"The Dinosaur Fakers" - 3

"And how," said Lena, twirling her tea around with a spoon, "do you propose to get us in that club?"

"We'll hot-wire an auto," replied Bernhard, "and drive to the Badlands of Montana. There probably are some sort of old bones out there. The rest we can fake."

"It can't hurt to try," said Lena, who found her role as lookout to be too much like a real job.

They left the cafe and surveyed the street.

"There's one," said Bernhard. "You jimmy the trunk and see if there's any motoring gear. I'll work on the ignition wires."

The street was dead quiet, nobody around. Everything went smoothly and soon they were on the road.

"I've never been to the Badlands," said Bernhard. "See if you can lift a map at the next fuel stop."

"Right-o," said Lena, as she shielded her Zippo flame from the rush of air.

Several days later, after nights spent in disgusting flea-bag motels, they arrived at the Badlands.

"The name suits it, I think," said Bernhard, who was sweating profusely in the hot sun. They had acquired picks and chisels at a hardware store in Duluth.

"This seems exactly like work," said Lena. "And what's the idea, anyway? Ya just start diggin' and up comes an ichthyosaurus?"

"No," said Bernhard. "The idea is to look about sharply... To peruse the rocks and cliff-faces intently... in hopes that some unusual conformation may indicate the presence of fossilized bone."

"Well listen to the big dummy," said Lena. "Sounds good on paper, but I'd like to see ya spot a stegy stickin' outta some old stone, just like that."

"Nice alliteration," said Bernhard. "But I see one now, in fact. Or, if not a 'stegy,' then some ancient creature's bony rump."

Lena followed Bernhard's gaze.

"I got nothin'," said Lena. "Looks like plain old gray stone to me."

"Then stand aside, wench," said Bernhard, "as I reveal what is surely a magnificent new contribution to human understanding."

Bernhard laid into the cliff-face.

"Ungh!" he grunted. Sweat was dripping off of him in rivers now. His clothes were drenched. The pick-axe made little, if any, impact on the stone.

Lena chuckled nastily. If she had had a thin villainous moustache she might have stroked it; in lieu of that she took leisurely drags on her cigarette.

"Behold... wench..." said Bernhard, summoning his strength for another blow.

"Ungh! Ungh! Ungh!" he grunted, striking the implacable stone repeatedly.

"Heh-heh," Lena chuckled.

Exhausted, Bernhard tried to huddle against the stone in a thin sliver of shade, but the sun was almost directly overhead.

"This isn't working," said Bernhard.

"No," said Lena. "Just as I told you. I suppose it's back to the daily grind for us."

"There is one thing we could try first," said Bernhard.

Lena waited.

"Dynamite," said Bernhard. "I picked up some dynamite too at that hardware store. See can you get it out of the trunk. And don't jostle it too much: I'm not sure how sensitive it is."

"See can you get your own damn dynamite out of the trunk," said Lena, tossing her cigarette on the ground. But she went anyway.

"Say," Lena said, "there's enough sticks in here to blow the whole valley to Kingdom Come and back."