Melody Herr
Summer of
Discovery
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Melody Herr
Summer of
Discovery
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Summer of Discovery Melody Herr
University of Nebraska Press ¦ Lincoln and London
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© 2006 by the Board of Regents
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of the University of Nebraska.
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All rights reserved
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Manufactured in the United States
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⬁ of America 䡬
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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Herr, Melody.
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Summer of discovery / Melody Herr.
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p. cm.
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Summary: In the rural Midwest during
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the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, two
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fourteen-year-old boys join an
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archaeological dig and unearth the story hunters through the final days of the Indian Wars. Includes bibliographical references.
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isbn-13: 978-0-8032-7362-7 (pbk.: alk. paper)
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isbn-10: 0-8032-7362-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)
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[1. Archaeology—Fiction.
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Fiction.
22 23 24
2. Excavations (Archaeology)—
4. Great Plains—History—Fiction. 1931–1939—Fiction.] I. Title. pz7.h4321345su 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005016726
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Set in New Century
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Schoolbook by Bob Reitz.
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Designed by A. Shahan.
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Printed by Edwards Brothers, Inc.
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3. Indians of North America—Great Plains—Fiction.
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of the Great Plains peoples, from the Ice Age
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[-4], (4)
5. Dust Bowl Era,
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1 Dust Storm
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5 The News Office
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9 Discovery
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15 Bones
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21 Ice Age Hunters
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25 The First People
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29 Ash Hollow Cave
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35 Digging into Time
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41 Rescue!
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47 Tool-Makers of Ash Hollow
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51 The Buried City
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Contents
65 The Scientists 69 Search for an American Explorer 73 Pike’s Trail
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81 American Cowboy
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87 The First Horse
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91 Fort Robinson
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97 Mr. Daley’s Own Story
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101 A New World
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105 Author’s Note
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61 The Hermit and the Sack of Corn
77 The Final Clue
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55 Wild Fire!
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109 Sources
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Summer of Discovery
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Dust Storm
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a f l a s h i n g b l ac k c l o u d rolled across the Nebraska prai-
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rie. Gaining speed, it rushed on the town.
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Dave never saw the storm coming. Usually he kept an eye
22
on the wind, but just then he was searching the ground. It was
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the first day of summer vacation, and he and Ben were hunting
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for Indian arrowheads in the empty fields. The harsh, hot wind
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had turned the earth to dust. Here and there, it had dug pits
26
as big as bathtubs that the farmers called “blow-outs.”
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Dave was scanning the ground so closely he didn’t feel the
28
wind pushing harder and harder against his back. Suddenly,
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the dirt was whipping in circles at his feet. He looked around.
30
Little tornadoes were spinning all over the field. At that mo-
31
ment, the black cloud struck.
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“Ben! Ben!” he called into the hissing air.
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“Over here! Come on!” Ben yelled.
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Dave took three steps toward the voice, then the wind threw 1
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him down. Wicked, swirling dust scratched his eyes and ripped
2
his throat. Helpless to run or fight back, he pressed his hands
3
over his face and tucked his head against his knees.
4
He felt someone grab his elbow. “Go!” Ben’s order sounded
5
like a faraway echo. With the air pounding and the ground
6
exploding, the boys crawled on their stomachs as though they
7
were soldiers crossing a battlefield. They had gone only a few
8
yards when Dave reached into emptiness. He felt with both
9
hands. There was nothing. Had the storm blown them to the
10
edge of the earth? Before he could yell a warning, he felt a
11
shove. Over the edge he plunged.
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Ben landed next to him at the bottom of the blow-out. There they lay, face down, coughing and panting while overhead the storm continued its attack. Dave closed his eyes, switched off his thoughts, and let his body go numb.
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——— Normal P the grit from his eyes, he looked around. The storm had passed * PgEnds: and the dust was falling. How long had he been lying there? “Man, you look terrible!” Ben was already on his feet. [2], (2) “No worse than you do,” Dave retorted. “Thanks for shoving me into this hole. You probably saved my life.” “Anytime, pal.” The boys grinned, but they both knew how lucky they were. A dust storm could drown a herd of cattle. Dusters were more deadly than snow blizzards and less predictable. They could strike anytime. Western Nebraska had had very little rain for several years. The prairie grass wilted and the corn shriveled under the cruel sun. With no roots to anchor it, the soil blew across the Great Plains at the whim of the wind. The sandy drifts heaped up by the storm made Dave think of desert dunes as he and Ben searched the abandoned field for their bikes. They found one beside the fencepost where they Some time later, Dave rolled onto his back, sneezing. Wiping
2
1
had parked. The paint was scratched and the frame had some
2
new dents. Otherwise, Dave’s bike had survived.
3
Ben’s bike was gone. On the rim of the blow-out, he picked
4
up two orange streamers from the handlebars. Nearby, the tip
5
of a pedal was poking through the ground. The boys dug with
6
their hands and feet around the spot but all they could find
7
was that one pedal.
8 9
“What kind of archaeologists are we anyway?” Ben grumped. “We can’t even find a bicycle!”
10
“We’ll look again tomorrow,” Dave answered. “The wind
11
buried it; we’ll just let the wind dig up it again. Come on, we’d
12
better hurry.” He pushed his bike toward the road while his
13
friend scanned the field once more.
14
On the way home, the boys made plans for the future when
15
they would be real archaeologists. They imagined the thrill of
16
excavating the buried city of Pompeii or exploring the rubble
17
of a Roman palace. Most of all, they dreamed of discovering a
18
secret tomb in Egypt and following the maze of tunnels to the
19
mummy. Their pharaoh would be even richer than the famous
20
King Tut.
21
With their minds in distant places, they passed the “Wel-
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come to Bridgeport” sign. Bridgeport looked like a miniature
23
town for a toy train set. It had a bank, a post office, a school, a
24
church, a newspaper office, two stores, and some houses
25
the buildings necessary for a town but nothing extra. Ben
26
stopped in front of the newspaper office, and Dave dragged
27
himself back to everyday reality. It was May 1939. He was
28
David Fletcher, fourteen years old; and he had just survived
29
a duster. Now, here he was, back in his hometown, with his
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beat-up bike and his friend Ben Watson.
31 32
all
“We’ll start searching for your bike first thing tomorrow,” Dave promised Ben.
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“Can’t. Have to get the paper out.”
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The Watson family ran the Bridgeport Reporter. It appeared d u s t s to r m
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twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday. Ben spent Tuesday
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and Friday checking last-minute news, setting up the press,
3
and printing the huge pages. Late in the evening, he delivered
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the papers so the townsfolk would have fresh news with their
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morning coffee.
6
“Let me help, Ben. Dad’s store isn’t too busy these days. He
7
won’t need me much this summer.” Dave’s father sold hard-
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ware and farm machinery. Business had been very slow since
9
the drought because farmers could not afford new tractors or
10
plows. They mended their old equipment and tried to make do.
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Dave liked helping at the newspaper office where the ac-
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tion never stopped. At any moment, exciting news might burst
13
through the door.
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The News Office
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t h e n e x t m o r n i n g dav e hurried through his chores at the
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hardware store and raced over to the newspaper office. Every-
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thing was in noisy motion. A fan hummed on the front counter.
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The clock on the wall rang eight thirty while the radio on the
23
table below played a jazz tune. At the center of the office, a
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typewriter chattered loudly. Every few seconds the bell pinged
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and the machine paused for a breath. Then the roller zoomed
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back to its starting place and pattered on again.
27
“Hey there, Louise!”
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The typist jumped. “David Fletcher! What’s the news?”
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“No news
not yet, anyway. I came to help.”
30
“Well, then, come on back.” Her fingers poised on the key-
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board, Louise swept her chin toward the doorway to the print-
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ing room. “Ben’s greasing . . .” Her lips moved but Dave heard
33
only the voice of the typewriter.
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He lifted a hook in the wall and the counter split open as 5
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he pulled the left end toward him. He scooted through as the
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counter swung shut behind him. He liked Ben’s cousin Louise;
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but when she was writing, nothing could interrupt her. Some-
4
day she would marry that old typewriter.
5
Dave could really handle a grease gun. He used one all the
6
time on the farm machinery at the store, and so he took over
7
greasing the printing press. Meanwhile, Ben set the type. He
8
picked the tiny metal cubes of letters, one by one, from the
9
alphabet bins and spelled out a news story on the printing
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plate. The strings of sentences looked backward because, when
11
the inky plate stamped the paper, the words would come out in
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reverse. The process reminded him of making linoleum blocks
13
in art class and the way the printed picture faced the opposite
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direction of the carved picture.
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“Not much news in tomorrow’s paper.” Ben measured the
16
empty space on the plate with his thumb and little finger.
17
“Louise will have to cook up some headlines.”
18
“We’ll get her a real front-page story
or make the news
19
ourselves!” Dave declared, scrubbing the grease from his
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hands.
21
“Yesterday we almost got our names in the paper
in the
22
obituary column, that is,” Ben grinned. “I don’t want to be an
23
accident. If we’re going to make news, let’s be heroes!”
24
The boys waved to Louise on their way to the door. Outside,
25
Ben turned toward the post office while Dave aimed his bike
26
for the railroad station.
27
At the post office, men crowded around a poster with the
28
latest report from Washington dc. Once the capital city had
29
seemed far away from Bridgeport but hard times had brought
30
it close. When dust from the Great Plains blew into the White
31
House, the president sent a team of experts to study the prob-
32
lem. Now Washington seemed just down the road. Decisions
33
made there mattered. In fact, they mattered enough to cause
34
arguments between neighbors who had never before bothered 6
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about politics. Today congressmen were debating a new farm
2
policy; and at the Bridgeport post office, townsfolk and farmers
3
were debating it too.
4
“I’m glad for the help,” a skinny man in patched overalls was
5
saying. “Without those government checks, I would have lost
6
my farm two years ago. What would I have done then? I’ve got
7
six little kids.”
8
“Those big boys from Washington just want to boss us
9
around,” answered a sunburned man with mud on his boots.
10
“If you want a check, you have to follow their rules. Plow your
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
fields this way. Plant this kind of seed. I’ve been farming since I could walk
[7], (7)
I don’t need those city boys telling me anything!”
“That’s right! Those government agents blame us for the drought. They offer to pay us for not planting our crops! I think they want to shut us down for good,” added another farmer.
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——— Normal Pa gressmen can’t make up their minds. They won’t let us starve, * PgEnds: E but they won’t give us enough help to get back on our feet.” “What do you know about it? You spend the whole day in [7], (7) your cozy barbershop,” the sunburned man demanded. The barber still spoke calmly. “Everyone in Bridgeport bankers, plumbers, shopkeepers, teachers, librarians, mechanics, doctors depends on the business of farming. A bad year for you means a bad year for all of us.” The postmaster nodded in agreement as she handed the Watsons’ mail to Ben. As he left the post office, he could hear the debate still going on. “It seems to me,” the barber said calmly, “that those con-
30 31
Far down the street, Dave turned into the railroad station and
32
leaned his bike against the wooden stairs. Planting his foot
33
on the edge of the porch, he swung over the low railing. Then,
34
trying to look businesslike, he strode into the telegraph office. the news office
7
1 2
“I’m with the Bridgeport Reporter,” he told the clerk. “What’s the news?”
3
“Miss Watson came for the latest national bulletin early
4
this morning. There’s no more news today.” The clerk always
5
sounded grouchy. Without looking up, he pulled a telegram
6
from a stack on the left corner of his desk. He stamped the
7
blue-grey card with the date, then plopped it on another stack
8
on the right corner. Thumping the stamp into the ink pad, he
9
took another telegram, stamped it, and stacked it.
10
Dave waited one moment longer, then silently turned and
11
left. He was already riding up the street when he heard a
12
shout. He glanced over his shoulder. The clerk stood on the
13
porch, waving one of the blue-grey cards.
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Braking sharply, Dave pivoted his bike. The clerk met him
15
at the bottom of the stairs. “This telegram just came for Miss
16
Watson. Please deliver it.”
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18 19 20 21
“Yes, indeed.” Dave snuggled the card into his pocket. Who-
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Discovery
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‘‘discovery
hot on the trail
Coming tonight.” That was
the whole telegram, just seven words. The sender’s name added just one more: Daley. Dave had no clue who Daley was or what this strange message meant. Ben looked puzzled too. But Louise seemed to know exactly what the telegram was all about. “Mr. Daley,” she explained, “was our next-door neighbor when my folks lived in Lincoln. He works at the history museum.” “But why is he coming here?” Ben asked. “What is this ‘discovery’?” “You’ll have to ask him,” Louise grinned mysteriously. The clock struck twelve. “We’d better get hot on that deadline!”
33
The three rushed to work with sandwiches in their hands.
34
Back in the press room, Dave and Ben continued setting type. 9
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1
“Do you know Mr. Daley?” Dave asked, picking through a box
2
for a dollar sign.
3
“Never heard of him.” Ben pretended not to care. To tell
4
the truth, he was itching to find out more. “It figures, though,
5
Louise would be friends with an old guy who works for a mu-
6
seum.”
7
When the drought ended and good times returned, Louise
8
planned to study history at the University of Nebraska. Until
9
then, she was doing research in the newspaper collection at the
10
town library and interviewing elderly pioneers who remem-
11
bered the frontier days. She wrote feature stories for the Re-
12
porter on battles, blizzards, elections, robberies, trading posts,
13
cattle drives, wagon trains, and railroads. Someday, Dave
14
thought, Louise would write a whole book
15
of books.
no, a whole shelf
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Late that evening, Dave and Ben sat on the Watsons’ porch
18
drinking iced tea and making plans. As the boys were talking,
19
a car stopped in front of the house. The driver stood and leaned
20
across the car’s roof to check the house number, then strode up
21
the sidewalk toward the boys. “Good evening. I’m looking for
22
Louise Watson.”
23
From inside the house, Louise must have heard the car be-
24
cause, just as Ben stood to call her, she came out the front door.
25
“Mr. Daley! How are you? What’s the news?”
26 27
[10], (10)
“The news? Archaeology, of course. A gang of workers made a discovery, and the foreman asked me to take a look.”
28
“Who? Where? When?” Louise caught herself and laughed.
29
“Sorry, I’m turning into a reporter. Won’t you sit down and tell
30
us your story?” She poured a glass of tea while Mr. Daley sat
31
on a chair beside the front window where light from the lamp
32
inside shone on his face.
33
That face surprised Dave. He had pictured Mr. Daley as a
34
wrinkled old man, but his face did not look old. It looked well 10
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used, worn in the hard-working spots like a favorite baseball
2
glove. The mouth and eyes had tiny folds around the edges and
3
the tanned cheeks were rough. Above the forehead, the skin
4
was shiny smooth where a patch of hair had rubbed off.
5
Mr. Daley tugged a slip of paper and a pair of glasses from
6
his shirt pocket. He read the message silently, as if to check the
7
facts once more. Yesterday, he explained, a road construction
8
team working near the town of Scottsbluff had found some
9
giant arrowheads. The foreman had immediately called Mr.
10
Daley.
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Mr. Daley turned to Ben and Dave. “I hear that you two are archaeologists. Is that right?”
[11], (11)
“That’s right. I mean, we’re going to be archaeologists,” Ben
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answered. Dave nodded. “Good. Unless you have other plans for the next few days, I Dave couldn’t say anything: he was too astonished. Luckily, Ben answered for both of them. “When do we start?”
19 20
At eight o’clock the next morning, Dave and Ben loaded their
21
camping gear into Mr. Daley’s trunk and climbed into the back
22
seat. They drove northwest along the North Platte River and
23
reached Scottsbluff around noon. A gas station owner gave Mr.
24
Daley directions to the construction site.
25
The foreman waved eagerly when he saw the car. Mr. Da-
26
ley greeted him and introduced Ben and Dave. As Foreman
27
Roberts led them down to the creek, he explained that two days
28
ago, while eating lunch beside the creek, one of the workmen
29
had spotted a pointed stone poking out of the sand. It turned
30
out to be an arrowhead, the biggest arrowhead he had ever
31
seen. He showed it to the other workers. Within an hour, they
32
found two more.
33
The foreman took a bandana from his overalls pocket and
34
unwrapped the artifacts. One by one, he handed them to Mr. d i s c ov e ry
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could use your help on this trip. What do you say?”
11
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Daley. They were long and flat with sharp edges; a finger-sized
2
groove ran from base to tip on each side.
3
“These are too large to be arrowheads,” Mr. Daley decided
4
after he had examined the artifacts closely. “They must be
5
spear points.”
6 7
They look deadly enough to kill a huge beast, Dave thought. Yet somehow they seemed graceful too.
8
Mr. Daley pulled a pencil and a notepad from his pocket.
9
“Now I need to ask a few questions. Exactly where did you
10
find the artifacts? Were they all lying in the sand or were some
11
stuck in the bank? Did you find any bones or pottery or metal
12
tools?”
13
“We searched this side of the creek from that dead tree
14
downstream to that bend upstream.” Foreman Roberts pointed
15
with his hat. “I guess we were so excited that we didn’t pay
16
attention to anything else. Do you need all that information?”
