Danger at the Dinosaur Stomping Grounds Read online

  “Toni, why don’t you go fill up your water bladder and our bottles at the restroom faucet while we clean up the breakfast dishes,” Shoop said when they had finished eating.

  “Okay,” Toni said.

  “I’ll help,” Buck said before Dad could tell him he needed to read through scripts he had read through a gazillion times already.

  When they got to the water faucet, Buck started filling the bottles. Toni unzipped her backpack. As she pulled out the bladder, something small dropped to the ground. Buck reached down and picked it up. It was a small fabric patch with a picture of the South Six-Shooter Peak sewn onto it. In front of the rock formation was a large lizard that almost looked like a dinosaur. CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK was embroidered down the side and across the bottom. The cardboard tag stapled to it said five dollars.

  “That’s cool,” he said, handing it to Toni. “I didn’t know you bought that, too.”

  “I didn’t buy that,” Toni said. “I showed it to Nick. I guess he bought it for me as a surprise.”

  “I don’t remember seeing him buy anything,” Buck said.

  “Are you implying that he stole this too?” Toni said angrily. She jerked the bottle Buck was holding away from him. “Go away. I can do this myself.”

  “Fine,” Buck said. “I don’t know why you’re sticking up for him. I’m certain he took my sunglasses and have no doubts that he shoplifted that patch, too.”

  Buck walked away, but before he’d gone far, he called back over his shoulder. “I don’t even think he wanted to give it to you. He just never got the chance to get it out of your backpack without you seeing.”

  “I’m not listening to you,” Toni called back.

  “Just like that little mushroom-shaped stone,” Buck added. “He wasn’t going to give it to you. He was putting it in his own pocket.”

  When Buck got back to the Green Beast, Nash was there. Shoop and Dad had everything they needed on the picnic table and were ready to go.

  “Where’s Toni?” Dad asked.

  “She’s coming,” Buck said.

  “I saw Nick when I rode by,” Nash said. “Is he coming too?”

  “No,” Buck said, “which is just fine with me.”

  When Toni got back with the water, she showed everyone the patch. “Nick bought this for me as a surprise,” she said, and gave Buck a haughty look.

  “That’s nice,” Shoop said, barely glancing at the patch. He picked up his backpack. “Are you ready?”

  “Let me put this on my desk first,” Toni said, heading for the door. “I don’t want to lose it.”

  “Here, Toni,” Dad said. He reached in his pocket and tossed the key to her. “I already locked it.”

  Toni unlocked the door, tossed the key back to Dad, and went in. It wasn’t long before she poked her head out the door.

  “Aren’t we taking the shotgun mic, Shoop?” she called out. “The black case is still in here.”

  “No, we’ll be hiking too long to lug that around. The camera mic will do, and I’ll hook Buck up with the lavaliere mic if I need to,” Shoop said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “No problem,” Toni said, hopping out and shutting the door behind her.

  The group started toward the shortcut. Buck walked in the lead, Nash right behind him. Toni brought up the rear. The sun peeked over the distant mesas as the group went over the ridge and down into the other side of the campground. They crossed the road and were walking past the amphitheater when Dad suddenly stopped.

  “Toni,” he said, “did you lock the Green Beast when you came out?”

  “I think so, but I’m really not sure.”

  Dad sighed. “I’ll go back and check.”

  “I’ll go,” Buck said. “I’m faster.”

  “Thanks,” Dad said. “We’ll wait for you here.”

  The others sat down on the benches in the amphitheater’s grotto as Buck raced back up and over the shortcut. When he got to the Green Beast, the door to the camper was wide open.

  Toni may have forgotten to lock the door on her way out, but I know she closed it, Buck thought.

  He peeked in, half expecting someone to jump out at him. Seeing no one, he stepped inside. The bedroom door was open, and he could see the computer monitors were still attached to the wall, the keyboards still on the desk. He closed the door and went to the front where Shoop kept his laptop. It was in its usual place in the cabinet. Turning to leave, Buck stopped cold, staring in disbelief at the bedroom door. His bear danger sign was gone.

