while. All we can
say is that they lived many, many ages ago, and we are lucky if we can
come upon any slight remains of them."

"Do you really think you'll find some fossil bones?" asked Dick.

"I'm sure of it!" was the answer. "Hello! That looks as if they had
found something over there!" he cried, as some excitement was manifest
amid a group of laboring Greasers some distance away.

The professor hurried there, followed by the boys. They saw where some
men, down in a shale pit had uncovered what at first looked to be a
tree-trunk.

"It is part of the hind leg of the great Brontosaurus!" cried Professor
Wright, in intense excitement. "That's what it is--the Brontosaurus!"

"But you want a _Brontotherium_," insisted one of the helpers, a
professor in the making.

"I don't care what I get, as long as they are fossil bones!" cried Mr.
Wright. "But I shall yet find a Brontotherium here--of that I am
certain. Careful now, men!"

"Say, he's really found something!" cried Dick.

But alas for the hopes of the professor! When the object was taken out
it proved to be only part of the skeleton of a long dead buffalo, the
bones being so encrusted with clay or mud as to appear much larger than
they really were.

"Well, too bad," sighed the professor. "But better luck next time.
Come again, boys."

And so the digging went on as fast as could be done, for each shovel of
earth and each dislodged stone was carefully examined by the scientist
or one of his scientific companions for any trace of the bones of an
extinct monster.

Under the urging of Del Pinzo, the Greasers, all of whom had been
engaged by him, worked hard--harder than they would have done had Del
Pinzo not been there to spur them on. Professor Wright admitted this,
and said it was why he was willing to pay the half-breed to oversee the
laborers.

And of all who labored none was more active than a certain young
Greaser, in ragged garments and with a most dirty face, who seemed to
be in all parts of the excavating camp at once. He leaped down into
holes, he climbed mounds and delved there a while; he labored with pick
and shovel. He was all over at all times, it seemed.

So active was he that he attracted the attention of Del Pinzo, who,
strolling over to the youth remarked, in Mexican Spanish:

"I don't seem to remember you. Where are you from?"

To which, in native dialect, he was answered:

"I come in my brother's place. San Feliece h