The Tooth (6 page)

Preparing for the day’s trip the next morning was more like getting ready for an expedition—my grandparents had taken control of things.

Grandad had modified my quad bike by adding a big carrier box, a radio, and a global positioning system, more often known as a GPS. All these were taken from his own bike. Then the tank was filled and everything checked for good working order.

Nanna rushed between the kitchen, where she was making bacon-and-egg pie, and the linen cupboard, where she was sorting out clothes to protect us against the stings of ongaonga. Everything was neatly wrapped and transported to the quad bike.

It was ten o’clock before we were ready to leave. Nanna and Grandad were there to wave goodbye. From the looks on their faces, I could see that each of them would have loved to come with us. It seemed to me that they hadn’t had this much excitement for years.

To make sure we didn’t get lost, Grandad had programmed the route into the GPS. The LCD screen showed a yellow line drawn over a map of the area, with a red dot indicating our position. We could zoom in as close as we wanted, although the image became all chunky if we went in too close. It was also hooked up to the radio, so Nanna and Grandad could monitor our progress on a similar screen at home.

I didn’t need the map to get across Pounamu—Phoebe and I knew it well. As expected, the gravel track on the other side of the main road was deserted: there was only one house and, according to Grandad, that was empty. The track itself had high weeds growing down the middle, but with the tops bent over as if a vehicle had driven by recently.

Thus it was no surprise when we reached the house and saw smoke coming out of the chimney. I indicated to Mits to turn off the bike. When the sound of the motor died, it was replaced with that of loud, thumping music coming from behind the house—probably a car stereo.

I moved quietly forward on Phoebe so that I could get a better look down the driveway. There I saw a truck that looked like it might be a double horse float. Further forward I could see through to the area at the back of the house. Immediately I froze. Sam Mason was kicking a tin can around the yard. He did this for a while before two other people came into view. They greeted Sam using funny stiff-armed handshakes, and then everybody moved out of view.

I heard doors being slammed, and a moment later a car roared into life. The pitch of the motor changed as the car came into view—they were coming out. I spun around to tell Mits, but he was already moving off the road into the scrub. I dug my heels into Phoebe and she leapt forward. The scrub was too low to hide us, but a large macrocarpa tree opposite the house was easily big enough. I made it in time to hear the car accelerate down the driveway. There was a chance they might have seen me: if they had, I felt sure I would soon know about it.

I held my breath as I watched through a fork in the tree. A large, black vehicle eased out of the driveway and onto the
gravel. There was a brief glimpse of the occupants, before the motor roared and they sped off down the road in a spray of stones and dust. The two men were larger versions of Sam Mason. Nobody had looked in my direction.

We waited until we’d heard them turn onto the main road before coming out of hiding. Mits coasted up to me. ‘Who are they? Did you see them?’

‘Yeah,’ I said with a smile. ‘It was the Basinhead Gang.’

‘The Basinhead Gang?’

‘Yep! Sam Mason and his two cousins, and they’ve all got that same crazy haircut. You know, the one that looks like it’s been cut around a basin. So I reckon they’re the Basinhead Gang.’

Mits nodded. ‘And they’re here after dinosaur fossils.’

I thought about that. ‘No. Mason might be, but I doubt the others would be interested.’

‘Then what
are
they doing here?’

That was the big question. I doubted they were just having a free holiday out in the country. They would be here for some reason, and it was sure to be something illegal. I looked up the driveway at the truck and saw clearly now that it was a horse float. Was it something to do with horses? Or was the truck used to transport other things, such as cattle?

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t think we should come along here again.’

‘No,’ agreed Mits. ‘Let’s get out of here, before they come back.’

The road ended in an overgrown turning area. A smaller track led past a collapsed fence into the manuka. It was plain
that a vehicle had been along this track, too, probably within the past few days.

It was impossible to miss the clay quarry: it was a huge, red hole, looking like a giant wound in the earth. The bottom showed signs that there had once been a pond. Now it was just a dustbowl. The few plants that were still growing were red with the stuff. It was easy to see how my T-shirt had got covered.

