Читать книгу Dick Kent at Half Way House - Milo Milton Oblinger - Страница 3

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Just before dusk, riding in on a slight swell, the canoe touched on the leeward side of the island. It was a wooded island, similar to a score of others that dotted that lake. There was little to differentiate it from its brothers except that in its very center the fir and balsam had graciously withdrawn to permit a huge shaft of solid rock to raise its head loftily and majestically skyward.

The three young men who disembarked from the canoe, stood looking toward the shaft with something like eagerness in their eyes. Then one of them spoke:

“There it is! The rock of the dinosaur!”

Another of the trio, a stockily built boy with light blue eyes and sandy complexion, removed a battered felt hat that had been crammed down over his well-shaped head and ran his fingers through a mop of corn-colored hair.

“Bones! Toma—bones!”

The remaining member of the party, swarthy, dark, soft-footed, agile as a panther, grinned as he stooped down to tie the strings of one of his moccasins.

“Mebbe this not right place after all,” he said.

The first speaker turned swiftly at this and regarded the stooping figure. What had induced Toma to make that remark? The description that had been given them by Mr. Donald Frazer, factor at Half Way House, fitted this island exactly: an island in a lake of many islands, an island with a tall rock. Dick Kent remembered as well as if it had been only yesterday.

“It’s three hundred miles northwest of here in a country of innumerable lakes,” the factor had directed them. “These lakes all drain into the Half Way River. They are all very close together, forming a sort of chain. Most of the lakes are dotted with a few islands, but there is one lake, near the center of the chain, that has more islands than all the rest—scores of small wooded islands. On one of these you will find a tall, spindling rock. The island with that rock is the island of the dinosaur.”

So remembering this conversation, Dick could not believe with Toma that they might have come to the wrong place. Here was the wooded island. Here was the spindling rock. Here was the lake of many islands.

“Why don’t you think it’s the right place?” he demanded.

The young Indian straightened up quickly, his eyes twinkling.

“Why you get so worried, Dick?” he inquired blandly. “I no say this the wrong place. Mebbe so, mebbe not. Plenty islands I see in other lakes an’ plenty rocks too.”

“But not a rock as tall as that one,” objected Sandy.

Dick nodded his head.

“Yes, and most of the other lakes we explored had only a few islands. This one tallies exactly with the description Mr. Frazer gave us.”

Toma grinned again.

“All right,” he waved their arguments aside. “What you say, we go see?”

The three boys pushed forward. The island was scarcely more than four or five acres in area. In a few minutes they reached the center, coming to a full stop near the base of the pinnacle. They found a peculiar formation here. In some prehistoric time a gigantic upheaval had thrust the underlying strata to a position very nearly perpendicular. In other words, layer upon layer of substratum had been lifted up out of the earth and exposed to view. Embedded in one of the layers of rock was the huge fossil of a prehistoric reptile. Its immense frame could be seen very distinctly from where the boys were standing. Supported by the rock, much of which had crumbled away, the skull of the dinosaur rested lightly against the side of the pinnacle and the bones of the rest of the body, still joined and intact, extended downward to the edge of a deep pit.

The effect of all this was ghastly. Staring at it, one was conscious of an indescribable feeling that the fleshless body of the dinosaur still retained life and that it had clambered out of the deep pit beneath it and was now endeavoring to climb the tall, spindling spire of granite. So lifelike and terrible indeed, did the primeval monster appear, that for a full five minutes the three boys stood there without as much as moving a muscle.

Suddenly the tension snapped as Dick burst into a roar of laughter. He laughed until the tears came into his eyes and coursed down his cheeks. He roared and slapped his thigh and sat down on a rock, swaying back and forth in a paroxysm of uncontrollable mirth.

Toma and Sandy stared at their chum in utter amazement. They surveyed each other blankly. They looked quickly over at the dinosaur in the belief that possibly they had overlooked something.

“See here,” began Sandy, “what in the name of common sense are you yowling about? If you can possibly see anything funny in that gruesome mass of bones your sense of humor is warped. Stop it, Dick! Stop it, I say before you drive me daft. Stop!”

Dick raised his head and wiped his eyes. He was still choking.

“You—you see nothing funny?” he gasped.

“I do not!”

“What do you think of our friend, the dinosaur?” and Dick indulged in another convulsive chuckle.

Sandy’s eyes flashed fire.

“Say—”

“Look at it! Look at it!” shrieked Dick. “Its size! Must weigh tons—tons, Sandy. And—we’ve come—three hundred miles—laboring under impression—going to carry it back on a raft.”

“Well—”

“On a raft,” continued Dick. “That thing on a raft. If you can, just get that picture in that slow mind of yours.”

Toma was grinning broadly now.

“The portages,” he wondered.

“Yes, think of carrying that huge skeleton over the portages.”

“Why it—it can’t be done,” stated the young Scotchman, beginning to see the light. “Absolutely out of question. We’ve come on a fool’s errand. Mr. Frazer must have—”

“Known it!” Dick took the words out of his chum’s mouth. “Of course, he knew it. Can’t you see, Sandy, we’ve been victimized, made the butt of one of the worst jokes I’ve ever heard of. No wonder they all grinned and acted so queerly when we left the post. By this time, half the people in this north country are laughing up their sleeves. It’s all a hoax. I’ll bet that London museum Mr. Frazer told us about hasn’t even made an offer for this dinosaur.”

“You mean the whole affair from beginning to end was planned by that fool and his friends?”

“Exactly.”

“And that we’ve not only lost what we thought was a chance to make a few hundred dollars but have become the laughing stock of—of—” Sandy choked and gurgled.

“Right again,” grinned Dick. “You’re learning fast.”

Sandy’s color drained from his cheeks and he sat down quickly, endeavoring to control the fierce gathering storm within.

“And you call that a good joke,” he inquired bitterly, “a friendly, decent joke that sent us packing through a hundred dangers at the risk of life and limb? You can laugh at that?”

“Well, what would you have me do? Sit down and cry? Not I. Might as well make the best of it. I’ll go back and laugh with ’em.”

“I laugh too,” said Toma. And he did.

Sandy continued to glower. He looked up at the dinosaur. Then he put his head in his hands and groaned.