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food.
Women.”
    “ Do you see any women?” asked
Augie, waving in the direction of the tall trees. “Do you see any
food? I’m not even sure I can cash this when we get back to
Mallontah. How likely is it that someone there will have two
thousand marks lying around? I’d have been better off if she sent
me a five pfennig piece taped to the inside of the envelope like my
Auntie Gin used to do. It’s a good thing I have two bottles of
contraband in my pack.”
    “ That’s what I like about
you—always prepared.”
    That night, the two bottles were produced, one
passed around among the men and the other shared by the two
lieutenants as they warmed their feet by the campfire, their heads
resting on their packs. The noises of this strange forest were far
different than back home. There were squawks and squeaks and in the
distance, roars. Not distant enough for McTeague’s
taste.
    “ Don’t worry,” said Augie. “They’re
more afraid of you than you are of them.”
    “ I can attest to the fact that that
is not the case.”
    The next morning all of the men expressed
similar concerns as an entire herd of great beasts made their way
through the nearby forest, heedless of the humans. The monsters
were up to twelve feet tall and thirty five feet long, though there
were many smaller members of the species among them. Though their
bumpy skin and thick legs put one in mind of an elephant, they
walked on hind legs, only sometimes using quadrupedal locomotion.
Their heads were shaped something like the head of a horse, but
their long, heavy tails spoke of their reptilian
origins.
    “ What are they called again?”
wondered McTeague.
    “ Dinosaurs,” said Augie. “All I can
think of when I see them is the size of the brisket you could
get.”
    “ I doubt it would taste
good.”
    “ Our cook back home, Mrs.
Colbshallow, can make anything taste good. Let’s get the men
together and get going. If those are the sheep in this country, I
don’t want to see the wolves.”
    The column of forty two soldiers dressed in
blue and khaki walked north, away from the dinosaurs. Though the
ground was thick with rhododendrons and other small brush, there
were enough game trails that overland travel was not too slow.
Along the way the men saw more and more of the strange creatures,
though Augie didn’t know if the smaller ones were rightly
dinosaurs. They had feathers and looked much more like scary birds.
They marched all morning and came to their destination just after
noon. It didn’t look any different than a hundred other forest
clearings except that this clearing contained the parties they were
sent to meet.
    Three creatures stood before the soldiers. They
were all well over six feet tall and they looked far more reptilian
than the dinosaurs or scary birds did, as though alligators had
been given the power to stand up on their back legs and use their
forelegs for hands as men did. Each had a long snout filled with
peg-like teeth and a long tail which trailed behind them, remaining
just a few inches above the ground. Though they wore no clothing,
their scaly bodies were painted in bizarre designs of red, black,
and white. All three as one raised their right hands, palms
outward, to the dewlaps on their throats and spoke a hissing
language.
    “ What did they say?” asked
McTeague.
    “ Something about a tree?” Augie
replied.
    “ Aren’t you here as the
interpreter?”
    Augie shrugged, and then spat out a series of
hisses and gurgles of his own.
    “ Everything’s fine—greeting,
greeting, hail, hail, promise not to kill you, etc.”
    “ Alright, tell them what I say.”
McTeague produced a note from his pocket and read it. “Hail to you
and your chief. We come to you in peace and friendship from across
the sea and bring you word from your new great chief that he now
claims these lands. So that you know your new great chief means
well, he has sent us with these gifts.”
    As Augie translated, McTeague gestured to one
of