The Tooth (11 page)

‘You killed him,’ accused Mason.

I was leaning over the injured man, checking his breathing and pulse. Both were steady, although probably not as strong as they should be. ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘He’s not dead. Anyway, it was his fault. He shouldn’ve come down the path.’

‘If you hadn’t been—’

‘Oh shut up, Mason. Why don’t you do something useful? Go and get help.’

‘No, you do it.’

‘I’m going down to see if the stallion’s still alive.’

He glared at me.

‘Look,’ I said quietly, ‘if your cousin doesn’t get help, he’ll die.’

Still he glared.

‘You can take my quad bike.’

His eyes brightened. ‘Where?’ he asked.

‘Do you know where Pounamu station is?’

‘No!’

‘Take the road towards Napier and not far along you’ll see a sign saying “First Aid Post”. Go in there and tell them what’s happened. Grandad will sort something out.’

He looked at me for a moment, before turning and climbing back up the path. I followed. After a brief lesson on the controls of the bike, he was ready to go. He turned to
me. ‘Don’t think you’re getting away with this, Thomas,’ he snarled. ‘I’m getting Cousin Damien. He’ll come and sort you out. By the time he’s finished, you’ll wish you’d never come near this place.’ With a final growl, he turned and rode away.

I watched him go, wondering why I’d given him my bike just to save one of his criminal cousins. If things had been reversed, I knew he wouldn’ve done the same for me.

I went over to the container. Both doors were open, revealing a treasure trove of horse gear: saddles, bridles, halters, covers, cleaning gear, everything you needed for a horse. I grabbed one of the covers, a halter and a lead, and headed back down the path. The man was no worse or better than before. I lay the cover over him before continuing down the path.

It was a relief to see that the stallion was still living. He was in the water not far from where he’d fallen. He stood as if in a trance, unaware of where he was or what was happening.

He didn’t stir as I got alongside to examine him. There were several shallow cuts from the fall down the slope—nothing that needed stitching. While there was no sign of the ongaonga stings, I felt they were the cause of the stupor. That and the shock of the fall.

I talked to him all the time, stroking his head. He showed no response, even when I slipped the halter on. With the lead clipped in place, I moved towards the path. He wouldn’t budge. I tried again but with the same lack of success. I stood stroking between his eyes, trying to think of something else I could do. Somehow I had to get him out of the water. If he got any sicker, he would go down, and with the rising water he was sure to drown.

‘C’mon, horse,’ I said loudly. ‘Do something to help.’ There was a flicker of a response from his eyes. Maybe that’s the answer, I thought: act tougher.

‘C’mon!’ I yelled as I pulled. ‘C’mon. C’mon, you can do it. C’mon, c’mon.’ He took one step forward, and then another. Soon we were walking slowly towards the path.

‘Yes! That’s it,’ I said more quietly. ‘Yes! Just a little bit further. Keep it coming. Yes!’

There was a broad bit of dry land where the path spread out onto the canyon floor. It would remain dry for another hour or so, and was big enough for him to lie on if he did go down. I used the lasso to tie him so that he could move around, but not into the water or the ongaonga. There was nothing else I could do until help arrived.

Only then did I have time to go and see Phoebe. She was standing quietly with the others, about a hundred metres away from the edge of the canyon. I walked slowly over to her. The two other mares moved away a bit, leaving Phoebe by herself. Soon, I was cuddling her face, telling her all sorts of things about my fears for her, and the horrible night I’d had. In reply, she told me she was fine, but keen to get back to her own paddock. I promised her it would happen soon, and that when I got back I’d find some special apples for her. She said she’d like that. And so we went on while I waited for the others to come.

Grandad arrived in the old army vehicle which was Pounamu’s ambulance. A stockman and Sam were with him. Not far behind was Karen in the van, followed by Dad and Mits in the truck.

While Sam and the stockman ran down to the patient, the rest of us stood and stared at the ever-deepening lake that had once been the canyon.

‘That’s going to cause some problems,’ said Karen.

‘And it’s going to get worse,’ added Grandad. ‘I did a ring-around this morning, and it was still hosing down in the catchment area. They reckon they’ve had up to three hundred millimetres in the past couple of days. The bulk of the water won’t reach here until after lunch.’

Dad turned to Karen. ‘You’ve done this sort of thing before. About how long to cut out The Tooth?’

‘About four hours. That’s if there’s only the one fossil. If we find others, then it’s sure to take longer.’

