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 Through the End of the Cretaceous
in the Type Locality of the Hell Creek Formation
in Montana and Adjacent Areas

edited by

Gregory P. Wilson
Department of Biology and Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington 98195-1800, USA

William A. Clemens
Museum of Paleontology
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California 94720-4780, USA

John R. Horner
Museum of the Rockies
Montana State University
Bozeman, Montana 59717-0040, USA

Joseph H. Hartman
Harold Hamm School of Geology and Geological Engineering
University of North Dakota
Grand Forks, North Dakota 58202-8358, USA

Special Paper 503

3300 Penrose Place, P.O. Box 9140 Boulder, Colorado 80301-9140, USA

2014
Copyright © 2014, The Geological Society of America (GSA), Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright
is not claimed on content prepared wholly by U.S. government employees within the scope of their
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Published by The Geological Society of America, Inc.

3300 Penrose Place, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, Colorado 80301-9140, USA
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Printed in U.S.A.

GSA Books Science Editors: Kent Condie and F. Edwin Harvey

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

Cover: Acrylic painting copyright © 2013 Donna Braginetz; used with permission. A reconstruction
of a latest Cretaceous Hell Creek ecosystem, in which a family of Triceratops drinks from the shores
of a meandering river, while in the foreground the large marsupialform mammal Didelphodon vorax
gets a good scratch and the aquatic salamander Opisthotriton kayi kicks up a plume of mud as it
swims through the shallow waters. Flowering plants including members of the nettle family occupy
the frequently flooded river banks, while trees including dawn redwood Metasequoia, Ginkgo, and
Erlindorfia give structure to the woodlands.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Gregory P. Wilson, William A. Clemens, John R. Horner, and Joseph H. Hartman

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
John R. Horner

1. From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact: Early studies (1901–1980) of

the Hell Creek Formation in its type area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
William A. Clemens and Joseph H. Hartman

2. Context, naming, and formal designation of the Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation
lectostratotype, Garfield County, Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Joseph H. Hartman, Raymond D. Butler, Matthew W. Weiler, and Karew K. Schumaker

3. Assessing the relationships of the Hell Creek–Fort Union contact, Cretaceous-Paleogene

boundary, and Chicxulub impact ejecta horizon at the Hell Creek Formation lectostratotype,
Montana, USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Jason R. Moore, Gregory P. Wilson, Mukul Sharma, Hannah R. Hallock, Dennis R. Braman,
and Paul R. Renne

4. Magnetostratigraphy of the Hell Creek and lower Fort Union Formations in

northeastern Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Rebecca LeCain, William C. Clyde, Gregory P. Wilson, and Jeremy Riedel

5. Carbon isotope stratigraphy and correlation of plant megafossil localities in

the Hell Creek Formation of eastern Montana, USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Nan Crystal Arens, A. Hope Jahren, and David C. Kendrick

6. A florule from the base of the Hell Creek Formation in the type area of eastern Montana:
Implications for vegetation and climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Nan Crystal Arens and Sarah E. Allen

7. A preliminary test of the press-pulse extinction hypothesis: Palynological indicators of

vegetation change preceding the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, McCone County,
Montana, USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Nan Crystal Arens, Anna Thompson, and A. Hope Jahren

8. Euselachians from the freshwater deposits of the Hell Creek Formation of Montana . . . . . . . . 229
Todd D. Cook, Michael G. Newbrey, Donald B. Brinkman, and James I. Kirkland

iii
iv Contents

9. Diversity and paleoecology of actinopterygian fish from vertebrate microfossil localities of

the Maastrichtian Hell Creek Formation of Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Donald B. Brinkman, Michael G. Newbrey, and Andrew G. Neuman

10. Extinction and survival of salamander and salamander-like amphibians across

the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in northeastern Montana, USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Gregory P. Wilson, David G. DeMar Jr., and Grace Carter

11. Temporal changes within the latest Cretaceous and early Paleogene turtle faunas of
northeastern Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Patricia A. Holroyd, Gregory P. Wilson, and J. Howard Hutchison

12. A stratigraphic survey of Triceratops localities in the Hell Creek Formation,

northeastern Montana (2006–2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
John B. Scannella and Denver W. Fowler

13. Cranial morphology of a juvenile Triceratops skull from the Hell Creek Formation,
McCone County, Montana, with comments on the fossil record of
ontogenetically younger skulls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Mark B. Goodwin and John R. Horner

14. Paleobiological implications of a Triceratops bonebed from the Hell Creek Formation,
Garfield County, northeastern Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Sarah W. Keenan and John B. Scannella

15. Mammalian extinction, survival, and recovery dynamics across the Cretaceous-Paleogene
boundary in northeastern Montana, USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Gregory P. Wilson
 Foreword

For over a century, the Hell Creek and Fort Union formations and their constituent fossil biotas have
captivated geologists and paleontologists alike. Much of the early research focused on exposures of these
formations in the north-flowing tributaries of the Missouri River in northeastern Montana. Barnum Brown
inaugurated these studies describing the Hell Creek Formation from exposures in the valley of Hell Creek,
its tributaries, and adjacent areas in Garfield County. Then, in 2002, Geological Society of America Special
Paper 361, The Hell Creek Formation and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in the Northern Great Plains:
An Integrated Continental Record of the End of the Cretaceous (edited by Joseph H. Hartman, Kirk R. John-
son, and Douglas J. Nichols), was published. The majority of the chapters in that Special Paper presented
new data and insights based on substantial research in western North and South Dakota. In its preface, the
editors commented, “…we now realize that we have just begun to mine the information lode available on
biotic patterns preserved in this part of the northern Great Plains” (p. v).
The papers in the present volume validate the editors’ prediction. Here, the emphasis shifts back to
northeastern Montana to present the results of recent research in the type locality of the Hell Creek Forma-
tion. The majority of these chapters are products of research carried out as part of the Hell Creek Project
(1999–2010) organized by John Horner, Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University (see Introduc-
tion). During this period, the project’s fieldwork was based at camps in the valley of Hell Creek. As the
authorship of the following papers indicates, this field and laboratory research involved earth scientists from
many North American universities and museums.
This volume brings together the results of some of the research completed under the auspices of the
Hell Creek Project. The chapters stem from “Through the End of the Cretaceous in the Type Locality of the
Hell Creek Formation and Adjacent Areas,” a symposium organized by Joseph Hartman, Greg Wilson, John
Horner, and William Clemens and presented at the Ninth North American Paleontological Convention held
in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2009. The current results of the project illustrate the impacts of refined and new meth-
ods and tools for research, such as stable isotope geochemistry, more precise radiometric age determinations,
Global Positioning Systems, as well as morphometric analyses and studies of large databases. In tandem,
the research questions have evolved to take advantage of the increased precision, quality, and quantity of the
data, from determinations of paleoecologies to assessment of ontogenetic sequences, patterns of sedimenta-
tion, and basin-level intraformational correlations.
The introduction and the first chapter provide a historical perspective on the paleontological and geo-
logical field research that has taken place in the area. John Horner briefly introduces the conception and
design of the Hell Creek Project, and William Clemens and Joseph Hartman pick up the historical thread
farther back at the beginning of the twentieth century with the horn of Triceratops found by W.T. Hornaday
and follow that thread forward to 1980, the Alvarez asteroid extinction hypothesis, and the years beyond.
The next four chapters focus on important aspects of the geology in northeastern Montana. Joseph
Hartman and his coauthors describe the lithostratigraphy of a local composite section of the Fox Hills, Hell
Creek, and Fort Union formations in the Flag Butte area of central Garfield County, and propose it as the

Wilson, G.P., Clemens, W.A., Horner, J.R., and Hartman, J.H., 2014, Foreword, in Wilson, G.P., Clemens, W.A., Horner, J.R., and
Hartman, J.H., eds., Through the End of the Cretaceous in the Type Locality of the Hell Creek Formation in Montana and Adjacent
Areas: Geological Society of America Special Paper 503, p. v–vii, doi:10.1130/2014.2503(000). For permission to copy, contact
editing@geosociety.org. © 2014 The Geological Society of America. All rights reserved.

v
vi Foreword

lectostratotype for the Hell Creek Formation. To constrain the relative position of the Hell Creek–Fort Union
formational contact, the Chicxulub impact ejecta layer, and the K-Pg boundary, Jason Moore and his coau-
thors apply lithological, geochemical, palynological, and geochronological analyses to a narrow stratigraphic
interval in the lectostratotype section. Then, Rebecca LeCain and her coauthors report on their magnetostrati-
graphic evaluation of the local composite section in the Hell Creek Formation lectostratotype area, as well
as a local composite section in the Biscuit Butte area, together spanning the uppermost Fox Hills Formation,
the Hell Creek Formation, and the Tullock Member of the Fort Union Formation. And as a step toward a
more robust system for intraformational correlation of fossil localities, Nan Arens and her coauthors present
a carbon isotope chemostratigraphic curve through the Hell Creek Formation and across the K-Pg boundary
into the Tullock Member of the Fort Union Formation.
The following two papers focus on the paleobotanical data from the study area. Nan Arens and Sarah
Allen describe a megaflora from the lower Hell Creek Formation, comparing it with the well-studied floras
from North Dakota and applying leaf physiognomy methods to it to reconstruct local paleoclimate. Then,
Arens and her coauthors present a stratigraphic succession of palynofloras immediately across the K-Pg
boundary that they use to test the “press-pulse” extinction hypothesis.
The last eight chapters provide new data and analyses of the vertebrate fauna from the study area. In
the chapters by Todd Cook et al. and Donald Brinkman et al., the authors revise the fossil record of fresh-
water sharks, rays, and actinopterygian fish, respectively, from the Hell Creek Formation and the Tullock
Member. They then discuss the paleobiogeographic, temporal, and paleoecological context of these data.
The papers by Gregory Wilson et al., Patricia Holroyd et al., and Gregory Wilson investigate taxonomic
diversity dynamics in salamanders and salamander-like amphibians, turtles, and mammals, respectively,
leading up to, across, and following the K-Pg boundary. The results of these analyses, which incorporate
relative abundance data, provide compelling evidence for a more complex K-Pg mass extinction scenario,
a characteristic “survival” fauna, and a mosaic pattern of recovery. The dinosaur genus Triceratops is the
focus of three papers in this section. John Scannella and Denver Fowler review the stratigraphic and his-
torical context of 27 significant Triceratops localities, many of which have been excavated as part of the
Hell Creek Project, and stress the importance of these data in evolutionary and ontogenetic studies and
future targeted collecting. Mark Goodwin and John Horner describe a skull of a juvenile Triceratops from
the Hell Creek Formation and reflect on how collector bias has led to under-representation of nonadult
specimens in our collections. Sarah Keenan and John Scannella then provide a detailed evaluation of the
taphonomy of a Triceratops bonebed and its implications for our understanding of the paleobiology of this
common Hell Creek dinosaur.
In sum, we are very excited about the advances that are presented in this volume, but we echo the editors
of Special Paper 361 in recognizing that the chapters in this volume are building blocks or starting points
for additional research as we continue to mine a rich lode of geo- and biohistory data preserved in the strata
bounding the K-Pg boundary.

Stratigraphic Conventions

We use the Tullock as a member of the Fort Union Formation following the convention of the U.S.
Geological Survey. We use the acronym K-Pg to reflect the splitting of the Tertiary into the Paleogene and
Neogene by the International Stratigraphic Commission.

Acknowledgments

We are tremendously grateful for financial support from Nathan Mhyrvold, the Kohler family, the U.S.
Department of Energy (to JHH), the Energy & Environmental Research Center of the University of North
Dakota (JHH), the University of California Museum of Paleontology, and others listed in individual chapters.
We would also like to acknowledge assistance from the various federal and state agencies, community mem-
bers, and landowners who have made this research possible. Specifically, we would like to thank the Bureau
of Land Management (Gary Smith, Doug Melton), Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge (Bill Berg, Nathan
Hawkaluk), Montana State Department of Natural Resources and Culture (Patrick Rennie), private land-
owners (McKeever, Engdahl, Hauso, Twitchell, Olson, McDonald, Trumbo, Bliss, Abe, Leo, and Virginia
 Foreword vii

Murnion, Isaacs, Burgess, Thomas, and Pinkerton families), the Hell Creek State Park staff (Mary Pat Wat-
son, Jerry Hensley, Dave Andrus, Lilly Johnston, Hally McDonald), members of the business community
of Jordan, Joe Herbold (The Office), Jim and Ed Ryan, the Hagemans, Clint and Deb Thomas, the Fosters
and FitzGeralds, and Clyde and Lori Phipps. We are also indebted to the referees who critically reviewed the
manuscripts and Edite Forman for her tour-de-force copyediting all of the manuscripts.

