Dinosaur Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

are even smaller. When I was a lad and visited southern El Grande, I saw centrosaurs in herds of hundreds, some of the big females thirty-five feet long. Sammy's been with us since the beginning, and he still acts like a youngster. Don't you, Sam?" Shellabarger grabbed hay from a bale, pulled a eucalyptus leaf from another box, and tied them up with a long green blade of grass. Sammy's beak opened and a rasping parrot tongue poked out. He rolled over a little more, stretched out his beak, and took the wad from Shellabarger. The centrosaur whistled softly through his nose.
    All around Sammy's crest, reddish-brown knobs stuck out like studs on a dog's collar. Spots of dark green and fleshy pink covered the crest to just behind the prominent bony ridges surrounding his eyes.
    "He looks placid now," Shellabarger said, "but Sammy gave me fits when I was younger. Liked to step on toes."
    "Do the dinosaurs live a long time?" Anthony asked.
    "We've got one old carnivore here, Dagger, a venator--he's in the trailer now, we don't take him out until the show--he's thirty-seven or thirty-eight, probably. He was a youngster when I plucked him off the plateau thirty years ago. Herbivores live about three times longer than the carnivores. So Sammy could live to be ninety or more."
    "You seem to like them all," Peter said.
    "Well," Shellabarger said, "I like some, and some like me." He drew up one corner of his lips and lowered his eyebrow in a half grimace.
    The size of theCentrosaurus stunned Peter. He had never seen a dinosaur up close--only in pictures--and Sammy's bulk was both bigger, in some ways, and smaller, than he had imagined. Bigger, because if Sammy got loose, he could certainly smash up most of the circus, and smaller, because he could not tear apart a city. Peter wondered how big Dagger the venator was.
    "There's Lotto now," Shellabarger said, nodding toward the juncture of the two tents. "You'll meet the rest of the beasts soon enough."
    Lothar Gluck was a short plump man with a pale face and red cheeks and thin graying brown hair. He wore an expensive suit that refused to fit properly. His short stubby nose and florid lips reminded Peter of Charles Laughton, but Gluck's features seemed more dissipated, as if in his youth he might have been a handsome man.
    "Lotto, this is Anthony Belzoni and his son, Peter," Shellabarger introduced. Gluck stuck out a thick pale hand, and Anthony shook it first as Gluck murmured certain standard phrases, "Pleasssed to meet you, delighted, yesss . . ." Then he came to Peter. Gluck's hand felt soft and slightly damp, like bread dough. He kept glancing over his shoulder, as if expecting someone else to arrive.
    Though he was a U.S. citizen--and had been since 1913-- Lothar Gluck still spoke with a German accent. He hung on to many of his s's as he said them, as if unwilling to let his words loose.
    "Sso, Mr. Shellabarger hass given you a small tour?" Gluck asked.
    "We've seen a few of the animals," Anthony said. "It's a thrill to get this close, isn't it, Peter?"
    Gluck focused on Peter, sized him up, and smiled sunnily. "Esspecially for a youngsster. I have built my career on thrilling young folks with the beassts."
    Peter felt he was expected to say something. "They're great," he said. "I mean, they'rebig. "
    "Both greatand big," Gluck said. "Sssome bigger than others." He cast a sad, glassy eye on Sammy. "Will Ssammy be performing tonight?"
    "He wouldn't miss it," Shellabarger said.
    "Sammy was the first dinosssaur I brought down from El Grande. I first went up the rivers to the tepuis when I was thirty-one yearss old, in the expedition of Colonel Fawcett himself. He ordered me to take Sammy and two other beassts down the Caron�back to civilization. Colonel Fawcett stayed behind, and was never seen again. After Professor Challenger, he was the greatest explorer of that region . . . But then, Challenger wass a dynamo, a genius, and something of a monssster himself."
    "Cardozo was better,"