,” Cope said. “They have opposed us and impeded us, they have got the army after us, they
have poisoned our water and insulted our persons, and now they are going to steal our finds. Yes, I
mean to shoot at them.”
This seemed to them extreme, but Cope was angry and would not be talked out of it.
An hour passed. Most of the camp fell asleep. Johnson was lying next to Cope, and his twisting and
turning kept him awake.
Thus he was awake when the first dark figure crept over the ridge.
Cope gave a soft sigh.
A second figure, then a third. The third was heavyset, lumbering.
Cope sighed again, and swung his rifle around.
The figures crept toward the camp, and made for the fossil head.
Cope raised his rifle to shoot. He was a crack shot, and for a horrified moment Johnson thought he
really intended to kill his rival.
“Now, Professor—”
“Johnson,” he said quietly, “I have him in my sights. It is within my power to kill a trespassing
sneak and thief. Remember this night.”
And Cope raised his rifle higher into the air, and fired twice at the sky, and shouted, “Indians!
Indians!”
The cry brought the camp to its feet. Soon rifles were discharged from all sides; the night air was
clouded with gun smoke, and acrid with the smell of powder.
Across the camp, they heard the intruders scrambling up the ridge. There was an occasional shout
of “Damn you! Damn your eyes!”
Finally, a deep, distinctive voice cried, “Just your way, Cope! It’s a damnable fake! Just your way!
A fake!”
And the three men were gone.