17
“Yes, indeed. The artifact itself is important evidence, but
18
where it was found, how deeply it was buried, and what other
19
objects were nearby also give us clues,” Mr. Daley explained.
20
“Let’s see what we can find now.” He and the foreman walked
21
toward the bend in the creek.
22
Dave and Ben headed in the opposite direction. Something
23
on the ground glittered. Dave ran over and brushed away the
24
sand. It was only a river clam’s broken shell. Disappointed, he
25
tossed it into the water.
26
Ben leaned down and picked up a black stone. He looked
27
at it closely then dropped it again. “A dumb old rock,” he told
28
Dave. “Strike two.” They laughed at themselves.
29
Dave started to think. An archaeologist needed to know
30
where an artifact was found. If it was lying on the shore, there
31
was no way to tell where it had come from. It might have fallen
32
from the overhanging bank or washed downstream from miles
33
away. But if it was still in the ground, he could be sure exactly
34
where it came from. 12
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Dave told Ben his idea, and they began searching the creek
2
bank. Working as a team, Ben stayed beside the water and
3
examined the wall of the bank while Dave inspected the slope
4
above.
5
Slowly and carefully, Dave scanned every bit of ground,
6
strip by strip. A round, greyish-white spot caught his eye. “An-
7
other shell,” he mumbled. He wouldn’t let a clam trick him this
8
time. Then he stopped. Why was a shell up here, so far from
9
the water? He rubbed away some dirt; the spot grew bigger. It
10
was not a shell.
11
With a stick, Dave pried away more dirt. The greyish-white
12
object was hard, long, and smooth, like a bone. He dug around
13
it a little more. It was a bone! An old bone from a gigantic
14
animal!
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Bones
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dav e s h o u t e d . m r . da l e y and Foreman Roberts came run-
20
ning. Ben scrambled up the creek bank and raced off for a
21
shovel. In a moment he was back, ready to start digging.
22
“Just a minute there!” Mr. Daley ordered. “Not so fast! Ar-
23
chaeologists follow procedures. First, we take notes.” He
24
handed Dave the pencil and notebook. “This will be your field
25
journal. Write the date and the place where we are working.
26
Next, sketch a map.”
27
Dave drew three wiggly lines and labeled them “creek.” He
28
added a crowd of triangles for the bushes and bumpy circles
29
for the three boulders nearby. From the position of the sun,
30
he figured out which direction was north and drew an arrow
31
topped with a capital N. Finally, he marked the bone with a
32
big star.
33
While Dave sketched the map, Ben made a grid on the
34
ground. Using a measuring tape, he drew a square six feet15
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by-six feet and pounded a short peg into each corner. Along
2
the four sides, he marked the one-foot, two-feet, three-feet,
3
four-feet, and five-feet points with iron stakes. With a piece of
4
string, he connected each stake with its twin on the opposite
5
side of the square. When he finished, the big square had thirty-
6
six little squares inside it.
7
Ben and Dave copied this set of squares on graph paper.
8
Across the top, they wrote letters for the vertical rows. Down
9
the left side, they numbered the horizontal rows. Every square
10
had a letter for its first name and a number for its last name,
11
like the squares on a bingo card. Dave’s bone was in c3.
12
“Now we dig,” Mr. Daley announced.
13
“Finally!” Ben grumbled under his breath. To him, all these
14
procedures seemed like a silly waste of time.
15
Each chose a block of the grid and set to work with trowels
16
and brushes. Soon it was clear that Dave had discovered the
17
skeleton of some kind of big animal. As he scraped away the
18
sandy soil, he gradually uncovered ribs and a shoulder blade.
19
Mr. Daley cleared the dirt from the back legs while Foreman
20
Roberts worked out more of the animal’s ribs and a few verte-
21
brae of its backbone.
22
Ben found the skull. It had two thick horns, a long snout,
23
and two rows of blunt teeth. He and Dave stared at it sadly.
24
They had been hoping for a rare fossil, maybe even a dinosaur.
25
But all they had found was a buffalo.
26 27
“Should we quit, Mr. Daley?” Dave asked. “If you want a buffalo skeleton, we can get one anywhere.”
28
“This isn’t an ordinary buffalo. The skull is much bigger
29
than usual. See these giant horns?” Mr. Daley knelt down and
30
spread his arms. “See how far they reach from tip to tip? Your
31
buffalo is actually the buffalo’s ancestor. It belongs to a pre-
32
historic species that lived during the Ice Age but then became
33
extinct, like the elephant’s shaggy relative the mammoth.
34
“When we finish clearing away the dirt, we’ll ship the skull 16
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1
back to the University of Nebraska State Museum. The scien-
2
tist there will tell us exactly what bison species we found and
3
when it lived here on the Great Plains. Then we can estimate
4
how old this skeleton is.”
5
At least it’s a very old, very big buffalo, Dave told himself.
6
On the squares of the grid in his notebook, he drew the bones
7
showing through ground, then went back to work.
8
When he had loosened all the dirt, he dusted the skeleton
9
with a small paintbrush. As he worked around the shoulder
10
blade, the bone slipped just enough to reveal something hid-
11
ing under it. There, where the ribs joined the backbone, lay a
12
spearhead.
13
It was long and flat and grooved like the ones the road
14
crew had found. Its tip stuck between two vertebrae, and Dave
15
didn’t dare pull it loose. Trying to sound calm, he called to Ben. “Hey! A spearhead!” Ben yelled when he saw it.
17
Mr. Daley hurried over to look. “You found a spearhead?
19
Where?” Dave pointed.
20
Mr. Daley got down on his hands and knees. Leaning for-
21
ward until his nose almost touched the ground, he looked
22
closely at the spearhead. He sat up; he blinked and rubbed
23
his eyes. He put on his glasses and looked again. Foreman
24
Roberts came too. The two men almost bumped heads as they
25
examined the spearhead.
26
“Dave, this is a great discovery,” Mr. Daley said. “The spear-
27
head buried inside the skeleton proves beyond a doubt that
28
humans and this species of bison lived on the Great Plains at
29
the very same time. Humans lived here during the Ice Age!”
30 31
That very night, Mr. Daley sent telegrams around the country.
32
The next morning, Louise arrived first to write a story for the
33
Bridgeport Reporter. Soon newspaper reporters were swarm-
34
ing into Scottsbluff. They crowded around and shouted quesbones
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16 18
[17], (17)
17
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1
tions at Mr. Daley. They interviewed Foreman Roberts and
2
the men on the road crew. When they tried to interview Dave,
3
Ben did all the talking. Dave just stood there, blushing and
4
embarrassed, feeling stupid, until Louise pulled him aside.
5
“Will you take a few pictures for me?” she asked. Dave be-
6
longed to the photography club at school. The other guys
7
teased him because he was the only boy in the club, but last
8
year he had won the grand prize in the state art contest. Luck-
9
ily, he had packed his Kodak. He took pictures of the whole
10
skeleton and close-ups of the spearhead. As soon as Mr. Daley
11
saw Dave’s camera, he asked for a few photos too.
12
A group of paleontologists from the Smithsonian Institu-
13
tion, who were working nearby at the fossil beds on Agate
14
Springs Ranch, arrived late in the afternoon. Mr. Daley
15
wanted these experts to certify that the discovery was gen-
16
uine
17
examined the skeleton and the spearhead. They particularly
18
asked to see the notebook and the drawings to check that the
19
archaeology team had followed all the procedures.
not a fake. The scientists inspected the creek bed. They
20
At last the experts were absolutely convinced that Dave had
21
truly found the spearhead stuck in the bones in the ground
22
exactly as they saw it. They shook his hand and signed their
23
names in his notebook as witnesses. Now no one could doubt
24
that the discovery was real.
25
Foreman Roberts brought his crew down to the creek bank
26
to pack up the bones. Mr. Daley showed the workmen how
27
to cut the soil into large blocks and wrap them in a layer
28
of papier-mâché. The men gently lifted the blocks from the
29
ground and loaded them into the company truck. The driver
30
had orders to deliver them to the train station and ship them
31
to the museum in Lincoln.
32
It was hard to picture the bones behind glass in a museum
33
when they had been buried in the ground since the Ice Age.
34
What had the creek bank looked like thousands of years ago? 18
[18], (18)
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1
Dave tried to imagine the scene. A herd of buffalo stood in
2
a pack; their woolly bodies made a wall against the freezing
3
wind. Standing on the edge of the pack, a bull spied a patch of
4
grass and trotted over for a few bites.
5
Now the hunters seized their chance. At a signal from their
6
leader, they silently circled the bull. Then, yelling and waving
7
their arms, they closed in. The bull ran toward the herd, but
8
the hunters blocked his path. He spun around, looking for a
9
way to escape. The ring of spears was tightening around him.
10
Trapped!
11
Suddenly, one side of the ring split open. He could see the
12
creek, and he charged toward safety. He had almost reached
13
the bank when a man leaped from behind a rock. As the animal
14
thundered past, the hunter rammed his spear high into the
15
hairy chest.
[19], (19)
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273.552
16
*
17
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18 19 20
[19], (19)
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 bones
19
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
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[20], (20)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
[21], (21)
12 13 14
Ice Age Hunters
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15
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16
——— Normal Pa * PgEnds: E
17 18 19
mr. daley poured popcorn into the long-handled wire bas-
20
ket and laid it on the ring of hot stones around the fire. Soon
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
the kernels were banging and bouncing against their cage. He dumped them into a kettle, stirred in melted butter, and added two shakes of salt. That crispy popcorn was so good! Dave wished he hadn’t eaten so much dinner. He nibbled the kernels one by one. Ben, of course, was hungry again. He helped himself to a
28
huge bowlful of popcorn. “Louise says you’re a great storyteller,
29
Mr. Daley. Do you have a campfire tale?”
30 31 32 33 34
“Louise tells a pretty good story herself.” Mr. Daley smiled at her across the fire. “Maybe she has one for tonight.” “Aw, her stories are just history lessons in disguise,” Ben complained. Louise laughed. “I always like true stories best, especially 21
[21], (21)
1
true stories about the past. Why don’t you tell us about the
2
hunters who speared the bison Dave and Ben discovered?”
3 4
“What do you mean when you say ‘true’?” Mr. Daley countered.
5
What a strange question! Louise looked at him in surprise.
6
“Facts! I mean a story based on facts. What else could ‘true’
7
mean?”
8
Mr. Daley swallowed a sip of coffee. “ ‘Truth’ has more than
9
one definition. I will tell you two stories. They are very differ-
10
ent; but in its own way, each is true. Then you will see what I
11
mean.
12
“Let’s start with the story that archaeologists tell about
13
the first Americans. It is based on the discoveries made so
14
far
15
years, new discoveries will add more facts. Archaeologists will
16
always be rewriting the story.” Mr. Daley stretched one leg
17
toward the fire and began.
what we call the ‘facts.’ But next week, next year, in ten
18
The very first humans lived on the other side of the world,
19
somewhere in Africa. They lived in small family groups and
20
constantly moved from place to place as they gathered berries,
21
nuts, and wild plants. They collected birds’ eggs and caught
22
fish, turtles, and other small animals for meat because hunting
23
large game was difficult and dangerous.
24
For tools and weapons, those first humans used whatever
25
stick or stone was close to hand. They quickly discovered,
26
though, that certain shapes worked best for certain jobs.
27
Pointed tips were for digging, sharp edges for cutting, and
28
round, smooth sides for pounding. After a while, men and wom-
29
en began to make hoes, knives, and hammers from wood and
30
bone. It took a long time for tool-makers to master the skills
31
for working with stone because it is harder to shape.
32
As the population grew, families moved to new lands. Hu-
33
mans gradually spread north toward the Mediterranean Sea,
34
west into Europe, and east into Asia. All the while, over thou22
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1
sands of years, the climate was changing. The warm, dry
2
weather of the early days in Africa gave way to the Ice Age.
3
Frozen rivers called glaciers covered parts of the world. Many
4
kinds of plants and animals disappeared; only those suited to
5
cold, wintery weather survived. Humans adjusted more easily
6
because they learned to eat different foods, make furs into
7
clothing, and build fires for heat.
8
By this time, people had traveled to the far side of Asia,
9
all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Only now it wasn’t much
10
of an ocean. With so much water trapped in ice, the ocean
11
level dropped, uncovering a wide strip of land that connected
12
Asia to North America. Group by group, over a long period of
13
time, humans crossed this land bridge. They gradually moved
14
eastward across North America all the way to the Atlantic
15
Ocean on the other side. They also headed into Mexico, Central
16
America, and far down to the tip of South America. And, as
17
they spread across the Americas, many groups passed through
18
the Great Plains.
19 20
Mr. Daley held up one of the grooved spearheads. “This is one of the oldest types of artifacts found in North America.”
21
Dave tested the stone edge with his finger. It was still sharp,
22
and he could imagine it shining on the hunter’s spear. “How old
23
do you think it is?” he asked.
24
Mr. Daley thought for a moment. “According to our best
25
guess, the Folsom people who made these spearheads lived
26
here about ten thousand years ago. Another group, the Clovis
27
people, probably came a few thousand years earlier, during
28
the end of the Ice Age. Both the Clovis and the Folsom peo-
29
ples were nomads who spent their lives always on the move.
30
They made stone spearheads and knives, and they used ani-
31
mal skins. That’s about all we really know
so far.”
32
“So far, all we know so far . . . ,” Ben repeated slowly. He
33
stared past the fire, out toward the dark prairie, and tried to
34
imagine that chilly world. ice age hunters
23
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[24], (24)
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
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[24], (24)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
[First Page
11
[25], (1)
12 13 14
The First People
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15
———
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16 17 18 19 20
‘‘you promised us two stories,’’ Dave reminded Mr. Daley. “What about the other one?”
21
“Ah, yes. American Indians have their own explanations for
22
how humans arrived here. I will tell you one of their stories.”
23
“You mean ‘myths,’ ” Louise interrupted.
24
“Call them ‘myths,’ if you like. But in their own way, they are
25
as true as the stories told by archaeologists, the stories based
26
on scientific facts.” Mr. Daley filled his cup with coffee. “Here
27
is a story told by the Kiowas. Saynday, the main character,
28
appears in many of their tales.”
29 30
Everywhere Saynday went, he banged into someone or some-
31
one banged into him because the place was so dark and so
32
crowded. Finally, he decided that he had to do something and
33
called for a meeting. Still colliding with each other because
34
they couldn’t see, the people headed toward the sound of his 25
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [25], (1)
1
voice. Afraid that he would be knocked down by the crowd,
2
Saynday reached out his hand. He touched something rough.
3
“What is this?” he wondered, as he felt it over carefully. It
4
was tall, round, and rough on all sides. It was a tree trunk! And
5
at the bottom, Saynday discovered a hole just large enough for
6
him to crawl through.
7
“Follow me!” he shouted. “Everyone hold hands and follow
8
me!” Then he crawled into the hole and began to climb up the
9
inside of the tree. The others followed, but they could not hold
10
hands any more because they needed both hands for climbing.
11
After a long time, Saynday saw a tiny spot of light above
12
him. He kept climbing until he reached another hole in the
13
trunk. Slipping through, he found himself standing on the
14
ground. It was daylight! The others came out of the tree, one
15
by one, laughing with joy because they had escaped from the
16
dark, underground place. They saw a river, a grassy prairie,
17
and herds of deer and antelope. Right then and there, Saynday
18
and his people decided to make this sunny world their new
19
home.
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“That’s a good campfire story, Mr. Daley, but how can you say
22
that it’s true?” Louise insisted.
23
“It’s true because it explains mysteries that the facts can’t
24
explain. It offers a way to understand nature’s riddles.” Mr.
25
Daley glanced around the fire at three puzzled faces. “Let me
26
give you an example. In another version of the story I just told
27
you, when the people climbed through a hollow log, a pregnant
28
woman got stuck. No one behind her could travel through to
29
the new world. For this reason, the Kiowas say, their tribe was
30
always small.”
31
“Do you mean,” Dave asked, “that the story about Saynday
32
is like one of the tales about Pecos Bill? You know, the cowboy
33
who rode the cyclone that made Death Valley and the Grand
34
Canyon?” 26
[26], (2)
1
“You’re on the right track, Dave,” Mr. Daley encouraged him.
2
“But for the Kiowas, this story also holds a powerful, spiritual
3
meaning, a meaning that we, in our culture, don’t grant to tall
4
tales.
5
“Each tribe has a different story about the beginnings of
6
the world and the first people. The Crows tell about a duck
7
diving deep underwater to bring up a mouthful of mud so that
8
Old-Man-Who-Did-Everything could make land, animals, and
9
humans. The Pawnees say the stars gave birth to a girl and
10
a boy who started a human family. According to the Osages,
11
a girl beaver married a snail. Since their children could be
12
neither beavers nor snails, they became humans.
13
“Hearing the stories of his or her own tribe gives an Ameri-
14
can Indian a sense of identity, of pride in belonging to a special
15
group. This feeling adds yet another layer of meaning,” Mr.
16
Daley concluded.
17 18
do you know what they mean to Indians?”
19
“I lived among Indians when I was growing up,” Mr. Daley
20
answered softly. “I saw that their own culture gave them self-
21
respect and dignity, in spite of the hardships that they faced.”
