Dragon Teeth

Young Johnson Joins the Field Trip West

William Jason Tertullius Johnson, the elder son of Philadelphia shipbuilder Silas Johnson, entered Yale College in the fall of 1875. According to his headmaster at Exeter, Johnson was “gifted, attractive, athletic and able.” But the headmaster added that Johnson was “headstrong, indolent and badly spoilt, with a notable indifference to any motive save his own pleasures. Unless he finds a purpose to his life, he risks unseemly decline into indolence and vice.”

Those words could have served as the description of a thousand young men in late nineteenth-century America, young men with intimidating, dynamic fathers, large quantities of money, and no particular way to pass the time.

William Johnson fulfilled his headmaster’s prediction during his first year at Yale. He was placed on probation in November for gambling, and again in February after an incident involving heavy drinking and the smashing of a New Haven merchant’s window. Silas Johnson paid the bill. Despite such reckless behavior, Johnson remained courtly and even shy with women of his own age, for he had yet to have any luck with them. For their part, they found reason to seek his attention, their formal upbringings notwithstanding. In all other respects, however, he remained unrepentant. Early that spring, on a sunny afternoon, Johnson wrecked his roommate’s yacht, running it aground on Long Island Sound. The boat sank within minutes; Johnson was rescued by a passing trawler; asked what happened, he admitted to the incredulous fishermen that he did not know how to sail because it would be “so utterly tedious to learn. And anyway, it looks simple enough.” Confronted by his roommate, Johnson admitted he had not asked permission to use the yacht because “it was such bother to find you.”

Faced with the bill for the lost yacht, Johnson’s father complained to his friends that “the cost of educating a young gentleman at Yale these days is ruinously expensive.” His father was the serious son of a Scottish immigrant, and took some pains to conceal the excesses of his offspring; in his letters, he repeatedly urged William to find a purpose in life. But William seemed content with his spoiled frivolity, and when he announced his intention to spend the coming summer in Europe, “the prospect,” said his father, “fills me with direst fiscal dread.”

Thus his family was surprised when William Johnson abruptly decided to go west during the summer of 1876. Johnson never publically explained why he had changed his mind. But those close to him at Yale knew the reason. He had decided to go west because of a bet.

In his own words, from the journal he scrupulously kept:

Marsh

Professor Marsh kept offices in the Peabody Museum on the Yale campus. A heavy green door with large white lettering read PROF. O. C. MARSH. VISITORS BY WRITTEN APPOINTMENT ONLY.

Johnson knocked. There was no reply, so he knocked again.

“Go away.”

Johnson knocked a third time.

A small panel opened in the center of the door, and an eye squinted out. “What is it?”

“I want to see Professor Marsh.”

“But does he want to see you?” demanded the eye. “I doubt it.”

“I am replying to his notice.” Johnson held up the newspaper advertisement from the week before.

“Sorry. Too late. Positions all filled.” The door panel snapped shut.

Johnson was not accustomed to being denied anything, particularly a silly trip he did not want in the first place. Angrily, he kicked the door. He stared at the buggy traffic on Whitney Avenue. But with his pride, and a thousand dollars, hanging in the balance, he got control of himself, and knocked politely once more. “I’m sorry, Professor Marsh, but I really must go west with you.”

“Young man, the only place you must go is away. Go away.”

“Please, Professor Marsh. Please let me join your expedition.” The thought of his humiliation before Marlin was awful to Johnson. His voice choked; his eyes watered. “Please hear me out, sir. I’ll do whatever you say, I’ll even provide my own equipment.”

The panel snapped open again. “Young man, everyone provides their own equipment, and everyone does whatever I say, except you. You are presenting an unmanly spectacle.” The eye peered out. “Now go away.”

“Please, sir, you have to take me.”

“If you wanted to come you should have answered the advertisement last week. Everyone else did. We had thirty candidates to choose from last week. Now we have selected everyone except— You’re not, by any chance, a photographer?”

Johnson saw his chance and leapt at it. “A photographer? Yes, sir, I am! I am indeed.”

“Well! You should have said so at once. Come in.” The door swung open wide, and Johnson had his first full look at the heavy, powerful, solemn figure of Othniel C. Marsh, Yale’s first professor of paleontology. Of medium height, he appeared to enjoy a fleshy, robust health.

Marsh led him back into the interior of the museum. The air was chalky and shafts of sunlight pierced it like a cathedral. In a vast cavernous space, Johnson saw men in white lab coats bent over great slabs of rock, chipping bones free with small chisels. They worked carefully, he saw, and used small brushes to clean their work. In the far corner, a gigantic skeleton was being assembled, the framework of bones rising to the ceiling.

“Giganthopus marshiensis, my crowning achievement,” Marsh said, nodding toward the looming beast of bones. “To date, that is. Discovered her in ’74, in the Wyoming Territory. I always think of her as her. What is your name?”

“William Johnson, sir.”

“What does your father do?”

“My father is in shipping, sir.” Chalky dust hung in the air; Johnson coughed.

Marsh looked suspicious. “Are you unwell, Johnson?”

“No, sir, perfectly well.”

“I cannot abide sickness around me.”

“My health is excellent, sir.”

Marsh appeared unconvinced. “How old are you, Johnson?”

“Eighteen, sir.”

“And how long have you been a photographer?”

“A photographer? Oh, uh—from my youth, sir. My, uh—my father took pictures and I learned from him, sir.”

“You have your own equipment?”

“Yes—uh, no, sir—but I can obtain it. From my father, sir.”

“You are nervous, Johnson. Why is that?”

“I’m just eager to go with you, sir.”

“Are you.” Marsh stared at him, as if Johnson were a curious anatomical specimen himself.

Uneasy under that stare, Johnson attempted a compliment. “I’ve heard so many exciting things about you, sir.”

“Indeed? What have you heard?”

Johnson hesitated. In truth, he had heard only that Marsh was an obsessive, driven man who owed his college position to his monomaniacal interest in fossil bones, and to his uncle, the famous philanthropist George Peabody, who had provided the funding for the Peabody Museum, for Marsh’s professorship, and for Marsh’s annual field trips to the West.

“Only that students have found it a privilege and an adventure to accompany you, sir.”

Marsh was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “I dislike compliments and idle flattery. I don’t like to be called ‘sir.’ You may refer to me as ‘Professor.’ As for privilege and adventure, I offer damned hard work and plenty of it. But I’ll say this: all my students have come back alive and well. Now then—why do you want to go so much?”

“Personal reasons, si— Professor.”

“All reasons are personal reasons, Johnson. I’m asking yours.”

“Well, Professor, I am interested in the study of fossils.”

“You are interested? You say you are interested? Young man, these fossils”—his hand swept wide, gesturing to the room—“these fossils do not invite interest. They invite passionate commitment, they invite religious fervor and scientific speculation, they invite heated discourse and argument, but they do not thrive on mere interest. No, no. I am sorry. No, no, indeed.”

Johnson feared he had lost his opportunity with his chance remark, but in another swift change, Marsh smiled and said, “Never mind, I need a photographer and you are welcome to come.” He extended his hand, and Johnson shook it. “Where are you from, Johnson?”

“Philadelphia.”

The name had an extraordinary effect on Marsh. He dropped Johnson’s hand, and took a step back. “Philadelphia! You—you—you are from Philadelphia?”

“Yes, sir, is there something wrong with Philadelphia?”

“Don’t call me ‘sir’! And your father is in shipping?”

“Yes, he is.”

Marsh’s face turned purple; his body shook with rage. “And I suppose you are a Quaker, too? Hmmm? A Quaker from Philadelphia?”

“No, Methodist, actually.”

“Isn’t that very close to Quaker?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you live in the same city that he does.”

“That who does?”

Marsh fell silent, frowning, staring at the floor, and then he made another of his abrupt turns, shifting his bulk. For a large man he was surprisingly agile and athletic.

“Never mind,” he said, smiling once again. “I’ve no quarrel with any resident of the City of Brotherly Love, whatever they may say. And yet I imagine you are wondering where my expedition is going this summer, to look for fossils?”

The question had never crossed Johnson’s mind, but to show proper interest, he replied, “I am a bit curious, yes.”

“I imagine you are. Yes. I imagine you are. Well, it is a secret,” Marsh said, leaning close to Johnson’s face and hissing the words. “Do you understand me? A secret. And it will remain a secret, known only to me, until we are on the train headed west. Is that completely understood?”

Johnson backed away under the vehemence of the words. “Yes, Professor.”

“Good. If your family desires to know your destination, tell them Colorado. It isn’t true, for we won’t go to Colorado this year, but that doesn’t matter because you’ll be out of touch anyway, and Colorado is a delightful place not to be. Understood?”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Good. Now then, we depart June 14, from Grand Central Depot in New York. Returning no later than September 1 to the same station. See the museum secretary tomorrow and he will give you a list of provisions you are to provide—in addition, in your case, to your photographic equipment. You will allow supplies sufficient for a hundred photographs. Any questions?”

“No, sir. No, Professor.”

“Then I will see you at the platform on June 14, Mr. Johnson.” They shook hands briefly. Marsh’s hand was damp and cold.

“Thank you, Professor.” Johnson turned and headed toward the door.

“Ah, ah, ah. Where do you think you are going?”

“To leave.”

“By yourself?”

“I can find my way—”

“No one, Johnson, is permitted unescorted movement through this office. I am not a fool, I know there are spies eager to look at the latest drafts of my papers, or the latest bones to emerge from the rock. My assistant Mr. Gall will see you out.” At the mention of his name, a thin, pinched man in a lab coat put down his chisel and walked with Johnson to the door.

“Is he always like this?” Johnson whispered.

“Lovely weather,” Gall said, and smiled. “Good day to you, sir.”

And William Johnson was back out on the street.

Learning Photography

Johnson wanted nothing more than to escape the terms of his wager and this impending expedition. Marsh was obviously a lunatic of the first order, and conceivably dangerous as well. He fixed on having another meal with Marlin, and somehow extricating himself from the bet.

