Story of a Monster Fish 5 



specimen is well worth the telling. He discover- 

 ed a large part of the tail sticking out of a round- 

 ed mass of sandstone ; another section was in the 

 ditch below. I was at the time camped on the 

 other side of the Cheyenne River, and it took me 

 nearly all day to return with Charlie who came 

 after me in our one horse buggy. It was a bitter 

 cold evening when we reached the locality, and in 

 order to sleep, we built a big fire of dead cotton- 

 wood limbs, and when we were ready to leave the 

 fire for bed, we raked off the coals and rolled out 

 our bed on the warm earth beneath. We were 

 under a sheltering bank that protected us from 

 the wind. The next day the wind again blew a 

 gale, and we stood on the bluff and swung our 

 picks all day in our effort to get down to the floor 

 on which the skeleton lay stretched out at full 

 length. Our eyes were soon filled with the sand 

 we loosened with our picks; but our enthusiasm 

 ktiew no bounds, and that evening, I believe, the 

 other boys, George and Levi arrived with the out- 

 fit, pitched a tent and cooked us a good meal un- 

 der cover. It was a big undertaking however, to 

 get that dinosaur out of the quarry and haul it to 

 the railway at Edgemont, South Dakota, 75 

 miles away. It took us two months and a half of 

 tireless effort. The skeleton had evidently sunk 

 after death in quick sand, since the front limbs 

 were lifted up along the sides of the body and re- 

 versed, snowing the perfectly preserved webs that 

 covered them. The head, and the neck were 



