Dinosaur Lake by Kathryn Meyer Griffith Read Free Book Online Page B

you find them?”
    “Down past Cleetwood Trail, before the steep walls begin again. The prints were going into the water. It’s easy to see how they could have gone unnoticed. The location is desolate. Hard to get to. I don’t know what made me hike that far off the beaten path.” He shook his head again, wonder and fear warring in his eyes. “Any paleontologist in his right mind would give twenty years of his life to see a real live dinosaur walking around–except me. As much as I adore studying the creatures, I believe there was a reason for their demise, their extinction. They’d be far too destructively anachronistic to coexist with humanity. What most people don’t realize is some dinosaur species were extremely intelligent. Rapacious in their behavior. I’d hate to come face to face with a live one and I’d hate to try to keep one in captivity. A good dinosaur is a dead dinosaur. They’re magnificent monsters, but they don’t belong in iron cages like circus freaks or running loose. Too unpredictable. Too volatile. Too big .”
    Henry wasn’t sure he agreed with the scientist. It’d be incredible to see a real, living, breathing dinosaur. Just once. A large tranquilizer gun would solve the problem easily.
    “Yeah, I remember what happened to King Kong,” Henry threw in for comedic relief, but Justin didn’t crack a smile.
    “Eat your food, Justin,” Henry ordered in a calm voice. The kid was a nervous wreck. “Then you can show me those prints. I’ve got to see them for myself. If we hurry we can make it down there before dark.”
    “Okay. It’ll be good to show them to someone else. Prove they’re actually there, that they weren’t a figment of my imagination. Maybe then I won’t feel like I’ve lost my sanity.”
    Justin gulped down his food.
    Henry wasn’t as hurried. He was convinced their journey down to the lake would turn out to be a wasted trip. Dinosaur tracks. Yeah, sure.
    ***
    The sun was going down by the time they arrived at the water’s edge. Trees were bathed in lace cloaks of muted reds and oranges, and the murky shadows dancing around them made it seem even later. They’d taken too long over supper and the trip down from the rim to where the tracks were had turned out to be more difficult than Henry had anticipated. Justin had been correct when he’d said it was off the beaten path.
    Trudging through the mud, the scientist led Henry down along the bank, past the boat dock at the mouth of Cleetwood Trail and around the bottom of the caldera. They walked and climbed for what Henry felt was at least an hour. The kid had a great sense of direction. When they came to a spot where the caldera’s cliffs were rugged and steep, Justin crouched over and searched the ground in the dimming light, using a flashlight Henry had given him.
    “I thought they were here,” he muttered, as he moved on.
    Henry followed behind in silence. Better find them soon, he thought, light’s almost gone.
    “Here they are,” Justin mouthed just as Henry was getting ready to suggest they give it up and head back. The scientist hunkered down.
    Henry came up behind him, bending over to study what Justin was pointing at. They were animal imprints of some kind, true enough. They were approximately eight feet long; narrow at one end and much wider at the other. George had been right about something else–the toes appeared to be webbed claws.
    The prints led to the lake and only the impressions made in the soft mud nearest the water were clearly visible.
    “See,” Justin exclaimed, “I wasn’t hallucinating. Here are the tracks to prove it.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than Henry.
    Henry didn’t know what to say. He was staring at the tracks, but he wasn’t believing them. He craned his neck and glanced around. “They seem to have come from below the cliffs somewhere. There are caves along the caldera’s base beneath the water line. Some of them are quite large and they vein down into