Yet that evening, to his horror, he learned that the wager had become notorious. It was now known broadly throughout the College, and all during dinner people came to his table to talk about it, to make some small comment or joke. Backing out now was inconceivable.

He realized then he was doomed.

The following day he went to the shop of Mr. Carlton Lewis, a local photographer, who offered twenty lessons in his craft for the outrageous sum of fifty dollars. Mr. Lewis was amused with this new pupil; photography was not a rich man’s pursuit, but rather a shifty business for people who lacked the capital to embark on a more prestigious livelihood. Even Mathew Brady, the most famous photographer of his day, the chronicler of the Civil War, the man who photographed statesmen and presidents, had never been treated as anything but a servant by the eminent subjects who sat for him.

But Johnson was adamant, and over a period of weeks he learned the skills behind this method of recording, introduced from France forty years earlier by the telegrapher Samuel Morse.

The process then in vogue was the “wet plate” photographic technique; in a darkened room or tent, fresh chemicals were mixed on the spot, and sheets of glass coated with a sticky, light-sensitive emulsion. The newly made wet plates were then rushed to the camera and exposed to the scene while still wet. Considerable skill was required to prepare an evenly coated plate, and then to expose it before the plate dried; later development was easy by comparison.

Johnson learned with difficulty. He could not carry out the steps fast enough, with the easy rhythms of his teacher; his early emulsions were too thick or too thin, too wet or too dry; his plates had bubbles and dripped densities that made his pictures amateurish. He hated the confined tent, the darkness, and the smelly chemicals that irritated his eyes, stained his fingers, and burned his clothes. Most of all he hated the fact that he couldn’t master the craft easily. And he hated Mr. Lewis, who tended to philosophize.

“You expect everything to be easy because you are rich,” Lewis would chuckle, watching him fumble and swear. “But the plate doesn’t care how rich you are. The chemicals don’t care how rich you are. The lens doesn’t care how rich you are. You must first learn patience, if you wish to learn anything at all.”

“Damn you,” Johnson would say, irritated. The man was nothing but an uneducated shopkeeper putting on airs.

“I am not the problem,” Lewis would reply, taking no offense. “You are the problem. Now come: try again.”

Johnson ground his teeth and swore under his breath.

But as the weeks passed, he did improve. By late April his plates were uniform in density, and he was working swiftly enough to make good exposures. His plates were crisp and sharp, and he was pleased as he showed them to his teacher.

“What are you pleased about?” Mr. Lewis asked. “These pictures are wretched.”

“Wretched? They are perfect.”

“They are technically perfect,” Lewis said, shrugging. “It means merely that you know enough to begin to learn about photography. I believe that is why you came to me in the first place.”

Lewis taught him now the details of exposure, the vagaries of f-stop, focal length, depth of field. Johnson despaired, for there was so much more to learn: “Shoot portraits wide open with short exposures, because the wide-open lens has a soft quality that flatters the subject.” And again, “Shoot landscapes stopped down with long exposures, because people wish to see a landscape sharp both close and at a distance.” He learned to vary contrast by changing exposure and subsequent development time. He learned to position his subjects in the light, to change the composition of his emulsions on bright and dull days. Johnson worked hard and kept detailed notes in his journal—but also complaints.

“I despise this little man,” observes one characteristic entry, “and yet I desperately want to hear him say what he will not: that I have learned this skill.” Yet even in his complaint one notices a change from the haughty young man who a few months earlier could not be bothered to learn to sail. He wanted to excel at his task.

In early May, Lewis held a plate up to the light, then inspected it with a magnifying glass. He finally turned to Johnson. “This work is almost acceptable,” he allowed. “You have done well.”

Johnson was elated. In his journal he wrote: “Almost acceptable! Almost acceptable! Nothing said to me was ever so sweet to my ears!”

Other aspects of Johnson’s demeanor were changing as well: despite himself he was beginning to look forward to the trip.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia was the busiest city in America that May, nearly bursting with the vast crowds that flocked to attend the Centennial Exposition of 1876. The excitement that surrounded this celebration of the nation’s hundredth anniversary was nearly palpable. Wandering the soaring exhibition halls, Johnson saw the wonders that astonished all the world—the great Corliss steam engine, the exhibits of plant and agriculture from the states and territories of America, and the new inventions that were all the rage.

The prospect of harnessing the power of electricity was the newest subject: there was even talk of making electrical light, to illuminate city streets at night; everyone said Edison would have a solution within a year. Meanwhile there were other electrical wonders to puzzle over, particularly the curious device of the tele-phone.

Everyone who attended the exposition saw this oddity, although few considered it of any value. Johnson was among the majority when he noted in his journal, “We already have the telegraph, providing communications for all who desire it. The added virtues of voice communication at a distance are unclear. Perhaps in the future, some people will wish to hear the voice of another far away, but there cannot be many. For myself, I think Mr. Bell’s tele-phone is a doomed curiosity with no real purpose.”

Despite the splendid buildings and enormous crowds, all was not entirely well in the nation. This was an election year, with much talk of politics. President Ulysses S. Grant had opened the Centennial Exposition, but the little general was no longer popular; scandal and corruption characterized his administration, and the excesses of financial speculators had finally plunged the nation into one of the most severe depressions in its history. Thousands of investors had been ruined on Wall Street; Western farmers were destroyed by the sharp decline in prices, as well as by harsh winters and plagues of grasshoppers; the resurgent Indian Wars in the Montana, Dakota, and Wyoming Territories provided an unsavory aspect, at least to the Eastern press, and both Democratic and Republican parties promised in this year’s campaign to focus on reform.

But to a young man, particularly a rich one, all this news—both good and bad—merely formed an exciting backdrop on the eve of his great adventure. “I relished the wonders of this Exposition,” Johnson wrote, “but in truth I found it wearingly civilized. My eyes looked to the future, and to the Great Plains that would soon be my destination. If my family agreed to let me go.”

The Johnsons resided in one of the ornate mansions that fronted Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. It was the only home William had ever known—lavish furnishings, mannered elegance, and servants behind every door. He decided to tell his family one morning at breakfast. In retrospect, he found their reactions absolutely predictable.

“Oh, darling! Why ever would you want to go out there?” asked his mother, buttering her toast.

“I think it’s a capital idea,” said his father. “Excellent.”

“But do you think it’s wise, William?” asked his mother. “There’s all that trouble with the Indians, you know.”

“It’s good that he’s going, maybe they’ll scalp him,” announced his younger brother, Edward, who was fourteen. He said things like that all the time and no one paid any attention.

“I don’t understand the appeal,” his mother said again, an edge of worry in her voice. “Why do you want to go? It doesn’t make any sense. Why not go to Europe instead? Someplace culturally stimulating and safe.”

“I’m sure he’ll be safe,” his father said. “Only today the Inquirer reports on the Sioux uprising in the Dakotas. They’ve sent Custer himself to put it down. He’ll make short work of them.”

“I hate to think of you eaten,” said his mother.

“Scalped, Mother,” Edward corrected her. “They cut off all the hair right around the head, after they club you to death, of course. Except sometimes you’re not completely dead and you can feel the knife cutting off the skin and hair right down to the eyebrows—”

“Not at breakfast, Edward.”

“You’re disgusting, Edward,” said his sister, Eliza, who was ten. “You make me puke.”

“Eliza!”

“Well, he does, Mother. He is a revolting creature.”

“Where exactly will you go with Professor Marsh, son?” his father asked.

“To Colorado.”

“Isn’t that near the Dakotas?” asked his mother.

“Not very.”

“Oh, Mother, don’t you know anything?” said Edward.

“Are there Indians in Colorado?”

“There are Indians everywhere, Mother.”

“I wasn’t asking you, Edward.”

“I believe no hostile Indians reside in Colorado,” his father said. “They say it’s a lovely place. Very dry.”

“They say it’s a desert,” said his mother. “And dreadfully inhospitable. What sort of hotel will you stay in?”

“We’ll be camping, mostly.”

“Good,” his father said. “Plenty of fresh air and exertion. Invigorating.”

“You sleep on the ground with all the snakes and animals and insects? It sounds horrific,” his mother said.

“Summer in the out-of-doors, good for a young man,” his father said. “After all, many sickly boys go for the ‘camp cure’ nowadays.”

“I suppose…” said his mother. “But William isn’t sickly. Why do you want to go, William?”

“I think it’s time I made something of myself,” William told her, surprised by his own honesty.

“Well said!” said his father, pounding the table.

In the end his mother gave her consent, although she continued to look genuinely worried. He thought she was being maternal and foolish; the fears she expressed only made him feel all the more puffed-up, brave, and determined to go.

He might have felt differently, had he known that by late summer, she would be informed that her firstborn son was dead.

“Ready to Dig for Yale?”

The train left at eight o’clock in the evening from the cavernous interior of the Grand Central Depot in New York. Finding his way through the station, Johnson passed several attractive young women accompanied by their families, but could not quite bring himself to meet their curious eyes. Meanwhile, he told himself, he needed to find his party. Altogether, twelve Yale students would accompany Professor Marsh and his staff of two, Mr. Gall and Mr. Bellows.

Marsh was there early, walking down the line of cars, greeting everyone the same way: “Hello, young fellow, ready to dig for Yale?” Ordinarily taciturn and suspicious, Marsh was here outgoing and friendly. Marsh had handpicked his students from socially prominent and wealthy families, and these families had come to see their boys off.

Marsh was well aware that he was serving as a tour guide to the scions of the rich, who might later be properly grateful for his part in turning their young boys into men. He understood further that since many prominent ministers and theologians explicitly denounced ungodly paleontological research, all research money in his field came from private patrons, among them his financier uncle, George Peabody. Here in New York, the new American Museum of Natural History in Central Park had just been chartered by other self-made men such as Andrew Carnegie, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Marshall Field.

For as eagerly as religious men sought to discredit the doctrine of evolution, so wealthy men sought to promote it. In the principle of the survival of the fittest they saw a new, scientific justification for their own rise to prominence, and their own often unscrupulous way of life. After all, no less an authority than the great Charles Lyell, friend and forerunner of Charles Darwin, had insisted again and again, “In the universal struggle for existence, the right of the strongest eventually prevails.”

