Lieutenant Arthur McTeague paced back and forth, from one end of the small clearing to the other.  Around him grew the dense forest full of incredibly high redwoods and huge maples.  Most of his platoon was gathering together brush to build a barrier around the spot that had been chosen as their campsite for the night.  The remainder were laying out fuel, tinder, and kindling for the campfires.  McTeague’s fellow lieutenant, Augustus P. Dechantagne, sat on a large rock at the edge of the clearing.

“I signed up for the artillery,” said McTeague.  “What about you, Augie?”

“Artillery.”

“Then how come we’re out here in the middle of nowhere, not a cannon in sight?”

“You’re lucky they let you have a rifle,” said Augie as he pulled an envelope from his tunic pocket.

“What’s that then?”

“Letter from my sister.”

“Anything interesting at home?”

Augie handed him the letter, and he read through it quickly.

“Wow.  Tender.”

“Oh, she loves me in her own way.”

“Anything else in the envelope?”

“Just my allowance.”  Augie held up a wire transfer in the amount of two thousand marks.

“Kafira!  You can have quite a week on the town with that.  All you can drink.  Good 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 the men who brought forth six small bags tied at the top.  McTeague handed two to each of the reptilians, one of whom opened a bag, spilling out a handful of copper pfennigs into his hand.

“The army plans to win over the lizardmen with twelve marks worth of coins?” wondered Augie, after he had finished the reptilian tongue.

“Coins good,” said one of the lizardmen in Brech.  “Like coins.  Not kill you.”