We skirted around the outside until we found the continuation of the track. Flattened weeds showed that the other vehicle had also bypassed the quarry and continued towards the river.

About a kilometre further on, the manuka thinned to reveal the canyon and the river beyond. We dismounted and crept to the edge of the cliff, as if expecting some great revelation from below—the way great discoveries are revealed in the movies.

There was no alien spacecraft or lost treasure city. Just a large, flat space covered with green grass dotted with weeds. This was the place where we hoped to make the greatest fossil discovery in New Zealand’s history. As such, it was a bit of a disappointment.

I went to the quad and called up Grandad. ‘We’re at the place,’ I said.

‘So we can see. Why did you stop at the house?’

‘There are people living in the house.’

‘Are there? That’s a bit queer.’

‘Yeah. We’ll tell you more later. Over and out.’

We sat down and took out some of the bacon-and-egg pie.

‘Your grandparents must be watching the signal all the time,’ said Mits.

‘Yeah, very likely.’ Then I chuckled. ‘We should use the
quad to make some patterns or something. Like crop circles. See what they make of that.’

Mits laughed. ‘Yeah, we could even spell out some letters for them. See if they can read it.’

We thought about that in silence for a while before Mits nodded towards the canyon and asked, ‘How are we going to get down there?’

‘If it’s the right place, then I managed to get out and I was only four. So I reckon we can get down. It’s just a matter of finding where.’

Mits spread his arms. ‘Which side?’

I stood and looked around. ‘That way,’ I said pointing. ‘That’s where the vehicle tracks go.’

We mounted up and followed the tracks into the scrub. A hundred metres or so later we broke into a place where the scrub had been cleared. In the middle sat a white shipping container—one of the half-sized refrigerated ones.

It looked as though it had been there for some time. The cleared scrub had browned off and lost all its leaves.

Mits stopped in front of the container. ‘Do you think they’ve just dumped it here?’

‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘These things are expensive. This’s worth thousands of bucks.’

‘Then why put it here?’

‘They’re using it to store something,’ I said. ‘See,’ I pointed at the padlock on the doors. ‘That’s only new. But why would they want to lock up something way out here?’

I walked Phoebe around to the back. The refrigeration unit had been removed, so it wasn’t being used to freeze anything. The rest of the thing was in excellent order, better than some Dad shifted at the port.

‘Tiny,’ called Mits, ‘I’ve found the way down.’

I moved back to the front, where Mits was standing at the start of a path leading down the side of the cliff. I dismounted and moved so that I could see the path all the way to the bottom. It had been carved out of the rock. It was easy to see why somebody would put a path down there. The grass was greener than anything I’d seen on any of the stations. Obviously the water from the river kept the soil moist. It would be a great summer pasture.

‘We going to take the quad down there?’ asked Mits.

I looked at the path. It was wide enough for the bike, but the edge would be perilously close. While the cliff was not vertical, it would still be dangerous to go over the edge. I didn’t like the surface of the path either. It was rough rock with dust filling the depressions—not the safest surface for bike or horse.

‘No. It’s too dangerous. I’m certainly not taking Phoebe down there.’

After contacting Grandad and loading up the backpack, we set off. A short distance down the path, I stopped and examined the rock. ‘Sandstone,’ I said. ‘Just the type of rock we need.’

Mits just nodded. I could see his eyes were glowing with anticipation. I suppose mine were, too.

Before we even got to the bottom, I knew we were at the right place. Where the path sloped down into the scrub at the base of the cliff, I saw the spiky, green leaves of ongaonga. I pointed them out to Mits.

‘Is that ongaonga?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ I replied. ‘It certainly looks like the stuff in the book. Why don’t you touch it to find out?’

‘Nah. You do it.’

I shrugged; somehow we had to find out for sure. I wiped the back of my hand lightly across a leaf. It felt like a whole lot of needles had been dancing on my skin. It was not really painful, just more of an annoyance.

‘That’s ongaonga all right,’ I said. ‘Try it.’

Mits did so. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he decided.

‘No. But if you get repeated stings I’m sure it’s a lot worse. Look at all those spines. Imagine if you fell in it.’

