Thomas Jefferson? Wasn’t he — ?

“Mr. President! Sir!” A really sweaty man pushes his way next to Jefferson His Nutcracker clothes are more torn up, and he wears a couple extra pistols strapped to his body. “Maybe he’s a French or British, spy, sir! Maybe the Spanish sent him!”

“Then they’re doing a fairly poor job of sneaking up on us, Mr. Howard. And wasn’t it your idea that we shall not refer to me as ‘President’ while we’re on this little jaunt?”

The pistol-wearer’s eyes bulge a little more. “Yes, Mr. President. Sorry, sir. This should remain a secret mission.”

“This is kind of a big group to be called ‘secret.’” It’s York. I can hear other voices, and the noise of horses and work. He’s right — there seem to be a lot of people here.

“We’re not taking advice from some darky slave!” Mr. Howard snaps back. Darky slave? York is black, it’s true. But what kind of awful words —

Where am I? When is this?

“Stand down, Mr. Howard,” Jefferson says.

“But he just contradicted — ”

“I said, ‘stand down.’ Stop shouting at the less fortunate. I’m sure this journey shall stay secret. After all, it’s not as if news of the President’s travels can fly through thin air.”

It’s time for me to shake out all the grogginess and find out where I am.

“Um, sir — ”

Instead, I throw up. One of those empty-stomach throw ups, that are sometimes even worse.

“The boy’s sick.”

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that time travel is easy.

“Maybe we better take him to St. Louis,” the one named Floyd says.

“Portents and omens, sir,” Lewis says to Jefferson.

“Let us take him to my camp, first,” Jefferson says. “It’s closer, and Sally can look after him.”

I don’t want to be looked after. I just want to go home.

I’m handed a rag for my mouth.

“Drink this.” Floyd holds out some kind of wooden cup. He decides to help me, and tips the liquid into my lips.

Whatever it is — medicine? — it stings and burns and I start coughing, so thanks to being “helped,” I never get the word “no” out of my mouth, “no, I don’t want to go, I want to stay here and look for my friends — ”

But now I’m being led away, my arm around Floyd’s shoulder, and he’s taking me toward some kind of wooden wagon.

“Up here, little friend.”

I’m still not sure where I am, but I’ll take the ride, so I let him help me up.

I climb on, and in the rear of the wagon, I see a blanket in the corner that’s been thrown over some stuff, so I take it and pull it off.

There’s a giant bone underneath it.

Like a dinosaur bone.

Like a bigger-than-Clyne dinosaur bone.

I’m shivering, but I don’t put the blanket on.

“Master Sands?” Two men are walkin toward the wagon. At least I hope it’s two — maybe I’m seeing double. It looks like Jefferson has split into two separate lanky red-headed men.

Except the other one doesn’t have a ponytail.

“Are you brothers?” I finally manage to croak out.

Jefferson laughs and turns to the other guy. “Sometimes, Captain Clark, you’d think we were the only two red-haired men in creation, the way people keep asking that. No, young sir,” and now he’s looking at me again, “this is Captain William Clark, the other leader of this noble, somewhat secret, perhaps misbegotten expedition. You should put the blanket on, Master Sands. I’m sure the bony remains of the incognitum won’t miss it.”

“Before you return to camp, Mr. President, here’s the other find you inquired about — the strange hat we found by the riverbank.” Clark lifts a sword — a sword! but it’s smaller than Excalibur, and obviously someone besides King Arthur and Thea can hold this one — and hanging off the tip is my Seals cap.

I grab for the cap without thinking. Without the ship, it’s my only chance to get home, and maybe to find my friends.

“Perhaps it belongs to the boy?” Clark asks. Yeah, perhaps it does.

Jefferson takes it from the sword tip to look at it, then drops it, as if he’s been burned. He squats down to study it. “I should hope not. He’d scald himself. You have found the first scientific anomaly of your long journey, Mr. Clark. An entirely different kind of incognitum — a mysterious type of half-hat, with lettering on it.” he says, pointing to the overlapping “S” and “F.”

That weird word again. What is this incognitum that Jefferson is so worked up about?

“You and your incognitums, sir.” Clark shakes his head. “I appreciate you accompanying us all the way through Missouri in order to look for large and mysterious bones, but let’s not terrify the men any more than we have to.” Clark pats the bone laying near me on the wagon.

“Dinosaur bone “ I tell them, getting a couple more words out of my mouth.

“What?”

“From a dinosaur. But not the one who does homework. Luckily.”

Clark looks at Jefferson and shrugs. “I don’t know what he’s saying. Maybe he is from another country.”

“Dinosaur.” Jefferson repeats the word. “It’s some kind of Latin I’ve never heard before.”

“Hat.”

“What?”

“Hat,” I repeat.

I want my Seals cap. Still feeling shaky I start to reach for it again, thinking I’ll climb down from the wagon.

But before I can, I’m jerked back in as the horse the wagon’s hitched to starts to move.

“Let Sally tend him!” Jefferson says to the driver of the wagon. “Later, when he’s regained his strength, we shall find out how our young squire came to be by the banks of the Ohio River this sunny day in May!”

I’m shivering and still feeling sick, and this time I take the blanket completely off the dinosaur bone and wrap it around myself.

The wagon pulls me along, farther and farther away from the baseball cap that’s my only real ticket home.

Trail of Bones is now available
from Candlewick Press.