68 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



Quickly slipping the teeth into his mouth, Cope 

 advanced with a smiling face to greet his guests, 

 who shouted as one man, " Do it again ! Do it 

 again!" He repeated the performance for them 

 again and again, much to their mystification. 



After they had tried to pull out their own and 

 each other's teeth, and had failed, they settled down 

 to breakfast. The cook poured out their coffee for 

 them, and when they had had enough they shouted, 

 "When!" 



We never knew whether this hospitality was of 

 any benefit to us, as the whole tribe went on their 

 buffalo hunt, and we saw no more of them, but very 

 likely their chiefs forbade petty stealing from our 

 camp, for we lost nothing. 



We crossed the Missouri, here a clear, sparkling 

 stream, and the Judith River, and went into camp 

 in the narrow valley of Dog Creek, in the midst of 

 the fossil fields which we had come so far and at 

 such risks to explore. 



All about us stretched the interminable labyrinths 

 of the Bad Lands. Above us lay twelve hundred 

 feet of denuded rock, which Cope at that time be- 

 lieved to belong to several formations. The rock 

 consists of great beds of black shale, which disin- 

 tegrates on the surface into a fine, black dust. The 

 lower levels contain many beds of lignite, which 

 makes a good soft coal, and burns readily. We 