22
Mr. Daley looked so sad and thoughtful that, although Dave
23
wanted to ask more questions, he decided to keep quiet. Maybe
24
Mr. Daley would tell Ben and Dave more later, when he knew
25
them better. After all, they had met only two days ago.
26
Louise broke the silence. “Now I understand what it means
27
to say that ‘truth’ has several meanings. The facts seem so cold
28
and bare
next to these stories.”
29
Had Louise the reporter, Louise the historian, Louise the
30
matter-of-fact young woman really admitted that facts might
31
be boring? Dave couldn’t believe his ears.
32
Ben grinned; he could never resist the chance to tease his
33
cousin. “I don’t know. That Ice Age buffalo with the spearhead
34
in its shoulder was pretty interesting. If you don’t think so, the first people
Lines: 41 t ———
0.0pt Pg
“How do you know all these stories?” Dave asked. “And how
even boring
[27], (3)
27
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [27], (3)
1
Dave and I will just have to find something a little more excit-
2
ing. What do you say, Dave?”
3
But Mr. Daley, his face brightening, spoke first. “I hope that
4
you boys will count me in too! I was planning to investigate
5
a few places this summer, and we three archaeologists could
6
work together.”
7 8
“You bet!” Dave and Ben answered, almost in unison. It was going to be a summer of discovery!
9 10 11
[28], (4)
12 13 14
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15
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16
*
17
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
[29], (5)
12 13 14
Ash Hollow Cave
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15
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16 17 18 19
dave rolled down the window until the glass disappeared.
20
He folded his arms behind his head and poked his feet under
21
the front seat. He yawned and glanced over at Ben, curled
22
against the other side of the car. They had not slept much the
23
past two nights; they had been too busy and too excited about
24
going on Mr. Daley’s archaeological expedition.
25
It was a volunteer job, but they did not mind working with-
26
out pay. Here was a chance for an all-summer camping trip.
27
Dave was taking his camera with the hope of shooting some
28
great pictures of the prairie and wild animals. Ben looked for-
29
ward to the hard digging because it would build his muscles for
30
football season. Best of all, they would have plenty of adven-
31
tures discovering the past peoples of the Great Plains. They
32
were on their way to becoming real archaeologists!
33
Now, after a quick stop in Bridgeport to pack for the long
34
trip and a promise to supply Louise with plenty of news stories 29
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [29], (5)
1
about their discoveries, they were on the road. The big Ford
2
hummed quietly as it rolled along the wide, smooth pavement
3
following the North Platte River. Stretched out on the back
4
seat, Dave fell asleep.
5
Suddenly there was a loud “Bang!” The car tipped to the left.
6
Dave crashed into the door. The car was bumping wildly and
7
rocking from side to side. The pavement had disappeared. The
8
road was nothing but a narrow dirt path with thick trees and
9
tangled vines on both sides. A deep canyon lay straight ahead.
10
Mr. Daley was gripping the wheel tightly with one hand and
11
the gear shift with the other. His face was white and sweaty.
12
“We hit a rock. A tire blew.” He pushed the brake, let it up, and
13
pushed it again. “The brakes won’t stop us on this hill. We’ll
14
have to ride it out.”
15
Like a roller coaster gone wild, the car roared into the can-
16
yon. Dave watched the speedometer needle swing. Ben stared
17
at the trailer rumbling behind them. Mr. Daley wrestled the
18
wheel, fighting to stay on the road. It was a long way down.
19
Near the bottom of the canyon, the road began to level out.
20
Mr. Daley gradually stopped the car on the sandy banks of the
21
river. He sighed and wiped his face with a handkerchief. “What
22
a ride!”
23
With the boys’ help, he changed the flat tire. Then they got
24
back into the car and drove across the wooden bridge. On the
25
other side, they passed a sign printed in large black letters:
26
“Ash Hollow.”
27 28
“Here we are,” Mr. Daley announced. “Let’s make camp and eat lunch.”
29 30
An hour later, Dave was sitting on a rock, drinking lemon-
31
ade and watching a buzzard float overhead. Ash Hollow was
32
like a huge room without a ceiling. A lazy stream trickled
33
across the floor, and clumps of trees grew here and there. A
34
few vines clung to the crumbling stone walls. The bird glided 30
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1
down toward the eastern wall and landed on a dead branch in
2
front of a long fissure in the rock.
3
“What made the crack?” Dave asked.
4
Mr. Daley looked where Dave was pointing. “That’s a cave.”
5
“A cave!” Ben nearly dropped his sandwich. “Let’s go ex-
6
plore!”
7
“Of course, that’s why we came.” Mr. Daley continued to
8
eat calmly, as though he explored caves every day; but Dave
9
spotted a gleam of excitement in his eyes.
10
After lunch, Dave filled his canteen from the big water jug
11
and started for the cave. His tool bag rattled as he hiked beside
12
Mr. Daley up the rocky slope to the cliff. Ben came scurrying
13
past them. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” he yelled as he charged
14
toward the mouth of the cave.
15 16
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“Ben! Wait, Ben!” Mr. Daley called. The warning came too
———
0.0pt Pg
late.
17
With a terrifying shriek, a whirling brown ball of feathers
18
flew straight at Ben. Too startled to shout, he tumbled down
19
the slope even faster than he had scrambled up a few moments
20
before.
21
The owl followed. Dave ducked as it swooped overhead. It
22
circled and swooped again. Dropping his shovel, Mr. Daley
23
began clapping his hands. The sound echoed against the cliff
24
and thundered through the hollow. The frightened owl flew
25
into a tree.
26
“Dumb old bird.” Ben tried to hide his embarrassment. He
27
pulled himself onto the lower ledge of rock that protruded from
28
the opening in the cliff like a narrow balcony. Cautiously, he
29
crawled inside. Dave and Mr. Daley followed.
30
Dim sunlight came through the entrance, and Dave took out
31
his field journal to draw a map of the cave. It reminded him of
32
an attic. Near the front, the ceiling was high enough for a man
33
to stand up straight. Toward the back, it sloped down to meet
34
the gravelly floor. The walls on both sides were solid rock. a s h h o l l ow c av e
[31], (7)
31
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [31], (7)
1
Meanwhile, Ben staked out a grid with four squares on the
2
floor. On the right wall just above the floor, Mr. Daley drew a
3
thick line with yellow chalk and marked it “0.”
4
“What is that for?” Dave asked.
5
“Proper procedures.”
6
Ben rolled his eyes.
7
“We’re going to use the stratigraphic method,” Mr. Daley
8
continued. “When you found the buffalo skeleton, we used a
9
two-way grid to show the layout of the bones. This time we’re
10
using a three-way grid. In addition to the placement of the
11
artifacts, this grid will show us how deeply they’re buried.”
12
Mr. Daley nailed the end of a long tape measure to the chalk
13
mark. “This line is level zero
14
down one foot at a time and keep the artifacts from each level
15
separate. The younger artifacts will be in the top levels, and
16
the older ones will be deep in the lower levels.”
17 18
that is, zero feet deep. We’ll dig
wards through time.” “Exactly. So, who wants to dig and who wants to keep score?”
20
Ben and Dave flipped a coin. “Tails,” Dave called. But the
21
nickle landed heads up. He sat down and copied the grid into
22
his notebook. Across the bottom of the page, he wrote “One
23
Foot.” He drew a large box and divided it into four squares
24
labeled a1, b1, a2, and b2.
25
Then, while Ben dug a hole one foot deep in the grid on the
26
ground, Dave listed the artifacts from each square in the same
27
square of the grid on paper. There weren’t many
28
animal bones and three arrowheads with their points missing.
29
Mr. Daley brushed them off and packed them in four small
30
paper bags, also labeled like the squares of the grid.
a few odd
31
When Ben reached the two-foot marker, he and Dave traded
32
places. As they worked, the sun moved west and its rays shone
33
more brightly through the entrance. By four o’clock, the after-
34
noon sunshine fully lit the cave. 32
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0.0pt P
“I see!” Dave exclaimed. “As we dig, we’ll be traveling back-
19
[32], (8)
——— Normal P PgEnds: [32], (8)
1
Sweat turned the dust on Dave’s face and arms into a thin
2
coating of mud. Hot and sticky, he felt like a cupcake with
3
chocolate icing melting over him. He poured a little water on a
4
towel to wipe his face and looked sadly at the half-empty paper
5
bags.
6
“Let’s finish the two-foot level, then go for a swim in the
7
stream. Maybe we’ll find more tomorrow,” Dave added hope-
8
fully and knelt down again. A few minutes later, he lifted the
9
last scoop of dirt from the hole. “Here, one more funny gizmo
10
for the collection.” He handed Ben a smooth, curved gray chip.
11
“What’s this?” Ben asked, passing the artifact to Mr. Daley.
12
“It looks like a lump of baked mud with scratch marks on it.”
13
Mr. Daley rubbed it with a cloth. “Believe it or not, this
14
‘funny gizmo’ is baked mud
15
shows that some of the last people who used this cave had
16
adopted a new technology. Maybe they discovered how to make *
17
pottery on their own; maybe they learned from other peoples.
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
it’s pottery. This little shard
[33], (9)
Lines: 140 ———
99.5525
——— Normal Pa Either way, pottery was a wonderful discovery back then. And * PgEnds: Pa today, designs on pottery allow archaeologists to work out a rough time sequence and give clues about contacts among peo[33], (9) ples spread across North America.” As Dave carefully wrapped the shard in a strip of newspaper, he marveled that a little piece of baked mud could reveal so much about the past. Then he and Ben raced down the trail, tugging off their shirts as they ran. When they reached the stream, they tossed the rest of their clothes on the bank and jumped into the bright, cold water.
28 29 30 31 32 33 34 a s h h o l l ow c av e
33
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
[34], (10)
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Lines: 14 ———
0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
[34], (10)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
[35], (11)
12 13 14
Digging into Time
Lines: 150
15
———
0.0pt Pg
16 17 18 19
dave was drizzling maple syrup over his pancakes when
20
a beat-up pickup pulled into camp. A darkly tanned rancher
21
wearing
22
leaned through the window. “Hello there!”
a
faded
red
shirt
and
light
gray
overalls
23
“Welcome! Come and join us,” Mr. Daley invited. “Benjamin
24
Watson, David Fletcher, meet George Olson. He owns the
25
ranch on the south side of the hollow. He’s the one who told
26
me about the cave.”
27
“Did you find anything or did that pot-hunter destroy the
28
cave before you got here?” Mr. Olson asked as he took the cup
29
of coffee Mr. Daley offered him.
30
“No sign of a pot-hunter,” Mr. Daley answered.
31
“Good. You got here just in time then.” Mr. Olson turned
32
to the boys to explain. “One of my neighbors has taken up a
33
new hobby. He calls it ‘archaeology.’ Actually, though, he just
34
digs for fancy stuff to sell. He doesn’t understand that you 35
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [35], (11)
1
shouldn’t sell an artifact
2
a museum! And he doesn’t care that, after he ruins a site, its
3
worthless to a real archaeologist. What do you call a man like
4
that? ‘Pot-hunter’
it’s scientific evidence! It belongs in
that’s what I call him.
5
“I was afraid my neighbor Mr. McFadden would find the
6
cave. I’d planned to work there myself someday, but I don’t
7
have the expert training to do it right. So I invited Mr. Daley
8
here to do a real, scientific excavation.” Mr. Olson turned back
9
to Mr. Daley. “I hope you’ll show me what you find.”
10
“Absolutely,” Mr. Daley promised, “and you’ll be welcome at
11
the museum anytime.” Then the two men sat down with their
12
coffee to discuss the government’s new farm policies.
13
When he stood to leave, Mr. Olson asked if Ben or Dave had
14
seen his dog, a bloodhound named Sal. She was going to have
15
puppies, and she had disappeared into the hollow to be alone.
16
The rancher had expected her to come home when the pups
17
were two weeks old, the way she always did. This time, though,
18
she had been gone for more than a month. He was getting
19
worried.
20 21
“We’ll keep an eye out for her,” Ben offered. Dave nodded. A big black dog should be easy enough to spot.
22
“Good. With all of us looking, I know we’ll find Sal sooner
23
or later. Thanks again for the coffee, Mr. Daley. Good to meet
24
you, boys.” Mr. Olson took four steps toward the truck then
25
turned around again. “We could have a heavy storm tonight.
26
Why don’t you camp in my barn?”
27
“Thanks,” Mr. Daley replied. “We might do that.”
28 29
“See you later.” Mr. Olson hopped into his pickup and drove away.
30
After finishing the camp chores, the archaeology team went
31
back to work in the cave. Ben led the way, but this time he
32
moved slowly and carefully. It was a good thing he did be-
33
cause, there on the trail, soaking up the morning sun, lay a
34
rattlesnake. 36
[36], (12)
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0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
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1
Ben stopped short, holding out his arms to block Dave and
2
Mr. Daley. Then, picking up a rock, he aimed a few feet in front
3
of the snake’s head. He did not want to hit it, only scare it.
4
The rock landed with a thud, and the startled rattler slid away
5
down the cliff.
6
The morning passed quickly in the cave. Ben dug the three-
7
foot level with a small trowel and swept away the dirt with
8
a paint brush. He uncovered chips of broken pottery, polished
9
bones with pointed tips, and stone tools in many strange
10
shapes.
11
Dave studied each tool. He tried to figure out what it was
12
and how it had been used. He picked one with a thin, sharp
13
edge along the bottom. It must be a knife, he thought. Its thick,
14
rounded upper side fit neatly in his hand; and he felt as if he
15
were shaking hands with the person who had made it very,
16
very long ago.
Lines: 190 ———
0.0pt Pg
17
Ben and Dave took turns digging and keeping records while
18
Mr. Daley cleaned and packed the artifacts. They dug through
19
the rest of the four-foot level but found nothing until they
20
reached the last two inches. There they discovered a handful
21
of small rabbit bones and two broken spearheads.
22
As the boys dived into the five-foot level, however, they
23
found an artifact in almost every scoop of dirt. There were
24
spearheads of many different sizes. Some were shaped like
25
cherry tree leaves, others like fish. There were stone knives
26
and sticks of deer bone with one end sharpened to a point.
27
There were hollow tubes of bone and thin slices of pearly shell
28
with a hole at each end. Surprisingly, for a cave in the middle
29
of the Great Plains, there were even a few seashells.
30
Some strange things appeared too. A shiny gray stone the
31
size and shape of a hotdog. A loaf of white, grainy stone on a
32
flat slab. A deer antler with a hole drilled in the widest part.
33
A stone much like a spearhead but shaped like the letter “T”
34
with a point at the bottom tip. d i g g i n g i n to t i m e
[37], (13)
37
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [37], (13)
1
Ben and Dave did not find any pottery, although they sifted
2
the dirt through a window screen so that they would not miss
3
even the smallest piece. They found fewer and fewer artifacts
4
as they reached the bottom of the five-foot level. Dave found
5
only two broken spearheads in the last three inches. When Ben
6
started the six-foot level, he turned up nothing but stony soil.
7
Four inches down, he hit solid rock.
8 9
“Well, we’ve reached the end,” Mr. Daley declared, “and the beginning. Let’s fill in the hole.”
10
“What do you mean? How can it be both the end and the
11
beginning?” Ben asked. He climbed out of the hole and started
12
shoveling dirt back into it. He had no time for silly riddles.
13
“I’ve been thinking about stratigraphy,” Dave said as he
14
helped his friend. “And I think I know what Mr. Daley means.
15
The layer of solid rock marks both the end of our work and the
16
beginning of human time in this cave. “Here’s how I see it. Imagine that a little girl has a very deep
18
sandbox. Every spring, her father pours a new bag of sand over
19
the top and buries the toys that she lost the summer before.
20
When the girl is thirteen years old, she decides to dig to the
21
bottom of the sandbox. Near the top, she finds the toys that
22
she played with when she was twelve. A little farther down,
23
she finds toys she had when she was ten. Below those are toys
24
she had at age eight, and so on. Finally, she reaches the layer
25
of sand that her father poured into the sandbox the day that
26
he brought it home. “This bottom layer is the end
the last layer that the girl
28
digs when she is grown-up. But it is also the beginning
29
first layer that she played in when she was small.”
the
30
“Now I get it! If I were in a cartoon, there’d be a light bulb
31
over my head!” Ben exclaimed. “The layers of sand are like the
32
levels of dirt in the cave, except that the sandbox is only a few
33
years old and the cave is hundreds or thousands of years old.”
34
He stopped with a frown. “But what if the girl’s family 38
Lines: 20 ———
0.0pt P
17
27
[38], (14)
——— Normal P PgEnds:
[38], (14)
1
moves away, and the new owner digs in the sandbox? He
2
wouldn’t know the age of the child who had left the toys in
3
each layer of sand. All he could be sure about is that the ones
4
near the bottom belonged to a baby and the ones near the top
5
belonged to an older kid.”
6
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Dave admitted. “And what if,
7
when the girl was ten, her cousin buried a toy truck down in
8
four-year-old layer? How would the new owner know that the
9
truck was out of place?”
