Being in the middle of nowhere meant that you were surrounded by lots and lots of nowhere. There was no way that I would be able to make a detailed scan of the entire area surrounding the proposed mine in a day. Instead, I used a shotgun approach, where I peppered an area with lots of randomly placed field tests. If I found anything in those test areas, then I would explore everything adjacent to it. If there were no interesting minerals in the scan, then I’d move on. I might miss something by doing this, but it let me cover a lot of area in a short amount of time.
Spending around two hours going outwards from the site in each direction meant that it was late afternoon by the time I finished my exploring. I returned to the campsite hungry, tired and dirty. Mark and Sylvie were having a meeting as I drove the ATV back to the surveyors, but they made their way over to me as I was filling up the tank for the next person to use it.
“Your timing couldn’t be better, Abby. Sylvie and I just finished going over the final report and I was about to call the pilots and see if they could be ready to leave in an hour and a half.”, Mark said.
“Make it two hours and you’ve got a deal. I need a bit of time to clean up and get a snack at the plane hotel.”, I answered.
“Plane hotel?”, Sylvie asked.
“She means the FBO, the fixed-base operator. It’s where the plane gets hangered between flights. They have showers for the pilots and a lounge for customers waiting for their flights to take off. Two hours it is. Are you ready do go?”, Mark explained.
“Sure. I’ll input my data on the way to the plane. How long is the flight to Arkansas and where are we staying tonight? If you want to survive to see another sunrise, make sure that the word ‘outdoors’ doesn’t pass your lips.” Sylvie and Mark both laughed at my threat.
“The flight is around two hours and we’re staying indoors at a Travelodge right next to the airport.” Mark had put extra emphasis on the work indoors.
“That’s good. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I won’t have to kill you. Dirt comes out in the wash. Blood is a whole other matter.” I finished with the ATV and handed the keys to Sylvie.
“You wouldn’t kill me. Not when you’d already gone through all the trouble of saving my life. That would just mean that you got into all that trouble for nothing.”, Mark responded.
“That’s true.”, I said dejectedly. Then I perked up and added, “But I can make you wish you were dead.”
Mark frowned at the glee in my voice and was about to continue our teasing banter when Sylvie asked, “She saved your life?”
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“Yes. Last September she ran into a burning building and carried me out.”, Mark answered.
Sylvie gave him a skeptical look, waiting for the punchline.
“It’s true. No joke. Here, I’ve got the video.” Mark pulled out his phone, swiped at it a few times and handed it to Sylvie.
“You downloaded the video to your phone?”, I groaned, “Seriously? Why would you do that?”
“To remind me why I keep you around when your tongue gets too acerbic.”
“Acerbic? Really? Nobody uses that word in normal conversation. Why didn’t you just say ‘snarky’?”, I asked.
“There you go again. Being all acerbic.” Mark drew out that last word and giving the final syllable a hard K sound at the end. I couldn’t hold a straight face anymore and I lol’ed.
While we’d been talking, Sylvie had been watching the video and when it ended, she had that weird look on her face that I’d seen several people have after watching the video. I’d termed it ‘stunned disbelief’ and I dreaded what was coming next.
“Holy shit, Abby. That was incredible. What the hell did you think you were doing?”
I couldn’t get Mark to stop laughing for five straight minutes. Somewhere in the middle of his chortling, he managed to gasp out, “That’s why I have the video with me! I love hearing people ask you that.”, and then he was off again, holding his sides and enjoying my discomfort.
Eventually, we made our way to the car and said our goodbyes. Right before we were about to leave, Sylvie jumped in with a quick question. “Abby, my team is going to very upset with me if I don’t ask you if you found anything in all of your, uhm, surveying.”
I looked over at Mark, who wasn’t trying to hide his own curiosity, before turning to answer Sylvie. “I can’t go into details, but I will tell you that you and your team are working on the second largest concentration of copper on the property.”
“There’s another ore deposit location? Where?”, Sylvie asked.
“You’ll have to wait for the final report in two weeks to get information. Oh, and there’s an intact skeleton of a T-Rex in the southwestern corner of the property.”
As we drove away, leaving Sylvie with lots of unanswered questions, Mark asked, “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”.
“Yup.”
“You do realize that not knowing the location of the other ore deposit, or if there really is another deposit at all, is going to drive her crazy?”
“Yup.”
“Was it payback for the looks her team have been giving you for the past two days or for asking you that questions about the fire?”
“Neither really. I wanted to answer her truthfully, but I can’t give her more information until I’ve set my deal up with Jake.”
“So there really is a T-Rex skeleton? In good shape?”, Mark asked.
“Definitely. I’ve seen one in museum. They’re very similar.”
“A few years ago, I was with Grampa Jake at a mining site when a dinosaur fossil was discovered by the workers. They called in a paleontologist from a local museum to evaluate it. The fossil had been too badly damaged to make it worth a lot, but I got interested in fossils for awhile and looked up their values. Do you know what a T-Rex skeleton is worth?”
“I’ve never given it much thought. Well, any thought.”, I answered truthfully.
“Full skeletons are fairly rare, and T-Rex ones are very rare. One of the most famous was sold at auction in the late 1990’s for a little over $8,000,000.”
It took a little while for that to settle in and then I whispered, “In that case, I’ll keep the locations of the other ones to myself for now.”