‘No, thank you,’ he said, continuing down the path. ‘I’ll leave that for you to do.’

I noticed the butterflies as soon as we got to the bottom. There were three of them feeding on the yellow flowers growing in the pasture.

‘This is the place, for sure,’ I said. ‘They’re Red Admirals.’

Mits beamed. ‘Great! That’s two clues out of three. So let’s go find The Tooth.’

We started with a walk around the base of the cliff. The ongaonga was only on the side sheltered from the sun. Altogether that was about four hundred metres’ length of the stuff, which shouldn’t take too long to search. The problem was that at no place could we access the cliff without crawling through the nettles.

‘Time to get Nanna’s clothes on,’ I said pulling off the backpack.

A while later we were dressed all in black: black balaclavas over our heads; black jerseys covering our bodies and arms; hands and fingers stuck into black knitted gloves. Fortunately, that morning we had both chosen to wear trousers, otherwise we would have had to put on Nanna’s old pantyhose.

I looked at Mits and burst out laughing. ‘You look like a bank robber,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well that’s better than the way you look. You’re a serial killer, if ever I saw one.’

‘As long as it does the job,’ I replied, before plunging into the bushes and pushing my way through to the cliff face. I got a few stings, but they were nothing compared to the excitement I felt about beginning the final stage of our search.

A moment later Mits joined me. We stared at the rock face in disappointment. I suppose we both half-expected to find The Tooth on the first go. It was not to be. We stood staring at a moss-covered cliff face that showed no sign of a tooth or any other fossil. It was a great anti-climax.

It would have been an easy search if we could have just walked along the base of the cliff. But that was not possible. In most places we could go no further than a few metres before a rock fall or exceptionally thick bushes forced us to retreat to the pasture and try another spot. It was time-consuming and frustrating.

We stopped for lunch when we were about halfway. It was almost two hours since we’d started searching. However, we weren’t unhappy with our progress. The remaining half was big enough to keep our hopes up, and Nanna’s bacon-and-egg pie was delicious.

The afternoon was a repeat of the morning, except that the happy feeling faded as we approached the end of the ongaonga. It was also extremely hot dressed in clothes more suitable for a snow storm than a mild autumn day. By the time we’d finished we were both feeling depressed.

‘So, what next?’ I asked after we had stripped off our extra clothes.

‘Maybe there’s another place further downstream,’ suggested Mits without enthusiasm.

I looked around the canyon and shook my head. ‘No, this is the place. I know I’ve been here before.’

‘Then why haven’t we found it?’ whined Mits. ‘You sure it was behind the ongaonga?’

‘Yes,’ I replied without hesitation.

‘Then what’s happened to it?’ Again the whine. Soon he would be yelling at me, unless I directed his anger at someone else.

‘Maybe somebody else has found it. It’s been eight years since I saw it.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Probably that thug Sam Mason. Why does he have to be here, wrecking it all for us?’ He looked up at the white container sitting above the pathway. ‘I bet he’s got the fossils stacked up there.’

‘I doubt it. We would have seen where they’ve been working.’

After that we sat in silence for a few minutes, dejected, but too tired to think of anything else to do.

Mits broke the silence with, ‘So, what do we do now? Give up?’

‘We could have another look tomorrow?’ I suggested with little enthusiasm. ‘Maybe we should find out what glow-worms look like in the daytime and search for them.’

Mits sat up sharply. ‘The glow-worms,’ he said excitedly. ‘I’d forgotten all about them. That’s how we’ll find it.’

‘What? Come back tomorrow and look for them?’

‘No! Not tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tonight! Instead of us doing all the work, let them do it. Didn’t you say you were attracted to the glowing lights when you first found it?’

I nodded.

‘Then, we come back tonight and let the glowing lights do it all over again.’

‘Yessss!’ I hissed. ‘You’re right. Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘Because you’ve got no imagination. Only a fantasy nut would think of something like that.’ Then he hit me playfully on the arm. ‘Hey! If it’s a full moon we might even see some of those things that I’m not allowed to mention. Wouldn’t that be something?’