‘Maybe we have to forget about any others.’

Karen shook her head. ‘No! We must at least look.’

Grandad said, ‘Let’s get this poor blighter into the ambulance, and then I’ll leave you to work it out. But I reckon you’ve only got about six or seven hours and the place will be under water.’

Sam’s cousin had regained consciousness. The stockman reported that it looked as though the man’s ribs had been shattered, but there were no signs that the lungs had been punctured or the heart damaged.

The others sorted him out while Grandad and I went down to see the stallion, who seemed to be unconscious on his feet.

‘It’ll be better if we can get him to lie down,’ said Grandad. ‘Otherwise he’ll collapse and injure himself more.’

‘Can we make him do it?’

‘We can try. You talk to him and I’ll apply some pressure.’

So I started talking, and Grandad worked with the rope to pull him down. When he went, it was so fast that we had to jump out of the way so we didn’t get squashed.

Grandad looked down at the horse, shaking his head. ‘He doesn’t look good, does he? I think he’s going to die.’

‘No!’ I cried. ‘Can’t we do something? We can’t let him die.’ I paused, trying to think. ‘Can’t we get a vet or something?’

He studied the stallion. ‘Yeah, we could, but this is going to reach a crisis well before any vet gets near here. Sorry Timothy, but you’ll just have to let the poison take its course. If he’s got the will, then he might survive. If not, then…well…what can we do?’

After some discussion, we decided that the best approach was to waterblast the rock as we had planned. Then we would review the situation. Dad and Mits would take the truck with the gear around to the top of the waterfall, while Karen and I went into the canyon. It would be our job to receive the equipment lowered down by crane.

Before we started, Dad handed out the headsets. ‘OK, they’re voice-activated, so you don’t have to switch anything on. Just talk and all the others will hear. They work just as well around your neck as on your ears. However, when the machines start I suggest you use them as ear protectors. Any questions?’

There were none, so we set off on our tasks.

I stopped at the bottom of the path to check on the stallion—he was worse. Grandad was right: the crisis would come long before any help could arrive. I stroked him for a while, before reluctantly moving to follow Karen who was already well into the water.

‘How you going down there?’ asked Dad.

‘I’m just at the opening in the bush now,’ replied Karen. ‘The water’s getting shallower as I walk in. It may not be such a—’ Her voice cut out as if the connection was lost.

‘Karen?’ called Dad. No reply. ‘Karen!’

Then we heard her answer. ‘Oh, my God!’ It was little more than a whisper.

‘What is it?’ I called, wading faster to get to her.

‘The fossil,’ she replied.

‘Has it gone?’ Now I was worried.

No answer.

‘Karen!’ yelled Dad. ‘Has The Tooth gone?’

‘No,’ came a faint reply.

‘Then what?’ asked Dad.

That’s when I heard laughing. I stumbled through the nettles and over the boulders to find her standing in the water, staring at the rock overhang; her hands were on her head, and she was laughing almost hysterically. I followed her gaze, and soon I, too, was laughing. It was the laugh of amazement and disbelief.

The rock face that we had been going to waterblast had already been washed clean by the waterfall. At some stage there must have been a gushing torrent coming down from above. Now, The Tooth was so clean that it shone out of the black rock, much as I had imagined it as a child.

But that was not the cause of our amazement. Alongside, in the overhang, lay the rest of the skeleton of the dinosaur. While only bits of it were visible, it was enough to show that it was all there: massive skull, tiny forelegs, huge hind legs and a long tail.

‘What’s happening?’ called Dad, his annoyance beginning to show.

‘We won’t need the waterblaster,’ laughed Karen. ‘The waterfall has already done the job.’

‘Are there any other fossils?’ asked Mits.

‘No, there’s only one fossil,’ I said, straining to keep the excitement from my voice. ‘Only one. Just the whole skeleton of a dinosaur.’

‘Yesss!’ hissed Mits. Then he laughed. ‘See, I knew there was a dragon there all along. You people just have no imagination.’

‘So what are we going to do about it?’ asked Dad.

‘We’re going to take the lot,’ replied Karen, excitedly. ‘We can’t leave this here to get drowned.’

‘And how do you plan to do that?’

Karen calmed a little. ‘That’s a good question. You’d better come down and have a look.’