Here Marsh found himself surrounded by the children of the strongest. Marsh privately maintained to Bellows that “the New York send-off is the most productive part of the field trip,” and his thinking was firmly in mind when he greeted Johnson with his usual “Hello, young man, ready to dig for Yale?”

Johnson was surrounded by a cluster of porters who loaded his bulky photographic equipment aboard. Marsh looked about, then frowned. “Where is your family?”

“In Philadelphia, si— Professor.”

“Your father did not come to see you off?” Marsh recalled that Johnson’s father was in shipping. Marsh did not know much about shipping, but it was undoubtedly lucrative and full of sharp practices. Fortunes were made daily in shipping.

“My father saw me off in Philadelphia.”

“Really? Most families wish to meet me personally, to get a sense of the expedition…”

“Yes, I am sure, but you see, they felt to come here would strain—my mother—who does not completely approve.”

“Your mother does not approve?” Marsh could not conceal the distress in his voice. “Does not approve of what? Surely not of me…”

“Oh no. It’s the Indians, Professor. She disapproves of my going west, because she is afraid of the Indians.”

Marsh huffed. “She obviously knows nothing of my background. I am widely respected as the intimate friend of the red man. We’ll have no trouble with Indians, I promise you.”

But the situation was altogether unsatisfactory for Marsh, who later muttered to Bellows that Johnson “looks older than the others,” and hinted darkly that “perhaps he is not a student at all. And his father is in shipping. I think nothing more need be said.”

The whistle blew, there were final kisses and waves for the students, and the train pulled out of the station.

Marsh had arranged for them to travel in a private car, provided by none other than Commodore Vanderbilt himself, now a whitened eighty-two-year-old tucked into his sickbed. It was the first of many agreeable comforts that Marsh had arranged for the trip through his extensive connections with the army, the government, and captains of industry such as Vanderbilt.

In his prime, the crusty Commodore, a hulking figure in a fur coat worn winter and summer, had been admired by all New York. With ruthless and aggressive instincts, as well as a sharply profane tongue, this uneducated Staten Island Ferry boy, the son of Dutch peasants, had come to control shipping lines from New York to San Francisco; later he took an interest in railroads, extending his mighty New York Central from the heart of New York all the way to burgeoning Chicago. He was always good copy, even in defeat; when the secretive Jay Gould bested him for control of the Erie railway, he announced, “This Erie war has taught me that it never pays to kick a skunk.” And on another occasion, his complaint to his lawyers—“What do I care for the law? Haint I got the power?”—had made him a legend.

In later years Vanderbilt became increasingly eccentric, given to fraternizing with clairvoyants and mesmerists, communing with the dead, often on pressing business matters; and though he patronized outrageous feminists such as Victoria Woodhull, he still chased girls a quarter of his age.

Some days before, New York newspaper headlines had proclaimed “VANDERBILT DYING!,” which had roused the old man out of bed to bellow at reporters: “I am not dying! Even if I was dying I should have vigor enough to knock this abuse down your lying throats!” At least, this was what the journalists reported, though everyone in America knew the Commodore’s language was considerably saltier.

Vanderbilt’s railway car was the last word in elegance and modernity; there were Tiffany lamps, china and crystal service, as well as the clever new sleeper beds invented by George Pullman. By now, Johnson had met the other students, and noted in his journal they were “a bit tedious and spoiled, but all in all, an adventure-seeking lot. Yet we all share a common fear—of Professor Marsh.”

It was clear, seeing Marsh stride commandingly about the railway car, now sinking into the plush banquette seats to smoke a cigar, now snapping his fingers for the servant to bring him an iced drink, that he imagined himself as suited to these surroundings. And indeed, the newspapers sometimes referred to him as the “Baron of Bones,” just as Carnegie was the Baron of Steel, and Rockefeller the Baron of Oil.

Like these other great figures, Marsh was self-made. The son of a New York farmer, he had early shown an interest in fossils and learning. Despite the ridicule of his family, he had attended Phillips Academy Andover, graduating at the age of twenty-nine with high honors and the nickname “Daddy Marsh.” From Andover he went to Yale, and from Yale to England to plead support from his philanthropic uncle, George Peabody. His uncle admired learning in all forms, and was pleased to see a member of his family taking up an academic life. He gave Othniel Marsh the funds to start the Peabody Museum at Yale. The only catch was that Peabody later gave a similar sum to Harvard, to start another Peabody Museum there. This was because Marsh espoused Darwinism, and George Peabody disapproved of such irreligious sentiments. Harvard was the home of Louis Agassiz, an eminent zoology professor who opposed Darwin’s ideas, and was thus a stronghold of the anti-evolutionists—Harvard would provide a useful corrective to the excesses of his nephew, Peabody felt. All this Johnson learned in whispered conversation in the rocking Pullman bunks that night, before the excited students dropped off to sleep.

By morning they were in Rochester, by midday in Buffalo, waiting expectantly for a look at Niagara Falls. Unfortunately, their one glimpse, from a bridge some distance downstream, was anticlimactic. But their disappointment quickly vanished when they were informed that Professor Marsh expected to see them all in his private stateroom at once.

Marsh peered up and down the hallway, closed the door, and locked it from the inside. Though the afternoon was warm, he closed all the windows and locked them, too. Only then did he turn to the twelve waiting students.

“You have undoubtedly wondered where we are going,” he said. “But it is too early to inform you yet; I will tell you after Chicago. In the meantime, I caution you to avoid contact with strangers, and to say nothing of our plans. He has spies everywhere.”

Tentatively, one student said, “Who does?”

“Cope, of course!” Marsh snapped.

Hearing this unfamiliar name, the students looked blankly at each other, but Marsh did not notice; he was off on a tirade. “Gentlemen, I cannot warn you against him too strongly. Professor Edward Drinker Cope may pretend to be a scientist, but in fact he is little better than a common thief and keyhole-peeper. I have never known him to obtain by fair labor what he could steal instead. The man is a despicable liar and sneak. Be on your guard.”

Marsh was puffing, as if exerted. He glared around the room. “Any questions?”

There were none.

“All right,” Marsh said. “I merely want the record straight. You will hear more after Chicago. Meantime, keep to yourselves.”

Bewildered, the students filed out of the compartment.

One young man named Winslow knew who Cope was. “He is another professor of paleontology, I believe at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. He and Marsh were once friends, but are now the most steadfast enemies. As I heard it, Cope tried to steal credit for the professor’s first fossil discoveries, and there has been bad feeling between them ever since. And Cope apparently pursued a woman Marsh wanted to marry, and discredited her, or at least sullied her reputation. Cope’s father was a wealthy Quaker merchant, left him millions, I was told. So Cope does as he pleases. It seems he is a bit of a rogue and charlatan. There’s no end of sly tricks he will pull to steal from Marsh what is rightfully his. That’s why Marsh is so suspicious—he is ever on the watch for Cope and his agents.”

“I knew nothing of this,” Johnson said.

“Well, you know now,” Winslow responded. He stared out the window at rolling green cornfields. The train had left New York State, passed through Pennsylvania, and was in Ohio. “Speaking for myself,” he said, “I don’t know why you are on this expedition. I’d never go except my family made me. My father insists that a summer in the West will ‘put hair on my chest.’” He shook his head in wonder. “God. All I can think of is, three months of bad food and bad water and bad insects. And no girls. No fun. God.”

Still curious about Cope, Johnson asked Marsh’s assistant Bellows, a pinch-faced zoology instructor. Bellows immediately became suspicious. “Why do you ask?”

“I am simply curious.”

“But why do you, particularly, ask? None of the other students have asked.”

“Perhaps they are not interested.”

“Perhaps they have no reason to be interested.”

“That amounts to the same thing,” Johnson said.

“Does it?” Bellows asked, with a meaningful look. “I ask you, does it really?”

“Well, I think so,” Johnson said, “although I’m not sure, the conversation has become so convoluted.”

“Don’t patronize me, young man,” Bellows said. “You may think I am a fool—you may think we are all fools—but I assure you we are not.”

And he walked off, leaving Johnson more curious than ever.

Marsh’s diary entry:

The farmlands of Indiana raced past the window, mile after mile, hour after hour, lulling Johnson to a sense of monotony. With his chin propped on his hand, he was drifting off to sleep when Marsh said, “What exactly do you know about Cope?”

Johnson sat up abruptly. “Nothing, Professor.”

“Well, I’ll tell you some things that perhaps you don’t know. He killed his own father to get his inheritance. Did you know that?”

“No, Professor.”

“Not six months ago, he killed him. And he cheats on his wife, an invalided woman who has never harmed him in the least way—worships him, in fact, that’s how deluded the poor creature is.”

“He sounds a complete criminal.”

Marsh shot him a look. “You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you, Professor.”

“Also, personal hygiene is not his strong point. The man is odiferous and unsanitary. But I’ve no wish to be personal.”

“No, Professor.”

“The fact is he is unscrupulous and untrustworthy in the extreme. There was a landgrab and mineral rights scandal. That’s why he was kicked out of the Geological Survey.”

“He was kicked out of the Geological Survey?”

“Years ago. You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you, Professor.”

“Well, you don’t look like you believe me.”

“I believe you,” Johnson insisted. “I believe you.”

There was a silence. The train clattered on. Marsh cleared his throat. “Do you know Professor Cope, by any chance?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I thought perhaps you did.”

“No, Professor.”

“If you did know him, you would feel better if you told me all about it now,” Marsh said. “Instead of waiting.”

“If I did, Professor,” Johnson said, “I would. But I do not know the man.”

“Yes,” Marsh said, studying Johnson’s face. “Hmmm.”

Later that day, Johnson met a painfully thin young man making notes in a small leather-bound book. He was from Scotland and said his name was Louis Stevenson.

“How far are you going?” Johnson asked.