Gregory P. Wilson
William A. Clemens
John R. Horner
Joseph H. Hartman
 Introduction

In 1998, I proposed a project to Nathan Myhrvold in which we would undertake what we believed
would be the largest dinosaur (and associated paleontological specimens) collection effort in the United
States, rivaling any of the expeditions of the 1800s. We named it the Hell Creek Project, and planned for
an initial duration of five years. Our goal was to amass a huge, new collection of fossil remains from the
Upper Cretaceous, Hell Creek Formation of eastern Montana, all of which would have precise geologic and
geographic data. Nathan agreed to underwrite the majority of the field costs, and we then invited a number
of primary researchers who we thought would best represent the various aspects of the project. The senior
personnel included Bill Clemens (University of California, Berkeley, fossil mammals), Joe Hartman (Uni-
versity of North Dakota, fossil mollusks), and myself (Montana State University, dinosaurs). Each of us then
invited other senior researchers including Nan Arens (then of University of California, Berkeley, paleobota-
nist), Mark Goodwin (University of California, Berkeley, dinosaurs), Jim Schmitt (Montana State University,

Hell Creek base camp, 1 July 2000.

Horner, J.R., 2014, Introduction, in Wilson, G.P., Clemens, W.A., Horner, J.R., and Hartman, J.H., ed., Through the End of the Cre-
taceous in the Type Locality of the Hell Creek Formation in Montana and Adjacent Areas: Geological Society of America Special
Paper 503, p. ix–x, doi:10.1130/2014.2503(001). For permission to copy, contact editing@geosociety.org. © 2014 The Geological
Society of America. All rights reserved.

ix
x Introduction

stratigraphy and sedimentology), and Mary Schweitzer (North Carolina State University, biomolecules).
Each senior-level person then brought in a number of graduate students. The project got underway during the
summer of 1999, based at Hell Creek State Park on the southern shores of Fort Peck Reservoir in Garfield
County. The base camp was set up to sustain more than 50 people, and support as many as four concurrent
satellite camps. Boats and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) were purchased, and use of a helicopter was donated
by the Windway Capital Corporation of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. With boats, ATVs, and a helicopter we were
able to collect large specimens from all areas of the study region. Nothing was inaccessible.
The helicopter was fitted with a high-resolution video camera with which we were able to create high-
resolution aerial transects, and track particular beds over large areas. Some areas were mapped using LIDAR
(light detection and ranging), and all sites were placed into a high-resolution stratigraphic column.
At the end of the five-year period, we had amassed an enormous collection of specimens and data,
mostly from the lower third of the formation, a unit that had previously been under-collected for logistical
reasons. During those first few years, we also came to realize that mudstones contained remains that had also
been, for the most part, ignored because of a perception of poor preservation. It was in the mudstones that we
found numerous disarticulated, juvenile specimens of Triceratops.
In 2004, with a grant from the Smithsonian Institution, we undertook a second five-year project (Hell
Creek Project II) to mirror the first by continuing to amass large quantities of fossils and geologic data, but
to do so from the middle and upper units of the Hell Creek Formation. We moved our base camp east and set
up on the Twitchell Ranch, where we worked areas in northeastern Garfield County. So much material was
found that the five-year project extended into eight years.
In the end, vast collections of plant, invertebrate, lower vertebrate, dinosaur, and mammal specimens
had been collected. The Museum of the Rockies crews had collected more than 100 new specimens of Tricer-
atops, and a dozen new specimens of Tyrannosaurus. So much material was collected that specimen prepara-
tion will likely continue for another decade. As a result, many of the papers presented here are preliminary,
and data from this collecting effort will continue to be published for many years to come.

John R. Horner
May 2012
 The Geological Society of America
Special Paper 503
2014

From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact: Early studies

(1901–1980) of the Hell Creek Formation in its type area

William A. Clemens*
Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-4780, USA

Joseph H. Hartman
Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, University of North Dakota,
Grand Forks, North Dakota 58202-8358, USA

ABSTRACT

Over a century has passed since 1901 when W.T. Hornaday showed a fragment
of a horn of Triceratops found in the valley of Hell Creek to H.F. Osborn at the Amer-
ican Museum of Natural History. The following year Osborn’s assistant, Barnum
Brown, was dispatched to eastern Montana and began investigations of its geology
and paleontology. By 1929, Brown had published a geological analysis of the rocks
exposed in the southern tributaries of the Missouri River, named the Hell Creek
Formation, and published studies of some of the dinosaurs discovered there. Parts
of his collections of fossil mollusks, plants, and vertebrates contributed to research
by others, particularly members of the U.S. Geological Survey. From 1930 to 1959,
fieldwork was slowed by the Great Depression and World War II, but both the con-
tinuing search for coal, oil, and gas as well as collections of fossils made during con-
struction of Fort Peck Dam set the stage for later research. Field parties from sev-
eral museums collected dinosaurian skeletons in the area between 1960 and 1971. In
1962, concentrations of microvertebrates were rediscovered in McCone County by
field parties from the University of Minnesota. Ten years later, field parties from the
University of California Museum of Paleontology began collecting microvertebrates
from exposures in the valley of Hell Creek and its tributaries. The research based on
this field research provided detailed geological and paleontological analyses of the
Hell Creek Formation and its biota. In turn, these contributed to studies of evolu-
tionary patterns and the processes that produced the changes in the terrestrial biota
across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.

*bclemens@berkeley.edu

Clemens, W.A., and Hartman, J.H., 2014, From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact: Early studies (1901–1980) of the Hell Creek Formation in its type area,
in Wilson, G.P., Clemens, W.A., Horner, J.R., and Hartman, J.H., eds., Through the End of the Cretaceous in the Type Locality of the Hell Creek Formation in
Montana and Adjacent Areas: Geological Society of America Special Paper 503, p. 1–87, doi:10.1130/2014.2503(01). For permission to copy, contact editing@
geosociety.org. © 2014 The Geological Society of America. All rights reserved.

1
2 Clemens and Hartman
INTRODUCTION
From the discovery of dinosaurs in the valley of Hell
Creek in 1901 to 1980, when a hypothesis of their demise as
a consequence of an asteroid’s impact was proposed (Alvarez
et al., 1980), studies of the Hell Creek Formation in northeast-
ern Montana have contributed significantly in shaping pale-
ontological and geological research. Today, Hell Creek is one
of the streams empting northward into Fort Peck Reservoir, a
section of the Missouri River dammed in the 1930s, and it is
hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. In contrast, some
67 m.y. ago, this area was part of the deltaic western coastline
of a dwindling Western Interior Sea. Stretching from the Arc-
tic Ocean to the precursor of the modern Gulf of Mexico, this
sea bisected the North American continent through much of
the Late Cretaceous.
The Hell Creek Formation occupies part of the western
Williston Basin, an area of deposition since the early Paleo-
zoic. It overlies the Fox Hills Formation, which is made up of
the sediments deposited along the coastline of the retreating
Western Interior (Bearpaw–Pierre) Sea. In the valley of Hell
Creek, the basal strata of the Hell Creek Formation are largely
sandy coastal deposits grading upward into beds of domi-
nantly finer-grained siltstones and claystones. Large sandy
channel deposits at various levels through the formation are
traces of extensive river systems that traversed the area during
the latest Cretaceous and earliest Paleocene. Very near the end
of the Cretaceous, the sedimentary regime changed. The west-
ern Williston Basin became wetter, and locally swamps began
to form. Lignites that developed in these swamps character-
ize the Tullock and overlying Ludlow Members of the Fort
Union Formation (see Hartman et al., this volume). Locally,
the Hell Creek–Fort Union contact is placed at the base of the
stratigraphically lowest, laterally extensive lignite. Deposition
of the precursors of these lignites began at different times in
different areas throughout the region. In Garfield and McCone
Counties, this contact has been shown to be time transgres-
sive (Swisher et al., 1993; Arens et al., this volume, Chapter
5). Current estimates suggest the Hell Creek Formation was
deposited during approximately the last 1.8 m.y. of the Cre-
taceous and, in some areas, the earliest Paleocene (Wilson,
2005; Wilson et al., this volume; also see earlier estimates in
Hartman et al., 2002).
The history of research focused on the Hell Creek For-
mation and its biota prior to 1980 can be roughly divided
into four periods: (1) early exploration (1901–1929),
(2) evaluating coal deposits and building Fort Peck Dam
(1930–1959), (3) new research programs (1960–1971), and
(4) closer inspection (1972–1980). These intervals chart
changes in emphases and technologies in field and labora-
tory studies as well as the emergence of new questions and
areas of research.
For reference, throughout the chapter, we use the follow-
ing acronyms, abbreviations, and locality designations.
Institutional Acronyms
AMNH—American Museum of Natural History, New York,
New York, USA
AMNH-FI—American Museum of Natural History Fossil Inver-
tebrates
AMNH-IP—American Museum of Natural History Invertebrate
Paleontology
LACM—Los Angeles County Museum, now Natural History
Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, California,
USA
MRC—Missouri River Commission, USA
PWA—Public Works Administration, USA
UCMP—University of California Museum of Paleontology,
Berkeley, California, USA
USACE—U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
USGS—U.S. Geological Survey
USNM—U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C., USA
Abbreviations
kj—kilojoule
km—kilometer
k.y.—thousand years
m—meter
Ma—million years ago
mi—mile
NALMA—North American land mammal age
Locality Designations
Locality designations beginning with the letter “L,” e.g.,
L0053, are from a locality numbering system for mostly con-
tinental molluscan localities in North America maintained by
Joseph Hartman at the University of North Dakota. Locality
designations beginning with the letter “V,” e.g., V72085, “D,”
e.g., D7272, or “PB,” e.g., PB99023 are recorded in the UCMP
catalog, which is available at www.ucmp.edu/science/collections
.php. Locality designations beginning with USGS, e.g., USGS
8787, are recorded in USGS Mesozoic locality catalogs, housed
at the USGS offices in Denver under the care of Kevin (Casey)
McKinney (catalogs were formerly kept by the USGS at the U.S.
National Museum, Washington, D.C.).
EARLY EXPLORATION (1901–1929)
Discovery and the First Years of Collecting
Dawson County in northeastern Montana was one of the last
areas of the continental United States to be settled (Fig. 1). At the
end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries,
it was still an area of largely unplowed plains that had sustained
the last large herd of American bison (Lepley and Lepley, 1992).
In October 1901, William T. Hornaday, then director of the New
 3

