Read Dinosaur Summer for Free Online Page B

else. Peter toasted with a glass of milk. Looking around the table, he realized with a creeping numbness that his father and he were sitting with half a dozen circus performers, a ringmaster, a dinosaur trainer, and Lotto Gluck himself. John Ford sat at one end flanked by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack; to the right of Cooper were Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen, three beautiful actresses--one blonde, one brunette, and one redhead--and . . . he had come back around the table to Anthony and himself. Anthony was deep in conversation with the redhead, the one who had smiled at Peter. She wasn't much older than Peter, either.
    Ford, a pleasant but ordinary-looking man with thinning hair and round horn-rim glasses, stood to deliver his personal toast and wishes for the expedition.
    "Damn, I wish I was going with you," he said, aiming his glass around the table. His other hand clutched and worried a napkin.
    Peter looked at Anthony. "Going where?" he whispered.
    Anthony held his fingers to his lips.
    "When I was just breaking into movies, I read about the explorers following after Challenger. I remember the newsreels of Roy Chapman Andrews. Andrews divided his time between El Grande and the Flaming Hills in Mongolia. Monte, you ran into Roy once, didn't you?" "That grandstanding S.O.B.," Schoedsack said. Behind his goggling glasses, he seemed perpetually irritated.
    "He coulda made a hell of a lot of omelets," Ford said. "Some of them would have been pretty tough, of course."
    Harryhausen leaned across the table and said to Peter, "Andrews found fossil dinosaur eggs in Mongolia and real eggs on El Grande."
    "Oh," Peter said, realizing he had a lot to catch up on.
    "I remember the headlines when Colonel Fawcett went missing. Lotto, you knew Fawcett personally."
    "Another prima donna," Gluck said under his breath.
    "I heard that," Ford said. "Well, it takes one to know one."
    "Too right," Gluck said. He mopped his face with a handkerchief and took another swig of wine. Then he looked down at the table sadly.
    "And who could forget Jimmie Angel cracking up his airplane on El Grande and having to walk thirty miles to the bridge at Pico Poco? That wasafter it was supposed to be closed . . . I wanted to make a movie of that, even had Gary Cooper set for the part, but the studios were kinda cold on the idea, and other things came along." His eyes sparkled as he turned toward O'Brien. "OBie, you've been itching for years now to make another monkey movie."
    Everybody around the table but Schoedsack laughed. OBie shook his head wryly.
    "Well, I tell you what. Get these dinos into retirement"--he paused, then glanced around the table, smiling--"down in Tampa. Bring me back some great scenes, well blocked and with lots of drama, like you did forKong but in color, and we'll make that monkey movie. Only this time, the ape'll be smaller so it'll cost less. I'll even rope in Monte."
    "Never again," Schoedsack vowed darkly.
    Shellabarger got up and said he must excuse himself. The circus performers--including the ringmaster and the man and woman who had practiced with the horse--stood up with him. Everybody had to get dressed and ready for the final show, which would begin in an hour.
    As the table was cleared, the guests milled about. The ringmaster's assistant ushered everybody out. The tent was to be closed to bring in the performing cages. "Wouldn't want any of the animals to find you here!" the assistant said with a wolfish smile.
    "My beassts," Gluck said sadly, standing beside the ring, one hand on a guy wire. "All right, we go to the third tent. Come, we have photographers and newspaper people to talk to."
    The crowd of reporters in the third tent was not what Gluck had hoped for. There were only five, and two of those were from the society pages hoping to snag interviews with the actresses and Ford. Nobody seemed much interested in Gluck himself. He walked from group to group with a hang-dog expression.
    Peter had a chance to talk