NEW TALES OF THE GOBI DESERT
St. Joseph’s College, Wong Ngai Ian, Fiction: Group 3
D
id you really think I wouldn’t catch you slacking off?” a voice boomed in the speakers.
John knew at once that Mr. Canterbury was addressing him.
“I would be optimistic to think so!” John yelled back. The man on the speakers
was his boss, Mr. Darwin Canterbury, a short, stout man with an attitude. John and
some other men were working with him on an excavation project in the Gobi Desert. They were
looking for gold nuggets, a sign that there might be a load of precious metals under the surface,
so a bigger mining crew with more advanced equipment could dig through the tough rock and
sandstone. But right now, John and his crew were only armed with a pair of backhoes and a dozen
or so pickaxes and shovels. Under the strong, burning rays of the desert sun, digging through the
dirt and sand was back-breaking work, and everyone was grumpy.
“You had better stop jabbering or you’re going home with no gold or job.” Mr. Canterbury said
once more through the electric speakers rigged around the excavation site.
Well, back to work, thought John, picking up his shovel.
About a week after first landing on the border between Mongolian and China, the mining
operation was still going nowhere. At some point in the afternoon of one of the countless long,
hot days, Mr. Canterbury decided to move to an even more roasted part of the massive desert.
So thus began the hard, morale-draining trek towards a supposedly deserted mining outpost left
by previous miners, out in the middle of the potentially lethal Gobi Desert. John was not exactly
pleased with this news, and neither were his co-workers. Tom, one of John’s close friends piped up
“Why do we have to walk while the boss can drive his fancy truck?”
“Because he’s the boss, dummy!” Karl, another friend of John’s, replied, which was rather
funny as Karl was usually considered the dumb one.
Moving to the new mine was a long and exhausting journey. By the time they got there, most
of the miners were sound asleep, cradling their helmets like mothers cradling their babies. The
boss was right, John thought, there was way more gold here then there was at the old mine. As
he dug through the solid rock, he saw something, not very big, but visible through the thick Gobi
dust. It was a long, crescent shaped object. It was ivory and black, and it looked like a piece of
charred bone.
“Boss, come look at this,” John said to Mr. Canterbury. As the rest of the mining crew stopped
their respective jobs to crane their necks and listen to the conversation, Mr. Canterbury said in a
low, murmuring whisper “Not here. The walls have ears, come -- I’ll take you to my office.”
Turning a corner, he led John to a small, rectangular-shaped building with a low roof located
in the middle of the compound. Inside, there was a simple fire-place, a couple of chairs, and an
oak wood antique table next to a metal-framed bunk. John was very surprised indeed, as he
thought his boss wasn’t the kind of person who would let people into his own office. The room was
awfully quiet. John and Mr. Canterbury stood side-by-side, as an awkward silence settled upon
the fray. Finally, when John couldn’t stand the awkwardness any longer, he said to Mr. Canterbury
“Boss, there was this giant hambone thing, well not really giant, but anyway, it was all charred
and you should’ve seen it, boss!”
“I know, I saw.” Mr. Canterbury said in a calm voice. “I think, what we have here… is a
dinosaur bone.”
“