Figure 1. (A) A map of Dawson County published by Cram (1907) included a few landmarks and river tributaries. Towns
and other settlements were concentrated in the valleys of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. In 1902, Barnum Brown
began his fieldwork based at Miles City. He collected mollusks from outcrops along the Powder River near Hockett.
These would be erroneously referred to in Whitfield’s (1903; AMNH-FI catalog) report on the “Hell Creek” fauna. Brown
had little success collecting near Forsyth. Then he moved on through Jordan to the valley of Hell Creek. (B) In his first
report on the Hell Creek Formation, Brown (1907) provided only a sketch map of the area he had prospected in northern
Dawson County. In a footnote, he directed the reader to this more detailed and “very accurate” map of Dawson County
published by E.S. Cameron (1907) to illustrate his study of the birds of the area. Abbreviations: CC—Crooked Creek;
HC—Hell Creek; SC—Snow Creek; 7BC—Seven Blackfoot Creek.
4 Clemens and Hartman
York Zoological Society, returned to northeastern Montana. He
joined L.A. Huffman, a pioneer photographer who had a studio
in Miles City; Jim McNaney, a local cowboy; and others in Miles
City. The group headed for the valley of Hell Creek, where they
came across the cabin of Max Sieber, a former Texas cowboy
who turned bison hunter and then became a wolf hunter. The
group camped at Sieber’s place for two weeks (Fig. 2). During
their stay, Sieber showed Hornaday a nearby area where verte-
brate fossils were weathering out of the rock. Hornaday took
three fragments of the nasal horn of a Triceratops, first intended
for use as a paper weight (Brown, 1907), back to New York. On
his return, he showed the fossil and Huffman’s photographs to
H.F. Osborn at the American Museum of Natural History. Osborn
considered them sufficiently interesting to include the valley of
Hell Creek on the list of areas to be prospected by Barnum Brown
the following year (Hornaday, 1925, p. 79–80).
In May 1902, Hornaday wrote to his long-time friend Jim
McNaney asking him if he would guide Brown to Hell Creek:
A friend of mine who is connected with the American Museum of
Natural History, here, wants to go out to Hell Creek to look for fossil
bones, where I found some last October, and where M.A. Sieber found
others, east of his ranch. He would like to go up for a week or ten days,
flying light, to see if it would pay to make a stay of a month or so.
(M.H. Brown and Felton, 1955, p. 89)
Barnum Brown traveled to Miles City later in 1902 (Fig. 1A).
From here, he prospected to the northwest of Miles City near the
town of Forsyth with little success. Similarly, his prospecting in
the Powder River drainage to the south of Miles City was not
very successful in terms of discovery of vertebrates, but conti-
nental mollusks were collected from the Tullock Member at a
locality “below Hockett” (locality L0053, relocated by Hartman
as L3960). In early July, equipped with a sketch map provided
by Hornaday that showed the location of Sieber’s cabin (Fig. 3),
Brown traveled northward to the town of Jordan and then on to
Hell Creek. Here, he and his crew camped near Max Sieber’s
now-abandoned cabin. His field crew included Dr. Richard Swan
Lull, who would go on to a distinguished career in paleontology
at Yale University, and Philip Brooks, a student from Amherst.
Later, Brown recounted that after their arrival, while the cook
was preparing supper, he walked a short distance up Hell Creek
and located bones running into a hillside (Dingus and Norell,
2010, Appendix 2, p. 309–311). The partial skeleton preserved
here would become the type specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex.
A detailed account of the techniques used in collecting part of
this skeleton and recovery of two specimens of Triceratops in
1902 was given by Lull (in Hatcher, 1907, p. 182, 185–187; also
see Dingus and Norell, 2010, p. 106–109). Mollusks were col-
lected from exposures of the Hell Creek Formation in the valley
of Snow Creek, a tributary of the Missouri River to the northwest
of Hell Creek, and described by Whitfield (1903). Collecting
fossil vertebrates, mollusks, and plants kept Brown and his crew
occupied for more than the projected “week or ten days” during
the summer. Over 3 months elapsed between their arrival at Hell
Creek in July and the closing of camp and shipping of their exten-
sive collections from Miles City in October (Dingus and Norell,
2010, p. 88–93).
What was the impetus behind sending Brown to check
reports of the discovery of dinosaurs in eastern Montana? At the
beginning of the twentieth century, three American museums—
the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Car-
negie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Field Colum-
bian Museum in Chicago, Illinois—were competing in building
exhibits of vertebrate fossils, particularly skeletons of dinosaurs
(Rangier, 1991). In the early twentieth century, field crews from
all three museums were searching for dinosaurian remains in the
Western Interior of North America. An expedition from the Field
Museum in 1904 led by Elmer S. Riggs worked in southeastern
Montana, near the town of Ekalaka. They secured some dino-
saurian remains (Brown, 1907; Knowlton, 1909, p. 190) and an
exceptionally well-preserved shell of a turtle, which served as the
type specimen of Basilemys sinuous (Riggs, 1906). Earlier, Earl
Douglass (1902), collecting for the Carnegie Museum, explored
to the west of Hell Creek near the Crazy Mountains and discov-
ered fragmentary dinosaur bones as well as mollusks. The search
for exhibit-quality specimens of dinosaurs was not limited to
these three museums. In 1895, S.W. Williston led an expedition
from the University of Kansas into eastern Wyoming with the
goal of collecting a skull of Triceratops for display at the univer-
sity. Going to the valley of Lance Creek in eastern Wyoming, an
area where J.B. Hatcher (1896) had collected a number of skulls
of the beast, they found and collected a skull of Triceratops near
the confluence of Lance and Lightning Creeks. Two years later,
the skull was on display at the university. Two young men, Bar-
num Brown and Elmer Riggs, were members of that expedition
(Kohl et al., 2004; Dingus and Norell, 2010, p. 34–37).
After his very successful expedition to the valley of Hell
Creek in 1902, Brown did not return to northeastern Montana in
1903. The staff at the American Museum of Natural History was
deeply involved with the difficult preparation of the partial skeleton
of the dinosaur that would be named Tyrannosaurus rex. That year
Brown was occupied with fieldwork in Arkansas, South Dakota,
and Wyoming. His prospecting in Jurassic deposits on the flanks
of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming resulted in the discovery of
dinosaurian remains in an area to which he would frequently return
in subsequent years (Dingus and Norell, 2010, p. 95).
In April 1904, W.H. Utterback (Fig. 4B) from the Carnegie
Museum, Pittsburgh, began his field season prospecting outcrops
of the Judith River Formation exposed along the Musselshell
River, which then formed the western boundary of Dawson
County. He found this “a losing proposition” (Utterback, 1904a)
and received permission from his boss, J.B. Hatcher (Hatcher,
1904), to turn his attention eastward to outcrops of what was
then named the Laramie Formation or Beds. By August, he was
at work in the area around Hell Creek. Here, his luck changed.
Among the fossils he collected were two skulls of Triceratops
(Utterback, 1904b, 1904c; Hatcher, 1907, p. 182), “good”
material of hadrosaurs (Utterback, 1904b), and part of a jaw of
From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact 5

Figure 2. (A) In 1901, W.T. Hornaday

surveyed the “Breaks of the Missouri . . .
looking toward Snow Creek” (Brown and
Felton, 1955, p. 89, their figure 39). The
badlands forming the Breaks included
outcrops of the Bearpaw, Fox Hills, and
Hell Creek Formations. (B) The dugout
at Max Sieber’s home on the bank of Hell
Creek in 1901. From left to right: Max
Sieber, L.A. Huffman, and W.T. Horna-
day. The following year, Barnum Brown
discovered the first skeleton of Tyranno-
saurus rex ~150 yards (300 m) upstream
from the dugout. (L.A. Huffman photo-
graphs are courtesy of Coffrin’s Old West
Gallery, Bozeman, Montana.)
6 Clemens and Hartman

Figure 3. Directions to the “fossil country” on Hell Creek. This map, sketched by W.T. Hornaday, shows the area
where he and Max Sieber had collected parts of a horn core of Triceratops. This discovery led Barnum Brown to
Hell Creek in 1902. “Mt. Pisgah,” shown on the map, was not a local name for a landmark. Hornaday probably added
the biblical reference to Mt. Pisgah (Deuteronomy 34:1) to highlight his view of the significance of the discovery of
remains of dinosaurs (see Hornaday, 1925, p. 62). The map is part of letter from Hornaday to Barnum Brown, 29 May
1902 (map courtesy of American Museum of Natural History, Vertebrate Paleontology Archives, 2:3, Box 2, Folder 6).
 From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact 7

Figure 4. (A) Prairie trail from Miles City to the Hell Creek badlands (B. Brown, 1902 expedition; photograph courtesy of American
Museum of Natural History, Vertebrate Paleontology Archives, 7:2, Box 3, page 7). (B) In 1904 and 1905, William H. Utterback, a
preparator and collector for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, prospected for fossils in the valley of Hell Creek. During his
1904 field season, he collected a fragment of a jaw of Tyrannosaurus and two skulls of Triceratops. Here, he is shown preparing
one of the skulls. (Photograph in Carnegie Museum of Natural History Vertebrate Paleontology Archives; used with permission.)

Tyrannosaurus (McIntosh, 1981; McGinnis, 1982). During the
summer of 1904, Brown and his first wife, Marion, briefly vis-
ited the valley of Hell Creek and met Utterback (AMNH Annual
Report, 1904; M. Brown, 1960). Before moving westward to
prospect exposures of the Judith River and overlying Bearpaw
Formations along the Mussellshell River, Barnum and Marion
found a few specimens of dinosaurs but covered the bones in
hopes of collecting them later (Brown, 1904).
Continuing the Search for Dinosaurs and Other Fossils,
1905–1910
As the beginning of the 1905 field season approached, Osborn
(Fig. 5A) was writing his description and analysis of what would
become the type specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex. Spurred by the
possibility of finding more elements of this skeleton, Osborn sent
Brown back to Montana. Utterback had returned to the valley of

Figure 5. (A) A young Henry Fairfield

Osborn would later have oversight and
provide funding for the explorations
conducted by Barnum Brown in his
studies in the Missouri Breaks (photo-
graph courtesy of American Museum of
Natural History Library, image 333694).
(B) Barnum Brown (cropped from a
vintage Como Bluff photograph, 1897;
see Dingus and Norell, 2010, their fig-
ure 6). (Photograph courtesy of Ameri-
can Museum of Natural History Library,
image 17808.)
8 Clemens and Hartman
Hell Creek earlier in the spring of 1905. Finding that the drought
of the previous year in Montana had continued and not discov-
ering material worth collecting, he shifted his fieldwork to the
south (Utterback, 1905). Brown arrived after Utterback had left
and again set up camp near Sieber’s abandoned cabin (Fig. 6).
Through the summer, Brown and his crew extended the quarry
they had opened in 1902 (Fig. 7). Extensive quarrying, involving
blasting the overlying sediments and using a horse-drawn scraper
to remove the debris, yielded additional elements of the skeleton.
In July, Osborn (1905a) wrote to Brown, “I have been think-
ing a great deal about your work. I think you ought to spend the
larger part of your time prospecting, taking in as large a radius of
the country as you can, rather than quarrying and taking out spec-
imens. I would rather pay another assistant to quarry.” Excavation
of the partial skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex continued through
the summer until late August and occupied most of Brown’s
attention. Before returning to New York he was able to prospect
north of the Missouri River, where he found a hind limb of T. rex.
He also worked to the east in the Missouri Breaks and became
involved negotiations concerning collecting a hadrosaur skeleton
that became known as “Sensaba’s Mule.”
The Sensaba family was not mentioned by Hornaday (1902)
in his letter to Brown. It is clear, however, that they were early set-
tlers in the valley of Hell Creek and were mentioned in Brown’s
study of the Hell Creek beds (Brown, 1907). A plat map drawn
up in 1914 (Fig. 8) shows that, at that time, the Sensaba (mis-
spelled as Sensabi) family owned at least two cabins in the valley
of Hell Creek. The western cabin was the beginning of the main
Sensaba Ranch (Lester Engdahl, 1984, personal commun.). The
eastern cabin would become part of the Elmer Trumbo Ranch.
The Sensaba family had written to the AMNH offering to sell the
hadrosaur skeleton to which they laid claim. Brown found time
near the end of his field season in 1905 to casually inspect the
skeleton. After some complex negotiations, the following year
the skeleton was obtained for a much reduced price (see Dingus
and Norell, 2010, p. 106–111).
The activities in Montana of collectors from other museums
had not gone unnoticed in New York. In October, at the end of the
1905 field season in Montana, Osborn wrote Brown, “It is evi-
dent that we have a good field for next season. In the meantime
we must keep very quiet about it. I am tired of prospecting for
the benefit of other Museums. Marsh’s epigram ‘don’t go duck
hunting with a brass band’ is very appropriate” (Osborn, 1905b).
Barnum Brown returned to Montana in the summer of 1906
and continued collecting and prospecting. That fall, in New York, he
turned his attention to preparing his report on the Hell Creek beds.
He remained in New York through the summer of 1907 and com-
pleted his manuscript, which was published in October (Brown,
1907). In this paper, Brown discussed and illustrated geological
observations made in the valley of Hell Creek and, to the east, in the
valleys of Crooked and Gilbert Creeks. He also commented on the
geology of areas approximately 10 mi (~16 km) north of the Mis-
souri River. Brown made only passing reference to exposures of the
Hell Creek Formation in the valley of Big Dry Creek.
One of the challenges that Brown faced in preparing his report
was the lack of detailed, accurate maps of the area he was explor-
ing. After the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Missouri River
became a major route of transportation into western Montana. By
the late 1800s, river steamers traveled the river past the Missouri
Breaks. The Missouri River Commission’s (1892–1895) map of
the course of the river (Fig. 9) shows in detail the relationships
of mouths of tributary drainages but depicts only the areas imme-
diately adjacent to the Missouri River. In contrast, beyond the
banks of the Missouri, early maps of the northern part of Dawson
County appear to be generalized sketches. Brown (1907, p. 825)
was acutely aware of the situation, “[t]his area is unsurveyed and
all published maps are inaccurate in name, course and size of
most of the streams.” He made a sketch map (Fig. 10) to accom-
pany his report. In a footnote to his paper (Brown, 1907, p. 825),
he referred the reader to “a very accurate map” that had just been
published by Cameron (1907) as part of his study of the birds of
Custer and Dawson Counties (Fig. 1B). Although an improve-
ment over Brown’s and other maps (e.g., Cram’s [1907] map;
Fig. 1A), it still suffered from inaccuracies and lack of detail in
depiction of the areas studied by Brown. In the following decade,
with increased settlement of the Missouri Breaks and areas to the
south, surveys began to produce plat maps (e.g., Fig. 8), which
much more accurately depicted the courses of tributaries of the
Missouri and recorded land ownership.
During the summers of 1906, and then 1908, 1909, and 1910,
Brown was drawn eastward from the headwaters of Hell Creek. He
shifted his work to the valleys of Crooked Creek and Gilbert Creek
(Fig. 10). Even farther to the east, in the summer of 1908, Brown
discovered and, with the assistance of Peter Kaisen, collected
another skeleton of Tyrannosaurus on the eastern side of the valley
of Big Dry Creek near the mouth of Bug Creek. This site is now
in McCone County (Fig. 11, no. 24). Brown and Kaisen returned
to the area in 1909 (Brown, 1933). In 1910, with the completion
of collection of a hadrosaur skeleton discovered the previous year,
Brown moved his fieldwork north to Alberta (Dingus and Norell,
2010, p. 131–132). Here, he would spend several years collecting
from exposures along the Red Deer River. For more detailed and
illuminating accounts of Barnum Brown’s fieldwork along the Red
Deer River and surrounding area, see Dingus (2004, chapter 6) and
Dingus and Norell (2010, chapters 5–7).
Description and Analysis of the Vertebrate Fossils
Discovered by Brown and His Associates
Osborn, Brown, and Lull studied and published analyses
of some of the fossil vertebrates discovered in the Hell Creek
Formation between 1902 and 1910. Osborn’s publications (e.g.,
1905c, 1906) and development of a spectacular exhibit at the
American Museum of Natural History (Osborn, 1913) focused
attention on Tyrannosaurus rex. Lull (1903) described a skull of
Triceratops collected in 1902. Brown’s (1906, 1908, 1933) work
on dinosaurs included a description of Ankylosaurus and recogni-
tion of a new family of armored dinosaurs.
 From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact 9

Figure 6. (A) A view of the valley of Hell Creek looking downstream. The photograph was taken from the bluff contain-
ing Barnum Brown’s Tyrannosaurus quarry (quarry 1) looking toward the north and the area where Max Sieber had a
cabin, dugout, outbuildings, and corrals (black arrow). Construction of the house, partly hidden in the grove of cotton-
wood trees to the left of the creek, was started by Albert and Olga Engdahl in 1916. Photographs in the American Museum
of Natural History archives show that in 1902 and 1905, Barnum Brown set up his camps around this grove of cotton-
woods (Clemens, personal collection, 1984). (B) Barnum Brown working in quarry 2 in 1902. A description of collecting
this and other partial skeletons from the area was given by Lull (in Hatcher, 1907, p. 182, 185–187; also see Dingus and
Norell, 2010, p. 106–109). Quarry 2 yielded a mandible and postcranial elements of Triceratops, American Museum of
Natural History (AMNH) specimen number 971. (Photograph courtesy of American Museum of Natural History, Verte-
brate Paleontology Archives, 7:2, Box 3, page 4.) (C) Looking eastward at quarry 2. Here, unlike quarry 1, the vertebrate
fossils were preserved in siltstones. Almost 80 yr of erosion have not greatly modified the quarry. Lester Engdahl, seated
at the quarry’s edge, and his parents settled in the valley of Hell Creek. Lester’s recollections of local oral histories were
invaluable in tracing the course of Barnum Brown’s work in the area. Beginning in the 1960s, he also greatly facilitated
LACM and UCMP field research (Clemens, personal collection, 1984).
10 Clemens and Hartman

Figure 7. (A) Quarry 1, the type local-

ity of Tyrannosaurus rex, in 1905, when
Barnum Brown reopened the quarry
(photograph courtesy of American Mu-
seum of Natural History Library, im-
age 18172). (B) Enlargement of part
A to more clearly show the size of the
quarry and excavation with a horse-
drawn scraper. (C) Looking eastward
across the valley of Hell Creek in 1984
at the site of quarry 1. The section in the
face of the hill, which Barnum Brown
dubbed Sheba Butte, is 33.5 m (106 ft)
thick and dominantly composed of
cross-stratified, fine- to medium-grained
sandstones (Fastovsky, 1987). Almost
80 yr of erosion have removed most
traces of Brown’s extensive quarry (Cle-
mens, personal collection, 1984).
 From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact 11

Figure 8. Prepared in 1914, this plat map of T. 21

N., R. 36 E. documents the beginnings of settle-
ment of the valleys of Hell Creek and Snow Creek.
The “Sensibi” (the cartographer’s misspelling of
the family name Sensiba) and McDonald cab-
ins were present in the area of the valley of Hell
Creek, where, in 1902 and 1905, Barnum Brown
centered his quarrying. Here, he opened three
quarries. Excavation at quarry 1 (Q1), the type
locality of Tyrannosaurus rex, was not completed
until 1905. At quarries 2 and 3 (Q2, Q3), he col-
lected parts of skeletons of Triceratops in 1902.
The quarter-sections containing these quarries are
marked. The plat map is in the Garfield County
Courthouse and was copied with the help of Jo
Ann Stanton, deputy clerk and recorder.

Figure 9. The mouths of Hell Creek and Snow Creek (Paradise or Little Snow) were “well” located on Missouri River Commission maps
(Missouri River Commission, 1892–1895, plates 2, 76, 77). The latitude and longitude ticks and relative placement of the confluences of
tributaries to the Missouri River to the northeast of Round Butte were not considered in the construction of reconnaissance maps prepared by
Hornaday (Fig. 3 herein) or by Brown (Fig. 10A herein).
Figure 10. (A) Part of Barnum Brown’s sketch map (1907, his figure 1) modified with enhanced names of some tributar-
ies to the Missouri River. The symbols indicate the locations of some sites where material was collected in 1902, 1905,
and 1906. Comparison with the Missouri Commission map (Fig. 9) or a modern U.S. Geological Survey topographic
(Fig. 11 herein) shows that, relative to Round Butte and the abrupt northward deflection of the Missouri River just
downstream, the mouths of Snow Creek and Hell Creek have been placed too far to the northeast. In contrast, the loca-
tions of the fossil localities shown along the individual tributaries are appropriate given the scale of the map. (B) This is
part of a map, labeled “Original Sketch Map of Hell Creek, Mont.[,] Mr. Barnum Brown – Am. Mus. Nat. Hist.,” found
in the AMNH Vertebrate Paleontology Archives. It is a copy of the published map (Brown, 1907, his figure 1) apparently
annotated by Barnum Brown. It includes symbols identifying the material collected: + = Triceratops, = Tyrannosau-
rus, = Trachodon, = Ankylosaurus (a clearer key has been added). We have numbered the localities (see Fig. 11 for
an explanation). The map is not dated. Inclusion of the location of the second skeleton of Tyrannosaurus between Rock
and McGuire Creeks (locality 24), which was discovered in the summer of 1908, indicates that it was prepared later
that year or more recently. (Map courtesy of American Museum of Natural History, Vertebrate Paleontology Archives.)
 From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact 13

Figure 11. Barnum Brown’s (1907, his figure 1) locality map (in part) rectified to a modern U.S. Geological Survey base map. Locality
numbers were added by us to refer to map locations plotted by Brown. Underlined numbers are localities added on the map annotated after
the 1908 field season (Fig. 10). Symbols on Brown’s unpublished map (+ = Triceratops, = Tyrannosaurus, = Trachodon, = Ankylo-
saurus) are given by the following numbers: Localities 1 and 2 are localities on Seven Blackfoot Creek that yielded material of Triceratops
(see Fig. 10B). Fossils of Triceratops were also found at locations 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 23; fossils of Tyrannosaurus were
found at locations 3, 24, and 25; Trachodon (Edmontosaurus) material was found at locations 7, 9, 13, 14, 19, 21, and 22; and Ankylosaurus
was found at location 20.

W.H. Hornaday did not lose interest in the consequences of
bringing the fragmentary horn of a Triceratops to the attention
of his friend, H.F. Osborn. Among his many interests, Horn-
aday was very active in the field of conservation, particularly
in the preservation of bison, which had been hunted almost to
extinction. He published a number of widely read books and
articles and was not reticent in writing about the scenery in and
around the valley of Hell Creek and the fossils discovered there
(e.g., Hornaday, 1924, 1925, 1931). His article on “The Bad-
Lands of Hell Creek,” republished in “A Wild-Animal Round-
Up” (Hornaday, 1925, p. 54–80), includes an L.A. Huffman
photograph of Max Sieber’s cabin, dugout, and the outbuild-
ings around his home.
Throughout his fieldwork, Brown and his crews collected a
variety of other vertebrates, invertebrates, and fossil leaves from
the Hell Creek Formation, the overlying lignites, and the Fort
Union Formation. Among the vertebrate fossils they collected
and described were well-preserved skeletons of Champsosaurus
from the lignite beds (Brown, 1905b). The discovery of several
genera of turtles, crocodiles, and “fish” was noted in a summary
list of vertebrates (Brown, 1907), which was revised by Brown
(1914) after completion of his fieldwork in the area.
In 1906, Brown and his field crew collected a few mam-
malian teeth from exposures of the Hell Creek Formation in the
valley of Crooked Creek. They discovered another locality that
yielded mammals in the valley of Gilbert Creek (AMNH Annual
Report, 1906). A photograph shows Peter Kaisen and Edward
Frich at work “washing mammal dirt through sack” (AMNH
photograph 785–18184 [79E-3–11]). Decades later, applications
of a much more refined technique of underwater screening would
14 Clemens and Hartman
greatly enhance the samples of mammals and other microverte-
brates from the Hell Creek Formation and the Tullock Member.
Simpson (1927, 1929) described the collection of mammalian
fossils made by Brown’s crew in the valley of Crooked Creek
and the “Cameron Collection,” which was reported to have come
from “the vicinity of Forsyth, Montana, and Snow Creek” (Simp-
son, 1927, p. 1).
Invertebrate Paleontology
In 1902, in addition to collecting dinosaurian material,
Brown and his field crews collected other fossils from outcrops
of the Hell Creek Formation in the valley of Hell Creek and adja-
cent areas. New species, based on poorly preserved specimens of
freshwater mussels (Unionoidea) from the Hell Creek Formation,
were described by Whitfield (1903) as coming from Snow Creek
(Fig. 11). Brown’s field notes concerning his mollusk and plant
collections are woefully meager, but most of these fossils are
identified with lot or locality labels that appear to help sort them
logically into faunules or florules. The specimens in the 1902 col-
lections can be assigned to Hell Creek lots 19 and 612 (Figs. 12A–
12B). Whitfield (1903; Fig. 12C) reported these lots of fossils as
“being 120 feet [36.6 m] above the Pierre Shales.” Some snails
in these lots were assigned to already named taxa of various geo-
logical ages, but they actually came from the Hockett locality
in the Powder River drainage (Hartman, 1998). Other species,
such as Corbicula subelliptica (Meek and Hayden, 1856), have
not been found subsequently in the Hell Creek Formation. Whit-
field (1903, p. 483) provided some sedimentological information,
“[t]he fossils were found imbedded in a fine-grained gray clay,
and are extremely friable and difficult of extraction, so much so,
that it has been nearly impossible to free any of them from the
matrix without an almost complete exfoliation and breaking up
of the shell; only a few of them are sufficiently well preserved
and perfect enough for illustration” (Figs. 12A–12B). This type
of preservation is typical of shell accumulations found on the sur-
face of well-lithified outcrops of Hell Creek Formation.
Through their later field seasons, Brown and his crews found
significant beds of freshwater mussels, documented by large col-
lections of well-preserved specimens. Whitfield’s 1907 paper
on new and rephotographed species was based on specimens
collected in 1906 (lots 709, 710, 718; localities L6876, L6874,
L6877). These lots were collected from horizons 180 ft (54.9 m),
80 ft (24.4 m), and 300 ft (91.4 m) above the “Pierre Shales,”
Figure 12. (A) Exterior view of AMNH-
FI 35805 with a green diamond indicat-
ing that it is the holotype of Proparrey-
sia verrucosiformis (Whitfield) figured
by Whitfield (1903). (B) Interior view
of AMNH-FI 35805 that was originally
numbered 9625. The underlined “Arial
italic” number 19 identifies the shell as
part of Brown’s lot 19 (Locality L6875).
(C) Robert Whitfield (Merrill, 1924,
p. 533, his figure 104) described and in-
terpreted Barnum Brown’s collections
of mollusks, primarily mussels from the
Hell Creek Formation. In doing so, he
established the foundation of its fresh-
water molluscan paleontology.
 From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact
respectively, as reported in Whitfield (1907) and AMNH-IP
records. Thus, Brown provided Whitfield and others with the
opportunity to contemplate the stratigraphic distribution of mol-
lusks in the Hell Creek Formation, if not their geographic or
sedimentary contexts. Their biostratigraphy, however, remained
unexamined until recently (Hartman, 1998).
Additional molluscan fossils were collected by Brown in
1909, lot 765, which AMNH-IP records show as coming from
“120 feet [36.6 m] above Pierre Shales (locality L6898).” One
additional labeled collection of mollusks exists (lot 757; local-
ity L6899), but the time at which the specimens were collected
and at what horizon are unknown. Two other localities with the
existing lot numbers (709, 710) were reported from different
lithologies, suggesting that different samples were taken from
the same horizon or from nearby localities (localities L6900 and
L6901, respectively). Brown also reported taxa of mollusks from
the Hell Creek Formation not noted by Whitfield, presumably
because the fossils were not actually collected. He (Brown, 1907,
p. 834) stated that he “invariably found . . . waterworn fragments
of bones and shells” in “river-sorted gravels” in sandstone inter-
vals in the upper part of the formation and reported a locality
near “Mr. Oscar Hunter’s fence near Crooked Creek (locality
L1156).” Mollusks from the overlying Fort Union Formation are
relatively uncommon. Brown’s experience in the “Fort Union?
lignite beds” bears testament to their rarity with only “a few inde-
terminable casts of shells” being found in a lignite associated
with chert (Brown, 1907, p. 835; locality L6180).
The significance of external sculptural patterns of unionoid
shells was first recognized by Pilsbry (1904) immediately follow-
ing the description of “Unios” by Whitfield. Pilsbry noted Whit-
field’s tendency to correlate the new finds with the Laramie forms
and stated that, “the radial V-like beak-sculpture of at least part of
them shows that there is nothing in the supposed relationship of
the Laramie forms to any surviving North American Unios. They
belong to the Hyriinae of Simpson’s arrangement, and are only
referable to Unio in a Lamarckian sense” (Pilsbry, 1904, p. 12).
On the same page, Pilsbry went on to note that the name Unio
browni Whitfield was preoccupied, and the new species “maybe
called Parreysia barnumi,” after Barnum Brown, and included
within the hyriniids.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, paleontologists
used continental mollusks to interpret general time units, with
the fossils thought of in the most quasi-evolutionary terms.
Expressions such as “Laramie aspect,” “Fort Union fauna,” and
“Wasatch fauna,” along with similar references to formations
became confusing, de facto chronostratigraphic terms. White’s
(1883; see Table DR1 in GSA Data Repository1) “tabular view”
of North American continental fossil mollusks clearly delimited
a Laramie Period fauna that included the majority of the conti-
nental mollusks then known for North America. In doing so, a
1
GSA Data Repository Item 2014025, Tables DR1–DR4, is available at www
.geosociety.org/pubs/ft2014.htm, or on request from editing@geosociety.org or
Documents Secretary, GSA, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA.
15
tremendous thickness of western interior strata would be part of
the discussion concerning the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.
Whitfield (1903, 1907) described new species, identified
additional taxa, and, also compared some fossils with more
modern taxa, thus giving a sense of an evolutionary relationship
between Cretaceous and modern unionids. Like many studies
to follow, Whitfield’s study was local in scope, faunal in nature,
and limited to comparative taxonomic diagnoses. As an AMNH
paleontologist, however, he was the hands-on choice to examine
the discoveries made by Brown in Hell Creek country. He was
impressed by the morphologic similarity of the “Laramie” mus-
sel species to those that lived in the inland waters of North Amer-
ica and made direct comparisons to the modern North American
mussel fauna (see Table DR2 in the GSA Data Repository [see
footnote 1]). Whitfield (1907, p. 624) stated, “Considering all the
similarities between these Laramie fossils and their representa-
tive species in the Mississippi and Ohio water-sheds, I venture
to state that these further western waters of the Laramie times
were the original home of much of the Unio fauna of these more
eastern recent localities.” Although of limited interest to many,
this connection between Cretaceous “Laramie” and present mus-
sel faunas would remain a consistent mindset among students of
molluscan evolution and nomenclature (Watters, 2001; see Hart-
man and Bogan, 2009).
Although brief in length, Whitfield’s (1903, 1907) reports
on Brown’s collections set the foundation for all later studies
of Hell Creek continental mollusks. The fact is, however, few
paleontologists explored continental mollusks for their potential
to resolve problems of correlation, what would become known
as Lazarus taxa, environmental landscape reconstruction, or
their evolutionary patterns. Some aspects of their nomenclato-
rial complexity and comparisons to modern faunas were con-
sidered, with Whitfield (1903, 1907) making bold statements
about the history of relationships that would be echoed in mod-
ern literature (Watters, 2001).
In 1914, C.F. Bowen of the USGS collected mollusks from
the Hell Creek Formation in Garfield County (localities L2589–
L2593) that were reported by Stanton (1916; Hartman, 1984).
Although the strata and localities were not otherwise discussed,
the area of the localities, Porcupine Dome southwest of Jordan,
was included in Bowen’s (1915, plate X) geologic map and
assigned to the Lance Formation. Unlike the fauna described by
Whitfield, Bowen’s collection included species of Sphaerium as
the only identifiable bivalves (Hartman, 1998).
In 1915 and 1916, A.J. Collier conducted field studies of the
lignite resources of Sheridan, Daniels, Roosevelt, Valley, Phillips,
and Blaine Counties, all north of the Missouri River in northeast-
ern and north-central Montana (Collier, 1918, plate 1). He was
assisted by W.T. Thom Jr., R.F. Baker, H.R. Bennett, E.T. Conant,
and Barnum Brown, who collaborated with Collier in the field in
1916. In the present study area, mollusks were collected by Col-
lier from Hell Creek strata in Valley County (localities L1794–
L1797). Collier (1918) reported the faunules at these localities on
the basis of identifications provided by J.B. Reeside Jr. (Fig. 13)
16 Clemens and Hartman
Figure 13. J.B. Reeside Jr. (1889–1958). In 1912, he
began his career in the U.S. Geological Survey as a
graduate student summer employee. All of the activi-
ties that he would pursue with professional vigor began
with participation in field parties under the direction of
C.J. Hares in the lignite fields of northwestern South
Dakota and southwestern North Dakota. Reeside would
soon be mentored by Stanton in the identification of
fossils, replacing Stanton’s role after graduation (see
also Dane, 1961).
and presented additional details on the lignite resources of part
of this area in his report on the Scobey coal field (Collier, 1925).
This report contains information relevant to the determination
of the stratigraphic position of some of the molluscan localities
noted previously (Hartman, 1984, 1998). The bivalve fauna rep-
resented by these collections is again relatively limited. Along
with the sphaeriids, the faunules included species of Plesielliptio
and a more highly sculptured species of Proparreysia from one
locality (locality L1794).
Pilsbry (1921) followed his earlier interpretation with a
paragraph-long assessment of the fossil record of North America,
ending with the Laramie mussels:
The records for Triassic Unionidae are as yet few; but the wide separa-
tion of localities, the presence of several species and their considerable
diversity in shape and sculpture in each area, may permit the inference
that Triassic North America possessed a large and varied Naiad fauna
of South American type, Hyriinae and Mutelidae. The next fauna of
these mussels of which we have any definite knowledge is that of the
Jurassic in Colorado and Wyoming. Here the South American types
have entirely disappeared, and in their place are distinctively Holarctic
Unioninae, in which the beak sculpture when known is of the con-
centric type [footnote]. These were probably immigrants from Asia.
Similar forms occur more abundantly in the Laramie. (Pilsbry, 1921,
p. 31–32)
In the footnote, Pilsbry introduces Proparreysia for the “spe-
cial group, near Parreysia or a subgenus thereof” that includes
“[c]ertain Uniones described by Whitfield . . . from the Mon-
tana Laramie, [that] have sculpture recalling Diplodon, but more
like the Asiatic Parreysia “ (Pilsbry, 1921, p. 32). Subsequently,
a number of Hell Creek Formation species would be assigned to
this new taxon.
Returning to northeastern Montana in 1921, Thom, Dobbin,
and Stanton collected mollusks from the Hell Creek Formation
in the northern part of the Jordan coal field in western Garfield
County (localities L2396–L2399; see Hartman, 1984, 1998). In
their report on the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in eastern Mon-
tana, Thom and Dobbin (1924) included their stratigraphic and
general paleontological interpretations, along with concerns over
reported occurrences of a shark and the “brackish” molluscan spe-
cies Corbicula subelliptica in the upper beds of the formation.
Problems typical of molluscan studies are that the specifics of the
discoveries were never published, and only species with umbo-
nal or dorsally directed postumbonal sculpture (e.g., Plesielliptio
and Quadrula) were collected. No more highly sculptured species
were included in their collection. During the same field season,
the only bivalve collected by Frank Reeves was also a sphaeriid
from the Hell Creek Formation in Fergus County (L2376). The
first identifiable molluscan material from the Tullock Member of
the Fort Union Formation was collected by Collier in 1927, in the
first year of his study of the geology and coal resources of McCone
County (Collier and Knechtel, 1939). Reeside (1928) reported a
“Lance” age for a fossil assemblage including Unio gibbosoides
Whitfield, Campeloma multilineata Meek and Hayden, and Tulo-
toma thompsoni White. This age assignment is in keeping with
the then-current species diagnoses for these taxa (Hartman, 1998).
Although where these fossils were found has not been specifically
determined, all three taxa are very likely assignable to new Paleo-
cene species on the basis of other collections known from the area
(for the snails, see Hartman, 1984, 1998).
Paleobotany
Early studies of the Hell Creek Formation yielded only a
few fossilized leaves, stems, and fruits. These were identified by
Knowlton (Fig. 14A) and reported by Brown (Brown, 1907, p.
842). In 1908, Brown recovered a collection of leaves from “clays
between middle and basal sandstones and in association with a
skeleton of a dinosaur.” The leaves were identified by Knowl-
ton (1909), who interpreted them as indicative of an Eocene age.
These data did not play a major role in the then-current discus-
sions of the “Laramie problem.” At that time, Calvert’s (1912)
paleobotanical research on floras from other parts of the western
interior was influential. Subsequently, in 1929, the appointment
 From Tyrannosaurus rex to asteroid impact 17

of Roland Brown (Fig. 14B) to the staff of the USGS led to major
and long-lasting changes in the pattern of paleobotanical research
in the uppermost Cretaceous and Paleocene formations of north-
eastern Montana.
Geology, Stratigraphy, and the “Laramie Problem”
During most of the first two decades of the twentieth cen-
tury, the Missouri Breaks and areas to the south were part of
Dawson County. Garfield and McCone Counties, which were
cut out of Dawson County, were not organized until 1919. Pale-
ontological and geological research in the Missouri Breaks and
adjacent areas in what was then Dawson County was advanced,
apparently semi-independently, by Barnum Brown and, particu-
larly after 1910, members of the USGS. At that time, a widely
discussed research question was the determination of the position
of what was then termed the “Cretaceous-Eocene boundary” in
geological sections in the western interior. This complex question
was often dubbed the “Laramie problem.”
The roots of the Laramie problem extend back into the nine-
teenth century with the pioneering studies of the western interior
(Waage, 1975). These included the early studies by Meek and
Hayden (1862) and Hayden (1869) that differentiated between
the underlying Cretaceous beds and overlying Tertiary lignites
(Fig. 15) in the Great Lignite Basin (Williston Basin). Because
of the similarity of certain continental fossil mollusks, from time
to time in their earliest papers, Meek and Hayden confused the
equivalency of Cretaceous strata (Judith River beds) with those
of the “Lower Eocene” Fort Union Group. As their research
matured, these uncertainties were removed in later papers.
In these early studies, the Laramie was often considered to
be a unit including a conformable series of Cretaceous, brackish
water grading into continental, often lignitic sediments (White,
1883). The top of the Laramie was placed at a hypothesized
major unconformity marking a global interval of uplift, erosion,
and/or lack of deposition of sediments separating the Cretaceous
from the Eocene.
In a contribution to discussions of the Laramie problem,
Stanton and Knowlton (1897) reviewed the invertebrate (mollus-
can) fauna and flora of the “Ceratops” beds, locality by locality,
throughout Wyoming and in parts of Colorado and Utah. They
noted, “[u]ntil a few years ago it was the custom to include in

Figure 14. (A) Frank Knowlton (1860–1926). Knowlton was a paleobotanist on the staff of the U.S. Geological
Survey. He was a friend and scientific adversary of T.W. Stanton in their differences on interpretation of the ages
of the flora and fauna, respectively, across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary (see Dall, 1911). (Source: U.S.
Geological Survey Photo Archives, Knowlton, F.H., Geologist, no. 434 portrait, 25 June 1889.) (B) Roland W.
Brown, whose paleobotanical research in the western interior played significant roles in documenting Cretaceous
and Paleogene floras, as well as in the debates surrounding recognition of the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.
(Photograph from Mamay, 1963.)
18 Clemens and Hartman
Figure 15. An early interpretation of the geology of Garfield County by
F.V. Hayden (1869) based on his mapping of the area with U.S. Army
Corps of Topographical Engineers.
the Laramie all of the beds between the Fox Hills and Wasatch
formations” (Stanton and Knowlton, 1897, p. 155). In their anal-
yses, individual localities were local lithostratigraphic sections
they had visited, where fossils were identified and compared by
assemblage presence (or absence) in order to draw conclusions
concerning biostratigraphic correlations. Succinctly, they stated
that the Laramie and allied formations, “first known as the Lig-
nite series, included the coal-bearing strata of the Upper Creta-
ceous with the lower Tertiary or Fort Union strata and was all
regarded as Tertiary in age. Later, the Laramie was differentiated
by King as the uppermost division of the conformable Cretaceous
series, and the Fort Union group ultimately associated with the
lower Tertiary, although still regarded by some as belonging to
the Laramie series. The Laramie as thus characterized was sup-
posed to be very sharply circumscribed” (Stanton and Knowlton,
1897, p. 127–128).
In tracing the course of stratigraphic research in the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, it is important to remember
that, although practiced in Europe, American geologists did not
consistently make a distinction between lithostratigraphic and
chronostratigraphic units. For example, Wasatch could refer to a
lithostratigraphic unit, the Wasatch Formation, or a chronostrati-
graphic unit, the “early Eocene” (Fig. 16). As used in these early
studies, “early Eocene” was approximately a temporal equiva-
lent of the Paleocene Epoch, which was not widely recognized
by stratigraphers until decades later. Wasatch was not correla-
tive with the early Eocene or Wasatchian North American land
mammal age as currently recognized. Additionally, there were
disagreements about the proper criteria for defining and recog-
nizing the chronostratigraphic boundary between the Cretaceous
and Eocene. Some workers focused on recognition of a conform-
able sequence of strata capped by a hypothetical widespread
unconformity marking the boundary (e.g., Cross, 1909). Others
cited paleontological evidence and interpretations of the age of
strata as the bases for their interpretations (see Hartman, 2002).
Although attempts at sweeping generalizations were made, at
the beginning of the twentieth century, the geology of only a
few areas in the western interior had been studied in detail. This
would change, particularly as the results of an increasing number
of field studies by the USGS became available.
A full review of the history of discussion and dispute over
the Laramie problem is well beyond the scope of this paper.
Here, we focus on the impact of the paleontological and geo-
logical data that came from the work of Brown and members
of the USGS on Cretaceous and Tertiary sections in what was
then Dawson County and adjacent areas. The first publications
based on the collections that Brown made in 1902 presented sys-
tematic descriptions and analyses. Brown (1905b) described two
new species of Champsosaurus, Champsosaurus laramiensis
and Champsosaurus ambulator. The partial skeletons that served
as their type specimens came from sites ~100 yards (91.4 m)
apart horizontally and at stratigraphic levels differing by only 6 ft
(0.91 m) in the “lower strata of lignite, above the Ceratops beds.”
These lignitic strata were described as part of the “Laramie Cre-
taceous exposures on Hell Creek” (Brown, 1905b, p. 3).
Whitfield’s systematic studies of the molluscan faunas
sampled by Brown in 1902 (Whitfield, 1903) and 1906 (Whit-
field, 1907) have already been discussed. Very probably all these
fossil mussels came from what is now recognized as the Hell
Creek Formation and are of Cretaceous age. Molluscan material
is rarely preserved in strata in the lower part of the Tullock Mem-
ber. In neither of his publications did Whitfield (1903, 1907) con-
sider the relationships of the “Laramie” (Cretaceous) Hell Creek
Formation molluscan fauna to that of the Cretaceous “Ceratops
beds” (Lance Formation) of Wyoming. On one hand, his failure
to discuss this topic seems strange, as discussions of the Laramie
problem had been raging since the late 1800s. The Hell Creek
molluscan fauna would have provided a perfect segue into the
fray. Whitfield, however, may have felt out of his element. He had
not been part of arguments over the Laramie problem, and, at the
time of writing his papers, Brown had yet to publish his views on
the stratigraphy of the formation.
Barnum Brown’s study of the Hell Creek beds (Brown,
1907) provided a stratigraphic analysis of the geological section
exposed along Hell Creek, its tributaries, and adjacent areas in
the Missouri Breaks. As advertised in the subtitle of this paper,
he also contributed to discussions of the Laramie problem with
considerations of “their relation to contiguous deposits, with fau-
nal and floral lists and a discussion of their correlation.” Brown
made reference to his observations in eastern Wyoming of the
“Converse County beds of Wyoming” or “Ceratops beds of Con-
verse County, Wyoming,” now recognized as the Lance Forma-
tion. His introduction to these beds came in 1895 when he was a
student at the University of Kansas and collected in this area on
a summer field trip directed by S.W. Williston (Kohl et al., 2004;
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 "I know," Dorning laughed. "He does drive like a comet. But—er—I'm a
regular snail at the wheel. If Rodrigo doesn't mind——"

"He doesn't," Rodrigo cut in rather sullenly.

John turned eagerly toward her, and she said gayly, "Very well, Mr.
Dorning, and you may drive just as slowly and carefully as you know how."

"Fine," returned John. "We'll take a turn in the park on the way. It's a
wonderful afternoon." He hurried to open the door for her.

"Good afternoon, Count Torriani, the tea was delicious," she said
suavely, dark, ironic eyes upon his grave face. He glanced at the undisturbed
tea things upon the little taboret, shrugged his shoulders, and bent over her
hand. Vexed as he was with her, he could not kiss her hand without feeling a
little emotion within him.

He watched her disappear into the hall. To John Dorning, following her,
he called suddenly, "John, you'll need your hat, won't you?" John
shamefacedly returned for it. Rodrigo handed it to him with a smile.

Rodrigo sank down into a comfortable chair, lighted a cigarette, and

thoughtfully poured himself a cup of the neglected tea.

It was an hour later that John returned, flushed by the wind and
something that had nothing to do with the elements. Rodrigo was still in the
chair, trying to read.

"You didn't mind my running off with Miss Van Zile?" John asked, with
a strange indication in his voice that he didn't care whether his friend minded
or not. He was excited, eager to confide.

"Not at all," returned Rodrigo, "but John——"

John had lighted a cigarette and was walking around the room. "She's
wonderful, isn't she, Rodrigo?" he said suddenly. "A very remarkable and
very beautiful girl. She's never been to New York before, she says. She's
frightened with the city, but eager to see the sights. I've made several
engagements with her to show them to her."
 Rodrigo was silent.

John enthused on. "Rodrigo, if I fell in love, it would be with that kind of
a girl—frank, unspoiled, sweet and lovely. She has something Eastern
women utterly lack. They are all so sophisticated and blasé. You could never
imagine such a woman marrying me for my money, for instance."

Rodrigo wondered if he was a coward. He ought to warn John that he

was playing with dynamite, that this girl was everything that his friend
thought she was not. But John was so utterly absorbed in her. And he,
Rodrigo, had promised Henry Dorning to show his son something of worldly
women. Here was John's opportunity to secure an education. Probably with
no serious results. Elise must be playing with Dorning, and it couldn't last.
She could have no serious intentions toward John. He was exactly the
opposite of the type of man that interested her. Rodrigo, with no sense of
self-flattery, even suspected shrewdly that she had played up to John with
the object of making John's room-mate jealous.

And so, he decided, for the time being, that he would keep silent.

CHAPTER XI

Rodrigo attended a private auction of Flemish art the next morning and
did not reach the office until noon-time. Having glanced through his mail, he
thrust his head into John's office to tell him of the purchases he had made.
He was quite well pleased with himself and was looking forward to
Dorning's commendation on his bargains. Mary Drake was alone in the
office.

"Good-morning, Mary," called Rodrigo. "Has John gone to lunch

already?"

He saw with a little uneasiness that something of the usual warmth with
which she greeted him had fled from her eyes and voice. "Yes, he is lunching
with a Miss Van Zile at the Plaza."

Rodrigo frowned. His high spirits were somewhat quenched. He entered

and walked over toward Mary and sat down. He looked at her a moment,
hesitated, then said abruptly, "Mary, if your best girl friend was attracted to a
chap who you knew was no good, what would you do about it?"

She regarded him seriously and said rather pertly, "I would make very
sure first that my opinion of the man's unworthiness was correct."

"And if you had made sure—then what?"

She gave a little helpless gesture. She was so serious that he was on the
point of asking her what was troubling her. "How can you make sure?" she
asked gravely. And went on, "I used to think that first impressions of people
were instinctively the right ones. That everything after that just had the
effect of clouding things, of leading to wrong judgments. Recently I changed
my mind. I decided that what a person has been in the past has nothing to do
with the present. I thought people could change, could find themselves, and
become new men—or women. Now—I don't know."

He tried to take her delicate, white hand, but it eluded his. "Mary," he
asked softly, "are you thinking of me when you say these things about—first
opinions?"

He took her troubled silence for an affirmation.

"Has someone been talking to you since about me?" he queried

intuitively.

Mary, who was never one for groping about in the dark, replied, "A girl
by the name of Sophie Binner was in this morning. She asked for you. When
she found you weren't here, she grew quite loud and troublesome, and Mr.
Madison referred her to John. I couldn't help but hear some of the
conversation between them, though I left when I discovered its private
nature."

"Sophie Binner?" he repeated, screwing his forehead into a frown. "But I

haven't seen her for several months. She is an actress I knew in England—
and, for a short time, here. But she has been on the road with her company,
and I haven't even written to her."

"You must have written to her some time or other."

"Why, what do you mean, Mary?" He had never seen the usually calm
and capable Mary agitated so. It agitated him in turn. Sophie was not above
making trouble, he knew, especially after the unfriendly manner of their last
parting.

"I don't want you to question me any further, Rodrigo," said Mary
nervously. "I have told you quite all I know. You will have to get the rest
from John. Probably he won't mention it to you. He hates trouble of all kinds
—particularly sordid troubles—and he will be anxious to shield you. And I
think you shouldn't allow yourself to be shielded, in this case."

"Certainly not. I'll ask him what happened at once."

But Rodrigo did not have the opportunity to broach the subject of Sophie
to his partner during the remainder of the day. John did not return from his
luncheon engagement until after three, when he hurried in breezily, a
carnation in his buttonhole and a flush upon his face that caused the
employees out in the gallery to look significantly at each other and smile
approvingly. The head of the concern had never looked so happy. John
closeted himself at once with a couple of art buyers who acted in the
capacity of scouts for Dorning and Son. By the time Rodrigo judged
Dorning was free and went in search of him, John had again disappeared,
this time, Mary said, to dress for dinner.

Rodrigo found John in their apartment, arrayed in his evening clothes,

administering the final touches to his necktie. The Italian told himself a little
ironically that Elise Van Zile had reversed the social order of the day in their
lodgings—now it was John who was donning festive attire almost every
evening and setting out upon social expeditions, and Rodrigo who was left
home to settle in a chair with a book. Formerly it had been the reverse.
Rodrigo remarked banteringly about this.
 "But I have such a wonderful reason for deserting you," John cried.
"How she ever happened to decide to like me, when you were available,
Rodrigo, I don't know. She is such a beautiful creature—she could have the
pick of all the men in the world. And she's just as sweet as she is beautiful.
You don't think that I deliberately went out to oust you from her affections,
do you, Rodrigo?" John spoke so earnestly that Rodrigo gave a short laugh
of reassurance. But there was a note of anxious pity in it also. Poor old John.

"I understand that you saw another friend of mine to-day, also," Rodrigo
said, lighting a cigarette and flicking the match into the open grate.

John dropped his thin fingers from his tie and replied quietly. "Did Mary
tell you? I asked her not to."

"She evidently thought it better that I should know, and I think she is
right, as usual. What did Sophie Binner want of me—and you?"