“All the way to the end. California,” Stevenson said, lighting another cigarette. He smoked continually; his long, delicate fingers were stained dark brown. He coughed a great deal, and in general did not look like the sort of robust person who seeks a journey west, and Johnson asked him why he was doing so.

“I am in love,” Stevenson said simply. “She is in California.”

And then he made more notes, and seemed to forget Johnson for a time. Johnson went off in search of more congenial company, and came across Marsh.

“That young man there,” Marsh said, nodding across the carriage.

“What about him?”

“You were talking to him.”

“His name is Stevenson.”

“I don’t trust a man who makes notes,” Marsh said. “What did you talk about?”

“He’s from Scotland and he is going to California to find a woman he is in love with.”

“How romantic. And did he ask you where you were going?”

“No, he wasn’t the least interested.”

Marsh squinted at him. “So he says.”

“I have made inquiries about that Stevenson fellow,” Marsh announced to the group later. “He’s from Scotland, on his way to California to find a woman. His health is poor. Apparently he fancies himself a writer, that’s why he makes all those notes.”

Johnson said nothing.

“Just thought you would be interested to know,” Marsh said. “Personally, I think he smokes too much.”

Marsh looked out the window. “Ah, the lake,” he said. “We will soon be in Chicago.”

Chicago

Chicago was the fastest-growing city in the world, both in population and in commercial importance. From a prairie village of four thousand in 1840, it had exploded into a metropolis of half a million, and was now doubling in size every five years. Known as “Slabtown” and “The Mud Hole of the Prairie,” the city now extended across thirty-five square miles along Lake Michigan, and boasted paved streets and sidewalks, broad thoroughfares with streetcars, elegant mansions, fine shops, hotels, art galleries, and theaters. And this despite the fact that most of the city had been razed in a terrible fire just five years before.

Chicago’s success owed nothing to climate and locale; the shores of Lake Michigan were swampy; most of the early buildings had sunk into the mud until they were jacked up by the brilliant young Chicago engineer George Pullman. Water was so polluted that visitors often found small fish in their drinking water—there were even minnows in dairy milk. And the weather was abhorrent: hot in summer, brutally cold in winter, and windy in all seasons.

Chicago owed its success to its geographical position in the heartland of the country, to its importance as a rail and shipping center, and most particularly to its preeminence in the handling of prodigious tonnages of beef and pork.

“I like to turn bristles, blood, and the inside and outside of pigs and bullocks into revenue,” said Philip Armour, one of the founders of the gigantic Chicago stockyards. Along with fellow meatpacking magnate Gustavus Swift, Armour ruled an industry that dispatched a million head of cattle and four million pigs each year—and which employed one-sixth of the population of the city. With their centralized distribution, mechanized slaughter, and refrigerated railroad cars, the barons of Chicago were creating a whole new industry—food processing.

The Chicago stockyards were the largest in the world, and many visitors went to see them. One of the Yale students was the nephew of Swift, and they went off to tour the yards, which Johnson regarded as a dubious tourist attraction. But Marsh was not stopping in Chicago for tourism. He was there on business.

From the magnificent Lake Shore Railroad Depot, he took his charges to the nearby Grand Pacific Hotel. Here the students were awed by one of the largest and most elegant hotels in the world. As everywhere, Marsh had arranged special accommodations for his party, and there were newspapermen waiting to interview him.

Othniel Marsh was always good copy. The year before, in 1875, he had uncovered a scandal in the Indian Bureau, whereby bureau officers were not dispensing food and funds to the reservations, but were instead keeping the proceeds for themselves, while Indians literally starved. Marsh had been informed of this by Red Cloud himself, the legendary Sioux chief, and had revealed the evidence in Washington, severely embarrassing the Grant presidency in the eyes of the liberal Eastern establishment. Marsh was a good friend of Red Cloud, and thus reporters wanted to talk to him about the Sioux Wars now raging. “It is a terrible conflict,” Marsh said, “but there are no easy answers to the Indian question.”

Then, too, Chicago reporters never tired of repeating the story of Marsh’s earliest public exploit, the affair of the Cardiff giant.

In 1869, the fossilized skeleton of a ten-foot giant was unearthed in Cardiff, New York, and quickly became a national phenomenon. It was generally agreed that the giant was one of a race of men who had been drowned in Noah’s flood; Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald and a number of scholars had pronounced it genuine.

Marsh, in his capacity as the new paleontology professor from Yale, went to view the fossil and said, within earshot of a reporter, “Very remarkable.”

“May I quote you?” said the reporter.

“Yes,” said Marsh. “You may quote me as saying, ‘A very remarkable fake.’”

It was later determined that the so-called giant originated as a block of gypsum, carved secretly in Chicago. But the incident brought national attention to Marsh—and he had been talking to reporters ever since.

“And what brings you to Chicago now?” one reporter asked.

“I am on my way west, to find more bones,” Marsh said.

“And will you be seeing bones in Chicago?”

Marsh laughed. “No,” he said, “in Chicago we will see General Sheridan, to arrange our army liaison.”

Marsh took Johnson with him, because he wanted to be photographed with General Sheridan.

Little Phil Sheridan was a compact, energetic man of forty-five, with a fondness for plug tobacco and tart expression. He had assembled the army staff now waging the Indian War—Generals Crook, Terry, and Custer, all of whom were in the field, hunting out the Sioux. Sheridan was particularly fond of Armstrong Custer, and had risked the disapproval of President Grant by ordering Custer back into service along with Generals Crook and Terry in the Indian Wars.

“It’s no easy campaign,” Sheridan said. “And we need a man with Custer’s dash. The Indians are being driven from their homes, whether we care to see it that way or not, and they’ll fight us like devils. And the fact that the Indian agency supplies ’em with good rifles doesn’t help, either. The main conflict promises to be in Montana and Wyoming.”

“Wyoming,” Marsh said. “Hmmm. Will there be problems for our group?” He did not seem the least perturbed, Johnson noticed.

“I can’t see why,” Sheridan said, spitting with remarkable accuracy at a metal basin across the room. “So long as you stay out of Wyoming and Montana, you’ll be safe enough.”

Marsh posed for a photograph, standing rigidly beside General Sheridan. He then obtained letters of introduction to the three generals, and to the post commanders at Fort Laramie and Cheyenne. Two hours later, they were back at the train station, ready to continue westward.

At the departure gate, a rough-looking man, very tall, with a peculiar slanting scar on his cheek, said to Johnson, “How far are you going?”

“I’m on my way to Wyoming.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he remembered he should have said Colorado instead.

“Wyoming! Good luck to you then,” the man said, and turned away.

Marsh was beside Johnson a moment later. “Who was that?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“What did he want?”

“He asked how far I was going.”

“Did he? And what did you say?”

“Wyoming.”

Marsh frowned. “Did he believe you?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Did he seem to believe you?”

“Yes, Professor. I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I am fairly sure, Professor.”

Marsh stared off in the direction of the departed man. The station was still crowded and busy. The echoing din was loud, pierced by departure whistles.

“I have already warned you about talking to strangers,” he said finally. “The man you spoke to was Cope’s favorite foreman, Navy Joe Benedict. A brutal thug of a human specimen. But if you told him we were going to Wyoming, that is all right.”

“You mean we are not going to Wyoming?”

“No,” Marsh said. “We are going to Colorado.”

“Colorado!”

“Of course,” Marsh said. “Colorado is the best source of bones in the West, though you can’t expect a fool like Cope to know it.”

Going West

The Chicago and North Western Railway carried them across the Mississippi at Clinton, Iowa, over a twelve-span iron bridge nearly a mile long. The students were excited to cross the largest river in America, but once its great muddy expanse was behind them, their lethargy returned. Iowa was a region of rolling farmlands, with few landmarks and points of interest. Dry heat blew in through the windows, along with an occasional insect or butterfly. A dreary, perspiring tedium settled over the party.

Johnson hoped to glimpse Indians, but saw none. A passenger beside him laughed. “There haven’t been Indians here for forty years, since the Black Hawk War. You want Indians, you have to go west.”

“Isn’t this the West?” Johnson asked.

“Not yet. ’Cross the Missouri.”

“When do we cross the Missouri?”

“Other side of Cedar Rapids. Half a day on.”

But already the open prairie, and the fact of having crossed the Mississippi, had an effect on passengers. At each station and refueling stop, men would step onto the platform and fire their pistols at prairie dogs and prairie fowl. The birds would go screeching into the air; the little rodents would dive for cover, chattering. Nobody ever hit anything.

“Yep,” said one passenger. “They’re feeling the wide-open spaces now.”

Johnson found the wide-open spaces extraordinarily tedious. The students amused themselves as best they could with cards and dominoes, but it was a losing battle. For a while, they would get out at each station and walk around, but eventually even the stations became monotonously the same, and they usually remained inside.

At Cedar Rapids, the train stopped for two hours, and Johnson decided to stretch his legs. Rounding the corner of the tiny station, which stood at the edge of wheat fields, he saw Marsh talking quietly to the scarred man—Cope’s man, Navy Joe Benedict. Their manner seemed familiar. After a time, Marsh reached in his pocket and handed something to Benedict; Johnson saw a flash of gold in the sunlight. He ducked behind the corner before being spotted and hurried back to the train.

When the train resumed, Johnson’s perplexity increased as Marsh immediately came to sit beside him.

“I wonder where Cope will go this summer?” Marsh said, as if thinking aloud.

Johnson said nothing.

“I wonder where Cope will go?” Marsh said again.

“Very good question,” Johnson said.

“I doubt that he, like us, is going to Colorado.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Johnson was beginning to tire of this game, and allowed himself to stare directly into Marsh’s eyes, holding his gaze.

“Of course not,” Marsh said quickly. “Of course not.”

They crossed the Missouri in early evening at Council Bluffs, the terminus for the Chicago and North Western Railway. Across the bridge, on the Omaha side, the Union Pacific Railroad took over and continued all the way to San Francisco. The Union Pacific depot was a great open shed, and it was packed with travelers of the rudest sort. Here were rugged men, painted women, border ruffians, pickpockets, soldiers, crying children, food vendors, barking dogs, thieves, grandparents, gunfighters—a great confused mass of humanity, all fairly glowing with the fever of speculation.

