Into the Badlands

“I’ll do that for you.” A little more insistently than Susannah liked, Amy put a hand out for her backpack. “Julia’s going to burst into tears any minute. She’ll get all the younger ones started.”

Susannah quickly relinquished her pack. She’d been at the campsite on Saturday afternoon to welcome the children, and had spent that evening getting to know them. Julia had seemed upset right from the start, as if she really didn’t want to be there. She looked and acted younger than ten—she probably wasn’t ready to spend two weeks away from home.

Hoping she wouldn’t say or do anything to release pent-up tears, Susannah knelt on the ground near Julia. “Finding anything?”

The small, curly head shook from side to side.

“I get days like that, too. I had about five years like that when I was just a bit older than you. I grew up on a farm in Manitoba. Not prime dinosaur country.”

“Wheat,” Julia muttered, still looking at the ground.

“Lots of wheat,” Susannah agreed. “But I was interested in paleontology, so I’d go out into a pasture, rope off an area and start digging.”

Julia glanced up. “But you didn’t find anything?”

“Not much. Rusted metal that broke off a plough about a hundred years ago. Bone from a bison. One summer I lucked out—found a pioneer garbage dump.”

Julia had stopped her halfhearted digging and was giving Susannah her full attention. She wrinkled her nose. “Yuck.”

“It wasn’t yucky. There were old medicine bottles and broken dishes and a pretty chamber pot with hand-painted flowers on it. Do you know what a chamber pot is?”

Julia shook her head.

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you.”

The girl’s gaze intensified. “You can tell me.”

Susannah whispered in her ear. Julia drew back, her face twisted in pleased disgust. “Eew! With flowers on it?”

Susannah nodded. “Those pioneers must have had a sense of humor. The thing is, where I turned up bottles and dishes and chamber pots, you’ll turn up a hadrosaur bone.”

Using her geologist’s hammer and a chisel, she began to chip at the ground. Julia watched Susannah’s even motion and began to copy it. It wasn’t long before they uncovered the tip of a bone.

“Finally. A rib. We found this animal’s skull, its spinal column, and its tibia, but we couldn’t find its ribs. Good for you!”

Julia smiled up at Susannah, her glasses glinting in the sun. Smiling back, Susannah realized she had passed thirty minutes without a single thought about Alexander Blake.

THE SUN, STILL HOT, was in the west. A few plaster-coated specimens lay drying on the ground. Some of the children worked slowly, obviously tired; others sat together, resting and talking.

“James?” Susannah said. “I don’t see Matt.”

“Again? He’ll be around somewhere.”

“I told him not to go too far.”

“Your definition of too far and Matt’s are probably very different.” James raised his voice. “Matt!” He listened for an answer, then called again. “Matt, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get back here pronto!” But no apologetic Matt, full of explanations, trotted back to the bonebed.

“I saw him near the dining shelter,” one boy said. “Maybe fifteen minutes ago.”

“He was just here, wasn’t he?” asked another camper. “Wasn’t he talking to Julia?”

Julia, her eyes huge, shook her head. She looked from James to Susannah, ready to panic.

One of the older girls said, “I was digging with him about an hour ago. He left to get some preservative, but he didn’t come back, so I just got it myself and kept working.” Uncertainly she added, “I guess I should have looked for him.”

“He’ll be somewhere nearby, Melissa.” Susannah spoke quietly to James. “Let’s take a quick look around. He could be behind any of these hills or walking along the riverbed—he found a vertebra there this morning. Maybe he went bone hunting again.”

When they didn’t find Matt near the quarry, in the dining shelter, supply tent, or back at the school bus, Susannah and James organized a more thorough search. Four pairs of one counselor and one camper fanned out from the quarry, carrying whistles as a simple form of communication. Hoping useful action would help ease the girl’s worry, Susannah asked Melissa to be her partner.

As she walked, Susannah thought about how often Matt had been told not to wander off. She hadn’t paid close enough attention to him. For most of the day, she’d been preoccupied with work and angry feelings about Alexander Blake, sometimes almost forgetting the children were there. In all the years the museum had run a science camp, no one had ever got lost.

Self-recrimination at this point was counterproductive. Nothing bad would happen to Matt. He was lost. They would find him. Later—alone and awake at night, or assessing the summer camp at the end-of-season board meeting—there would be lots of time for guilt.

They were nearly a mile from the quarry when Susannah noticed a pile of shale at the foot of a hill. Scraped ground leading to the top suggested someone had climbed up recently.

“Look at that, Melissa. I’ll bet Matt slid down the other side. He’s probably sitting happily in the shade, making sand castles.” She called Matt’s name, waited, then called again, louder.

“I think I heard something,” Melissa said eagerly. “It sounded really far away, though.”

“I’ll go up for a look. Wait here.”

Carefully Susannah edged up the side of the hill. At its crest she saw what she had been afraid of seeing: a hole about two feet across, with an uneven edge. She wriggled closer on her stomach and looked down into the stale darkness. “Matt?”

A faint voice reached her. “I’m down here!”

Susannah fumbled in her backpack for her flashlight and shone it down. There: a ghostly reflection. She called to Melissa, waiting at the base of the hill. “Have you got the whistle? Try to get someone’s attention—three blows means help.” She wished she could see Matt better. The flashlight’s beam barely reached him. “Are you hurt, Matt?”

“Get me outta here, Dr. Robb!” His voice quavered.

Get him out. Good idea. But how? From the sound of him, Matt couldn’t wait for the others to arrive, if they ever did arrive. There was no guarantee anyone would hear the whistle.

She could hear and see Matt, so the sinkhole wasn’t all that deep. She tried to estimate the distance to the pale face illuminated by her flashlight—thirteen feet, maybe more. Not a long enough drop to kill you, but long enough to hurt you, long enough to keep you stranded. She had to make sure Matt wasn’t hurt, reassure him, get him out.

His voice wafted up to her. “Dr. Robb? Are you there?”

“Of course I’m here. I won’t leave you.”

She couldn’t get him out. She could throw the flashlight down so he’d have light. She could send Melissa back to the quarry for help, and lie there with her head down the hole carrying on a long-distance conversation to keep Matt calm.

Bad idea. She didn’t want another child wandering alone in the badlands, and she wanted to have a good look at Matt, as soon as possible. He was talking, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hurt.

She’d have to go in after him.

Her body tensed at the thought. She didn’t like heights or the dark or jumping. She didn’t like fast sports or danger. But here she was, proposing to plunge into a dark void. Without a net. Well, she wasn’t exactly a couch potato. She did a lot of on-the-job hiking and climbing. She was fit.

Again she shone the flashlight into the hole. About a yard from the top, she noticed a small outcropping. Here and there along the sides were uneven areas that might provide hand- and toeholds.

“Melissa, I need you up here.” She waited until the girl joined her at the top of the hill. “Lie on your stomach so your weight is spread out—the ground could cave in again. I’m going down to see if Matt’s okay, and I’ll try to help him out.” She spoke calmly, as if she were just going to walk down some stairs to check on him. “Be ready to give him a hand.” She tucked the flashlight into the backpack.