  Anger rose up inside him. It had to be Nick, he thought. He knew how much I liked that sign. I bet he took it because I called him out on pocketing that little rock yesterday. I wonder if he took anything else.

  Buck looked more carefully throughout the entire camper, going through all the drawers and cabinets. He lifted the seat cushions at the table and looked in the storage areas under them. Everything seemed to be in place. Nothing else appeared to be missing.

  Buck turned to leave but then thought, Toni had said she was putting the patch on the desk. I don’t remember seeing it, though.

  Buck opened the bedroom door and looked at the desk. There was no patch in sight. He rummaged through the desk drawers and looked on Toni’s bunk. Still no patch.

  Nick wouldn’t have known the patch was there, Buck continued thinking, but when he saw it just sitting there, I bet he took that too. I’m positive he never intended to give that patch to Toni. Well, I’m not going to let him get away with this.

  Storming out of the Green Beast, Buck made sure the door was locked behind him. Then he grabbed his bike, raced down to Nick’s campsite, and charged up the drive.

  Nobody was around, and Nick’s bike was not there. Buck looked at the tents and hesitated for a moment.

  I know I shouldn’t go in them, he thought, but maybe Nick left the sign and patch in there. If so, I’d have proof.

  Buck unzipped the flap on the tent nearest the driveway and went inside. There were two sleeping bags and two pillows. A bunch of clothes were thrown into the corner. Buck looked under everything. There was no sign or patch. He did the same in the other tent. Nothing.

  Frustrated, Buck rode back to his campsite. He locked his and Toni’s bikes on the bike rack and checked all the doors on the Green Beast one last time before hurrying back up the campground road. As he went over the shortcut, he decided he wasn’t going to tell anybody what happened until later.

  Toni will just defend Nick and be mad at me, he thought. And Dad’s about had it. If I start arguing with her again, he’s going to be really ticked. I’ll just keep quiet until I can catch Nick red-handed and prove he’s a thief.

  Buck reached the campground road and jogged across to the amphitheater, happy with his decision.

  “Was it locked?” Dad asked as Buck entered the grotto.

  “It is now,” Buck answered, then opened his water bottle and took a big drink so he wouldn’t have to say anything more.

  They started out walking down a sandy trail toward distant canyons. At first Buck and Toni said little and ignored each other. Dad and Shoop paid no attention to them as they talked with Nash about the terrain, the student program, and the TV show production process. Gradually the tension between Buck and Toni lessened. The two seemed to put aside their disagreements, and joined in on the conversations.

  As they talked, Nash led them into a canyon, going up a series of stairstep ledges closed in tightly on both sides by steep rock walls. The ledges changed to smoother slickrock with cairns to show their way. Although they kept going higher and higher, it was not steep enough to require scrambling. Sometimes they navigated across wide rimrock ridges with vast sweeping vistas. Other times, their way narrowed and they hugged tall cliffs on one side with long drop-offs on the other.

  Shoop, seemingly unbothered, was constantly filming. He focused on a single juniper growing out of a crevice in the red rock, captured lizards scampering to find shade, and videoed a golden eagle against the brilli
ant blue sky, a rabbit gripped in its talons. He shot Buck as he stood with his arms stretched out, making shadows that looked like the Cave Spring pictographs. At one point, the only way through a huge rock ridge was to crawl through a small archway. Shoop filmed Buck as he crawled through on his belly. Then, handing the camera equipment through, Shoop readily crawled through himself. They continued on the opposite side of the tall ridge, now looking down hundreds of feet to a different canyon floor. They had hiked for several miles and when they stopped for lunch, everyone agreed Shoop had conquered his fear of heights.

  “It’s not bothering me a bit,” he said, yet after lunch, when the ridge they were traversing seemed to come to a dead end, Shoop’s bravado wavered.

  “Wait a second,” he said. “Where’s this trail going anyway?”

  There was no way around the massive cliff rising in front of them, and no way down the sheer drop-offs to either side. Yet the cairns led straight to the base of the cliff.