“Black Hillers,” Marsh explained. “They outfit here before they go to Cheyenne and Fort Laramie, and from there travel northward to the Black Hills in search for gold.”

The students, impatient for a taste of the “real West,” were delighted, and imagined that they, too, had become more real themselves.

But despite the fevered excitement, Johnson found the sight sad. In his journal he recorded, “The hopes of humanity for wealth and fame, or at least for creature comfort, can delude them so easily! For surely only a handful of the people here will find what they are seeking. And the rest will meet with disappointment, hardship, sickness, and perhaps death from starvation, Indians, or marauding robbers who prey on the hopeful, questing pioneers.”

And he added the ironic note: “I am most heartily glad that I am not going to the dangerous and uncertain Black Hills.”

The West

Beyond Omaha the real West began, and aboard the train, everyone felt renewed excitement, tempered by the advice of older travelers. No, they would not see buffalo—in the seven years since the transcontinental rail lines opened, the buffalo had disappeared from view along the rail side, and indeed the legendary great herds of animals were fast disappearing altogether.

But then came the electrifying cry: “Indians!”

They ran to the opposite side of the car, pressed their faces to the glass. They saw three teepees in the distance, surrounded by a half dozen ponies and dark silhouetted figures, standing and watching the train go by. Then the Indians were gone, vanished behind a hill.

“What tribe are those?” Johnson asked. He was sitting next to Marsh’s assistant Gall.

“Pawnee, probably,” Gall said indifferently.

“Are they hostile?”

“Can be.”

Johnson thought of his mother. “Will we see more Indians?”

“Oh yes,” Gall said. “Lots of ’em where we’re going.”

“Really?”

“Yes, and probably riled up, too. There’s going to be a full-on Sioux War over the Black Hills.”

The federal government had signed a treaty with the Sioux in 1868, and as part of that treaty, the Dakota Sioux retained exclusive rights to the Black Hills, a landscape sacred to them. “That treaty was unnecessarily favorable to the Sioux,” Gall said. “The government even agreed to remove all forts and army outposts in the region.”

And it was a huge region, for in 1868, the Wyoming, Montana, and Dakota Territories still seemed distant and unapproachable wilderness. No one in Washington had understood how quickly the West would open up. Yet one year after the treaty had been signed, the transcontinental railroads began service, providing access in days to land that could previously be reached only by weeks of difficult overland travel.

Even so, the Sioux lands might have been respected had not Custer discovered gold during a routine survey in the Black Hills in 1874. News of gold fields, coming in the midst of a nationwide recession, was irresistible.

“Even in the best times, there’s no way to keep men from gold,” Gall said. “And that’s a plain fact.”

Although forbidden by the government, prospectors sneaked into the sacred Black Hills. The army mounted expeditions in ’74 and ’75 to chase them out, and the Sioux killed them whenever they found them. But still the prospectors came, in ever increasing numbers.

Believing the treaty had been broken, the Sioux went on the warpath. In May of 1876, the government ordered the army to quell the Sioux uprising.

“Then the Indians are in the right?” Johnson asked.

Gall shrugged. “You can’t stop progress, and that’s a plain fact.”

“We will be near the Black Hills?”

Gall nodded. “Near enough.”

Johnson’s understanding of geography, always vague, allowed his imagination free rein. He stared out at the wide-stretching plains, which seemed suddenly more desolate and unappealing.

“How often do Indians attack white people?”

“Well, they’re unpredictable,” Gall said. “Like wild animals, you never know what they’ll do, because they’re savages.”

West of Omaha the train climbed steadily and imperceptibly as it entered the high plains leading to the Rocky Mountains. They saw more animals now—prairie dogs, the occasional antelope, and coyotes loping in the distance near sunset. The towns became smaller, more desolate: Fremont, Kearney Junction, Alkali, Ogallala, Julesburg, and finally the notorious Sidney, where the conductor warned the students not to get off “if they valued their lives.”

Of course they all got off to look.

What they saw was a line of wooden storefronts, a town composed, wrote Johnson, “almost entirely of outfitters, stables, and saloons, and doing a brisk commerce in all three. Sidney was the town nearest to the Black Hills, and it was filled with emigrants, most of whom found prices outrageously high. The town’s reputation for murder and cut-throat life was not demonstrated to us, but then we had only stopped an hour.”

But they were not long disappointed, because the Union Pacific train was now speeding them westward to a still more notorious locus of vice and crime: Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory.

Travelers loaded their six-shooters coming into Cheyenne. And the conductor took Marsh aside to recommend that his party hire a guard, to see them safely through the town.

“Such preliminaries,” wrote Johnson, “gave us a most pleasurable nervous anticipation, for we imagined a lawless wild place which proved to be just that—a figment of our imaginations.”

Cheyenne turned out to be a rather orderly and settled place, with many brick buildings among those of wood-frame construction, but it was not entirely peaceful. Cheyenne boasted one schoolhouse, two theaters, five churches, and twenty gambling saloons. A contemporary observer wrote that “gambling in Cheyenne, far from being merely an amusement or recreation, rises to the dignity of a legitimate occupation—the pursuit of nine-tenths of the population, both permanent and transient.”

Gambling halls were open around the clock, and provided the major source of revenue to the town. Some indication of the business they did can be judged from the fact that the proprietors paid the city a license of $600 per year for each table, and each saloon had six to twelve green baize tables going at once.

The enthusiasm for gambling was not lost on the students, as they checked into the Inter-Ocean Hotel in Cheyenne, where Marsh had previously arranged a special rate. Although the best hotel in town, it was, noted Johnson, “a cockroach-infested dump, where the rats scurry up and down the walls, squeaking at all hours.” Nevertheless, each student was given a private room, and after soaking in hot baths, they were ready for a night on the town.

A Night in Cheyenne

Timid, they set forth as a group—twelve earnest young down-Easters, still wearing their high collars and bowler hats, strolling from saloon to saloon with as much nonchalance as they could muster. For the town, which had appeared disappointingly tame by day, assumed a positively sinister aspect at night.

In the yellow light of the saloon windows, the boardwalk crowd of cowboys, gunmen, gamblers, and cutthroats looked at them with amusement. “These varmints’d kill you as soon as smile at you,” said one student melodramatically. Feeling the unfamiliar weight of their new Smith & Wesson revolvers dragging at their hips, the students tugged at their guns, adjusting their weight.

One man stopped them. “You look like nice fellers,” he told the group. “Take some friendly advice. In Cheyenne, don’t touch your guns ’less you mean to use ’em. Round here, people don’t look at your face, they look at your hands, and a great deal of drinking is done in these precincts at night.”

There were not only gunfighters on the boardwalk. They passed several nymphs du pave, heavily painted, calling out teasingly to them from dark doorways. Altogether they found it exotic and thrilling, their first experience of the real West, the dangerous West they had been waiting for. They entered several saloons, sampled the harsh liquor, played hands of keno and 21. One student pulled out a pocket watch. “Nearly ten, and we haven’t seen a shooting yet,” he said, with a tinge of disappointment.

Within minutes, they saw a shooting.

“It happened astonishingly fast,” Johnson noted.

It was a cold-blooded display, and the students—no doubt in shock—were relieved when they heard the sound of music from the theater next door. When several gamblers left the tables to see the show, they followed hurriedly along to see this next attraction.

And here, unexpectedly, William Johnson fell in love.

The Pride De Paree Theater was a two-story triangular affair with the stage at the wide end, tables on the floor, and balconies mounted high on the walls at both sides. Balcony seats were the most expensive and desirable, though they were farthest from the stage, and so they bought those.

The show, observed Johnson, consisted of “singing, dancing, and petticoat flouncing, the rudest sort of entertainment, but the assembled patrons greeted it with such enthusiastic cheers that their pleasure infected our more discriminating tastes.”

Soon enough they learned the value of balcony seats, for overhead were trapeze bars, on which swung comely young women in scanty costumes and mesh tights. As they arced back and forth, the men in the balconies reached out to tuck dollar bills into the folds of their costumes. The girls appeared to know many of the customers, and there was a deal of good-natured banter high in the air, the girls crying, “Watch them hands, Fred,” and “Mighty big cigar you got there, Clem,” and other endearments.

One student sniffed, “They are no better than prostitutes,” but the others enjoyed the spectacle, shouting and tucking dollar bills with the rest, and the girls, seeing new faces and distinctive Eastern clothes, maneuvered their swings to come close to their balcony again and again.

It was all good fun, and then the girls overhead changed to a new set, and the swinging began again, and one of them came close to their balcony. Laughing, Johnson reached for another dollar bill, and then his eyes met those of the new girl, and the raucous sound of the theater faded away, and time seemed to stop, and he was aware of nothing but the dark intensity of her gaze and the pounding of his own heart.

Her name was Lucienne—“It’s French,” she explained, wiping the light sheen of perspiration from her shoulders.

They were downstairs, sitting at one of the floor tables, where the girls were allowed to have a drink with customers between shows. The other students had gone back to the hotel, but Johnson stayed, hoping Lucienne would come out, and she had. She had sashayed right to his table. “Buy me a drink?”

“Anything you want,” Johnson said. She ordered whiskey, and he had one, too. And then he asked her name, and she told him.

“Lucienne,” he repeated. “Lucienne. A lovely name.”

“Lots of girls in Paris are named Lucienne,” she announced, still wiping the perspiration. “What’s yours?”

“William,” he said. “William Johnson.” Her skin glowed pink; her hair was jet-black, her eyes dark and dancing. He was entranced.

“You look a gent,” she said, smiling. She had a way of smiling with her mouth closed, not revealing her teeth. It made her seem mysterious and self-contained. “Where’re you from?”

“New Haven,” he said. “Well, I grew up in Philadelphia.”

“Back East? I thought you were different. I could tell from your clothes.”

He worried that this might not find favor with her, and suddenly didn’t know what to say.

