Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

“We won’t be alone. We’ll have Cookie and Little Wind.”
Cope frowned. He drummed his fingers nervously on his sketchbook.
“Please, Professor. It’s important that you repack the fossils. We will be fine. And the day is
passing as we stand here discussing it.”
“All right,” Cope said finally. “This is against my better judgment, but all right.”
Delighted, Johnson and Toad left at seven that morning, with Cookie and Little Wind driving the
wagon.
Cope organized the wooden boxes of fossils, repacking those not sufficiently safe to suffer the
depredations of the steamboat’s stevedores. Isaac looked after Sternberg, who was delirious most of
the time; he boiled him a tea made of the bark of willow branches, which he said helped with fevers.
Morton assisted Cope.
Six or seven other passengers waited at Cow Island for the steamboat. Among them was a Mormon
farmer named Travis and his young son. They had come to Montana to bring the gospel to the settlers,
but had had little success, and were disgruntled.
“What you got in those crates there?” Travis asked.
Cope looked up. “Fossil bones.”
“What for?”
“I study them,” Cope said.
Travis laughed. “Why study bones when you can study living animals?”
“These are the bones of extinct animals.”
“That can’t be.”
“Why not?” Cope asked.
“Are you a God-fearing man?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do you believe God is perfect?”
“Yes, I do.”
Travis laughed again. “Well then, you must agree there can be no extinct animals, because the good
Lord in His perfection would never allow a line of His creatures to become extinct.”
“Why not?” Cope asked.
“I just told you.” Travis looked annoyed.
“You just told me your belief about how God goes about His business. But what if God attains His
perfection by degrees, casting aside His past creations in order to create new ones?”
“Men may do that, because men are imperfect. God does not, because He is perfect. There was
only one Creation. Do you think God made mistakes in His Creation?”
“He made man. Didn’t you just say man is imperfect?”
Travis glowered. “You’re one of those professors,” he said. “One of those educated fools who has
departed from righteousness to blasphemy.”
Cope was in no mood for theological dispute. “Better an educated fool than an uneducated fool,”
he snapped.
“You are doing the work of the Devil,” Travis said, and he kicked one of the fossil crates.
“Do that again,” Cope said, “and I’ll beat your brains out.”
Travis kicked another crate.
In a letter to his wife, Cope wrote: