LATEST READ:

 

A CHLOE WENDLETON MYSTERY:
Curse of the Stone Idol
~Rita Hsu Syers

Chapter One - continued

Chloe's grandfather, had already been there for two weeks by the time they arrived. The three children had flown on a plane without an adult accompanying them for the first time, and they were thrilled. They would be staying in Montana for July and August.

Maria-Luisa, the Wendleton's housekeeper, had decided to visit her relatives in Brazil while her precious Chi Chi was with her grandfather in Montana for two months. Since the house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where Chloe lived would be closed, Killian, her Golden Retriever, Isis, her Himalayan cat, and
Puck, her little ferret, had come with her to Montana. Her grandfather rented a house in the town of Bozeman while the three children were visiting, and all their pets as well. Will Reed brought his two ferrets, Firefly and Shimmer, the parents of Puck and Snickers, and Maya never went anywhere, other than school, without her ferret, Snickers.

Professor Wendleton joked that there was no room left in the house for him, but he really didn't mind. Six months ago, he had almost lost his precious granddaughter, Chloe, when she and her two friends, Maya and Will, were lost in a series of underground passages and attacked by huge, vicious, mutated rats.
Chloe could have brought the entire school marching band to Montana and her grandfather would not have cared. This was the first time any of the children had been on a dinosaur dig.

Chloe's grandfather was a paleontologist…he studied dinosaurs. He had been asked by the state of Montana to come out and oversee the huge new site of dinosaur bones that had been discovered outside the town of Bozeman. He would be there for July, August, September and October, and had invited Chloe
and her friends to stay with him for the months of July and August. The kids were so excited that when they finally arrived in Montana, sleep had been almost impossible…at least for the first two days. There was so much to see and do there!

Professor Wendleton had introduced them to the four other paleontologists that were there, one woman and three men. There were also six graduate students and an anthropologist.

Anthropology was the study of human cultures throughout the world and throughout time, and the young anthropologist, whose name was Jimmy Howling Wolf, was a full blooded Cheyenne. He was very handsome, with long black hair and warm brown eyes. He was also really funny, always playing practical jokes on everyone and telling funny stories. Chloe and Maya both had crushes on him.

Jimmy Howling Wolf grew up in Montana on a reservation not far from the town of Bozeman, and often brought his younger brother, Little Bear, eleven years old, to the dig. The young Indian boy had become very friendly with Chloe, Maya and Will.

All four children spent a lot of time practicing their archery. Chloe was the best of the three friends, because she had been doing it for so much longer. Maya was pretty good, but poor Will was only fair. He didn't seem to have any talent for archery at all. This bothered him at great deal, since their new friend,
Little Bear, was amazing. He had been using a bow and arrow since he was two years old, and could shoot an arrow with deadly accuracy and enough power behind it to bury it in a stone wall. He was also tall, handsome, and in very good shape for his age. Will, who was the smallest of the four children, felt like a child next to Little Bear.
"Anything happening at the nesting site?" asked Maya.
Chloe nodded, taking a cold bottle of water and a sandwich out of the refrigerator, which was always filled with bottled water, snacks and lots of popsicles.
"Yeah, you'll never guess what we found," she said, drinking half the bottle of water. It was so HOT out there.
"Unless you found a living, breathing dinosaur, I'm guessing it was more bones," said Will.
"Not this time, smarty. We found dinosaur eggs, and two of them had hatched."
"Huh?"
"Jimmy found them. There were two fossilized eggs, one had cracks in it like the baby was starting to hatch when it died, and in the other egg, the baby was halfway out of the shell. It was so cool, but sad too, you know? Poor baby."
"I've got to see this. C'mon, Will, let's go back to the site."
"I'll come back too. Here Killian, you want this?" Chloe held out half a turkey sandwich to the big Golden Retriever. Wagging his tail enthusiastically, Killian ate the sandwich in one bite.
Eating the other half of the sandwich, Chloe joined Maya and Will as they made their way back to the nesting site. ---end of excerpt