“Do you have a sweetheart back East?” she asked innocently, helping the conversation along.

“I—” He stopped, then thought it best to tell her the truth. “I was awfully fond of a girl in Philadelphia a few years ago, but she didn’t feel the same way about me.” He looked into her eyes. “But that was—that was a long time ago.”

She looked down and smiled softly and he told himself that he must think of something to say.

“Where are you from?” he asked. “You don’t have a French accent.” Perhaps she had come from France as a child.

“I’m from St. Louis. Lucienne’s only my name de stage, see,” she said cheerfully. “Mr. Barlow—the manager—Mr. Barlow wants everyone in the show to have a French name, because the theater is the Pride de Paree Theater, see. He’s very nice, Mr. Barlow.”

“Have you been in Cheyenne long?”

“Oh no,” she said. “Before, I was in the theater in Virginia City, where we did proper plays by English writers and such, but that closed with the typhoid last winter. I was going home to see my mother, see, but I only had money to get here.”

She laughed, and he saw one of her front teeth was chipped. This little imperfection only made him love her more. She was obviously an independent young woman, making her own way in life.

“And you?” she asked. “You are going to the Black Hills? Looking for gold?”

He smiled. “No, I am with a group of scientists who are digging for fossils.” Her face clouded. “Fossils. Old bones,” he explained.

“Is there a good livelihood in that?”

“No, no. It’s for science,” he explained.

She placed a warm hand on his arm, and the touch electrified him. “I know you gold diggers have secrets,” she said. “I won’t tell.”

“Really, I am searching for fossils.”

She smiled again, content to drop the matter. “And how long are you in Cheyenne?”

“Alas, I am here for only one night. Tomorrow I leave to go farther west.”

This thought already filled him with a delicious pain, but she did not seem to care one way or another. In her straightforward way, she said, “I must do another show in an hour, and stay with the customers another hour after that, but then I am free.”

“I’ll wait,” he said. “I’ll wait all night if you wish it.”

She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Until then.” And she swept away, across the crowded room, where other men awaited her company.

The rest of the evening passed as lightly as a dream. Johnson felt no fatigue, and he was happy to sit until she was finished with her performances. They met outside the theater. She had changed to a demure dress of dark cotton. She took his arm.

A man passed them on the sidewalk. In the darkness: “See you later, Lucy?”

“Not tonight, Ben,” she laughed. Johnson turned to glare at the man, but she explained, “It’s just my uncle. He looks after me. Where are you staying?”

“The Inter-Ocean Hotel.”

“We can’t go there,” she said. “They’re very strict about the rooms.”

“I’ll walk you home,” Johnson said.

She gave him a funny look, and then smiled. “All right. That would be nice.”

As they walked, she rested her head on his shoulder.

“Tired?”

“Some.”

The night was warm, the air pleasant. Johnson felt a wonderful peace descend over him.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said.

“Oh, me, too.”

“I’ll be back, though.”

“When?”

“Late August or so.”

“August,” she repeated softly. “August.”

“I know it’s a long time away—”

“Not so long—”

“But I’ll have more time to spend then. I’ll leave the party and stay with you, how does that sound?”

She relaxed against his shoulder. “That would be nice.” They walked in silence. “You’re nice, William. You’re a nice boy.”

And then she turned, and with complete naturalness kissed him on the mouth, right there in the warm Western darkness of Cheyenne, in a deep way he had never yet experienced. Johnson thought he would die with the pleasure of it all.

“I love you, Lucienne,” he blurted. The words just came out, unbidden, unexpected. But it was the truth; he felt it through his whole body.

She stroked his cheek. “You are a nice boy.”

He did not know how long they stayed like that, facing each other in the dark. They kissed again, and a third time. He was breathless.

“Shall we walk on?” he said finally.

She shook her head. “You go on home now. Back to the hotel.”

“I’d better see you to your door.”

“No,” she said. “You have a train in the morning. You get your sleep.”

He looked around at the street. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Promise?”

She smiled. “Promise.”

He walked a few steps toward his hotel, turned, and looked back.

“Don’t worry about me,” she called, and blew him a kiss.

He blew a kiss back to her and walked on. At the end of the block he looked back once again, but she was gone.

At the hotel, the sleepy night clerk gave him his key. “Good evening, sir?” he asked.

“Wonderful,” Johnson said. “Absolutely wonderful.”

Morning in Cheyenne

Johnson awoke at eight, refreshed and excited. He looked out his window at the flat expanse of Cheyenne, boxy buildings stretching across the plains. By all accounts it was a dreary sight, but Johnson found it beautiful. And the day was lovely, clear and warm, with the fluffy high clouds peculiar to the West.

It was true that he would not see the beautiful Lucienne for many weeks until his return trip, but this fact added a delicious poignancy to his mood, and he was in excellent humor when he went downstairs to the dining room, where the Marsh party had been instructed to meet for breakfast, at nine.

No one was there.

A table had been set for a large group, but the dirty plates were being collected by a waiter.

“Where is everybody?” Johnson asked.

“Who do you mean?”

“Professor Marsh and his students.”

“They’re not here,” the waiter said.

“Where are they?”

“Gone an hour or more.”

The words sank in slowly. “The professor and the students are gone?”

“They went to catch the nine o’clock train.”

“What nine o’clock train?”

The waiter looked at Johnson irritably. “I have a lot to do,” he said, turning away, rattling the plates.

Their bags and expedition equipment had been stored in a large room on the ground floor of the hotel, behind the reception desk. The bellboy unlocked the door: the room was empty except for the crates containing Johnson’s photographic equipment.

“They’re gone!”

“Something of yours missing?” the bellboy said.

“No, not mine. But everyone else is gone.”

“I just came on duty,” the bell captain said apologetically. He was a boy of sixteen. “Perhaps you should ask at the desk.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Johnson,” said the man at the front desk. “Professor Marsh said not to wake you when they departed. He said you were leaving the expedition here in Cheyenne.”

“He said what?”

“That you were leaving the expedition.”

Johnson felt panic. “Why would he say that?”

“I really don’t know, sir.”

“What am I going to do now?” Johnson asked aloud.

The distress must have been apparent in his face and voice. The man at the front desk looked at him sympathetically.

“They’re serving breakfast in the dining room for another half hour,” he suggested.

He had no appetite, but he returned to the dining room and took a small table to one side. The waiter was still clearing dishes from the bare table; Johnson watched, imagining the group of Marsh and the students, imagining their excited voices, talking at once, ready to leave… Why had they left him behind? What possible reason could there be?

The bellboy approached him. “Are you with the Marsh expedition?”

“I am.”

“The professor asked if he might join you for breakfast.”

In an instant, Johnson realized that it was all a mistake after all, that the professor had not gone, the hotel staff had merely misunderstood, everything was going to be all right.

With immense relief he said, “Of course he may join me.”

A moment later, a clear, rather high voice said, “Mr. Johnson?”

Johnson faced a man he had never seen before—a wiry, fair-haired man with a mustache and goatee stood next to his table. He was tall, in his middle thirties, and rather formally dressed in stiff collar and frock coat. Although his clothes were expensive and well cut, he nevertheless gave the impression of an energetic indifference, even sloppiness. His eyes were bright and lively. He appeared amused. “May I join you?”

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you know?” the man said, more amused than ever. He extended his hand. “I’m Professor Cope.” Johnson noticed that his grip was firm and confident, and his fingers stained with ink.

Johnson stared, and leapt to his feet. Cope! Cope himself! Right here, in Cheyenne! Cope eased him back into his seat and beckoned to the waiter for coffee. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I’m not the monster you have heard described. That particular monster exists only in the diseased imagination of Mr. Marsh. Yet another of his descriptions of nature is in error. You must have observed that the man is as paranoid and secretive as he is fat, and always imagines the worst in everybody. More coffee?”

Numbly, Johnson nodded; Cope poured more coffee.

“If you haven’t ordered, I recommend the pork hash. I myself eat it daily. It is simple fare, but the cook has a feel for it.”

Johnson mumbled he would have the hash. The waiter departed. Cope smiled at him.

He certainly didn’t look like a monster, Johnson thought. Quick, energetic, even nervous—but no monster. On the contrary, there was a youthful, almost childish enthusiasm about him, yet also an air of determination and competence. He seemed like a man who got things done.

“What are your plans now?” Cope asked cheerfully, stirring a dollop of black molasses in his coffee.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“That hardly seems necessary now that the old schemer has left you behind. What are your plans now?”

“I don’t know. I have no plans.” Johnson looked around the nearly empty dining room. “I seem to have been separated from my party.”

“Separated? He abandoned you.”

“Why would he do that?” Johnson asked.

“He thought you were a spy, of course.”

“But I’m not a spy.”

Cope smiled. “I know that, Mr. Johnson, and you know that. Everyone knows that except Mr. Marsh. It is just one of the many thousands of things he does not know, yet assumes he does.”

Johnson was confused, and it must have shown on his face.

“Which fantasy did he tell you about me?” Cope asked, still cheerful. “Wife beater? Thief? Philanderer? Ax murderer?” The whole business seemed to amuse him.

“He doesn’t have a high opinion of you.”

Cope’s inky fingers fluttered in the air, a dismissing gesture. “Marsh is a godless man, cut loose from all moorings. His mind is active and sick. I have known him for some time. In fact, we were friends once. We both studied in Germany during the Civil War. And later we dug fossils together in New Jersey, in fact. But that was a long time ago.”

The food came. Johnson realized that he was hungry.

“That’s better,” Cope said, watching him eat. “Now, I understand that you are a photographer. I can use a photographer. I am on my way to the far West, to dig for dinosaur bones with a party of students from the University of Pennsylvania.”

“Just like Professor Marsh,” Johnson said.

“Not quite like Professor Marsh. We do not travel everywhere with special rates and government favors. And my students are not chosen for wealth and connection, but rather for their interest in science. Ours is not a self-aggrandizing publicity junket, but a serious expedition.” Cope paused, studying Johnson’s earnest attention. “We’re a small party and it will be rough going, but you are welcome to come, if you care to.”

