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"A little closer!" I called.
Presently, they appeared slanting in toward me. We dropped into a gully filled with ferns
and scrambled up the other side. Then we found our way blocked by a big clump of palmetto.
"You go round that side; we'll go round this," I said. We started off, stopping to listen
and smell. Our positions were the same as on that first day, when James killed the bonehead.
We'd gone two-thirds of the way round our half of the palmetto when I heard a noise ahead
on our left. Holtzinger heard it too, and pushed off his safety. I put my thumb on mine and
stepped to one side to have a clear field of fire.
The clatter grew louder. I raised my gun to aim at about the height of a big theropod's
heart. There was a movement in the foliage-and a six-foot-high bonehead stepped into view, walking
solemnly across our front and jerking its head with each step like a giant pigeon.
I heard Holtzinger let out a breath and had to keep myself from laughing. Holtzinger said:
Then that damned gun of James's went off, bang! bang! I had a glimpse of the bonehead
knocked arsy-varsy with its tail and hindlegs flying.
"Got him!" yelled James. "I drilled him clean!" I heard him run forward.
"Good God, if he hasn't done it again!" I said.
Then there was a great swishing of foliage and a wild yell from James. Something heaved up
out of the shrubbery, and I saw the head of the biggest of the local flesh eaters, Tyrannosaurus
tnonyches himself.
The scientists can insist that rex is the bigger species, but I'll swear this blighter was
bigger than any rex ever hatched. It must have stood twenty feet high and been fifty feet long. I
could see its big bright eye and six-inch teeth and the big dewlap that hangs down from its chin
to its chest.
The second of the nullahs that cut through the copse ran athwart our path on the far side
of the palmetto clump. Perhaps it was six feet deep. The tyrannosaur had been lying in this,
sleeping off its last meal. Where its back stuck up above the ground level, the ferns on the edge
of the nullah masked it. James had fired both barrels over the theropod's head and woke it up.
Then the silly ass ran forward without reloading. Another twenty feet and he'd have stepped on the
tyrannosaur.
James, naturally, stopped when this thing popped up in front of him. He remembered that
he'd fired both barrels and that he'd left the Raja too far behind for a clear shot.
At first, James kept his nerve. He broke open his gun, took two rounds from his belt, and
plugged them into the barrels. But, in his haste to snap the gun shut, he caught his hand between
the barrels and the action. The painful pinch so startled James that he dropped his gun. Then he
went to pieces and bolted.
The Raja was running up with his gun at high port, ready to snap it to his shoulder the
instant he got a clear view. When he saw James running headlong toward him, he hesitated, not
wishing to shoot James by accident. The latter plunged ahead, blundered into the Raja, and sent
them both sprawling among the ferns. The tyrannosaur collected what little wits it had and stepped
forward to snap them up.
And how about Holtzinger and me on the other side of the palmettos? Well, the instant
James yelled and the tyrannosaur's head appeared, Holtzinger darted forward like a rabbit. I'd
brought my gun up for a shot at the tyrannosaur's head, in hope of getting at least an eye; but,
before I could find it in my sights, the head was out of sight behind the palmettos. Perhaps I
should have fired at hazard, but all my experience is against wild shots.
When I looked back in front of me, Holtzinger had already disappeared round the curve of
the palmetto clump. I'd started after him when I heard his rifle and the click of the bolt between
shots: bang
-click-click-bang-click-click, like that.
He'd come up on the tyrannosaur's quarter as the brute started to stoop for James and the
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