Bones for Barnum Brown: Adventures of a Dinosaur Hunter

Chapter Thirty-Four

34 SO THE MEN built a second coffer dam, fifty feet long, forty wide, six sandbags high. The volume of water it impounded was considerable . With everyone manning the buckets, the power of the crew to remove water was considerable , too. In an hour the rims of the new track Monk had found began to appear. A little more, and spurts of water squirted up from cavities within the print. "You're goin' to have yourself a time keepin' this place dry," John Mathews said. "River's comin' in so fast, we'll not be able to stop bailing." John was right. The prints were so deep that in places they had penetrated the stratum of limey mud in which they were made and extended into the clay base beneath. The great claws had punctured the clay. Here at the edge ofthe bank, the clay had washed away. Monk tried to stem the flow by caulking the leaks with burlap. His efforts were futile; the rough wadding popped out time and time again. The pressure under the rock was just too great. "Well, at least we can make a record of what's here," I decided. I stretched measured string to chart the trail, while the men kept the situation under control by bailing. The tracks of the hind feet were colossal. They were considerably larger than any we had uncovered before, but not only because of the creature's size; their maker, in sinking in so deeply, had impressed a great slide with his heel at every step. And foot-high welts of mud were piled up in front of the larger prints. One track, including the disturbed mud, measured two inches under five feet, a respectable size for a bathtub. The newly diked site filled up, of course, overnight, but I had seen the bottom; I was content . We turned all-out attention to Trail Three; 175 these fine tracks closest to the bank seemed by far most ideal for quarrying slabs. I went about with a fifty-foot tape, going over the prospects. The great slabs, each weighing tons, could not possibly be removed from the riverbed intact; they would have to be broken up and removed piecemeal, as numbered sections. Two natural features made this practical. The track-bearing stratum, eighteen inches thick, was not solid; it was broken up by cross-fractures at intervals of a couple of feet. Beneath it was an equal thickness ofclay. By cutting outlining channels and digging away the clay from below, the slabs could be broken up readily. Some of the tracks we would want still lay under the ledge, and we must knock this down with dynamite. I set the men to work drilling holes. Coming out ofHilda's Cafe that evening, I noticed dark cloud banks gathered in the west. They looked serious enough to make me hasten back to the hotel. Thunder grumbled and growled a bit, decided it wasn't getting attention, so a wind tore down the hall and started slamming doors and blowing curtains in windows, twisting and tugging at the limbs of a big cottonwood outside in front of the hotel. The rain came down on the heels of a blinding flash. Nobody in Glen Rose was more concerned than 1. The river, the river Mr. Wilson had warned me about, the river that piled brush out ofreach in the trees above its banks-what would it do? The rain came offand on throughout the night, greatly disturbing sleep. How much would it disturb our work out at the tracks? Dawn came on sloppy and appropriately dark grey. I dressed, slopped out to the Buick, and wallowed down the road to the first crossing. Crossing ? The water was five feet deep ... five feet deeper, that is. A lot of cars were lined up there, • , • Bird measuring a sauropod hindfoor track. Foll-iFoOT \M"IlHSION Diagram comparing the largest Paluxy River sauropod footprints to other sauropod tracks at the site. Sketch by Bird included in a letter to Brown, May 9, 1940. none trying to ford the river. I walked down to the bank of the still-rising stream. "Might as well forget going out to your diggings today," a man beside me advised. "And tomorrow too." By ten o'clock on the first ofJune a few of the seasoned old timers skilled in knowledge of how deep their cars would...