And that was how William Johnson found himself, at noon, standing on the platform of the Cheyenne railroad station with his equipment stacked at his side, waiting for the train to carry him west, in the party of Edward Drinker Cope.

Cope’s Expedition

It was immediately clear that Cope’s party lacked the military precision that characterized Marsh’s every undertaking. His group straggled into the station singly and in pairs: first Cope and his charming wife, Annie, who greeted Johnson warmly and would not be drawn to say anything against Marsh, despite the prompting of her husband.

Then a barrel-chested man of twenty-six named Charles H. Sternberg, a fossil hunter from Kansas who had worked for Cope the previous year. Charlie Sternberg walked with a limp, the result of a childhood accident; he could not shake hands because of a “felon,” a fistula in his palm; and he was subject to occasional bouts of malaria, but he exuded an air of practical competence and wry humor.

Next, another young man, J.C. Isaac (“it just stands for J.C.”), who was Indian shy; six weeks earlier, he had been among a party of friends attacked by Indians. The others had been shot down and scalped, and only Isaac escaped, leaving him with a deep fear, and a facial tic around the eyes.

There were three students: Leander “Toad” Davis, a puffy, asthmatic, bespectacled boy with protuberant eyes. Toad was particularly interested in Indian society, and seemed to know a lot about it. And George Morton, a sallow, silent young man from Yale who sketched constantly and announced that he intended to be an artist or a minister like his father; he wasn’t sure yet. Morton was withdrawn, rather sullen, and Johnson did not care for him. And finally Harold Chapman from Pennsylvania, a brightly talkative young man with an interest in bones. After being introduced to Johnson he almost immediately wandered off to poke through some bleached buffalo bones stacked near the station platform.

Johnson’s favorite of the group was the lovely Mrs. Cope, who was anything but the deluded invalid Marsh had claimed. She would accompany them only as far as Utah. Then the six men—with Johnson making seven—would set out for the Judith River basin of northern Montana Territory, to hunt for Cretaceous fossils.

“Montana!” Johnson said, remembering what Sheridan had said about staying away from Montana and Wyoming. “Do you really mean to go to Montana?”

“Yes, of course, it’s tremendously exciting,” Cope said, his face and manner radiating his enthusiasm. “No one has been there since Ferdinand Hayden discovered the area back in ’55 and noted great quantities of fossils.”

“What happened to Hayden?” Johnson asked.

“Oh, he was driven off by the Blackfeet,” Cope said. “They made him run for his life.”

And Cope laughed.

West with Cope

Johnson awoke in inky blackness, hearing the roar of the train. He fumbled for his pocket watch; it said ten o’clock. For a confused moment, he thought it was ten at night. Then the darkness broke with a shaft of brilliant light, and another, and flickering shafts illuminated his sleeping compartment: the train was thundering through long snow sheds as it crossed the Rocky Mountains. He saw fields of snow in late June, the brilliance so dazzling it hurt his eyes.

Ten o’clock! He threw on his clothes, hurried out of the compartment, and found Cope staring out the window, drumming his stained fingers impatiently on the sill. “I’m sorry I overslept, Professor, if only someone had awakened me, I—”

“Why?” Cope asked. “What difference does it make that you slept?”

“Well, I mean, I—it’s so late—”

“We are still two hours from Salt Lake,” Cope said. “And you slept because you were tired, an excellent reason for sleeping.” Cope smiled. “Or did you think I would leave you, too?”

Confused, Johnson said nothing. Cope continued to smile. And then, after a moment, he bent over the sketch pad in his lap, took up his pen, and drew with his ink-stained fingers. Without looking up, he said, “I believe Mrs. Cope has arranged for a pot of coffee.”

That night, Johnson recorded in his journal:

It would not be long before Johnson took a different view of Cope.

The train descended out of the Rocky Mountains to Great Salt Lake City, in the Territory of Utah.

Established thirty years before, Salt Lake City was a village of wood and brick houses, carefully laid out in a regular grid pattern, and dominated by the white facade of the Mormon Tabernacle, a building, Johnson wrote, “of such breathtaking ugliness that few edifices anywhere in America can hope to surpass it.” This was a common view. Around the same time the journalist Charles Nordhoff called it “an admirably-arranged and very ugly building,” and concluded that “Salt Lake need not hold any mere pleasure traveler more than a day.”

Although Washington claimed this as the Territory of Utah, and therefore a part of the United States, it had been established as a Mormon theocracy, as the scale and importance of the religious buildings made clear. Cope’s group visited the temple, the Tithing House, and the Lion House, where Brigham Young kept his multitudinous wives.

Cope then had an audience with President Young, and he took his own wife with him to meet the elderly patriarch. Johnson asked what he was like. “Gracious man, gentle and calculating. For forty years, the Mormons were hounded and persecuted in every state of the Union; now they make their own state, and persecute the Gentiles in turn.” Cope shook his head. “You would think that people who had experienced injustice would be loath to inflict it on others, and yet they do so with alacrity. The victims become the victimizers with a chilling righteousness. This is the nature of fanaticism, to attract and provoke extremes of behavior. And this is why fanatics are all the same, whatever specific form their fanaticism takes.”

“Are you saying Mormons are fanatics?” asked Morton, the minister’s son.

“I am saying their religion has made a state that does not halt injustice, but rather institutionalizes it. They feel superior to others who have different beliefs. They feel only they possess the right way.”

“I don’t see how you can say—” began Morton, but the others jumped in. Morton and Cope were always at loggerheads on religious subjects, and the arguments became tedious after a while.

“Why did you see Brigham Young?” Sternberg asked.

Cope shrugged. “There are no known fossil deposits in Utah now, but there are rumors of bones in the eastern regions near the Colorado border. I see no harm in making friendships for the future.” And he added, “Marsh met him, last year.”

The following day Mrs. Cope took the Union Pacific train back east, while the men traveled north by narrow gauge railway to Franklin, Idaho, “an alkali flats town,” Johnson noted, “with nothing to recommend it save that rail and stage lines enable one to leave it as soon as possible.”

But in Franklin, while buying stagecoach tickets, Cope was suddenly accosted by the sheriff, a large man with small eyes. “You are under arrest,” he told Cope, taking him by the arm, “and charged with murder.”

“Whom am I supposed to have murdered?” Cope asked, astonished.

“Your father,” the sheriff said. “Back East.”

“That’s ridiculous—my father died last year of a heart attack.” Despite being a Quaker, Cope was known for his flashing temper, and Johnson could see that he was doing his utmost to remain civil. “I loved my father with all my heart—he was kind and wise and supportive of my irregular scholarly wanderings,” he said with deep fury.

The sudden display of eloquence took everyone aback. The men all followed Cope and the sheriff to the jail, from a polite distance. It turned out a federal warrant for his arrest had been filed in the Idaho Territory. It also turned out that the federal marshal was in another district and would not return to Franklin until September. Cope, said the sheriff, would have to “cool his heels” in jail until then.

Cope protested that he was Professor Edward Drinker Cope, a United States paleontologist. The sheriff showed him the telegram stating that “Prof. E. D. Cope, paleontologist” was the man wanted for murder.

“I know who is behind this,” Cope said angrily. He was turning purple in the face.

“Now, Professor…” Sternberg said.

“I’m fine,” Cope said stiffly. He turned to the sheriff. “I propose to pay the telegraph costs to verify that the charges against me are untrue.”

The sheriff spat tobacco. “That’s fair enough. You get your father to cable me back, and I’ll apologize.”

“I can’t do that,” Cope said.

“Why not?”

“I already told you, my father’s dead.”

“You think I’m a fool,” the sheriff said, and grabbed Cope by the collar, to drag him into the jail cell. He was rewarded by a series of lightning-swift punches from Cope that knocked him to the ground; Cope proceeded to kick the sheriff repeatedly while the unfortunate man rolled in the dust and while Sternberg and Isaac cried, “Now, Professor!” and “That’s enough, Professor!” and “Remember yourself, Professor!”

At length, Isaac managed to drag Cope away; Sternberg helped the sheriff to his feet and dusted him off. “I’m sorry, but the professor has a terrible temper.”

“Temper? The man is a menace.”

“Well, you see he knows that Professor Marsh sent you that telegram, along with a bribe to arrest him, and the injustice of your behavior makes him angry.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the sheriff sputtered, without conviction.

“You see,” Sternberg said, “most places the professor goes, he encounters trouble from Marsh. Their rivalry has been going on for years now, and they are both able to spot it readily.”

“I want all of you out of town,” the sheriff shouted. “Do you hear me, out of town!”

“With pleasure,” Sternberg said.

They left on the next stage.

From Franklin, they faced a six-hundred-mile journey on Concord stagecoach to Fort Benton, Montana Territory. Johnson, who had thus far experienced nothing more arduous than a railway carriage, was looking forward to the romance of a coach ride. Sternberg and the others knew better.

It was a horrible journey: ten miles an hour, day and night, with no stops except for meals, outrageously expensive at one dollar each, and awful. And at every coach stop, everyone would talk of the Indian troubles, and the prospect of scalping, so that if Johnson had had any desire for the coach stops’ moldy army-surplus bacon, the rancid butter, and the week-old bread, he lost his appetite.

The landscape was uniformly dreary, the dust harshly alkaline; they had to walk up all the steep ascents, day or night; in the rattling, bouncing coach, sleep was impossible; and their chemical supplies leaked, so that at one point, “we were subjected to a gentle rain of hydrochloric acid, which drops etched a smoking pattern on the hats of the gentlemen, and elicited elaborate curses from all involved. The coach was stopped, and the driver accorded our left-over curses; the offending bottle stopped, and we were on our way once more.”

Besides their group, the only other passenger was a Mrs. Peterson, a young woman married to an army captain stationed in Helena, Montana Territory. Mrs. Peterson seemed none too enthusiastic to be rejoining her husband; indeed, she cried frequently. Often she opened a letter, read it, wiped tears from her eyes, and tucked it away again. At the last coach stop before Helena, she burned the letter, dropping it to the ground to dissolve into ash. When the stage reached Helena, she was formally met by four army captains, their demeanor grave. They escorted her away; she walked erectly in their midst.