10
Mr. Daley joined the conversation. “Ben’s right. We can’t
11
know exactly how old the artifacts are just by looking at the
12
layers, and sometimes artifacts end up in the wrong layers.
13
Luckily, scientists are inventing new ways of testing artifacts
14
and figuring out their age in the laboratory. Knowing the
15
proper procedures for digging and keeping records is very im-
16
portant, but it’s not enough. An archaeologist also needs to
17
know chemistry, physics, and biology so that he can date his
18
discoveries.”
19 20
By the time the archaeology team had refilled the hole and
21
packed their tools, a hot breeze was rolling ugly clouds over
22
the sky. Back at camp, Dave folded the tents while Ben loaded
23
the gear and Mr. Daley hitched the trailer to the Ford. Thunder
24
began drumming softly over the north ridge of the hollow as
25
they hopped into the car. It was a race with the storm!
26
In a minute, fat raindrops were splashing onto the Ford’s
27
hood one by one. They fell faster and faster. The thunder
28
banged louder and louder.
29
From his house high on the south ridge, Mr. Olson had seen
30
the car coming. He was waiting to swing open the wide doors
31
so Mr. Daley could drive straight into the barn. As soon as the
32
car stopped, the boys jumped out and closed the barn doors,
33
shutting out the ferocious storm.
34
Up in the empty hay mow, Dave looked back over Ash Hold i g g i n g i n to t i m e
39
[39], (15)
Lines: 216 ———
0.0pt Pg
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [39], (15)
1
low. He could not see much through the black rain, but a photo
2
of the storm would be spectacular. He aimed his camera and
3
waited with his finger ready on the shutter button. A bolt of
4
lightning zipped from the sky. It struck close to the eastern
5
wall of the hollow, perhaps right on the spot where the archae-
6
ology camp had stood less than an hour before.
7 8 9 10 11
[40], (16)
12 13 14
Lines: 23
15
———
404.05
16
*
17
——— Normal P * PgEnds:
18 19 20
[40], (16)
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 40
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
[41], (17)
12 13 14
Rescue!
Lines: 231
15
———
0.0pt Pg
16 17 18 19
dave followed ben through the thick mist. Ash Hollow
20
looked strange and gloomy after the storm. Wind had ripped
21
branches from the trees. Pounding rain had crushed the tall
22
weeds, and the boys slogged through the mud.
23
Back at the campsite, a puddle stood where the boys’ tent
24
had been. The bush they had used as a towel-rack had been
25
seared by lightning. Yesterday, the stream had hummed along
26
softly. Now it roared and splashed over its banks, juggling
27
twigs and bits of trash.
28
“Hey, Ben, look!” Dave pointed to a dark object bouncing
29
toward them. “Remember our flat tire? I think that’s the inner
30
tube. Mr. Daley patched it but he forgot it when we left in such
31
a hurry last night. It must have blown into the stream.”
32
“Quick
before it gets away
let’s rescue it!” Ben grabbed
33
a broken branch. Kneeling carefully on a rock at the water’s
34
edge, he hooked the inner tube as it floated by. 41
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [41], (17)
1 2
Suddenly, they heard a howl through the fog. Across the stream, a black dog was pacing the bank.
3 4
“That must be Sal!” Ben exclaimed. “Sal! Sal! Come here, girl!”
5
The dog stood still. Ben called again. Sal wagged her tail
6
and started toward him. But before she reached the water, she
7
turned back. Up and down the bank she trotted with her nose
8
to the ground.
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Ben called a third time. At last, Sal jumped into the stream and swam across. She greeted the boys with a few friendly sniffs and led them to a patch of high weeds. Three puppies she licked their faces one by one. Then, shoving them back into their hiding place, she returned to the stream and stared hard into the mist. “What’s wrong, girl?” Ben asked. The hound looked at him sadly and started pacing, sniffing the ground. Every few steps she paused and gave a short bark.
22 23
Lines: 25 ———
14.5pt
——— Normal P * PgEnds:
All at once she froze and lifted her ears. Dave heard noth-
20 21
[42], (18)
tumbled out and wiggled playfully around their mother while
ing; Ben shrugged. Sal barked again. It was a different bark this time, as though she were answering someone. From far downstream came a small cry.
24
The big dog raced toward the sound with the boys behind
25
her. On a tiny island in the swirling stream sat a wet puppy.
26
Sal immediately leaped into the water; but it was too strong,
27
too fast. She struggled back to the shore where she sat panting
28
and whining.
29
Ben had already pulled off his shirt before Dave realized
30
what his friend planned to do. “Hey! You can’t swim in that
31
flood.”
32
“Do you want the puppy to die out there?”
33
“No, of course not! But I don’t want you to get hurt either.”
34
“Don’t be a coward! Besides, I won’t need to swim. I can 42
[42], (18)
1
wade the whole way. Look, the water is only as high as our
2
rope.”
3
The boys had tied a rope to a tree limb hanging over the
4
stream. Holding on to the rope, they could launch themselves
5
from the shore, swing across the water, and drop into the
6
stream. Yesterday, when Dave had stood in the water, the
7
swing reached his chest. Now, after the storm, the rope’s knot-
8
ted end bobbed on top of the water.
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
“It isn’t too deep. I guess you can wade it,” Dave agreed. “But you’ll have a hard fight with that current. And how will you carry the puppy?”
[43], (19)
Ben paused. He hadn’t thought of that. “So what should we do?” “Well, I was thinking. The inner tube floats. Maybe if we put it around the puppy, we can pull her to shore,” Dave reckoned. “A life ring for a dog?” Ben looked doubtful. Nonetheless, he climbed the tree and untied the rope. Dave wrapped the rope around two sides of the inner tube
Lines: 274 ———
14.5pt P
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE
to make a loop handle, but the ring was too large: the puppy would slip through. It needed some kind of safety belt. Yes, that was the answer
a safety belt! He jerked off his belt and
23
asked for Ben’s too. He slid the belts through the rope on each
24
side of the ring and buckled them together in the middle. On
25
the island, he would cross the two belts around the puppy and
26
buckle them together again.
27
At last the boys were ready. With a yell, Ben jumped into
28
the water. Dave tossed him the inner tube and dropped down
29
beside him.
30
The wall of water slammed against them. It was only chest
31
deep but very powerful. If it knocked them down, they would
32
drown. For a long moment, Ben and Dave looked into each
33
other’s eyes. Then, without saying a word, they struggled to-
34
gether toward the island. rescue!
43
[43], (19)
1
The island was smaller than a school bus seat, too small for
2
the boys to climb on for a rest. So, still standing in the stream,
3
they leaned against it to catch their breath. The puppy jumped
4
up and down and licked their faces joyfully. As soon as Dave
5
stopped panting, he took hold of her. She twisted and squirmed
6
while Ben strapped her into the inner tube. Once in the water,
7
though, she began paddling bravely in her round rubber boat.
8
Ben and Dave each put a hand on the rope. Towing the
9
puppy behind them, they headed back to shore. They had al-
10
most reached the bank when a thick branch came splashing
11
toward them. Dave grabbed the inner tube and pushed it in
12
front of him. At the same time, Ben jerked the rope. The puppy
13
was safe.
14
But Dave was right in danger’s path. Before he could move,
15
the branch clubbed him on the shoulder. As he wobbled and
16
tried to keep his balance, his foot slipped. Down he went, under
17
the pounding water.
18
When he came to the surface again, he heard shouting.
19
Where am I? he wondered. Can I swim? What should I do?
20
Then he remembered what his father had told him about water
21
accidents: “Don’t panic. Just float.”
22
With a kick, Dave rolled onto his back. Now, instead of fight-
23
ing him, the stream was carrying him. He opened his eyes and
24
saw leaves overhead. A second later, he spotted an overhang-
25
ing shrub and grabbed it. Slowly, he pulled himself hand over
26
hand until he stood on solid ground. Safe at last! Sal came
27
running toward him.
28
He looked around. He had not floated far from the place
29
where the branch had hit him. Ben and the puppy were still in
30
the water. Dave walked toward them. “Want some help there,
31
buddy?” he asked.
32
“David Fletcher! Are you all right?” Ben had not been able to
33
do anything, except watch and worry, while his friend battled
34
the stream. 44
[44], (20)
Lines: 29 ———
0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
[44], (20)
1
“I’m fine. Come on; let’s go home.” While Ben climbed out
2
of the stream, Dave lifted the inner tube to the bank and un-
3
buckled the puppy. Glad to be free, she raced in circles around
4
her mother and rolled in the grass with her brothers. Dave
5
laughed, “She’s fine too, I’d say.”
6 7
The boys gathered their clothes. Then, with Sal and her pups leading the way, they hiked back to the Olson ranch.
8 9 10 11
[45], (21)
12 13 14
Lines: 311
15
———
389.552
16
*
17
——— Normal Pa * PgEnds: Pa
18 19 20
[45], (21)
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 rescue!
45
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
[46], (22)
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Lines: 31 ———
0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
[46], (22)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
[47], (23)
12 13 14
Tool-Makers of Ash Hollow
Lines: 315
15
———
0.0pt Pg
16 17 18 19
bac k at t h e r a n c h, Ben and Dave washed in the horse
20
trough, put on clean clothes, then went to look for Mr. Daley.
21
He was out on the front porch, unpacking the artifacts from
22
Ash Hollow Cave. He arranged them along the picnic table,
23
left to right, from the bottom level to the top, in order to piece
24
together the story of the people who had used the cave. He
25
invited Ben and Dave to help.
26
“Looks like schoolwork to me,” Ben grumbled as he opened
27
a crate of books and stacked the notebooks with maps and
28
graphs on a corner of the table. “Nobody told me an archae-
29
ologist had to spend time in the library.”
30
Dave silently agreed, but he chose a book with a red la-
31
bel. It looked like a guide for bird watching, only it was for
32
archaeology. It grouped artifacts according to what they were
33
made of
34
of them, gave their names, described their uses, and listed the
bone, shell, wood, stone, pottery. It showed pictures
47
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [47], (23)
1
states where they were found. Dave opened to the chapter
2
on stone tools. He turned the pages slowly until he spotted
3
a hotdog-shaped tool, just like the one he had discovered. He
4
picked it up and rolled it in his hands while he read. The book
5
called it a flint knapper. In the drawing, a tool-maker was
6
tapping it along the sides of a spearhead.
7
Dave took a spearhead from the five-foot level. If he looked
8
closely, he could see the rounded dents where the knapper had
9
chipped away flakes of stone. When he laid its tip against a
10
dent, it fit perfectly. He showed Ben.
11 12
“Great. Now what about the rest of this junk?” Ben pointed to the piles on the table.
13
“Let’s find out, pal.” Dave handed his friend the book and
14
made room for him on the bench. “Your football-player muscles
15
won’t go soft in one afternoon.”
16
Together, they studied the artifacts from the cave’s lowest
17
level: the bone awl for sewing animals skins and the T-shaped
18
drill for boring holes in wood and shell; the grinding tool with
19
its rounded loaf of rock for pounding seeds on the smooth slab;
20
the hollow beads of bird bone and the flat pearly shell beads;
21
the deer antler with the large hole used to straighten sticks
22
for spear handles; and, of course, many spearheads in different
23
sizes and shapes.
24
These artifacts were clues about the people who had left
25
them in the cave. Soil and fossils from plants and animals
26
offered more clues about the changing weather patterns on the
27
Great Plains. By putting all the clues together, archaeologists
28
created a picture of life in the past.
29
Slowly, the Ice Age had ended. The climate became warm
30
and dry. Grassy fields spread for miles over the Great Plains.
31
Huge animals like the woolly mammoth and the great bison
32
disappeared.
33
As these changes took place, people on the Plains devel-
34
oped a new way of life. Around 7,000 years ago, they stopped 48
[48], (24)
Lines: 33 ———
0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
[48], (24)
1
following animal herds and camped in one place for months
2
at a time. They still hunted, of course, but now they hunted
3
small bison, deer, prairie dogs, and birds. They caught fish and
4
dug for clams in the rivers. They also collected berries, seeds,
5
and wild vegetables. For hunting, gathering, and cooking these
6
foods, men and women invented new tools.
7
The seashells used to make jewelry came from far to the
8
west or south. Some adventurers might have traveled all the
9
way to the ocean or gulf themselves. More likely, though, they
10
got the shells through a long chain of traders reaching from
11
the Great Plains down to the Gulf Coast and even across the
12
Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Not only fancy things,
13
but also ideas and inventions moved along this chain from
14
group to group and spread across America. In this way, the
15
Archaic Culture grew slowly for over 5,000 years as the Plains
16
people learned to make use of the grassland environment. Back in Ash Hollow, no one lived in the cave for many years,
18
maybe centuries, and a thick, empty layer of soil covered its
19
floor. At last people returned. By now, though, they had learned
20
about new tools and new foods from their trading partners on
21
the east side of the Mississippi River who lived in large, or-
22
derly societies and buried their leaders in huge piles of earth.
23
Archaeologists named these eastern people the Woodland Cul-
24
ture because they made the forest their home. Artifacts showed
25
that they shared ideas and inventions with their neighbors
26
near and far all over North America. Ben was fitting together pieces of a jar. Pottery was a won-
28
derful invention
29
lighter and easier to shape. This jar must have held food, Ben
30
guessed, because he had found seeds scattered around it in the
31
cave. The big, flat ones like jack-o’-lantern seeds came from a
32
squash, one of the first vegetables early Americans learned to
33
grow.
34
hard and waterproof like stone but so much
The only problem with pottery was that it broke easily. The to o l - m a k e r s o f a s h h o l l ow
Lines: 347 ———
0.0pt Pg
17
27
[49], (25)
49
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [49], (25)
1
jar was missing too many pieces for Ben to put it back together.
2
“Dumb jar,” he thought as he scooped up the pottery chips and
3
dropped them into a paper bag. Then he went to help Dave
4
take photos.
5
While Dave set up his camera and tripod, Ben arranged the
6
spearheads one by one on an old white sheet. They wanted to
7
take a picture for Louise since she had promised to write arti-
8
cles about their discoveries for the newspaper. The spearheads
9
from the lower levels of the cave were about the same size, but
10
those from the upper levels were much smaller.
11
“Why are these spearheads so tiny?” Dave wondered.
12
“Because they’re not spearheads,” Ben answered. “They’re
13
“Really? Arrowheads from way back then? Bows and arrows seem like such complicated tools.” “They’re pretty simple, actually. A bow is just a sling-shot
17
turned sideways. An arrow is just a small spear. And remem-
18
ber, a spear is just a knife with two edges on a stick.”
19
“I guess you’re right. By putting the parts together, any-
20
one could have made a bow and arrows,” Dave agreed. Sud-
21
denly he grinned. “Hey, isn’t that what inventing is all about?
22
Putting simple tools together in new ways? This morning we
23
started with things someone else invented
24
inner tube. We added our own ideas and
25
jacket.”
26
belts and an old
ta-da! a puppy life
“Hey, yeah! We’re inventors too! Inventors and archaeologists!” Ben laughed. “Look out, world, here we come.”
28 29 30 31 32 33 34 50
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16
27
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arrowheads.”
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The Buried City
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t wo day s l at e r , o n a hill along Medicine Creek, Mr. Daley
20
was walking slowly back and forth across a grassy field. Now
21
and then, he poked the ground with a thin iron rod. If the
22
ground was hard, he shook his head, took a few steps, and tried
23
again. If the rod sank in easily, he pulled it out and listened
24
while he tapped the ground around the soft place. “Mark this
25
spot,” he said. Dave put in a small orange flag.
26
Barking playfully, the puppy pounced on the marker, hop-
27
ped back, and pounced on it again. As a reward for returning
28
Sal and her family, Mr. Olson had given the rescued puppy to
29
Ben and David. She had a wrinkly face and baggy ears. Her
30
back was black and her belly rusty brown. She had a bright
31
white patch on the left side of her chest, so the boys named
32
her Badge. After all, she was a bloodhound, the best kind of
33
detective dog.
34
“What are we looking for?” Ben asked impatiently. 51
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [51], (1)
1 2
“What are we looking for?” Mr. Daley repeated, glancing at Ben with a twinkle in his eye. “The remains of a village.”
3
“A buried city!” Ben didn’t wait another minute. He raced to
4
the equipment trailer parked in a corner of the field. Grabbing
5
a handful of tools, he ran back and handed Mr. Daley a shovel.
6
“Let’s get started!”
7
With four quick jabs, Mr. Daley dug around the nearest flag.
8
He lifted the cork of earth and scooped out the loose dirt with
9
his hands. The ground at the bottom of the hole was brick hard
10
but Mr. Daley seemed happy about this.
11
“Just as I thought,” he said. “See this hard layer? It’s the
12
floor of a house. Start here and clear away the dirt until the
13
whole floor is bare. Alright?” Ben nodded. “Call me if you need
14
help,” Mr. Daley added over his shoulder as he went on testing
15
the ground and sticking markers where other houses might be.
16
The boys set to work. Slicing the dirt from the edges with
17
their shovels, they expanded the hole until it was large enough
18
for Dave to kneel inside. Then he cleaned the floor with a
19
trowel and brush while Ben continued to make the hole wider.