  “We’ll be going down through there,” Nash said, pointing to a crack in the rock. “It looks worse than it actually is.”

  Buck sat down beside the crack, put his feet in, and looked at Shoop.

  “Get that camera on,” he said.

  As soon as the red light turned on, Buck suddenly dropped from sight. Instantly, though, his head popped back up.

  “No big deal. There’s a ladder,” Buck said, grinning.

  This ladder was different from the wooden ladder at Cave Spring. This one was metal, three times longer, and crammed into a crevice so narrow that someone going down would have to twist a little sideways to fit their shoulders between the rock walls. The bottom of the ladder ended at the top of a bunch of boulders that had become wedged in between the sides of the crevice when, sometime long in the past, they had broken off the cliff above them. Hikers would have to make their way down over this jumble of boulders for another forty feet until they finally reached the canyon floor.

  Shoop inched his way over and sat at the top, filming Buck going all the way down. Then, still grinning, Buck looked up and yelled, “Your turn!”

  TAKE 10:

  “BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR BIG AL, DESCRIBED AS HAVING POWERFUL HIND LEGS, A LONG TAIL, AND A DISPROPORTIONATELY LARGE HEAD. CONSIDERED DANGEROUS AND DEADLY.”

  Once everyone had reached the bottom of the crevice, they again followed a sandy trail that steadily went downhill. They had almost reached where it leveled off when there was an unexpected sound.

  “That sounds like a car door closing!” Buck raced ahead. Just around a bend, a jeep was parked where two dirt tracks came to a dead end by a trailhead signpost. Robert stood leaning against the side of the vehicle.

  “Wow! This is a surprise! I didn’t expect to see anybody back here, much less a road,” Buck exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Shhh,” Robert whispered. He glanced past Buck toward where the others were just coming around the bend of the trail. “Your dad and Nash and I set this up.”

  “Shoop’s going to flip,” Buck whispered, smiling.

  “Robert! What are you doing here?” Shoop exclaimed as he came around the bend. He looked up the narrow track of road, back to Robert, and then to Nash. “Why didn’t you tell us we could drive here? We didn’t have to risk our lives climbing all over that rimrock!”

  Toni laughed. “You weren’t even close to risking your life, Shoop.”

  “We didn’t tell you,” Dad said, “because you would have backed out. We needed the world’s best cameraman to be up there for the shoot.”

  “You mean you knew?” Shoop asked, ignoring Dad’s praise. Dad just grinned and nodded, but Shoop turned to Robert. “I don’t know about them, but I’m not going up that ladder or across those heights again! I’m hitching a ride with you!”

  “Actually, you’re all going back with me,” Robert said, laughing. “That was the whole plan.”

  “So that’s what you guys were up to yesterday when you sent me up the ridge to take a shot of the mushroom rock campsite from above,” Shoop said. “You can’t trust anybody, can you?”

  They all just laughed.

  “Where does this road come from?” Buck asked.

  “Remember that gate near Cave Spring?” Nash said. “It’s about three miles that way.”

  “So, where are the pictographs?” Toni asked.

  “This way,” Nash said. They followed an easy trail that led to an information sign at the base of a cliff that towered hundreds of feet above them. Buck rushed past the sign.

  “Wow!” he exclaimed, looking several feet above his head. Protected by an overhang were ancient figures painted on the red rock. Some looked like turtle shells, others like deer heads with antlers. There was a long line of white dots and a bunch of ocher-colored handprints, as well as dark hand-shaped shadows. As he looked, Buck started seeing even more. Almost blending into the red rock were fainter images of animals as well as large armless humanlike shapes that looked similar to the human-looking rock pinnacles that Buck had seen in many places throughout Canyonlands.

  Toni came over and stood next to Buck. “The brighter ones were made between seven hundred and one thousand years ago. The shadowy ones are between three and five thousand years old.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I read the sign.”

  Buck rolled his eyes, but choosing not to accuse Toni of showing off again, he said, “I like the turtles best.”

  “They aren’t turtles; they’re shields, aren’t they, Nash?”