Dad came down in a box-like metal cage attached to the crane, while Mits stayed at the top to operate the controls. When he saw the fossil, he was as impressed as we were, although you could see him worrying about what to do with the thing. Getting The Tooth out would have been difficult; taking out a whole dinosaur would be near-impossible.

‘We’ll never be able to lift it with the crane I’ve got up there. We’ll have to cut it into chunks.’

‘No!’ exclaimed Karen. ‘We’ll destroy too much. Anyway, it would take days to do that.’

‘Well the only other way is to take the whole thing off now and come back later with a bigger crane.’

‘After it’s been flooded?’ asked Karen.

‘We could wrap chains around it now so that all we have to do is attach the crane. But we’ll never get a big crane in until summer now.’

Plainly Karen was not happy with this. Nor was I. Who could tell what would happen if it sat in the water for seven or eight months?

However, none of us could come up with an alternative,
until Mits had his brainwave. He must’ve been sitting up on the truck, listening and thinking, and then, just as we’d made up our minds to leave the fossil in the water, he said, ‘You know, you could use that refrigeration container. Those things float, don’t they?’

‘Yeah,’ Dad agreed cautiously.

‘OK,’ continued Mits, ‘then if we put the container into the water, we can roll the rock into it and then float it out somewhere.’

‘We won’t be rolling it anywhere,’ said Karen. ‘It’ll weigh at least 20 tonnes.’

I could see Dad thinking. ‘Yeah, but if we put the container below the overhang, it might work.’

‘Yes!’ agreed Karen, excitedly. ‘Then when we drop the rock, it’ll fall into the container, and—hey presto!—we have one floating dinosaur.’

‘And even if it doesn’t float,’ added Dad, ‘it will be a whole lot easier to lift later on.’

‘Can you get the container down here?’ I asked.

Dad spread his arms. ‘Who knows? We can only try. It’s the best plan we’ve got.’

We all went up to the top and for the next half-hour we emptied the contents of the container into the horse float. There sure was a heap of horse gear—many, many thousands of dollars worth. There were also a lot of less valuable things, like buckets, pitchforks, shovels and other stuff you find around stables. To save time, we left that lying on the grass.

When the float was all loaded, we lifted the ramp to the horse float and bolted it in place. ‘OK,’ said Dad, rubbing his hands together. ‘Now let’s shift this container.’ I could see he
was enjoying himself; he loves doing this sort of thing.

As the others walked away from the float, I leant into the cab, took the key out of the ignition and put it in my pocket. I hadn’t forgotten that somewhere around the place there was another member of the Basinhead Gang—Cousin Damien, the one we hadn’t seen. If he turned up—as Mason had promised—then I didn’t want him driving away with the loot as if we’d loaded it especially for him.

The plan was a whole lot easier to dream up than to execute. It took another half-hour for the truck to drag the container to the top of the waterfall. The problem was that the tyres kept skidding and getting stuck. And, all the while, time was slipping away and the lake was getting deeper.

As Dad manoeuvred the container into position ready for the drop, the rest of us went down into the canyon to guide it into position.

‘Wow!’ said Mits, when he saw the fossil. ‘It
is
all there.’

‘Yeah,’ answered Karen, with obvious pride. ‘You were pretty close to being right when you superimposed the dragon on the rock. Except, of course, it’s not a dragon.’

Mits smiled. ‘It is if I want it to be.’

‘Are you people down there ready?’ interrupted Dad.

‘Yeah, we’re ready, Dad. We’re just admiring the fossil.’

‘Great. But let’s get it out of there and into this box. I’m sending it down now.’ I could sense the tension building in his voice.

A moment later, there was a loud scraping sound as the container was dangled over the edge of the cliff. I looked up
and it was directly above the overhang.

‘You’ve got it in the right place,’ I said into the headset. ‘But it’s going to bash into the overhang. It’ll smash the fossil.’

The container stopped coming down. I saw it sway wildly as the crane moved it further out from the cliff.

‘How’s that?’ asked Dad.

‘Yeah, that’s good. But it’s swinging all over the place.’

‘I can’t do anything to stop that. You lot’ll have to.’

Slowly it came down, swaying to and fro. As it approached the overhang, I could see that it would smash into the rock face if we didn’t stop it moving. ‘Stop!’ I yelled. ‘We need to get a rope onto it.’

It stopped. With Mits and Karen pushing me up the rock face, I could just reach the bottom corner of the container. I managed to get the rope tied in place, and after that it was easy. All three of us splashed around in the water, pulling on the rope until the bottom of the container touched the ground.