20
Every few minutes they traded jobs.
21
“Mom would laugh if she saw me,” Dave joked when his turn
22
came to shovel again. “She’s always reminding me to clean my
23
room. Now, here I am, shoveling dirt off someone else’s floor!”
24
By evening the job was done. The boys sat down to rest on
25
the smooth floor of a square house built almost eight hundred
26
years ago. Dave tried to imagine the scene. The builders had
27
dug a shallow basin, lined the bottom with clay, and filled it
28
with dry grass. Then they set the grass on fire. As it burned, it
29
baked the clay hard so that dampness could not soak through
30
the floor. Next they stood four logs in the center and a row of
31
thick poles around the edges of the square. Over this wooden
32
skeleton, the builders wove a mat of grass and sticks that they
33
covered with sticky mud. It dried quickly in the hot sun, and
34
at last the house was finished. 52
[52], (2)
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In order to enter the earth lodge, a person had to bend down
2
and creep through a low passageway. Once inside, though,
3
even an adult could stand up straight. There was only one
4
room, but it was twenty-five feet long on each side. Instead of
5
windows, a hole in the center of the roof let in sunshine. This
6
hole also let out smoke from the cooking fire that gave heat
7
and light. The family who lived in this house must have had
8
plenty of neighbors, Dave thought, as he counted the orange
9
flags dotting the hill.
10
Ben picked up his shovel to smooth off the back corner of
11
the house. All at once, the ground below the floor caved in. A
12
pear-shaped hole appeared, narrow at the top and wide at the
13
bottom. Ben dropped to his knees.
14
Deep in the hole, he found a huge pottery jar. Treasure!
15
He reached down and grabbed it. It must be very valuable
16
if someone had buried it for safe keeping. Eagerly he looked
17
inside.
18 19
The jar was full of corn. Ben moaned. He dumped the corn on the floor and trickled his fingers through the kernels.
20
“Oh well,” Dave said, trying to be cheerful. “The jar is a
21
great prize. It’s not even chipped. And look at the neat designs!
22
Louise will want a picture.” He headed to the tent to get his
23
camera, then stopped short, laughing. “Hey, Badge!”
24
The puppy had pushed her head so far into the hole that her
25
ears flopped flat on the ground. When she heard her name, she
26
backed out and looked at David. Red dust like make-up powder
27
stuck to her face. She sneezed and stared into the hole again.
28
“What did you find, Badge?” Ben knelt beside her and took a
29
look himself. The next moment, dirt was splashing into the air
30
as boy and dog dug wildly with hands and paws. Underneath
31
the cave-in, they discovered a pile of artifacts.
32
Badge wanted to keep digging, but Dave held her back while
33
Ben lay on his belly and reached far into the hole. One by
34
one, he lifted out two fish hooks made of bone and a knife t h e bu r i e d c i t y
53
[53], (3)
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1
made of a stone blade fitted with a bone handle. Dave reached
2
for the knife. The handle curved to fit his hand and the thin
3
stone blade had a pointed tip, just like the camping knife his
4
father had given him. Dave felt sure a fisherman had made
5
that knife
6
the bone hooks.
maybe even the same fisherman who had made
7
Something still glittered at the very bottom of the hole.
8
Stretching hard, Ben reached down again and felt around until
9
he touched a hard, smooth object. He pinched it between two
10
fingers and pulled it out. It was a glossy chip of shell, shaped
11
like a fish with carved lines for the head and scales and a round
12
hole for the eye. It flickered with pearly colors as Ben held it
13
toward in the sun. “This, my friend, is a sign left especially for
14
us.”
15
“A sign? Really? What does it mean?” Dave asked, puzzled.
16
“It is a sign that tomorrow we should go fishing!”
[54], (4)
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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12 13 14
Wild Fire!
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15
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16 17 18 19
e a r ly t h e n e x t m o r n i n g, the boys set out for Medicine
20
Creek. Close to the bank, the river moved slowly in the shade
21
of a tree. Down in the clear water, fish nibbled on reeds.
22
“Shhh . . . ,” Ben warned. He should have paid more attention
23
to his own feet, though. He stepped on a stick that snapped
24
in two with a loud, dry crack. The fish darted into the green
25
algae.
26
David knelt on the grass, baited his hook, and lowered it
27
gently into the water without making a single ripple. He sat
28
back on his heels. Ben dropped his line a few yards away and
29
flopped down on a stump. They waited. The big Ford appeared
30
on the bridge, and Mr. Daley waved as he passed on his way to
31
Stockville.
32
One by one, the fish came out of hiding. Floating through
33
their underwater meadow, they stopped here and there to
34
munch the weeds. As Dave watched, he lost himself in that 55
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [55], (5)
1
world. Suddenly his line trembled. Snapping to attention, he
2
focused on the signals coming through the line from deep in
3
the water.
4 5
A fish was inspecting the bait. Now it was taking a small bite.
6
Not yet, not yet. Dave held very still.
7
The fish grabbed the bait
8
upstream toward the bridge.
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Dave jerked his pole once. The line stayed tight, and he knew the fish was fixed firmly on the hook. Slow and easy, slow and easy, he coached himself. Stepping backward and pulling
22
[56], (6)
the line with his hand, he towed in the fish. With a final tug, he swung it out of the water and onto the bank. The bullhead was as big as his foot. Dave wiggled out the hook and baited it with another bit of raw beef. Ben had a fish too. He slipped it onto the string beside Dave’s and hung both of them in the water to keep them fresh. Within an hour, the boys caught three more.
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When the fish stopped biting, Dave pushed the end of his
20 21
hook and all. It dove and swam
pole into the ground. As he sat down to wait, he tried to remember what Louise had told him about the Middle Ages, the
23
years between 500 and 1300. Historians sometimes called this
24
period the “Dark Ages” because in Europe only a few persons
25
could read and write. Even the most educated did not know
26
much about science or about the places beyond their own coun-
27
try. Those Europeans never guessed that on the other side
28
of the world Americans were building a village along Medi-
29
cine Creek. But then, Americans had never heard of Europe,
30
England, Asia, or Africa. Separated by oceans, mountains, and
31
deserts, the people of each land could believe that they were
32
the only ones on earth.
33
A splash woke Dave from his daydreams. Ben was playing
34
tug-of-war with a fish. So far, he was winning as he backed, 56
[56], (6)
1
step by step, pulling it toward the shore. But then he tripped
2
and fell with a thump. The fish gained two feet of line.
3
Ben sat stunned for only a moment. Digging his toes into
4
the grass, he walked his hands up the pole, grabbed the line,
5
and gave it a few hard tugs. The game was over. A silvery fish
6
jangled on the bank, and Badge held it down with her paw
7
until Ben could claim his prize.
8 9
The boys had just returned to camp when the Ford pulled up,
10
followed by a fire truck. Mr. Daley parked quickly and called
11
them over to meet the volunteer fire crew.
12
“I drove into town and spent an hour looking for a tall lad-
13
der,” he explained. “No luck. I was beginning to think that
14
the good people of Stockville are afraid to climb more than
15
ten feet off the ground.” He grinned at his own joke. “Then I
16
remembered the fire company and went to see the chief. Since
17
it’s Saturday, he and a few of the volunteers agreed to help us.”
18
“Help us to do what?” Ben asked. “Why do we need a lad-
19
der?”
20
“To take pictures of the evidence,” Mr. Daley answered.
21
Some anthropologists thought that in early times the people
22
of the Plains lived as nomads, always on the move, following
23
animal herds. But this buried village was evidence that at
24
least one group of early Plains people had settled down. With
25
photographs of the house floors and storage pits, the archaeol-
26
ogy team could prove to anyone that the village really existed.
27
While the fire crew raised the ladder, Dave loaded a new roll
28
of film. Then, with his camera strapped to his belt, he climbed
29
ten, twenty, thirty feet into the air. Looking down made his
30
knees wobble. He tried to relax by pretending that he was
31
a first-rate photographer flying over the site in an airplane.
32
Imagining the village on a postcard, he aimed his camera.
33
Now he had only two pictures left on the film. As he wrapped
34
his arm around the ladder and swung to the other side to shoot wild fire!
57
[57], (7)
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1
a view of the river, he noticed a black smudge, low in the sky
2
and moving fast, heading straight for Stockville.
3
A duster! he thought. No, that smudge wasn’t a dust cloud.
4
It was smoke! He could see the flashing gold flames. “Fire! Wild
5
fire!”
6
“Where?” the chief shouted from below.
7
“West of the river, north of town.” Dave hooked the camera
8
back on his belt and zipped down the ladder. Almost before
9
he reached the ground, the firemen cranked in the ladder and
10
clamped it to the truck. They climbed aboard and sped across
11
the bridge.
12 13
“Come on, boys!” Mr. Daley called, starting the Ford’s engine.
14
“We can’t fight a prairie fire!” Dave yelled. While he was
15
sliding down the ladder, he had not heard the fire chief’s plan.
16
“No, we can’t,” Mr. Daley admitted. “The fire crew is going
17
to Stockville. If the wind drops fireballs on the town, the men
18
will put them out right away. Our job is to alert the farmers
19
and ranchers. That fire can’t cross bare ground. If we plow up
20
the grass in front of it, maybe we can stop it.”
21 22
“Like blowing up a bridge to stop an invading army!” Ben exclaimed. “Let’s go!”
23
At the first ranch, the hired man rushed to the barn to hitch
24
the plow. At the second, the rancher had seen smoke and was
25
already riding his tractor toward the fire. When Mr. Daley
26
drove in the lane at the third ranch, though, the rancher came
27
out of the toolshed carrying a wrench and an oil can.
28
“I’d help you, sure, Mr. Daley,” he answered when he heard
29
the plan to plow a fire strip, “but my tractor broke down again.”
30
“Is your plow working?”
31
The rancher nodded.
32
“Where is it? This Ford can pull a loaded trailer. I’ll bet it
33
[58], (8)
can pull a plow.”
34
Looking doubtful, the rancher pointed to the plow standing 58
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1
beside the fence. “I don’t know, but you’re welcome to try.”
2
Lifted on its wheels, the plow rolled easily along the road.
3
But when Mr. Daley reached the prairie and lowered the
4
blades, it stuck in the thick grass. Again and again, he revved
5
the Ford’s engine. The plow would not budge.
6
The smoke was overhead now, and Dave could see the fire’s
7
glow. How long before it would reach the town? Suddenly he
8
had an idea. The stratigraphic method had worked for break-
9
ing through the cave’s gravelly soil, why not use it for plowing
10
the tough prairie sod?
11
“Come on, Ben!” Dave dragged his friend from the car. One
12
on each side, they lifted the plow a few notches so that only the
13
lower half of the blades dug into the ground. “Now try!” Dave
14
shouted to Mr. Daley.
Lines: 135
15 16
The car’s wheels spun then caught hold. The plow jerked forward, bounced once, and at last settled down to cut the fire *
215.552
17
strip. Back and forth, the Ford worked obediently, making the
18 19
[59], (9)
———
——— Normal Pa strip wider and deeper with each pass, digging the barrier that * PgEnds: Pa would stop the wild fire and save the town.
20
[59], (9)
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 wild fire!
59
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
[60], (10)
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
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12 13 14
The Hermit and the Sack of Corn
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15
———
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16
——— Normal Pa * PgEnds: E
17 18 19
a l l n i g h t t h e w i l d f i r e blazed. Standing guard in case
20
the fire tried to cross the wide trench, Dave watched the roar-
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
ing flames. Behind him, the little town huddled fearfully. At any moment, the fire might ride the wind and drop onto a house roof. But the wind was still, and the barrier the farmers had plowed kept the fire at bay until it burned itself out. The last flames flickered and died as the sun rose in the smoky sky. Dave spotted Ben and Mr. Daley, who had spent the night
28
guarding two other points along the fire barrier. He called, and
29
they waved in reply as they walked toward the car.
30 31
“Hey! Quit that!” Ben scolded as Dave yawned. Then flopping into the back seat beside his friend, Ben yawned too.
32
“Looks as though it’s bedtime,” Mr. Daley teased, watching
33
them in the rearview mirror. Except for the soot on his clothes,
34
no one would have guessed he had spent a tense night fighting 61
[61], (11)
1
a prairie fire. Dave wondered how Mr. Daley, who had to be at
2
least sixty-five years old, could have so much energy.
3
“The men in my family
and the women too
have always
4
been rugged people,” Mr. Daley answered as though he had
5
heard Dave’s thoughts. “My father was a soldier. As a young
6
man, he fought in the Civil War, then headed west with the
7
frontier army.”
8
“I’ll bet he had some great war stories to tell,” Dave replied.
9
Still curious about Mr. Daley’s own life, he was hoping to learn
10
a little more.
11
“He won all sorts of medals for bravery. Actually, though, he
12
never said much about the battles he had fought. He always
13
insisted that he only did his duty and that he hated killing.
14
He didn’t want his son to become a soldier.” Mr. Daley paused,
15
then added thoughtfully, “Years later I understood why.”
16
Before Dave could ask another question, the car pulled into
17
the lane belonging to the rancher with the broken tractor. The
18
boys hopped out, unhitched the plow, and hopped in again. Mr.
19
Daley turned the Ford around and headed down the road.
20
“If it’s a story you want, Dave,” Mr. Daley resumed the con-
21
versation, managing to change the subject at the same time,
22
“I have one for you.” And so, as he drove back to camp, he told
23
the Dakota Sioux story about the discovery of corn.
24 25
An old man lived in a tent far away from his village. This her-
26
mit liked to spend his days alone, walking through the forest,
27
gathering plants and roots. One night, as he was falling asleep,
28
a dark shadow came into his tent. The shadow held out its arm.
29
“Come with me to my house,” it invited.
30
The hermit stood up and put on his clothes. When he step-
31
ped outside, the shadow had disappeared. He called, but no
32
one answered. He waited a while, then went back to bed.
33
The next night, as he was about to fall asleep, the same
34
mysterious voice spoke to him again. “Come with me to my 62
[62], (12)
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1
house.” Immediately he jumped up and hurried outside. Again,
2
the shadow had disappeared. Now the hermit was angry. How
3
dare anyone wake him up and then run off like that! What a
4
nasty trick! He swore that he would punish the joker.
5
And so, on the third night the hermit did not lie down. In-
6
stead, he slit a hole in his tent, just big enough for an arrow.
7
Standing inside the tent flap, he watched for the shadow. Soon
8
it returned. As it started to repeat its invitation, “Come with
9
me . . . ,” the hermit fired his bow. He heard a ripping sound,
10
followed by a rattling like falling pebbles. By now it was late;
11
rather than stumble about in the darkness, the hermit decided
12
to wait until morning to search for the mysterious shadow. It
13
couldn’t go very far after being shot, he thought.
[63], (13)
14
As soon as the sun rose, the hermit went outside to look
15
around. On the ground beside the tent, he found a small pile
16
of colored seeds. From this pile, the seeds made a trail leading *
17
into the woods. The hermit followed it until he reached a circle
18
of bare ground. There the trail ended, and he began to dig.
19
To his surprise, he found a sack of dried meat and a sack of
20
dried cherries. Digging a little further, he discovered another
21
sack with a rip in its side. Opening the sack, the hermit found
22
a handful of the same colored seeds. Suddenly he knew that
23
this sack was the mysterious shadow that had called to him.
24
When he had shot it, it had run back to its hole, dripping seeds
25
all the way.
26
Those colored seeds were corn kernels, something the old
27
hermit had never seen before. He discovered, though, that corn
28
was good to eat and shared it with the people of his village. And
29
that is how the Sioux received the gift of corn.
30 31 32 33 34 t h e h e r m i t a n d t h e s ac k o f c o r n
63
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
[64], (14)
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
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[64], (14)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
[65], (15)
12 13 14
The Scientists
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15
———
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16 17 18 19
t wo o f f i c i a l - l o o k i n g c a r s drove into camp. There were
20
so many cars full of visitors that Saturday that Dave would not
21
have noticed these two, except for the green and white signs
22
on the doors. Visitors’ Day was Louise’s idea. She had come to
23
Stockville last weekend to write a news report about the fire.
24
When she saw the buried village, she decided to write a feature
25
for the newspaper and suggested inviting the townspeople to
26
come for a tour. With her help, Mr. Daley and the boys had
27
turned the archaeology site into an outdoor museum.
28
The first visitors arrived at noon and the crowd buzzing
29
over the buried village kept growing. Luckily, Mr. Olson volun-
30
teered to direct traffic. Now, as the two cars drove toward their
31
parking spaces, Dave could read the green and white signs:
32
“University of Nebraska Experiment Station.”
33
The car doors popped open. Eight men stepped out, dressed
34
exactly alike in white shirts and gray pants and carrying blue 65
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [65], (15)
1
notebooks. They stood behind their leader while he spoke to
2
Mr. Olson.
3
Dave could not hear the conversation, but he saw the leader
4
offer his hand. Mr. Olson refused to shake it. He locked his
5
own hands into fists and kept them tight at his sides. Without
6
another word, the leader signaled his men to follow. Cool and
7
commanding, they marched toward the village.