The others stared after her.

“He must be dead,” Toad said. “That’s what it’s about. He’s dead.”

At the coach station, they were told that Captain Peterson had been killed by Indians. And there were rumors of a recent major cavalry defeat at Indian hands. Some said General Terry had been killed along the Powder River; others that General Crook had narrowly escaped death on the banks of the Yellowstone, and that he had suffered blood poisoning from the arrows removed from his side.

In Helena they were urged to turn back, but Cope never considered it. “Idle talk,” he said, “foolish talk. We will go on.” And they climbed back aboard the coach for the long trip to Fort Benton.

Located on the banks of the Missouri River, Fort Benton had been a trappers’ refuge in the early days of the Montana Territory, back when John Jacob Astor was lobbying in Congress to prevent any legislation to protect the buffalo, and thus interfere with his lucrative trade in hides. Northern Montana was the source of other hides as well, including beaver and wolf. But now the fur trade was declining in importance, and the fastest-growing towns were located farther south, in the mining regions of Butte and Helena, where there was gold and copper. Fort Benton had seen better days, and looked it.

As their stagecoach arrived on July 4, 1876, they saw that the army stockade gates were closed, and there was a general air of tension. The soldiers were gloomy and distressed. The American flag flapped at half-mast. Cope went to see the commanding officer, Captain Charles Ransom.

“What’s the trouble?” Cope asked. “Why is your flag lowered?”

“Seventh Cavalry, sir.”

“What about it?” Cope asked.

“The whole of the Seventh Cavalry under General Custer was massacred at the Little Bighorn last week. More than three hundred army dead. And no survivors.”

Fort Benton

George Armstrong Custer remained as controversial in death as he had been in life. Ol’ Curly had always been the focus of strong feelings. He had graduated last in his class at West Point, accumulating ninety-seven demerits in his last half year, just three short of dismissal. Even as a cadet, he was making enemies who would dog him all his life.

But the insubordinate cadet proved a brilliant military leader, the Boy Wonder of Appomattox. Handsome, dashing, and reckless, he went on to earn a reputation as a great Indian fighter in the West, but his reputation was debated widely. A dedicated hunter, he traveled with greyhounds wherever he went, and it was said that he took better care of his dogs than he did his men. In 1867, he ordered his troops to shoot deserters from his company. Five men were wounded, and Custer refused them medical aid. One subsequently died.

Even for the army, this was too much. In July 1867, he was arrested, court-martialed, and suspended for a year. But he was a favorite of the generals, and he was back ten months later at Phil Sheridan’s insistence, this time fighting the Indians along the Washita, in the Oklahoma Territory.

Custer led the 7th Cavalry against Black Kettle. His instructions were clear: to kill as many Indians as possible. General Sherman himself had said: “The more we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next year for the more I see of these Indians the more I am convinced they will all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers.”

It was a particularly vicious war. The Indians had been taking white women and children as hostages, whom they ransomed back to the settlers; whenever soldiers attacked an Indian village, the white hostages were summarily executed. This circumstance excused the kind of dashing bravado that was, in any case, Custer’s trademark.

Forcing his troops on extended marches, forgoing food and rest, he ran down Black Kettle, killed the chief, and destroyed his village. Only then did he realize that Indians from surrounding villages were gathering for a massive counterattack, and that he had overextended himself and endangered all his troops. He managed to pull out, but left behind a company of fifteen men, presuming them to be already dead.

Later, the entire battle became embroiled in scandal. The Eastern press criticized Custer for his harsh treatment of Black Kettle’s tribe, saying that Black Kettle was not a bad Indian but a scapegoat for military frustrations; this was almost certainly untrue. The army criticized Custer for his hasty attack and his equally hasty abandonment of the cut-off company; Custer was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for his behavior in the crisis, but he felt, with justification, that he had only done what the army had expected him to do, to run down the Indians with his usual dash and bravado.

His personal style—his long curly hair, his greyhounds, his buckskin clothes, and his arrogant manner—remained notorious, as did the articles he wrote for the Eastern press. Custer had a peculiar affinity for his enemy, and often wrote admiringly of the Indians; this was no doubt the source of the persistent rumor he had fathered a child by a beautiful Indian girl after the Battle of the Washita.

And still the controversy continued. In 1874, it was Custer who led a party into the sacred Black Hills, discovered gold, and thus precipitated the Sioux War; in the spring of 1876, he had gone to Washington to testify against the corruption of Secretary of War Belknap, who received kickbacks for supplies from every army post in the country. His testimony had helped start impeachment proceedings against Belknap, but had not endeared him to the Grant administration, which ordered him to remain in Washington and, when he left without permission in March, demanded his arrest.

Now he was dead, in what was already being called the most shocking and humiliating military defeat in American history.

“Who did it?” Cope asked.

“Sitting Bull,” Ransom said. “Custer charged Sitting Bull’s camp without scouting it first. Sitting Bull had three thousand warriors. Custer had three hundred.” Captain Ransom shook his head. “Mind you, Custer would have been killed sooner or later; he was vain and hard on his men; I’m surprised he wasn’t ‘accidentally’ shot in the back on the way into battle, as often happens with his type. I was with him in the Washita, when he charged a village and then couldn’t get himself out; luck and bluff saved the day, but luck runs out eventually. He almost certainly brought this one on himself. And the Sioux hated him, wanted to kill him. But it’s going to be a bloody war now. This whole country’s red-hot now.”

“Well,” Cope said, “we’re going to search for fossil bones in the Judith badlands.”

Ransom stared at him in astonishment. “I wouldn’t,” he said.

“There’s trouble in the Judith River basin?”

“Not specifically, no, sir. Not that we know of.”

“Well then?”

“Sir, most all the Indian tribes are on the warpath. Sitting Bull has three thousand warriors somewhere in the south—nobody knows where for sure—but we figure they’ll head for asylum in Canada before winter, and that means they’ll pass through the Judith basin.”

“That’s fine,” Cope said. “We’ll be safe for a few weeks during summer, for the reasons you just said. Sitting Bull isn’t there.”

“Sir,” Ransom said, “the Judith River is the shared hunting grounds of the Sioux and the Crow. Now, the Crow are usually peaceable, but these days they’ll kill you as soon as look at you, because they can blame your deaths on the Sioux.”

“That’s not likely,” Cope said. “We’re going.”

“I have no orders to prevent you from going,” Ransom said. “I’m sure nobody in Washington ever imagined that anyone would go. To go out there is suicide, sir. For myself, I wouldn’t go out with less than five hundred trained cavalry at my side.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Cope said. “You have done your duty in informing me. But I left Philadelphia with the intention of going to the Judith, and I will not turn back within a hundred miles of my destination. Now, can you recommend a guide?”

“Certainly, sir,” Ransom said.

But over the next twenty-four hours, the guides mysteriously became unavailable, as did horses, the provisions, and everything else that Cope had expected to obtain at Fort Benton. Yet he was undaunted. He simply offered more money, and more on top of that, until supplies began to become available after all.

It was here they had their first glimpse of the famous iron will of Professor Cope. Nothing stopped him. They demanded $180, an outrageous sum, for a broken-down wagon; he paid it. They wanted even more for his four “wheelers” and his four saddle ponies, “the meanest ponies that ever picketed together,” in Sternberg’s estimation. They would sell him no food except beans and rice and cheap Red Dog whiskey; he bought what he could. All together, Cope spent $900 for his motley outfit, but he never complained. He kept his gaze fixed on his destination—the fossils of the Judith basin.

Finally, on July 6, Ransom called him into the army stockade. It was the scene of bustling activity and preparation. Ransom told Cope that he had just received orders from the Department of War in Washington that “no civilians were permitted to enter the disputed Indian lands in the Montana, Wyoming, or Dakota Territories.”

“I’m sorry to put a stop to your plans, sir,” Ransom said politely, setting the telegram aside.

“You must do your duty, of course,” Cope said, equally politely.

Cope rejoined his group. They had already heard the news.

“I guess we have to go back,” Sternberg said.

“Not yet,” Cope said cheerfully. “You know, I like Fort Benton. I think we should stay here a few days more.”

“You like Fort Benton?”

“Yes. It’s pleasant and agreeable. And full of preparations.” And Cope smiled.

On July 8, the Fort Benton cavalry set off to fight the Sioux, the column riding out while the band played “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Later that day, a quite different group quietly slipped out. They were, wrote Johnson, a “particularly motley crew.”

At the head of the column rode Edward Drinker Cope, United States paleontologist and millionaire. On his left rode Charlie Sternberg, occasionally bending to massage his stiff leg.

On Cope’s right rode Little Wind, their Shoshoni scout and guide. Little Wind was proud in his bearing, and he had assured Cope that he knew the Judith River area like the face of his own father.

Behind these three came J.C. Isaac, who kept a sharp eye on Little Wind; with him were the students, Leander Davis, Harold Chapman, George Morton, and Johnson.

Bringing up the rear was the wagon pulled by its four stubborn horses, and driven by the teamster and cook “Sergeant” Russell T. Hill. He was a fat, weathered man whose girth had persuaded Cope that he could cook. Teamster Hill was distinguished not only by his size and proficiency at swearing so common among his trade, but also by his nicknames, which seemed to be endless. He was called “Cookie,” “Chippie,” “Squinty,” and “Stinky.” Hill was a man of few words, and those were most often repeated again and again.

So, for example, when the students would ask him why he was called Cookie or Stinky or another of his names, he would invariably reply, “I reckon you’ll see soon enough.”

And when confronted with an obstacle, however minor, Hill would always say, “Can’t be done, can’t be done.”

Finally, tethered to the wagon was Bessie, the mule that carried all Johnson’s photographic supplies. Bessie was Johnson’s responsibility, and he grew to hate her as the expedition went on.

An hour after they started, they had left Fort Benton behind, and they were alone on the empty vastness of the Great Plains.