‘Stop, Dad!’ I called. ‘We need to open the doors before it falls into place.’

With the doors open, it was lowered until it rested at an angle with the open end perfectly below the overhang. The crane stopped and we let out a cheer. Phase one had been completed successfully.

Even if there had not been the pressure of the slowly flooding canyon, I think we would have had troubles getting the job done in a day. Everything seemed to take so long. Getting the tools down and ready to work took almost an hour. They
had to be loaded into the cage, lowered down the cliff face, unloaded, and then the cage sent back up for another load. It seemed to take forever.

With the tools down, we were ready to start work. The diamond-tipped saw was powered by a two-stroke engine. It was too heavy for Mits and me to handle, yet Karen heaved it around with ease. When she first picked it up, her face spread wide in a grin. ‘I love working with these things,’ she said. ‘You feel like you’re cutting back deep into geological time. I sometimes think I might release some ancient creature that has been trapped for aeons.’ I chuckled quietly: I was beginning to really like this crazy woman.

The rock drill was driven by a diesel compressor that sat on the back of the truck. Only Dad had enough strength to work the drill, so we had to reorganize the manpower. Mits and I would have to take turns up at the truck. Mits chose to go first and was lifted up in the cage. After he lowered Dad down, we were ready to start work.

Sixteen holes had to be drilled into the top of the overhang. These would be joined by saw cuts all the way around. After that it would be the job of the rock splitters to break it off. If that didn’t work, then we were doomed. The fossil would have to stay where it was, maybe for another hundred million years.

Both of the machines were noisy and dirty. The dust could be controlled with water, of which there was no shortage, as the lake was now lapping around the base of the container. Our headsets made the noise bearable, although not enjoyable.

My job was to be the gofer and to take photos so that we had a record of the whole process. After a quarter of an hour, I needed a break. There was nothing new to photograph and
the headphones were hurting my ears, causing my head to ache. It was time to check the stallion.

He was much worse than when I’d last checked. He had recovered from the stupor and was now lying flat on the ground, breathing heavily. Froth was oozing out of his mouth and he was covered with sweat—he was burning up inside. If this continued, he’d be dead in an hour: I had to get his temperature down.

I ran up to the horse float and grabbed a couple of buckets. Back in the canyon, I began pouring water over his body. With the first bucket there was a slight flicker of an eye. So I started talking to him, hoping he could hear. I talked about all sorts of things, none of which made much sense, and all the time I continued to cool his body and wash his mouth with water.

The first hour passed and he was still alive, although it was hard to say whether he was improving or not. All that time, the canyon had reverberated with the sounds of the machines. Lunchtime came and went without the work stopping. You only had to look to the level of the lake to realize how urgent it was that we kept going.

Every now and then, there would be a pause in the work and I would check in with the headset. The news from the overhang was always depressing. The holes were taking longer than anybody had thought. It was now touch and go whether we would get them drilled in time.

I wanted to make contact with Pounamu to see if somebody was coming for Phoebe and the other horse. Unfortunately, in the confusion of the morning, nobody had thought to pick up the radio transmitter, and the headsets couldn’t reach that
far. There was no way of checking on where Grandad was, or what was happening to the mares.

By the end of the second hour, I felt that my efforts with the stallion were working. The frothing had stopped, and I could feel that he was a lot cooler. Then, when I saw the pupil of his eye follow me as I moved back up from the water, I knew things were better.

I sat beside his head, stroking his neck urging him to be brave. I so wanted him to live. He was just the sort of horse that Grams had written her song about. It was important that he stay alive—alive, wild and free.

Bit by bit, he seemed to brighten. I released the halter so that when he recovered he could make his way to the top without my help. When it was free, I continued to hold his head, hoping he’d gain strength from my presence. By then my sleepless night was catching up on me, and I nodded off a few times. It was probably the monotonous sound of the compressor that sent me to sleep. It’s one of those background noises that you can turn off, yet still be aware of any changes. For a long time there was no change, just the labouring roar of air being compressed. And so I slept.

When the change did come, it was big, loud and frightening: the compressor blew up. One moment I was dozing to the droning beat, the next I was deafened by the explosive sound of bits of metal being ripped apart. Then came the roar of escaping air. Finally, with the compressor gone, the rock drill stopped its chattering, leaving only the echo of the explosion coming back from the surrounding hills. And when that died, there was silence.