8
Silence spread over the friendly noise of the crowd. As the
9
men passed, they met stares of anger and fear. Mr. Daley came
10
out from under the awning where he had set up a small display
11
of artifacts and went over to meet the men.
12
“Welcome to our outdoor museum,” he called. “Let me show
13
you around.” The townspeople relaxed a little, although they
14
kept an invisible wall around the men in uniform as Mr. Daley
15
gave the officials a tour. Louise followed, taking notes for her
16
newspaper story.
17
Then the trouble began. Mr. Daley was talking about the
18
villagers’ gardens, and the men were asking questions. What
19
kind of crops did the villagers raise? How much land did they
20
farm? What farming methods and equipment did they use?
21
“We’re scientists from the University of Nebraska,” the
22
leader explained. “Back at the Experiment Station, we’re try-
23
ing to find better ways of farming and ranching on the Great
24
Plains. Maybe we can learn something from these farmers of
25
long ago.”
26
Another man joined in, “I’m an agent for the Soil Conserva-
27
tion Service in Washington dc.” He stepped forward and Dave
28
noticed for the first time that he wore a silver pin on his left
29
shirt pocket. A few visitors had gathered nearby to hear Mr.
30
Daley’s talk and now the Washington agent spoke directly to
31
them. “These dust storms must never happen again. Farmers
32
and ranchers must learn to use the land properly.”
33
“We’re not doing anything wrong! These dust storms are
34
not our fault!” Mr. Olson insisted. “We’re good ranchers, good 66
[66], (16)
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——— Normal P PgEnds:
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1
farmers
2
much corn and wheat that you city folks couldn’t eat it all. And
3
you wouldn’t pay us fairly for it either! Now, when we have a
4
dry spell, you big guys in the government blame us. You invent
5
your fancy farm policies and come out here with all sorts of
6
stupid rules.”
7 8 9
the best in America. Fifteen years ago we grew so
He turned to Louise, who was scribbling fast. “Miss Watson, please quote me in your newspaper.” “That’s right! Stop bossing us around!” a farmer declared.
10
“And you can quote me too,” he told Louise. “I say, ‘Leave us
11
alone!’ ” The crowd rumbled in agreement.
12
“Is this any way to treat a government agent who wants to
13
help?” the Experiment Station’s leader scolded his neighbors.
14
“You, Mr. Howard, are a traitor,” Mr. Olson answered an-
15
grily. “You used to work beside us and listen to our ideas. But
16
since this Washington boy came, you don’t care what we think.”
17
“Gentlemen, please,” Mr. Daley spoke loudly but calmly.
18
“What does an archaeologist know?” demanded one of the
19
visitors, ready for a fight. “Just a minute ago, you told us that
20
the villagers had gardens.”
21 22
“Exactly, they had gardens. We have farms,” Mr. Daley answered. “That is the important difference.”
23
Louise raised her hand. “Excuse me, Mr. Daley, could you
24
explain what you mean for the readers of the Bridgeport Re-
25
porter?”
26
“Certainly. You see, the villagers dug patches of ground
27
along the river with hoes and planted corn, beans, and squash.
28
Some years the harvest was better than others, but the vil-
29
lagers never depended only on the food from their gardens.
30
They caught fish and collected wild nuts and fruit. They also
31
hunted deer and buffalo.
32
“Today,” Mr. Daley continued, “we expect the land to feed
33
not only our families but all the citizens of this whole country
34
and even our customers in Europe. We grow food for our cows, the scientists
67
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pigs, and chickens too. Out in the middle of the prairie, we
2
clear huge fields with plows that rip deeply into the ground.
3
Year after year, we plant the same crops in the same place.
4
The wind blows away the soil, and the land wears out because
5
we don’t give it rest.”
6
“See!” the Washington agent interrupted. “Proper methods!”
7
“Wait,” Mr. Daley held up his hand. “Listen to the end of
8
the story. For hundreds of years, from about 600 until about
9
1300, villages much like this one blossomed across the Mid-
10
west. Then, suddenly they disappeared. Why? Archaeologists,
11
in cooperation with other scientists, are still searching for ev-
12
idence; but we think that a long drought forced those early
13
Americans to leave the Great Plains.”
14 15
“See!” Now it was Mr. Olson’s turn. “No one can control the weather.” “What is the lesson for us, then?” Louise asked. “On the one *
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
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——— Normal P times we get almost none. We can’t prevent a drought. On the * PgEnds: other hand, we can survive the dry years if we take care of the land.” [68], (18) “That’s exactly what I was trying to say,” Mr. Howard agreed. “By plowing the fields in certain patterns, we can protect the soil from the wind. By changing crops from time to time, we can keep the soil healthy. But we must all work together.” “Perfect!” Louise replied. “The last line of my article will be ‘We must all work together.’ ” She looked from face to face in the thoughtful crowd. hand, rain is unpredictable. Sometimes we get plenty; some-
29 30 31 32 33 34 68
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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12 13 14
Search for an American Explorer
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a s t h e l a s t v i s i to r s w e r e leaving, a young man walked
20
up to Mr. Daley. “Excuse me, sir. My name’s Fred Ronda, and I
21
wonder if you and your archaeology team can solve a mystery.”
22
“We’ll be glad to help if we can. Stay for dinner and tell us
23
about the case. Put another chop on the grill, will you?” Mr.
24
Daley called to Dave, who was lighting the fire.
25
“Two more,” Ben grumbled. “Two more plates, two more
26
cups, two more forks, two more . . .” It was his night to wash
27
the dishes. With Louise and now Mr. Ronda as guests, he felt
28
he had more than his share of work.
29
After dinner, Mr. Ronda told the archaeology team about
30
the mystery
31
ing for years. Mr. Ronda’s uncle, a storekeeper in Republic,
32
Kansas, claimed to have found the ruins of the Pawnee village
33
visited by the famous explorer Zebulon Pike. The citizens of
34
Republic were so proud to have this historic landmark near
and about the family quarrel that had been rag-
69
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1
their own town that they had built a monument to commemo-
2
rate it.
3
But Mr. Ronda’s father wanted to move the monument be-
4
cause, he claimed, the buried village on his farm near Red
5
Cloud, Nebraska, was the true site. The two brothers were
6
so stubborn that they refused to speak to each other. At last,
7
though, they agreed to let an expert settle their argument.
8
“The question is,” Mr. Ronda concluded, “how can anyone
9
really know which is the right spot? How can anyone find proof
10
of where Pike camped back in 1800?”
11 12
“1806,” Louise corrected. Mr. Ronda looked at her in surprise.
13
“I’m sorry; I didn’t introduce you two properly,” Mr. Da-
14
ley stepped in. “Mr. Ronda, meet Louise Watson, a writer for
15
the Bridgeport Reporter. She’s an expert on the history of the
16
Great Plains.” “Pleased to meet you, Miss Watson! I’ve read your newspa-
18
per from time to time. What do you know about Zebulon Pike?”
19
Ben sighed. He could see that Louise was going to give them a history lesson
21 22
and in the middle of July!
Louise grinned, “Trust me, Ben, it’s an exciting story. Just listen.”
23
After the Revolutionary War, the leaders of the United
24
States wanted their new nation to grow beyond the original
25
thirteen colonies. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought
26
the Louisiana Territory, all the land from the Mississippi River
27
to the Rocky Mountains. This great deal, called the Louisiana
28
Purchase, cost only $15 million and more than doubled the size
29
of the United States.
30
Zebulon Pike was one of the army officers sent to explore
31
the Louisiana Territory. He searched for the source of the Mis-
32
sissippi River, crossed the Great Plains, and traveled through
33
the Southwest. In fact, Pike’s Peak in Colorado was named
34
after him. He had so many adventures that the visit to the 70
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Pawnee village on the prairie in 1806 probably did not seem
2
very important or exciting to him. Yet that visit mattered to
3
the new nation because Lt. Pike ordered the village chief to
4
take down the Spanish flag and put up the American flag in
5
its place. The flag proclaimed that the land belonged to the
6
United States.
7
“But why was the village flying the Spanish flag?” Dave
8
wondered. “I thought that we bought the Louisiana Territory
9
from the French.”
10
“You’re right. But France had not always owned it. For over
11
two hundred years, the nations of Europe had been fighting
12
over land in America. During this time, the Louisiana Terri-
13
tory passed back and forth between France and Spain. When
14
the French won it once again in 1801, President Thomas Jef-
15
ferson decided to buy it for the United States.”
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
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“Didn’t anyone think the land belonged to the Indians who *
87.0pt P
——— Normal Pa whole idea of kings in Europe or presidents in Washington * PgEnds: Pa making decisions about places they had never even seen made him angry. No one around the campfire answered. [71], (21) “So, is the Pawnee village where Lt. Pike raised the American flag in Kansas or is it in Nebraska?” Mr. Ronda asked Louise, breaking the silence. Louise looked around the circle at Mr. Daley, at Ben, and finally at Dave. Can I count on you? she asked with her eyes. Each of them nodded in reply. “Good,” Louise said aloud, turning back to Mr. Ronda. “Give us two weeks, and we’ll have the answer.” had lived here for thousands of years?” Dave interrupted. The
29 30 31 32 33 34 search for an americ an explorer
71
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[First Page
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12 13 14
Pike’s Trail
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———
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year: 1806
p l ac e : l o u i s i a n a t e r r i to ry
19
Zebulon Pike waited nervously. For days, he and his men had
20
been marching across the prairie. Now, three miles from the
21
great Pawnee village, they had been ordered to stop. The chief,
22
they were told, was coming to meet them.
23
Lt. Pike looked over his men. He had twenty soldiers, ev-
24
ery one of them tired, dirty, and far from home. Would the
25
Pawnees laugh at this sorry little army? Lt. Pike wondered as
26
he smoothed his horse’s mane. He sure hoped there wouldn’t
27
be any trouble. Spotting a herd of running horses, he swung
28
back into the saddle for a better view. Hundreds of Pawnee
29
warriors were charging toward the army.
30
The soldiers reached for their guns. “Hold your fire! Don’t
31
shoot!” Lt. Pike shouted. At that moment, the Pawnees split
32
in two, like a huge snake opening its jaws. Yelling and waving
33
spears, the warriors closed in. The army was surrounded!
34
The Pawnees froze. Not a man or a horse moved. The chief 73
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [73], (1)
1
stepped out from the ring and came forward. His face was a
2
mask of war paint. Lt. Pike held his breath. Slowly the chief
3
stretched out his hand as a sign of welcome.
4
After smoking with the visitors and exchanging gifts, the
5
chief invited Lt. Pike to his lodge. Lt. Pike agreed to go, but he
6
would not take any chances. He knew that the Spanish army
7
was close
8
hoped that the Pawnee chief would tell him more about the
9
Spanish soldiers and their plans. And so, while he followed the
10
chief back to the village, his men set up camp across the river
11
on a high hill. If there was trouble, at least they would have a
12
good lookout.
he had seen the trail of flattened grass
and he
[74], (2)
13 14
David closed the book. Lt. Pike had so many adventures to
15
tell that he gave the visit to the Pawnee village only a few
16
paragraphs. Yet, reading his report more than one hundred
17
years later, Dave clearly imagined the soldiers camped on the
18
hill with the Pawnee village spread out below.
19
Clever Louise! She had thought of using Lt. Pike’s own re-
20
port to figure out which of the two sites was the village where
21
he raised the U.S. flag. An historian had collected all the maps
22
and reports from Lt. Pike’s expedition, added notes about the
23
places and peoples along the way, and published them in a set
24
of three books. Louise owned one set; she borrowed another set
25
from the library for Mr. Daley. Then, while she and Mr. Ronda
26
checked the Kansas site, Ben and Dave were investigating the
27
site in Nebraska.
28
Lt. Pike had left two important clues: a map and a descrip-
29
tion of the rivers and hills. The map was pretty rough, but it
30
seemed to lead to Red Cloud, Nebraska. The farm belonging to
31
Fred Ronda’s father also seemed to fit Lt. Pike’s description.
32
For evidence, Dave took photographs of the landscape. If Pike
33
could see these pictures today, he wondered, would the great
34
explorer recognize the place? 74
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1
There was a buried village with artifacts of the Pawnee type
2
and now the archaeology team had to figure out if the Pawnees
3
had been living there in 1806 when Lt. Pike traveled across the
4
Great Plains.
5
Until now, Ben and Dave had explored sites from prehis-
6
toric times, the period beginning when the first humans ar-
7
rived in the Americas and ending in 1492 when Christopher
8
Columbus arrived. The historic period began when the first
9
Europeans explored the land they called the New World. They
10
brought with them metal tools, guns, glass beads, and other
11
things the early Americans had never seen before. If an ar-
12
chaeologist found these artifacts, he knew that the site be-
13
longed to the historic period.
14
And this village clearly did. Dave and Ben found stone and
15
bone tools like the artifacts from other sites. Here, though,
16
some of the knives, arrowheads, and fish hooks were made of
17
metal. Instead of shell, the beads were made of glass; there
18
were also brass buttons and bells. All these things showed that
19
the villagers traded with the newcomers from Europe.
20
But when, exactly? That was the key question. These trade
21
goods could have been buried almost anytime in the last four
22
hundred years. What evidence could prove that the villagers
23
lived here in 1806 and met Zebulon Pike?
24 25
Dave stood up and stretched; he had to get to work. Back at the site, Ben was digging out a house floor.
26
The trowel clinked against a hard object. Ben dug a bit
27
more, tapped the spot, and heard a muffled ring. Gently scrap-
28
ing away the dirt, he uncovered a metal disk about the size of
29
a cracker. “Buried treasure!” he yelled, prying it loose. It flip-
30
flopped wildly and landed at his friend’s feet.
31
Dave picked it up. When he rubbed away the dirt with his
32
finger, he could see a crown on one side and a head on the
33
other. He tried to read the date underneath the head, but the
34
numbers had worn into a blur. pike’s trail
75
[75], (3)
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1
“Let me see!” Ben bent over the coin. With his pocket knife,
2
he carefully flaked the rust from the date. The last two num-
3
bers had worn off, but first two still showed faintly: 1 7. “Dumb
4
old rusty coin. It doesn’t prove anything. Couldn’t even buy a
5
piece of gum with it.” He jabbed it at Dave. “Here, you can have
6
it. We’ll never know for sure where Lt. Pike camped.”
7 8
“Hey, don’t give up,” Dave tried to sound hopeful. “We aren’t going to find a big sign saying ‘Zebulon Pike slept here.’ ”
9
“You probably won’t find a coin stamped ‘1806’ either,” Mr.
10
Daley joined in. “No single clue by itself will solve the mystery.
11
When all the clues fit together, we can be 99-percent certain
12
that we’ve found the right village. But we’ll always have to
13
leave that 1-percent possibility that we could be wrong.”
14
Mr. Daley took the coin and examined it closely. “Actually,
15
this is an important clue. It’s not a coin. It’s a peace medal,
16
given to the villagers as a sign of friendship. And that head is *
17
a portrait of the king of Spain.”
18 19 20 21
[76], (4)
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——— Normal P “Wow! The king of Spain!” Ben exclaimed. “The Spanish * PgEnds: army visited the village just before Lt. Pike arrived. Maybe I found the medal that the Spanish general gave the chief! Come [76], (4) on, Dave, we have to look for more clues!”
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 76
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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12 13 14
The Final Clue
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‘‘ to day i s o u r l a s t c h a n c e , ’’ Mr. Daley reminded Ben and
20
Dave as he tossed scrambled eggs onto their plates. “Louise
21
promised to solve the mystery of the Pawnee village in two
22
weeks. That time is almost up. Tomorrow she and Mr. Ronda
23
are driving back from Kansas to compare their findings at that
24
site with what we found here in Nebraska. I’d say we’re at the
25
right place. What do you think?”
26
“All the clues fit,” Dave answered. “What more do we need?”
27
“Footprints. Zebulon Pike’s footprints.” Ben paused to swal-
28
low a mouthful of eggs. “If we found his footprints, no one could
29
doubt that this is the village where he put up the American
30
flag.”
31
“Oh great idea, Ben. How are you going to find a footprint
32
left way back in 1806? And in the grass even?” Dave didn’t
33
mean to sound sarcastic, but his friend got angry.
34
“I will! Just watch me!” Ben dropped his empty plate in the 77
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [77], (5)
1
washbasin, grabbed his trowel, and marched off to work.
2
Dave followed a few minutes later. His job for the morn-
3
ing was taking pictures of the artifacts. In the ruins of earth
4
lodges, the archaeology team had found some tools made from
5
stone and bone, much like the ones from prehistoric sites. But
6
here, many of the tools were metal. Next to the carefully made
7
jars from the site along Medicine Creek, the pottery found here
8
looked thick and ugly, as if it had been made in a hurry.
9
In one of the storage pits, Ben had discovered a handful of
10
coins
11
travelers had visited this village, Dave thought, and they
12
brought with them new tools and new ideas. Life had been
13
changing for the people of the Great Plains.
Spanish coins, French coins, and English coins. Many
14
When he finished photographing the artifacts, Dave still
15
had one roll of film left. He wanted to take some good wildlife
16
pictures for the school photography contest. In Lt. Pike’s re-
17
port, he had read about the wild animals the explorer had
18
seen. The buffalo were gone now, of course, but Dave hoped
19
to shoot pictures of prairie dogs or mule deer. He was going
20
hunting with his camera.
