The earliest monuments beside the lower Nile and lower Euphrates, like the earliest monuments on the high plateaus or in the dense tropical forests of the new world, are purely modern -- are things of yesterday -- when measured by the hoary antiquity into which we grope when we attempt to retrace the prehistory of man, the history of his development from an apelike creature struggling with his fellow-brutes, to the being with at least longings and hopes that are half divine.-Theodore Roosevelt

Edward Cope grimaced as he drank the bitter coffee and tried to keep the noxious brew from spilling onto his woolen coat. He watched his daughter Julia play with the young Styrocasaurus in the Salty Brine of the Great Salt Lake, and warily eyed the young workman who had stopped his labors to enjoy the show.

“Charles,” He shouted across the grassy dune, startling the young man, “Charles, Can you please get back to work? We have much to do.”

Julia looked up and waved. The dinosaur she was washing off in the salt water thought she was hiding some food and butted her in the belly, knocking her back into the foam. She laughed and planted both hands on its crested forehead and pushed it back. It snorted and turned, splashing back towards its family. No food today. Julia stood up and sloshed her way to shore and up the hill to the canvas tent where her father surveyed his domain.

They had arrived here at the beginning of the summer at the request of Powell. He had been able to negotiate a settlement with the polygamists: Washington would leave Utah alone if they would set aside a preserve for the dinosaurs. With Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, a nice swath of land could be set aside to facilitate the herd’s nomadic wandering.

Cope had set up a tent city on the shores of the great Salt lake as far away from the Mormon settlements as he could. But it was not far enough. He despised the polygamists, and it showed in his nearly daily interactions with them. He was not one to be tactful when the situation called for bluntness. As the summer wore on, he found himself more isolated in the walled tent than he would have liked.

His daughter, on the other hand, was having a grand old time teasing the workmen. It was unbecoming a young woman of her stature, but he could only blame himself. Although she had spent most of her life in St. Louis, she had been coming on expeditions with him for the last several years. He considered it part of an unconventional education. She was headstrong and rebellious and would not have fit into the ivied halls of a Brown or Oberlin college. Even Haversford, where he himself had forgotten a professorship despite not possessing the vaunted degree requires, would have thrown her out inside of a semester. He shuddered to think of what kind of havoc Julia would have caused in Philadelphia if free from the constraints of schooling. No, it was best that he did his best to educate her out here on the frontier among the animals she was most at home with.

“Father.”

“I swear to God, Julia, when we get back to St. Louis I’m going to have your mother brew a tub of decent tea and I’ll take a bath in it.”

She plunked herself down on the canvas chair beside him and pulled off the riding boots she had worn into the water, pouring the collected water onto the parched desert dirt. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a stale biscuit, reaching down and into a cage set on the ground behind her. The animal in the caged chuckled and came sniffing up from it’s den in the shaded rear. It was not one of the dinosaurs, but a more prosaic beaver Cope had caught some years before when called in to help eradicate a dam that was flooding some valuable college property along the Clarion River in Pennsylvania. As an avid naturalist, he had made a habit of collecting living specimens and training them as pets.

Right now his entourage consisted of the beaver, several songbirds, a Gila monster gifted from Powell, and a Chimpanzee from Africa that he was most impressed with. He had named it Ole Swampy and felt that the name fit the ape better than it did the man in New York he named it after.

“Julia, you must not cavort in front of the men like that. You are not a child anymore.”

“Oh pshaw.” They’re not interested in me for anything but a good long gander. Charles and Ed are too scared of you to do anything more than say ’Howdy’.”

“Be that as it may, I expect you to be able to control yourself the next time we’re in Washington. I do not want those stuffed shirts to think I raised a bloody Cherokee savage as one of my own.”

Edward Cope sipped his tea. And stared out over the salt flats. Off in the distance, a familial pod of gigantosauri plodded and undulated across the flat expanse of desert on their way to the golden prairies in Colorado. He doubted they would make it. Too many men, too many railroads and too few places where they could rest.

“Julia, dear, what do you think of Yellowstone?”

“ That’s an odd non-sequitur. The river or the Lake?”

“The Whole blessed valley.”

He set down his teacup and picked up a carefully folded envelop from the folding camp table. He handed it to her and she began to scan it.

“It seems Mudge is in need of a Paleobiologist.” There appears to be a rogue monster menacing his carefully pruned reserve”

“Well, it serves them right. You warned them.”

“Be that as it may, we have a duty to the truth.”

“Another non sequitur,” she said. She eyed the letter again. “ Unless you think He’s lying.”

“I’ve never known Mudge to lie. At least not since the stroke. He’s one of the few honest men I know I can trust. This letter is more of a warning, I think.”

She Stood up and slung the boots over her shoulder.

“Well then, I think I should be packing. The mountain air should do me some good.”

“Wonderful girl. I believe you are right. There’s more than a big game hunt in Yellowstone. Something is afoot.”