He went out, and came in again quickly, saying in agitation, "The red thing has come nearer and is close to the house."
The men laughed, but the boy hid himself. Almost immediately after this the men in the kashim saw a fiery figure dancing on the gut-skin covering over the roof hole, and an instant after a human skeleton came crawling into the room through the passageway, creeping on its knees and elbows.
When the skeleton was in the room it made a motion toward the people which caused them all to fall on their knees and elbows in the same position as it had. Then, turning about, it crawled out as it had come, followed by the people, who were forced to go with it. Outside, the skeleton crept through the snow toward the edge of the village, followed by all the men, and in a short time every one of them was dead and the skeleton had vanished.
Some of the villagers had been absent when the spook came, and when they returned they found dead people lying all about on the cold ground. Entering the kashim, they found the orphan boy, who told them how the people had been killed.
They followed the tracks of the skeleton through the snow, and were led up the side of the mountain till they came to an ancient grave, where the tracks ended.
It was the grave of the boy's father.