21
And so that afternoon, with Badge racing ahead, Dave and
22
Ben hiked north and crossed the bridge over the Republican
23
River. A high hill rose in front of them. From a distance, it
24
hadn’t looked very big because no trees grew on it and it
25
blended into the landscape. The boys climbed to the top and
26
stood looking across the plains. To the northwest, they could
27
see the outline of the town of Red Cloud. To the southeast,
28
across the river, they could see their own camp at the Pawnee
29
village.
30 31
“What a great lookout!” Dave exclaimed. “We should have a pair of binoculars.”
32 33
“Hey, wait a minute! Didn’t Lt. Pike’s men camp on a high hill across the river from the Pawnee village?”
34
“Yeah! You’re really sharp, Ben. How’d you remember that?” 78
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Dave was trying hard to make up for insulting his friend dur-
2
ing breakfast.
3
Ben didn’t answer; something else had caught his attention.
4
He was staring at a dark circle down in the grass. “Dave, what
5
is that?” he asked.
6
“Where?” Dave squinted in the direction Ben was pointing.
7
“Oh, you mean down there? It’s probably some kind of strange
8
grass.”
9
“Why would wild grass grow in a circle? Someone would
10
have to plant it that way,” Ben explained. “Why would anyone
11
do that?”
12
“You’re right,” Dave frowned. “This calls for detective work.”
13
Whistling for Badge, Ben led the way. From the hill, the
14
dark circle had seemed very close and the boys had seen it very
15
plainly. Actually, it was almost a mile away and, as they ap-
16
proached, it disappeared under their feet. Had they imagined
17
it? They looked at each other, puzzled.
18
Badge slipped under the fence, into the pasture. She found
19
a low place in the ground and flopped on her back in the grass.
20
Her paws stuck up over the edge of the hollow, as though
21
she were rolling in a low bathtub. The boys laughed as they
22
watched her.
23 24
Suddenly Ben stopped laughing. “Badge, you clever dog! The dark circle is a ring of hollows.”
25
“You’re right! When we looked down from the hill, the grass
26
in the hollows only seemed darker because of the shadows,”
27
Dave reasoned. “A long time ago, before dirt and grass filled
28
them, these hollows must have been deep pits.”
29
While Ben ran back to camp to get a shovel, Dave measured
30
the circle. Counting his steps from one side to the other, he
31
estimated that it was one hundred feet across. He guessed
32
that circle of hollows was a ring of trenches dug by the soldiers
33
in case of an attack
34
might have done because they didn’t trust the Pawnees. the final clue
just the sort of thing Lt. Pike’s soldiers
79
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1
Ben dropped on his stomach and reached down into the
2
hole he had dug. “Dave! Look at this! I found a button!” Dave
3
wondered why Ben was so excited about a lost button. As soon
4
as he saw it, though, he understood.
5
It was not just any button. It was a brass button with fifteen
6
stars and the number “1.” It had fallen off the uniform of a
7
soldier of the U.S. Army, First Infantry
Lt. Pike’s infantry!
8 9
“Well, I have to hand it to you, Ben. You did find Lt. Pike’s
10
footprints,” Mr. Daley said when he saw the ring of trenches
11
the next day. “You even found a button belonging to one of Lt.
12
Pike’s soldiers. He himself might have lost it.”
13
“All the evidence we collected ought to convince the Ronda
14
brothers that the Red Cloud site is the Pawnee village where
15
Zebulon Pike raised the American flag,” Ben said proudly. “The
16
great explorer did sleep here.”
17
“Yes,” Louise agreed, “the case is closed.”
18 19
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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12 13 14
American Cowboy
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17 18 19
‘‘ l o o k ! ’’ b e n c a m e r u n n i n g, pointing toward a pale yellow
20
cloud in the southwest moving low and fast. The archaeology
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
team was traveling from Red Cloud in the south-central part of Nebraska all the way to Fort Robinson in the northwestern corner and had just pitched camp for the night. “Duster!” Dave jumped up. The storm would strike in just a few minutes. They had to warn Mr. Daley. Mr. Daley heard the boys’ shouting and peered out from
28
the tent. He took one glance at the racing cloud, then ducked
29
back inside. A moment later he reappeared with an armful of
30
notebooks.
31
“Come on!” he called, as he hurried toward the trailer. Just
32
yards from safety, he stumbled and fell with a thud. Paper
33
showered around him. While Ben pulled Mr. Daley to his feet,
34
Dave grabbed the scattered pages. Hugging them to his chest, 81
[81], (9)
1
he rolled under the trailer. A second later Ben and Mr. Daley
2
slid down beside him.
3
As the three lay there panting, Dave felt a soft but steady
4
pounding. He held his breath. No, it wasn’t his heartbeat. The
5
pounding was coming through the ground, and it was getting
6
closer. Now he heard a rumble. “Looks as though we’re in for
7
an earthquake,” he warned.
8
“Earthquake!”
Ben
repeated.
“Where’s
Badge?”
He
9
squirmed out from the under the trailer and began to yell for
10
the dog. The rumbling grew louder.
11
Suddenly the yelling stopped. Dave and Mr. Daley looked
12
at each other. “Hey guys!” Ben’s face was hanging sideways
13
in front of them. He wore a grin. “You have to see this.” Dave
14
cautiously wiggled forward until he could lift his head.
15
A herd of animals raced over the prairie. Dust whirled up
16
from their hooves like smoke. In the blink of an eye, horses
17
seemed to burst from the dust cloud. A fiery-gold mustang
18
galloped in the lead.
19
Then Dave saw why the wild ones ran. Six horses, with
20
bridles on their faces and saddles on their backs, followed close
21
behind. Their riders spurred them on as they drove the mus-
22
tangs toward the river’s fork.
23
The herd’s leader saw the trap and swung his band to the
24
left. With a whoop, one of the riders leaped to block the way.
25
The stallion bolted to the right, then broke to the left again.
26
The rider thrust his horse between the stallion and the rest of
27
the pack. He had cut off the herd from its leader, and now he
28
easily turned it back toward the river. As the other cowboys
29
moved to surround the mustangs, the rider headed after the
30
stallion.
31
When cries from the trapped horses reached the stallion,
32
he slowed. For a moment, it looked as though he might return
33
to his captured band. No! He spun again and charged for the
34
open plains. During that moment of hesitation, the rider had 82
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gained ground. He drew close and threw his lasso. As it hissed
2
overhead, the stallion reared and struck at the hateful rope
3
with his hooves. But it only tightened around his neck until it
4
strangled him. The chase was over.
5
The triangle of ground between the two branches of the
6
river made a natural corral for the mustangs. Water fenced
7
two sides, and the cowboys took turns guarding the open side.
8
In the morning, they would drive the herd to the town of Craw-
9
ford for the rodeo.
10
When the horses were secure for the night, Mr. Daley in-
11
vited the cowboys to dinner. While they ate, Dave studied Lee
12
Tall Rock, the rider who had roped the red-gold mustang. The
13
man had bronze-colored skin, black hair, and dark eyes. Is he
14
an Indian? Dave wondered to himself.
15
“I am Sioux,” the rider answered.
16
Dave jolted. Did he read my mind? Does he think I’m rude?
17
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“You are a great horseman,” Dave managed to say.
18
“Sioux have had horses ever since Europeans brought them
19
to America. We’re the best riders on the Great Plains. Come to
20
the rodeo on Saturday and you’ll see.”
0.0pt Pg
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [83], (11)
21 22
Lee Tall Rock rubbed his hands together, reached into the hat,
23
and picked a slip of paper. He waited until all the cowboys
24
had chosen their slips before opening his. He had drawn horse
25
number 5. He had already won the calf-roping contest that day,
26
now he would ride the bucking bronco!
27
Sitting at the top of the bleachers, Dave watched the cow-
28
boys take their places in line beside the horse pens. When he
29
saw Lee Tall Rock, he nudged Ben. “There’s our man. It looks
30
as though he’s going to ride the red-gold mustang! Come on,
31
let’s go!” The boys climbed down the side of the stands and
32
pushed their way toward the ring. By the time they found a
33
spot at the high fence, the second cowboy was brushing the
34
dust off his chaps. It had been a short ride for him. a m e r i c a n c ow b oy
[83], (11)
83
1
Lee Tall Rock paid no attention to the competitors. For him,
2
the only contest was the one between himself and the stallion
3
he called Fire Snake. Trapped in the tight stall, the horse could
4
not move even an inch forward or backward, left or right. But
5
as soon as he felt the man on his back, he sprang straight up.
6
While the rodeo clowns struggled to keep the stall door shut,
7
Lee Tall Rock gripped the rope around the stallion’s chest. He
8
wrapped a leather cord around the rope and knotted it across
9
his right palm. According to the rules, he must not touch the
10
horse with his free hand until the bell rang. So, tossing his left
11
glove to the blue clown, he nodded. The door sprang open.
12
Fire Snake reared, then charged into the ring. His head
13
plunged down; his hind legs shot into the air. He corkscrewed,
14
twisting his shoulders and hips in opposite directions. He
15
whirled in circles. He threw himself sideways. He rocked up
16
and down like a hobby-horse gone mad. He reared and plunged
17
again and again.
18
Through all these gyrations, Lee Tall Rock hung on. When
19
at last the bell rang, he tried to loosen the leather cord, but the
20
knot had jerked itself tight. He was tied to a wild mustang!
21
“He can’t get off! He’s a prisoner!” Ben yelled. Men shouted;
22
little girls screamed. Clowns jumped into the ring and tried to
23
drive the horse into a pen.
24
Lee Tall Rock paid no attention; he kept his mind on the job.
25
If he had to ride Fire Snake, then that’s exactly what he’d do.
26
He’d ride. He had to bring the stallion under control.
27
Luckily, Fire Snake was tiring. He panted hard and sweat
28
foamed down his neck. For a moment his wild bucking slowed.
29
Lee Tall Rock wrapped his legs around the stallion’s chest and
30
seized a fistful of mane. Fire Snake whipped back to life.
31
A second later a lasso sizzled through the air. In spite of the
32
blue clown’s silly costume, he was a true cowboy. His aim and
33
timing were perfect
34
head. 84
the lasso came down over the mustang’s
[84], (12)
Lines: 18 ———
0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
[84], (12)
1
As the horse rocketed past, the clown tossed the coiled end
2
of the rope to Lee Tall Rock, who reached up and grabbed the
3
flying twist of rope. He leaned forward, and it appeared that
4
he was giving the stallion a command.
5
Instantly, Fire Snake became calm. As obediently as if the
6
rope were a pair of reins, he galloped around the ring. The red-
7
gold mustang of the plains had met his equal.
8 9 10 11
[85], (13)
12 13 14
Lines: 201
15
———
389.552
16
*
17
——— Normal Pa * PgEnds: Pa
18 19 20
[85], (13)
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 a m e r i c a n c ow b oy
85
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
[86], (14)
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Lines: 20 ———
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——— Normal P PgEnds:
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
[86], (14)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
[87], (15)
12 13 14
The First Horse
Lines: 205
15
———
0.0pt Pg
16 17 18 19
that evening lee tall rock invited the archaeology team
20
to his ranch for a celebration. After the feast, Ben and Dave
21
sat on the grass with the younger children and listened to
22
Grandma Singing Bird tell stories.
23
“You want to know why my father is a great horseman?” a
24
small boy whispered to Ben. “I’ll tell you. He’s a Sioux. Some-
25
day I will be a great horseman too because I am Sioux. We have
26
been riding horses since forever.”
27
“Not forever,” Singing Bird corrected. “Once we did not have
28
horses at all. Braves hunted and fought on foot. When we made
29
a long journey, we packed our tipis, clothes, and food on the
30
backs of our dogs. We also trained our dogs to pull a travois, a
31
sort of sled made from two long poles strapped together. Those
32
furry dogs were so big and strong, they could carry a heavy
33
pack or pull a loaded travois for miles. Yet they were intelligent
34
and friendly companions as well as good workers. 87
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [87], (15)
1
“Our people still tell about the first time they saw a horse.
2
One morning a herd of buffalo was grazing near the camp.
3
Soon the herd wandered on, leaving behind a strange, beau-
4
tiful creature. It had four legs and round hooves. Its coat was
5
short and shiny, but the hair along its neck and over its tail
6
was long and wavy. What kind of animal was this? Not even
7
the wisest woman knew.
8
“The creature looked up at the crowd of people that had
9
gathered to stare at it. Then it calmly continued to graze. One
10
of the hunters got a rope. When he threw the lasso, the animal
11
simply trotted out of reach, as though it did not want to play
12
such a silly game. At last, though, the hunter caught it. Sur-
13
prisingly, instead of attacking or trying to run away, it allowed
14
the hunter to stroke its neck. Everyone wanted to touch this
15
wondrous creature. In fact, it seemed to enjoy being petted and
16
did not mind at all when one daring warrior climbed on its
17
back. The people were amazed that a wild animal could be so
18
tame, as tame as a dog.
19
“That animal, of course, was a horse. Horses soon became
20
very important to the Sioux. Sharing the work with the dogs,
21
they carried packs and pulled the travois from camp to camp.
22
Like the dogs, they were gentle, intelligent animals. But they
23
were also more useful than dogs. Warriors rode horses into
24
battle; hunters raced them after the buffalo. Because horses
25
were one of the tribe’s most valuable possessions, they were
26
given as gifts. Indeed, the Sioux called the horse Sunke Wakan,
27
meaning ‘Holy Dog.’ ”
28
The adults had been sitting nearby, listening. Now Lee Tall
29
Rock spoke sadly, “The great days when the Sioux rode their
30
horses across the wide, grassy land were numbered. The white
31
men, and the horses and guns they brought, only speeded
32
change. New tribes from the west, east, and north were arriv-
33
ing on the Great Plains. Instead of building villages, most of
34
these new arrivals followed the buffalo. At the same time, some 88
[88], (16)
Lines: 22 ———
0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
[88], (16)
1
of the village tribes left their gardens and took up hunting
2
too. The Great Plains was beginning to feel crowded; and all
3
the time, more white farmers
4
coming. When the railroads came and the buffalo disappeared,
5
the Sioux were forced to adapt to a new way of life. Those were
6
hard times. But we are strong people, and we shall be a strong
7
nation once again.”
and more white soldiers
kept
8 9 10 11
[89], (17)
12 13 14
Lines: 231
15
———
389.552
16
*
17
——— Normal Pa * PgEnds: Pa
18 19 20
[89], (17)
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 the first horse
89
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
[90], (18)
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
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——— Normal P PgEnds:
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
[90], (18)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
[91], (19)
12 13 14
Fort Robinson
Lines: 233
15
———
0.0pt Pg
16 17 18 19
dav e f o l l ow e d h i s f r i e n d quietly through the darkness.
20
Last night, as they were hiking across Lee Tall Rock’s ranch
21
to their tents, Ben had spied tracks. Now, before dawn, he and
22
Dave were heading back to the spot to keep watch.
23
Dave loaded a new roll of film into his camera. He had tried
24
to take wildlife pictures back at Zebulon Pike’s campsite, but
25
he had not succeeded. Maybe today he would get lucky; he
26
certainly hoped so.
27
The ranch was perched high in the Pine Ridge hills. The
28
sun began to rise, and Dave could see the valley below, spread-
29
ing out like a lumpy bed sheet with pine trees on the stony
30
bulges and the White River flowing along the folds. To the
31
south, huge chunks of rock called “buttes” dotted the rolling
32
plains.
33
Ben nudged him and pointed silently toward a clump of
34
pines. All Dave could see was trees. But wait! Some of the tree 91
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [91], (19)
1
trunks were moving. No, not trunks
2
long horns emerged from the branches.
legs! A head with two
3
A pronghorn stepped into the open. Ben gasped. He had
4
seen stuffed heads on the wall of his uncle’s hunting lodge,
5
but he had never seen a live pronghorn in the wild. It was so
6
handsome!
7
The pronghorn froze and looked around cautiously. The boys
8
melted against the rocks. At last, seeing no danger, it started
9
to graze. Two more pronghorns, females, came out of hiding
10
and joined their leader.
11
This was the moment Dave had been waiting for. Slowly
12
he moved away from the rocks to get a good shot. Aiming
13
the camera, he imagined the perfect picture: the two females
14
grazing and the male lifting his princely head. Dave held his
15
breath.
16
Suddenly the leader snapped to attention. Dave clicked the
17
shutter. Perfect! he congratulated himself. In the next instant,
18
the females lifted their heads. Instinctively, he turned to follow
19
their gaze.
20
A cougar crouched on the rocks. Although it was directly
21
over Ben’s head, he had no clue it was there. Fortunately, the
22
cougar didn’t know Ben was there either. All its attention was
23
focused on the pronghorns.
24
Dave pointed the camera and shot a picture. Ben looked at
25
him in surprise. “What are you doing?” he started to ask, but
26
before he could finish the question the cougar took a leap for
27
the nearest female. The three pronghorns sprang away with
28
the cougar racing behind them.