John walked over to his friend and put his hands upon Rodrigo's
shoulders. He suggested, "Please don't ask me any more about her, Rodrigo.
You'll never see or hear from her again. Why not let it go at that?"

Rodrigo replied impatiently, "I'm not a baby, John, I know more about
women like Sophie than you do. What was she up to?"

John shrugged his shoulders and decided to make a clean breast. "She
looked like the devil—thin and badly dressed. She said her show had failed,
left the whole company stranded out in Pocatello, Idaho. Christy and the
company manager skipped and went back to England. Sophie pawned her
jewels and clothes and just scraped together enough money to get her to
New York. So she came to you for help."

Rodrigo relaxed with relief. "Fair enough," he admitted. "I'll stake her to
a trip home. Why didn't you tell her to go away and come back again when I
was there?"

John hesitated. "She insisted upon some money at once. She had—some
letters from you. I read a couple of them, and they were really pretty serious
stuff, Rodrigo. You were never a calm letter-writer. And writing letters to a
certain type of woman is very had business in this country. There are always
shyster lawyers around ready to pounce upon them and turn them into
money. And she said—well, that you were in her apartment the night her
show opened. She mentioned a colored elevator man whom she could
summon as a witness, if necessary. But, damn it, I don't believe you were,
Rodrigo." John looked at his friend anxiously.

"I was just there for a minute, and it was perfectly harmless," Rodrigo
said at once. "It didn't mean a thing and she probably played it up merely to
give me a black eye with you. As a matter of fact, I recall that the elevator
boy did ride us up and wasn't there when I came down the stairs later. I had a
fearful row with her and she's probably out for revenge. But what's Sophie's
game anyway—blackmail? She can't get away with it."

John replied, "She threatened to sue you for breach of promise to marry
her, said you had jilted her in London once before. She wanted five thousand
dollars to call it off. I knew she didn't have a case, but I thought it was just as
well to keep her quiet. So I gave her two thousand dollars. Then I stopped in
at the apartment house address she gave me and for a fifty dollar bill
persuaded the colored elevator boy that you had never been there."

Rodrigo shook his head and smiled. Was there ever a friend like this
innocent-wise John Dorning?

"You're a prince, John," Rodrigo said sincerely. "But you shouldn't have
done it. You should have let me face the music." He turned almost fiercely
and paced the floor a moment. Returning, he faced John and cried, "I don't
know why you have such a sublime faith in me, John. God knows I've given
you no reason for it. I was in trouble when you first met me. And that wasn't
the first time, as you must have known. And yet you accepted me as a friend
and you gave me a start that's resulted in the happiest time of my life. Now,
damn it, I throw you down again. I guess I'm just bad."

John laid his hand on the Italian's shoulder. "No, I won't have you
condemning yourself. You've been strictly business since you've been over
here, I know. This Binner affair is a carry-over from the past. Your letters
didn't mean anything, even though they sounded pretty intimate. And that
episode in her apartment was just a peculiar combination of circumstances, I
can see that."
 "Oh, don't make me out a saint, John," Rodrigo cried impatiently. "If
those crooks in the hall hadn't jolted it out of my head—oh, well, what's the
use. Once a weakling, always a weakling."

"Not at all," John retorted. "I'll admit there's one kink in your character I
don't understand. I don't see why a chap who is as unselfish, straightforward
and worldly wise as you are, can—well, make a fool out of himself with a
certain type of woman. It's uncanny."

"It's in my blood. I'll never be able to be absolutely sure of myself,"

Rodrigo flung out hopelessly. His hands were nervously fingering the table
against which he was leaning. He was thinking neither of Sophie nor of
Rodrigo. He was seeing the white, disappointed face of Mary Drake, and he
knew now what had been troubling her. It did not occur to him to be thrilled
that she should care enough about him to be troubled. He was afraid, afraid
for his love and his happiness, because he was his own worst enemy. His
nervous, groping fingers closed upon a marble figurine, an exquisite carving
of a hooded cobra, head raised and ready to strike at a tiger. The tiger, about
to spring, had paused and stood, eyes upon the snake, as if fascinated. It was
among his art treasures that he had brought from Italy.

"You'll be sure of yourself," John was saying, "when the right girl comes
along." He smiled, and Rodrigo realized with a pang that John was thinking
of his right girl, Elise Van Zile.

"What chance will I ever have with the right sort of girl when the wrong
sort may come along first?" And Rodrigo too was thinking of Elise. He
suddenly realized that his fingers were digging into something hard until
they hurt. He looked down at the figurine, and lifted it.

"Here I am!" he cried. "I'm this tiger! I never told you why I brought this
figurine with me, why I've always cherished it, have I? Well, one reason is
because my father gave it to me when I was a boy as the memento of a very
exciting afternoon. It happened in India when I was about fourteen years old.
We were riding on an elephant, and we could see over a high wall into a sort
of a lane that led to an enclosure where a chap who used to make a business
of capturing wild animals for museums and circuses kept his stock. He let
the beasts roam around in there, and my father would take me to the other
side of the wall to see them.

"Well, on this afternoon, a big, silky tiger came walking down the lane.
Suddenly, when he was just about opposite us, he stopped short—like this
statue—his head down. He stared at something. We followed his shining
eyes. A cobra had slipped out of the box in which the chap kept his snakes.
The tiger stared as if paralyzed, fascinated, a yard from the snake's head. A
cobra! That's the wrong kind of a girl—a cobra. Mind you, this tiger could
have killed the thing with one blow of his paw. He could have killed a lion,
or scattered a regiment. Yet he stood there, his eyes held by the eyes of the
cobra. All at once he tossed his head up and took a step backward—and the
cobra struck."

"Struck! Did he kill the tiger?"

"I don't know. I felt sick. My father saw how white I was, and we left at
once. Several months later he saw this figurine in a shop in Calcutta and
bought it. He gave it to me."

John looked at him and said slowly, "Perhaps a cobra can't really kill
anything as big and strong as a tiger."

"It can make it bad for him, though. I can remember Dad cursing that he
didn't have a gun with him. A gun! That's you, John. When I've been
walking lately, I've usually had you along, and I've been pretty safe from
cobras."

"It's safer not to go walking at all."

"Well, even a tiger has to have some diversion," Rodrigo tried to lighten
up the serious turn the conversation had taken. As John walked over to the
mirror and resumed his adjusting of his cravat, Rodrigo said suddenly, "And
guns too, John—sometimes guns don't act as they should, very good guns,
too. And cobras raise the dickens with them too."

But John had hardly heard him, much less gotten the meaning of his
friend's cryptic speech. And Rodrigo was instantly glad. John was so
infatuated with Elise that mere words would never undeceive him. It must be
something stronger than words. Likewise, Rodrigo must make very sure that
Elise Van Zile was what he had described to John as the cobra type of
woman.

After John left, Rodrigo sat down and tried to interest himself in a large,
profusely illustrated volume on interior decoration. But he was in no mood
to concentrate upon the hopelessly conventional illustrations and the dry,
prosaic text. He flung the book down at length, and, lighting his pipe,
walked nervously about the apartment. He was thinking of John and Elise
Van Zile, and of himself. His feeling toward the sudden infatuation of his
friend for Mrs. Palmer's niece and Elise's sudden interest in John contained
not one atom of jealousy. Had she been the girl John thought she was,
Rodrigo would have been delighted and would have rendered the match
every assistance.

But Elise, Rodrigo kept telling himself, was the girl he thought she was.
This business to-day of Sophie Binner, this tale of the cobra he had related to
John, this whole raking up of his past had had a depressing effect upon him.
The world looked awry that evening.

He confessed, after fifteen minutes of aimless walking about, that he was

perhaps seeing things through a glass darkly. But of this much he was quite
certain: Elise Van Zile was clever. Though John Dorning was not the type of
man who appealed to her, she might decide to marry him for his money.
Married or single, she would always be selfish, unscrupulous. She wanted a
rich, safe husband.

If the husband were John Dorning, this would bring tragedy.

Having arrived at this conclusion, Rodrigo tried to denounce the whole

thing as nonsense and, catching up his hat, departed from the apartment in
search of something to eat, though he wasn't in the least hungry. He wanted
to get out, get away from himself, get where there were people, noise,
laughter.

He walked over to Broadway and deliberately chose a cheap restaurant

where race-track touts, vaudeville and burlesque actors and actresses,
theatrical agents and motion picture press agents absorb indigestible food.
But the gum-chewing waitresses and clattery crockery failed to divert him.
He hardly touched his food. Rising, he paid what the muscular waitress had
punched on his ticket, and walked back to the apartment through the surging
tide of the Broadway theatre traffic.
 Back in his living-room, he settled down with his book again. But he
could not read. He fell to brooding again. And out of his brooding came
finally a mad plan to save John Dorning. As well have the game as the name,
Rodrigo laughed ironically. He had done so many foolish things for his own
pleasure. God might now forgive this last one if it were done unselfishly, to
save a saint. For John Dorning was almost a saint to Rodrigo. Their
friendship was a thing almost sacred. But it was better to kill even this
sacred thing, Rodrigo reasoned solemnly, than to hurt John Dorning.

So the following afternoon he called Elise Van Zile on the telephone

from his office and, putting into his voice all the mellow intimacy that he
knew so well how to convey, he said, "I have missed you so much, Elise.
John interrupted our last little chat just when it was becoming so interesting,
and took you away. I'd so much more to tell you. We have such a great deal
in common, as you were good enough to say. I'm wondering when I may see
you again."

There was silence for a moment, and then her smooth tones came over
the wire, "Why, certainly. Aunt Helen and I will be delighted to see you any
time."

He lowered his accents. "Not, Auntie—you, you alone. You said you
would like to come again to our apartment. And this time I will promise we
won't be interrupted. Not even by John. I want so badly to see you—Elise.
Won't you come?"

After a long pause, her voice came noncommittedly, "When?"

"On Saturday afternoon at three?"

Another long pause, and then she said faintly, "I shall be there."

Rodrigo hung up the receiver and took a long, deep breath. Then he
walked into John's office and, taking advantage of Mary's temporary
absence, said, "John, I want you to promise me something."

"What is it, old man? And why the terrifically serious look on your
face?"
 Rodrigo forced a smile. "I want you to stay away from the apartment
until three-thirty next Saturday afternoon," he said. "At that time I want you
to meet me there, and probably I'll have something very interesting to show
you?"

"But my birthday isn't until next month, Rodrigo?" John bantered. "Did
you go out and buy that Gainsborough original I fancied so much—or
what?"

"Please don't ask any questions, John. And believe that I'm deadly
serious. Three-thirty. Will you be there?"

"Why, of course—if you say so."

During the rest of the week, Rodrigo was like a man who has had the
date of his electrocution set. He could not work, eat, nor sleep. John
remarked about it. Mary Drake regarded him anxiously from behind his
back.

At noon the following Saturday, Rodrigo heard John leaving his office
and hastened to stop him. He had not reminded John of his engagement of
the afternoon, but now he said,

"You haven't forgotten about coming to the apartment at three-thirty,

have you, John!"

"Oh, I'll be there. You're so darned mysterious about it that you've

aroused my curiosity."

Rodrigo felt a grim satisfaction. He did not purpose to have his

electrocution bungled by the absence of the man who was to turn on the
electricity.

Having with some awkwardness and difficulty disposed of Mrs. Brink,

the housekeeper, who showed a disposition to dawdle at her work so that she
might gossip with him, Rodrigo, at three o'clock that afternoon, was trying
desperately to interest himself in a newspaper. He was arrayed in a purple
silken dressing-gown. Soft cushions were piled invitingly upon the divan.
The shades had been drawn discreetly, so that the room was in a semi-
shadow. Whisky and soda stood upon a slim taboret.

He waited impatiently for fifteen minutes. Then his nerves tingled as he

heard the elevator door outside roll open and someone stepped out into the
corridor. An instant later the apartment bell chimed. Rodrigo gravely arose.
His face broke into an excellent imitation of a smile of hearty welcome. He
opened the door. A freckle-faced, gawky messenger boy grinned on the
threshold, handed him two telegrams and pointed with a chewed stump of a
pencil where to sign in the book.

Rodrigo, mystified and disappointed, broke the envelope of one of the

telegrams. His face turned pale and his chin quivered, like a man suddenly
attacked with a chill, as he read:

Congratulate me. Elise and I married at Greenwich five

minutes ago. I am the happiest man in the world.

JOHN.

He walked falteringly over to the deep armchair and sat down before he
had the courage to open the other yellow container.

Sorry I had to miss our engagement. Just as well perhaps.

