Read Who's sorry now? for Free Online Page B

and yellow, and had holes through them. ”Whatever they were strung on at one time has been dissolved. They’ve been fired to make them this hard and durable,” Dr. Toller said. ”We’ll keep sieving them.”
    The next discovery was a bit of leather about the size of a postage stamp. Toller said, ”Probably deerskin that’s been heavily oiled or beeswaxed. Otherwise it would have rotted.”
    Are we talking about an Indian?” Chief Walker asked.
    ”Most likely. If it had been a white hunter, there probably wouldn’t be the beads,” Dr. Toller said. ”We’re progressing well. But I imagine everybody’s hungry. At least I am.”
    ”If Mrs. Prinney were here she’d make us lunch,” Lily said.
    ”Let’s just pack up and go to town to Mabel’s,” Chief Walker said.
    Everybody went along, Chief Walker with the pathologist and the anthropologist in his police car. Robert, Lily, and the Harbinger boys in the Duesie. They discussed what had already been found with various levels of interest. Lily and Harry were the most enthusiastic about what they might learn about the skeleton. Jim was a bit bored with the chore of sifting and brushing around dirt when there were other things he and his brother needed to do for other customers.
    Robert didn’t want to see the rest of the bones. ”Bones and bagworms all in one day,” he said with a shudder. ”It’s too much to bear.”
    Lily said, ”You’ve always been afraid of things in nature. Remember the day we first came here and you admitted that you were afraid of trees?”
    ”I never said that,” Robert claimed.
    ”Yes, you did,” Lily said, laughing and gently poking her elbow into his ribs.
    Since Lily was right, he didn’t pursue the conversation.
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    REFRESHED BY A HEARTY LUNCH, the anthropologist, Dr. Toller, was eager to unearth the rest of the skeleton. ”I can see the front and top of the skull now and it’s a young person,” he said, addressing his remarks to Lily because she seemed the most interested. After delivering the pathologist and anthropologist, Chief Walker had left to investigate a house that had been broken into.
    ”How can you tell?” Lily asked Dr. Toller.
    ”By the way the various parts of skull come together. They don’t entirely knit together until a person is close to eighteen or twenty. I’d guess the subject was perhaps early teens. Possibly as young as fifteen or even younger.”
    ”You can’t tell anything else from the skull?”
    ”Yes, the teeth indicate it’s an American Indian.”
    ”They have different teeth?”
    ”Yes, the front ones are ‘shoveled.’ That means that they—” He thought for a moment how to describe it to a stranger. ”The calcium they’re made of goes around the sides and they are a bit concave at the back. Sort of like a little shovel.”
    ”That’s fascinating. I’d have never guessed front teeth weren’t always the same,” Lily responded.
    He nearly preened. It wasn’t often that an attractive young woman found his information interesting. He’d never had a young woman sign up for his classes, and most of the young men who took the class did so because they thought it would be easy to get a good grade. He’d only had two young men, on average, each year, who seemed genuinely interested in the subject that fascinated him.
    ”What’s more,” he went on, knowing he was showing off, ”the molars, as far as I can see before the skull is totally released from the soil where it is resting, aren’t worn down at all.”
    And what does that mean?”
    ”Most of the tribes in this part of the country ate a lot of corn, ground to powder between two stones. Some of the stone dust gets into it. It gradually files down the molars. But let’s get back to work. I’ll try to get the entire skull out. And Harry and Jim, you can get on with pulling the other stump out. But go easy, if you can. We don’t want to destroy any evidence.”
    The Harbinger brothers soon eased