29 30
“Whew! That was a close one!” Ben exclaimed as he leaned weakly against the rocks.
31 32
“Just think! I photographed two rare animals on the same day!” Dave sat down in the grass. He felt a little shaky.
33
“Right, pal. That cougar could have turned both of us into
34 92
[92], (20)
Lines: 25 ———
0.0pt P
——— Short Pa PgEnds:
[92], (20)
1
rare animals!” Ben answered. “Come on, Mr. Daring Wildlife
2
Photographer, let’s go eat breakfast and head to Fort Robin-
3
son.”
4 5
The sounds of cows, pigs, and chickens greeted the archaeology
6
team when the Ford drove through the gate at Fort Robinson.
7
A colonel mounted on a tall horse rode up to the car. He looked
8
just like a cavalry soldier from the movies with his dark hat,
9
shiny buttons, dusty pants, and high boots. He swung down
10
from the saddle, pulled off one long glove, and shook Mr. Da-
11
ley’s hand through the car window.
12
“Colonel Dawes, pleased to meet you,” he introduced himself
13
to Dave and Ben in the back seat, then turned again to Mr.
14
Daley. “Horses are waiting at headquarters for you and your
15
crew. Follow me, and I’ll give you a tour.” Half an hour later, Dave was riding a gray horse, in line
17
behind Colonel Dawes on his roan and Mr. Daley on a chubby
18
black horse. Ben rode next to Dave on a chocolate-colored
19
horse. They passed dairy barns, hog pens, and long poultry
20
houses. They circled fish ponds run by the government hatch-
21
ery. At last, they came to fenced pastures crowded with brawny
22
mules and sleek horses. “You’re looking at more than 7,000 animals
more than
24
three million dollars worth of government property,” Colonel
25
Dawes announced proudly. “We supply the whole U.S. Army.”
26
“I don’t understand,” Ben interrupted. “It’s 1939! I thought
27
tanks and airplanes had replaced horses and mules.”
28
“Oh no. Machines can’t go everywhere. The Army still relies
29
on horses and mules to do the real dirty work. Things could
30
change, though, in the next war or two.”
31
“You have a wonderful operation here, but we weren’t ex-
32
pecting a farm tour,” Mr. Daley explained, as the group dis-
33
mounted under a shade tree and unwrapped their sandwiches.
34 f o rt ro b i n s o n
Lines: 274 ———
16
23
[93], (21)
93
0.0pt Pg
——— Short Page PgEnds: TE [93], (21)
1
“We came to Fort Robinson to collect exhibits for the history
2
museum in Lincoln.”
3 4
“Well, this place has quite a history, let me tell you,” the colonel grinned.
5
In 1874 the U.S. Army sent soldiers to this wild corner of
6
northwestern Nebraska for two reasons: to protect settlers
7
from angry Indians and to protect Indian lands from greedy
8
settlers. The officer in charge named the new outpost after
9
Levi Robinson, a soldier killed in the fighting. Many more
10
men
11 12
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
died before peace came. Right here at Fort
[94], (22)
Robinson, in fact, the great chief Crazy Horse was murdered.
13 14
white soldiers, black soldiers, and warriors from many
different tribes
By the spring of 1877, many Indian leaders had agreed to leave their homeland and take their people to reservations. Crazy Horse and his warriors were among the last to surrender. At Fort Robinson they turned in their guns, their horses,
Lines: 29 ———
14.5pt
——— Normal P would begin again, ordered them to stay at the Red Cloud * PgEnds: Agency. When they tried to leave, the army chased them down and arrested Crazy Horse. As the soldiers led him to prison, [94], (22) he fought to escape and was stabbed. “That was the end of the Indian days, pretty much,” Colonel Dawes concluded. “With Crazy Horse dead, his followers, along with other families, moved to reservations.” When they finished lunch, Colonel Dawes pointed the archaeology team to the old garbage dump, now overgrown with weeds. Within two hours of digging, Ben turned up a pair of spurs, a hunting knife, and the flint lock from a rifle. Mr. Daley dug up dented cooking pots, chipped bowls, and rusty tin cans. Dave found discarded toys a top, a carved wooden dog, and the hands from a china doll. His greatest prize was a leather pouch full of marbles. After the wonderful artifacts from the buried village, these and their freedom. The government, afraid that the fighting
94
1
things looked like junk. But they did give clues about life at
2
Fort Robinson. Who would have guessed that frontier soldiers
3
ate canned food? Or that children once played here? The fort,
4
Dave decided, stood for changing times and changing ways of
5
life on the Great Plains.
6 7 8 9 10 11
[95], (23)
12 13 14
Lines: 303
15
———
420.5pt
16
*
17
——— Normal Pa * PgEnds: Pa
18 19 20
[95], (23)
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 f o rt ro b i n s o n
95
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
[96], (24)
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Lines: 30 ———
0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
[96], (24)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
[First Page
11
[97], (1)
12 13 14
Mr. Daley’s Own Story
Lines: 0 to
15
———
0.0pt Pg
16 17 18 19
‘‘ i ’ m g l a d t h at yo u ’ r e going to set up an exhibit at your
20
museum,” Colonel Dawes replied when Mr. Daley thanked him
21
for inviting the archaeology team. “It’s time that Fort Robinson
22
receives the recognition it deserves. After all, the brave sol-
23
diers who worked here tamed the frontier so that Americans
24
could settle on the Great Plains.”
25
“Yes, the soldiers were brave.” Mr. Daley paused. “But I
26
should warn you that the exhibit will not simply celebrate
27
their courage. ‘Taming the frontier’ meant driving out the In-
28
dians. They are Americans too: the museum must tell about
29
their experiences as well.”
30
Mr. Daley had not intended to insult him, but Colonel
31
Dawes suddenly stood, banging his chair against the wall.
32
“Wasn’t Major Arthur Daley your father?” he challenged. “Ac-
33
cording to the old army records, he was a tough Indian fighter.
34
Are you suggesting that he was wrong?” 97
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [97], (1)
1
Mr. Daley’s neck turned slightly red and drops of sweat
2
showed on his forehead. Dave and Ben looked at each other
3
in alarm. Were the two men going to argue?
4
At the last moment, Mr. Daley took control of his anger.
5
“That’s true. Major Daley was my father. In fact, he was here
6
at this fort when Crazy Horse was murdered. But the crime
7
upset him so much that he left the army. Instead of fighting
8
Indians, he wanted to help them. And so he became a govern-
9
ment Indian agent.
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
“The U.S. government claimed that it wanted to ‘civilize’ the Indians by teaching them to farm. I grew up on my father’s
[98], (2)
reservation, and I saw that forcing them to learn this new way of life was a double disaster.” “A double disaster?” Colonel Dawes repeated, sitting down again. By now his curiosity had overcome his anger. “Yes, a double disaster,” Mr. Daley continued. “The government officials back in Washington dc didn’t understand Indian cultures and did not seem to care if Indians living on the reser-
Lines: 21 ———
14.5pt
——— Normal P PgEnds:
vations suffered hunger, poverty, and sickness. Those officials didn’t understand the Great Plains environment either. They made all sorts of policies cutting the land into farms and giving
23
huge pieces to the railroads. Wild animals disappeared. The
24
soil dried out and blew away on the wind.
25
“When I was a young man, I decided to become an archaeol-
26
ogist in order to study the history of the Great Plains. I hoped
27
that my discoveries about the changing environment would
28
help to guide decisions about the use of the land. Furthermore,
29
I hoped that by proving American Indians have a long and ex-
30
citing history, I would show that they deserve respect. Today, in
31
spite of all they have endured, they still keep their traditions
32
alive.”
33
“Well, then, I wish you the best of luck.” Colonel Dawes rose
34
and shook hands first with Mr. Daley, then with Ben and Dave. 98
[98], (2)
1
That evening as the sun was setting, Dave sat outside his tent,
2
thinking about Mr. Daley’s own story. Now more than ever,
3
Dave wanted to become an archaeologist. He still wanted to
4
make a great discovery in some exotic country, of course. Yet,
5
he also wanted to learn about his own land and the people
6
whites, Indians, and others
7
he was born.
who had lived here long before
8
Looking out across the plains, he felt as though he were
9
looking through binoculars. But instead of showing him ob-
10
jects far away, these binoculars let him see into the distance of
11
time. He imagined the plains, dark and still during the endless
12
winter of the Ice Age. A group of woolly mammoth stood packed
13
together in the cold while hunters with their huge spears qui-
14
etly sneaked up for the attack.
Lines: 37 t
15
Then the snow melted. He saw a village surrounded by gar-
16
dens. Outside a low earth lodge, a woman was making a pot-
17
tery jar. Nearby, her elderly father smoked a clay pipe and her
18
little boy played with a toy bow and arrow.
19
The scene changed again. The village disappeared, replaced
20
by a circle of buffalo-hide tipis. Shouting warriors grabbed
21
their guns and galloped away on their horses. Then the tipis
22
too disappeared. A farmer sliced through the thick grass with
23
his plow; corn and wheat sprang up behind him.
24
Dave did not need the binoculars anymore. With his own
25
eyes he watched as more and more farmers came. They were
26
turning the Great Plains into a huge field and closing it in with
27
fences.
28
Yet humans could never really own the land. Nature owned
29
it and, from time to time, remade it. Over thousands of years,
30
a grassland could change into a desert or a forest. In a million
31
years, the floor of the ocean could become a mountain peak.
32
Humans could cause changes too. But in the end, Dave con-
33
cluded, they were just visitors in a land where nature ruled.
34 m r . da l e y ’ s ow n s to ry
[99], (3)
99
———
12.5525
——— Normal Pa * PgEnds: Pa [99], (3)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
[100], (4)
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Lines: 48 ———
0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
[100], (4)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
[101], (5)
12 13 14
A New World
Lines: 49 t
15
———
0.0pt Pg
16 17 18 19
‘‘ i ’ m s u r e w e ’ l l f i n d your bike today.” Dave tried to sound
20
cheerful but Ben only nodded. They both felt a little down.
21
Mr. Daley had brought them home to Bridgeport two days ago,
22
and already they were back to the usual routine: mowing the
23
yard, cleaning the store, delivering the newspapers. Neither
24
one talked much as they headed out of town to look for Ben’s
25
lost bike.
26
When they reached the place where the dust storm had hit,
27
they were surprised to find the field covered with bright green
28
corn. The farmer was walking through the rows, checking if
29
the ears were ripening. He saw the boys and came to the fence.
30
“What do you think? The crops are growing again!”
31
“Your corn looks great. You’ll get forty bushels to the acre
32
and forty dollars a bushel.” Dave knew what to say to a farmer.
33
“What’s your secret?”
34
“Secret?” the farmer laughed. “Oh, that’s a good joke! The se101
——— Normal Pa PgEnds: TE [101], (5)
1
cret is a water tank
2
we waited for rain to fall from the sky when all the water we
3
needed was right here, hidden right under our feet!”
and it’s not a secret anymore. For years,
4
Ben raised his eyebrows as if to ask “Is this guy crazy?”
5
The farmer, catching the look on Ben’s face, laughed again.
6
“I’ll stop talking in riddles.” He explained that nature had
7
stored water deep underground in a layer of rock called an
8
“aquifer.” With the help of government agents, he and his
9
neighbors built windmills to pump water to the surface.
10
Thanks to the new irrigation system, the crops no longer de-
11
pended on the weather.
12
“Would you like to see my windmill?” the farmer asked. Like
13
the owner of a new car, he wanted to show off his new machine.
14
So, to be polite, Ben and Dave went along for a tour. They had
15
to admire all the shiny parts and listen to the whole story of
16
drilling the well, pouring the concrete platform, and building
17
the steel tower.
18
“You know, something funny happened when we were lay-
19
ing the irrigation pipes,” the farmer continued. “We found a
20
bicycle.”
21 22
“A bicycle?” Ben snapped to attention. “Did you keep it? Where is it? May I see it?”
23
“Of course. I heard that a boy from town lost a bike during
24
the last big duster and I plan to give it back if he ever comes
25
to visit.”
26 27
“Here I am! I’m Ben Watson! May I see if the bike you found is mine?”
28
The bike the farmer wheeled from the shed was indeed
29
Ben’s. It was a little scratched but otherwise in good shape.
30
Someone had even put a new pedal on it. After thanking the
31
farmer and wishing him good luck with the windmill, Ben and
32
Dave headed home with Badge trotting behind them.
33
On the way, they stopped at the railroad station to check for
34
the latest news. As usual, the clerk was at his desk, stamping 102
[102], (6)
Lines: 69 ———
0.0pt P
——— Normal P PgEnds:
[102], (6)
1
telegrams. He looked up when they walked into the office. “Ben
2
Watson? David Fletcher? I have a telegram for the two of you.”
3
It was from the city of Lincoln. Could Mr. Daley have sent
4
it? Dave held the blue-gray card so that he and Ben could read
5
it at the same time.
6 7 8
coronado = 400th anniversary next summer = let’s find quivira
9
= da l e y
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
[103], (7)
The telegram was from Mr. Daley! Next year, 1940, it would be four hundred years since the Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado and his army had set out across the Plains to find the
Lines: 87 t
golden kingdom of Quivira. Now Mr. Daley was inviting Ben and Dave to retrace Coronado’s journey and search for the legendary land. How exciting! Next summer was a whole school
———
*
208.695
——— Normal Pa plans for another adventure in archaeology. Would they dis- * PgEnds: Pa cover Quivira? year away, but they didn’t wait even a minute to start making
[103], (7)
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 a n e w wo r l d
103
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Author’s Note
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This book is a work of fiction. The characters Ben and Dave, the
20
persons they meet, and their adventures are imaginary. Yet
21
the history of the Great Plains is not imaginary
22
Ice Age hunters, the Archaic people, the village gardeners, the
23
horsemen warriors, and the European explorers really existed.
24
We know as much as we do about them because archaeolo-
25
gists have searched out the evidence. On the next page, you
26
will find a short list of scientific books and articles about the
27
Great Plains and the peoples who lived there from the earliest
28
times.
it is fact. The
29
The inspiration for this book was also a real person, Dr.
30
Waldo Wedel, a pioneer of Great Plains archaeology. While he
31
was growing up on a farm in Kansas, he saw dust storms in
32
action. He wondered if there had been such droughts in the
33
past and how humans had survived. Searching for answers
34
to these questions, he studied archaeology in college and took 105
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a job at the Smithsonian Institution. He worked for over fifty
2
years to piece together the history of nature’s changing climate
3
and humans’ changing ways of life on the Great Plains.
4
When Dr. Wedel was in college in the 1930s, the methods
5
that the characters Dave and Ben use were the most up-to-
6
date procedures of the time. Since then, archaeologists have
7
developed much better excavation methods. For example, Ben
8
and Dave excavate an earth lodge in a single day, as an archae-
9
ologist might have done in the 1930s. Today professional ar-
10
chaeologists will spend weeks on just one lodge. Stratigraphy
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
and record keeping are still very important procedures. But
[106], (10
now, during an excavation, archaeologists are carefully gathering more kinds of evidence
pollen, plant remains, animal
bones. Thanks to advances in technology, archaeologists also have a whole range of new procedures for analyzing this evidence
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106
1
spect for their graves and sacred objects; thankfully, archaeolo-
2
gists and museum directors are responding. History continues
3
today. Every one of us is a part of the story
4
ture, new tools, new ways of life, and encounters with different
5
peoples.
the story of na-
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Sources
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general reading
19
Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The Native Amer-
20
ican West before Lewis and Clark. Lincoln: University of
21
Nebraska Press, 2003.
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
Carlson, Paul H. The Plains Indians. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998. Edmonds, Margot, and Ella E. Clark. Voices of the Winds: Native American Legends. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1989. Federal Writer’s Project, Nebraska. Nebraska: A Guide to the Cornhusker State. New York: Viking Press, 1939. Harrod, Howard L. Renewing the World: Plains Indian Religion and Morality. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987. Marriot, Alice, and Carol K. Rachlin. Plains Indian Mythology. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1975. Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela. Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought 109
19.432p
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[109], (13)
1 2
and Depression in Southwestern Kansas. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994.
3
Schubert, Frank N. Outpost of the Sioux Wars: A History of
4
Fort Robinson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995
5
(originally published as Buffalo Soldiers, Braves, and the
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
Brass [White Mane Publishing Company, 1993]). Standing Bear, Luther. Stories of the Sioux. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [1934] 1988. Trigger, Bruce G., and Wilcomb E. Washburn, eds. North America, vol. 1, parts 1 and 2, The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. New York: Cambridge Univer-
[110], (14
sity Press, 1996. archaeologic al sites
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The Cellars of Time. Special issue of NEBRASKAland 72
14.75p
(1994).
———
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1
ments and Culture Change in the Republican River Basin.
2
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
3
. “Contributions to the Archaeology of the Upper Repub-
4
lican Valley, Nebraska.” Nebraska History 15 (1935): 132–
5
209.
6
. “Preliminary Notes on the Archaeology of Medicine
7
Valley in Southwestern Nebraska.” Nebraska History 14
8
(1933): 144–66.
9 10
Wood, W. Raymond, ed. Archaeology on the Great Plains. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
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