Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1886-10-13
THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.
Discovery Of Fine Specimen on
the Western Plains.
The Victims of n Practical Joke Tramp
Five Days Along Bitter Creek In
Search of an Animal That Had
Been Dead for Centuries.
fBn. Nre. in Chicago Nexs1

fBnl Nye, In Chicago News.I
Several years ago had the pleasure of
Joining a party about to start out along
the banks Of Bitter creek on a hunting
expedition. The leader Of the party was
young man who had recently escaped
from college with a large amount OF
knowledge which he desired to experimen I
with on the people of the far West. He
had heard that there was an ichthyosau-
rus up somewhere along the west side of
Bitter creek, and he wanted us to go along
and help him to find 1t.
1 had been in the West some eight or
nine years then aud had never seen an
ichthyosaurus myself, but thought the
young man must know his busi-
ness, so 1 got out my Winchester an d
went along with the group.
We tramped over the pale, ashy, glar-
ing staring, stretch OF desolation through
burning, quivering days of monotony and
saSebrush and alkali water and aching
eyes and parched and bleeding lips and
nostrils cut through and eaten by the
sharp alkaline air, mentally depressed
and physically worn out, but cheered on
and braced up by the light and joyous
manner of the ever hopeful James Trilo-
bite E.on, of Concord.
James Trilobite Eton, Of Concord, never
moaned, never gigged back or shed hot,
remorseful tear in this powderv, hungry
waste of gray, parched ruin. No regret
came forth from his lips in the midst oi
this mighty cemetery, this CHASTITY pot
ter's field for all that nature had ever
reared that was too poor to bear its ow n
funeral expenses.
Now and then lean, soiled gray coyote
without sufficient moral courage to look a
dead mule in the hin foot, slipped aero SIS
the horizon like a dirty phantom and
faded into the hot and tremulous atmos-
piere. We o-nsd such game as that and
trudged on, cheered by the hope that
seemed to spring eternal in the breast of
James Trilobite Eton, of Concord.
Four days we wallowed through the
unchanging desolation. Four nights we
went through the motions OF slumbering
on the arid bosom of the wasted earth. On
the fifth day James Trilobite Eaton said we
were now getting near the point where we
would find what we sought. On we
pressed through the keen, rough blades of
the seldom bunch grass, over the shifting
yellow sand and the greenish gray of the
bad-land soil.
Toward evening James Tribolite Eaton
gave a wild shrek of joy and ran to us
from the bel of an OLD creek, where he had
found an ichthy osaurus. The animal was
dead! Not only that, but it had been deaC
q long, long time!
uncocked my gun and won't back t.
camp a sadder and madder man, and
though years have come and gone, l on
still irritable when think of the five day
we tramped along Bitter creek searching
for an animal that was no longer alive
and our guide know IL before he started.
ventured to say to j. Trilobite Eton
that night as we all sat together in tn
cleaning discus sing whether he should b,
taken home with u< in the capacity Of g
guide or as a remains, that it seemed t<
me a man ought to have better sense thar
to wear his young life away trying tc
have fun with his superiors in that way.
"Why, blame it ALL" says James, "what
did you expect? You ought to know your.
self that that animal is extiuctn
"Extinck!" says James Milton Sherrod,
In shrill, angry tones. 81 shoull say he
was extinck. That's what we're kickin'
about. What gallded me was that you
should of waited till the old cuss was ex-
timex before you come to US like a man and
told us about it. You pull US through the
sand for a week and blister our heels and
condemn near kill US, and all the time you
know that the blame brute is layin' there
in the hot sun gettin' more and m ore ex-
timex every minute. Fun is fun, and
like a little nonsense now and then just a
well Is you do, but l'll be eternally banish-
ed to Bitter creek il I think it's square ol
right or white to play it on your friend
this kind of a way.
SYou claim that the animal has beer
dead goin' on five thousand years, or som,
such thing as that, and try to get out of 4
that way, but long as you knew it and W,
didn't, it shows that you're a low cuss no
to speak of it.
"What difference does it make to US,
say, whether this brute was or was no
dead and swelled up like a pizen'd steer
long before More got his zoologickle show
together? We didn't know it. w,
haven't seen the Salt Lake papers TO
weeks. You use your edjecation to foe
people with. My opinion is that the da,
is not far distant when you will wake ul
and find yourself in the bottom of an un
timely grave.
"You bring us a hundred and fifty mile
to look at an old bone pile oil tranple
into the ground and then say that the ami
NAL is extinck. That's a great way to tai
to an old man, a man old enough to b
your grandfather. Probly you cacklat
that it is a rare treat for an old-timer lik
me to waller through from Green river {
the Yallerstone and then hear a younj
kangaroo with a moth eaten eyebrow un
der his nose burst forth into a rollickini
laugh and say that the animal we've beei
trailin' for Eve days is eItinck.
"I just want to say to you. James Trilo
bite Eaton, and say 1t for your good, an
say it with no prejudice against you, 70
Iwant to see you succeed, that il this eve
happens agin, and you are the party +
blame, you will wake up with a wild star
on the follern' day and find yourself
good deal extincker than this here oil
busted lizard is"