1 86 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



saw what appeared to be a human form in Jake's 

 bed. I rushed to it and threw off the blankets, and 

 there, sleeping peacefully, lay Jake. We had a 

 great mind to take him out into the Bad Lands and 

 pitch him off into a canyon. It seems that he had 

 been to the mountains, three miles away, where a 

 small exposure of the John Day beds could be seen 

 from camp ; and when he returned and we were not 

 in, he had not worried about us, but had eaten his 

 supper and gone to bed, while we were making 

 ourselves hoarse shouting for him. This incident 

 illustrates a peculiarity of youth its thoughtless- 

 ness as to the anxiety which it may be causing its 

 elders. 



Among the fossil remains which we secured in 

 these John Day beds, were the limbs of a huge 

 Elotherium humerosum, so named by Cope on ac- 

 count of the great process on the humerus. We 

 found the specimen in Haystack Valley, lying on 

 its side, with its toes sticking out of the face of a 

 slope. There were thousands of feet of volcanic 

 rock above it. Following in with pick and shovel, 

 we cleaned up the floor, to find, when we reached the 

 center of the humeri and femora, that they had been 

 cut through as smoothly as if it had been done with 

 a diamond saw. I knew, of course, that there had 

 been a fault here, and that the earth in slipping 

 down had severed the bones. The question that in- 