  Nash wasn’t looking at the pictographs. He was busy looking at the ground. He picked up a small fragment of red rock and, holding it up, looked at the rock wall in front of him. Part of the rock was a lighter shade of red than the rest.

  “I can’t believe this!” Nash exclaimed. “Somebody’s chiseled a pictograph off the wall!”

  “You’re kidding!” Buck said.

  “No,” Nash said. “See how the line of white dots is interrupted? There used to be dots all the way across.”

  “I noticed the rock was a lighter red there,” Buck said. “I just thought that’s what it had always looked like.”

  “No,” Nash said. “There was another shield painted there, and here, too.” He pointed to another place where the rock wall was a lighter red.

  “There are fragments and red dust all over too,” Toni added, looking at the ground. “I bet it wasn’t very long ago that someone did this. The dust hasn’t blown away and, except for where we’ve walked, the footprints in it haven’t been disturbed.”

  “This explains something else,” Robert said, sounding disgusted. “When I drove in, the gate was wide open. Did you guys see anybody down here from up above?”

  Everyone shook their heads.

  “We’ll need to report this as soon as we get finished filming here,” Shoop said.

  “Buck,” Dad said, “I think we need to add something to the script about this. Should I write something down for you?”

  “No, I can do this,” Buck said, then turned to Toni. “Do you remember that word you read yesterday on the sign at the cowboy camp? The one that meant to damage something?”

  Toni didn’t hesitate. “Vandalize. It’s on this sign too.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Thanks!” Buck said, then looked Toni straight in the eye. “And I’m sorry I said you were showing off before. It really helps when you read the signs.”

  “That’s okay,” Toni said. “I don’t mean to be a pain.”

  Shoop filmed Buck as he told about the different pictographs and how old they were. At the end, as Shoop zoomed in on the damaged part of the wall, Buck added, “It’s very upsetting, but someone has deliberately taken some of the pictographs. Not only is it a federal offense to vandalize these ancient archaeological sites, but these criminals also keep law-abiding citizens from connecting with the ancient artists who drew them thousands of years ago.”

  “That’s a wrap!” Shoop called out. When the camera light went off, they
hurried back to Robert’s jeep and climbed in. Everyone was quiet as they bumped down the rutted track. When they got to the gate, it was still open. Robert stopped on the other side.

  “Buck,” Robert said, “jump out and shut the gate, please.”

  “Sure,” Buck said. He climbed from the jeep, then walked over to the gate and swung it closed. Reaching down, he picked up the chain that would secure it to the gatepost, but the chain was too short. Buck looked at the gatepost. Another length of chain was still looped around it, the lock still attached, unopened. Buck looked more closely at the chain in his hand then pulled out his camera, snapped a picture, and ran back to the jeep.

  “Look,” he said excitedly when he climbed in. He brought up the picture on his camera and showed it to the others. “Nobody accidently left it open. The chain was cut!”

  TAKE 11:

  “DEADLY AGGRESSIVE, THE ALLOSAURUS HAD FEARSOME BATTLES WITH THE STEGOSAURUS, SURVIVING POWERFUL BLOWS FROM STEGO䜩S SPIKED TAIL.”

  Robert pulled into the visitor center parking lot. They all piled out, but as they went inside the building, Dad turned to Buck and Toni.

  “You two, wait out here in the museum,” he said.

  Buck protested, but Dad just gave him a stern look and headed with the others toward the back corner, where the ranger’s headquarters were located. When Buck turned back, Toni was already headed in the opposite direction toward the gift shop. Buck followed her. She went directly to one of the displays. Several different kinds of patches hung from pegs, but one peg was empty.

  “What are you doing?” Buck asked, coming up beside her.

  “I was thinking a lot while we hiked today, trying to picture what happened here. I knew you were right; I just needed to prove it to myself,” Toni answered. She pointed to the empty peg. “There was only one patch with the Six Shooter and lizard. I took it off that peg and handed it to Nick. When I said there were some things I wanted to buy, Nick said he’d hold my backpack. He never came over to the cash register while I was there and he was already outside when I got done paying.”