Forgive me for influencing John to break his date.

ELISE VAN ZILE.

For the first time in his life, Rodrigo cursed a lady. But mingled with his
resentment against her was a frank tribute to her cleverness. For he hadn't a
doubt in the world now but that Elise had seen through his stratagem and had
taken this decisive step to outwit him.
 CHAPTER XII

One glorious morning, three weeks later, when the June sunshine bathed
Fifth Avenue in a benevolent light and the staff of Dorning and Son edged
over as near the doors and windows as possible and made lugubrious
remarks about their luck at being shut up from the paradise outdoors, the
door of Rodrigo's office was flung open and John Dorning burst in.

"Rodrigo!" he cried, and stood there near the door smiling happily and
blushing furiously, looking wonderfully well and boyish.

Rodrigo sprang up at once and congratulated him heartily.

"I'm the happiest man in the world," John repeated the words of the
fateful telegram, and, Rodrigo admitted, he looked it. His face was bronzed
and suffused with health, the result of many hours upon the golf links and in
the lake adjoining the elaborate Adirondack "lodge" where the Dornings had
been spending their honeymoon. A feeling of relief for the moment and
optimism for the future swept through Rodrigo. Perhaps, after all, he had
misjudged Elise. Though, he told himself, it is a very rare marriage that does
not at least survive the honeymoon.

"Sit right down and tell me how the elopement all happened," invited
Rodrigo gayly, "you old scoundrel."

"Well, to begin at the beginning," said John exuberantly, "I had an

engagement with Elise in the evening on that Saturday you wanted me to
come to the apartment in the middle of afternoon, do you remember?
Around noon-time Elise telephoned me and said she was sorry but she would
have to cancel the evening engagement. She had to go to some charity
committee meeting or other with her aunt. I insisted upon seeing her, and she
finally agreed that we would have luncheon together and go for a short ride
in my car. I told her of my mystery date with you, and we enjoyed a good
laugh about it, old man, though, of course, she insisted upon my keeping it.
And I assure you I had every intention in the world of doing so. But we got
out on the Post Road, and it was such a wonderful afternoon—well, anyway,
I guess I made love to her, and then miraculously she said she would marry
me. I said 'When?' and she replied, 'Oh, it would be so romantic to do it at
once.' She was set against a fussy wedding of any kind. Didn't even want to
let my dad or sister know. I agreed, of course, being darned lucky to get her
any way at all. So we stopped at Stamford. Afterward I telephoned Dad and
sent you a telegram, and we started on our honeymoon."

"Great stuff!" Rodrigo enthused. "John, for a lad who has always fought
shy of the ladies, you certainly put it over in whirlwind style. What are you
going to do now?"

John hitched his chair nearer, beaming with high spirits. "My luck has
kept right on rolling in, Rodrigo. I happened to meet a chap from home at
the place we were staying. He mentioned that Ned Fernald was putting his
new place on the market. It seems Ned isn't so well off as he's supposed to
be, and building the place and outfitting it has strapped him so completely
that now he's anxious to sell. It's a peach of a big house, with lots of ground,
in the Millbank section, a new development. I'm going to get in touch with
Ned, and Elise and I have agreed that if we can arrive at the proper price,
we'll buy it."

Rodrigo averred that it sounded excellent. "But where is the blushing

bride?" he added.

"She's on her way to Greenwich. I just said good-bye to her and her aunt
at Grand Central. She's going to stop with Dad and Alice in Greenwich until
we get a place of our own."

"She's never met your folks, has she?" asked Rodrigo. He wondered
what Henry Dorning would think of his daughter-in-law, whether his
experienced old eyes would penetrate to things in her that his infatuated son
had never dreamed of.

"I'm sure they'll love her as much as I do," John enthused. "They can't
help it. She's the greatest ever. Dad knows Mrs. Palmer, Elise's aunt, very
well, so I got her to go along up."
 Two hours later, he came back into Rodrigo's office to announce that he
was leaving to subway down-town and seek out Edward Fernald, who was a
minor partner in a brokerage house on Nassau Street. John confided further
that he was, as yet, quite unable to settle down to the workaday problems of
Dorning and Son. He was still walking upon air.

"You'll have to put up with my incompetence for a while, till I get used
to the idea of being married to the world's greatest wife," he pleaded
smilingly with Rodrigo.

"Take your time," soothed the latter. "I'll be indulgent. We don't have a
marriage in the firm every day."

"I wish some nice girl like Elise would capture you," John offered
seriously.

Rodrigo laughed. "Oh, that's what all you newlyweds preach to us happy
old bachelors."

Nevertheless he dropped in to see what Mary thought of the returned and

changed Dorning, after John had left.

"Mrs. Dorning is very lucky," said Mary. "John is the sort who will
devote his whole life to making his wife happy."

She said it so positively that she put him a trifle on the defensive. "Any
normal husband would do that, wouldn't he?" he asked a little challengingly.

She was silent a moment, and then she said, evidently out of a troubled
mind and into her typewriter, "Some men aren't equipped to be normal
husbands."

He looked at her gravely, his eyes full of love for her. Some day soon he
was going to have it out with Mary, he told himself. He would have to.
Things couldn't go on with them as they had been. He had called upon her
many times now out of office hours, met her mother, taken Mary to the
theatre, to art exhibitions, and to concerts and the opera. Always he had
avoided making love to her, because he was desperately afraid of losing her
through having his intentions misunderstood. He had wanted, on many
occasions, to sweep her into his arms, to cover her face with kisses, to claim
her for his own, but he was afraid. He could not risk kissing Mary until he
was very sure she loved him. Before the Sophie Binner blackmailing
episode, he had been optimistic about Mary's feelings toward him. But
during the last few months the issue had been cast again into doubt.

Frequently he told himself almost bitterly that if Mary loved him she
would be willing to forget utterly anything that had happened to him in the
past. But this, in his more rational moments, he knew was asking too much.
She was not the sort of girl who rushes blindly into love. Her whole
character and training were influences in the opposite direction. Love must
come upon her gradually. She must be very sure. Americanized though he
was by this time, the very fact that Rodrigo was a man of another country
from her own, with other ideals and up-bringing, made the process of falling
in love with him for this serious-minded American girl groping and slow.
But, once he had won her, he knew that she would be his forever, utterly,
without question or regret. That was Mary Drake's way too.

Two weeks later John Dorning announced that he had bought the Fernald
house, and he eagerly discussed with Rodrigo furnishing the place according
to their high artistic standards. The Italian, on one pretext or another,
declined several invitations to go to Greenwich and look over the Fernald
property and the married Elise. John was insistent that Rodrigo rush up and
congratulate Elise in person, and then just try and deny that John was the
luckiest fellow ever born. Elise had been asking for Rodrigo, John said, had
urged John to invite him up. Rodrigo smiled benevolently, and declined. He
did not, for the time being, wish to face this clever, attractive, and
triumphant young lady.

But, at last, when the John Dornings had actually moved into the Fernald
house and the rare old furniture and objets d'art, which Rodrigo had helped
to select, were installed to the young householder's liking, Rodrigo could no
longer decline the invitation to spend a weekend with them without
offending his friend.

Elise met them at the Greenwich station in a trim new little sedan.
Rodrigo congratulated her heartily, and she gave him very pretty thanks. She
was looking exceptionally alluring, lending an exotic distinction even to the
tweedy sport clothes she was wearing.

"I am especially grateful to you, Rodrigo—I suppose I may call you that
now," she added, "because you were instrumental in bringing John and me
together." Rodrigo glanced at her a little sharply, wondering if there was a
double meaning in this. But her smile was serene, though those enigmatic
eyes were just a little narrower than normal.

"It is glorious out here. I love it," she tossed over her shoulder to him, as
he sat, unusually quiet in the tonneau of the moving car beside his bag and
golf sticks. And as she swept the car into the newly made driveway of their
artistic home of field-stone and stucco, "Aren't we lucky to get this place? It
is the first home of my own that I have ever had. I love every stone in it."

Rodrigo admitted to himself that she was giving an excellent imitation of

a very happy young bride.

John showed him through the house later, and Rodrigo was very sincere
in his praise of their dwelling and its broad, attractive surroundings. The
close-cropped lawn sloped down gradually to a small lake, surrounded by
willow trees, a body of fresh water that eventually found its way into the
neighboring sound. John explained that there was a concrete dam below,
with a private bathing beach of white sand and crystal-clear water. Millbank
was a new development, very much restricted and exclusive, with a fine
nine-hole golf course just across the lake. When Rodrigo cast pleased eyes
upon the links, John recalled that Warren Pritchard, on learning of Rodrigo's
coming, had immediately spoken for the guest's company on Sunday
morning at the Greenwich Country Club.

"I believe Ben Bryon and Lon Sisson are anxious for a revenge match on
account of the beating you and Warren gave them the last time," John
explained, indicating by his tone of voice that he didn't consider the
engagement so pressing as Warren evidently did, and that he would have
preferred to retain Rodrigo's company himself.

"That will be fine," Rodrigo enthused. "That is, if you haven't other plans
for me, John?" John shook his head in the negative.
 He motored to Stamford that evening with his host and hostess and
attended the first night of a polite comedy, destined for its New York
premiere the following week. The play was not particularly interesting, and
Rodrigo paid more attention to the audience than to the stage. It was a mixed
crowd of typical small-towners, well dressed and highly sun-tanned people
from adjacent Long Island Sound resorts, and professionals from Broadway
who were either interested in the production or the players. He recognized
the producer of the piece, a jolly, corpulent individual whom he had met at
the Coffee House Club. They ran into each other in the outside lobby
between the first and second act, and the theatrical admitted blithely that he
had a "flop" and was debating whether to dismiss the company at once and
forfeit his deposit on the lease of the Broadway theatre or chance a
performance in New York.

To Rodrigo, walking down the aisle as the orchestra was playing the
unmelodious prelude to the second act, came the realization anew that Elise
was quite the most striking-looking woman he had ever known. Her creamy
white shoulders billowing up from her black evening dress, her raven hair
sleeked tightly against her skull, her dark eyes either feeling or feigning
vivacious interest as she inclined her head to listen to John's animated
conversation, she was easily the most beautiful person in front or behind the
footlights. He sensed the strong magnetism of her presence as he took the
seat on the other side of her, and she said smilingly to him, "I was telling
John how bad this play is, but he seems only to have noticed that the settings
are in atrocious taste."

"He's right," Rodrigo acknowledged, and, thinking this was rather curt,
added, "And so are you."

"You find the audience more interesting?" she asked shrewdly.

"Yes, part of it," he said quickly, without thinking, and then cursed
himself for betraying that she exerted some of her old spell over him. A
sudden enigmatic smile crinkled her eyes and mouth as she gazed full at him
an instant, then turned abruptly to John.

He played golf with John's brother-in-law and his two companions the
next morning and had the satisfaction of being largely responsible for
another victory for Pritchard and himself. The latter was as tickled as if he
had captured a championship. "Come again next week-end, Rodrigo, and
we'll give these birds a real ride," he proclaimed loudly for the defeated ones'
benefit. But Rodrigo would not promise.

In the afternoon he pleaded pressure of work and an unbreakable dinner

engagement as an excuse for leaving. John protested loudly, but his guest
was adamant. At about five o'clock, they drove him to the station. Elise took
the seat beside him in the tonneau and, just before they reached the station,
she asked, "When are we to see you again? I was in town two or three times
last week. Twice I telephoned John for lunch, and he was too busy or out or
something. The next time, I warn you, I am going to invite you to give me
luncheon, Rodrigo, and you mustn't refuse me." And as if to assure him that
her intentions were innocent, she repeated the same thing to John in a louder
voice. He laughed back and said, "Of course. I want you two to be great
friends."

"Isn't she the most wonderful wife in the world?" John whispered to him
as he grasped the step-rods of the train.

"Yes, she is a wonderful woman," Rodrigo replied sincerely, and looked

over John's head to return her languid wave of good-bye.

Going back in the train, he thought of her and John, and of their chances
for happiness. He recalled the conversation Warren Pritchard had hesitantly
started on the way to the golf links that morning, and then dropped.

"I say, Rodrigo," Warren had begun, after fumbling around obviously for
an opening, "I know it may sound caddish of me, and I shouldn't be talking
this way, but what really do you know of this lady whom my brother-in-law
has married?"

"Oh, I only know her slightly," Rodrigo had replied offhandedly. "She
comes of an excellent San Francisco family, I believe, connected with the
Palmers—your father-in-law knows the Palmers well."

"I wasn't thinking of her family. But will she make old John happy?"

"Why not?"