I struck a sulphur match and saw something else about those three redskin skulls. The edges where the bone was gone weren't fractured clean like a bullet or a club would do. They were charred.
The three were sprawled around the fourth skeleton and that was the one gave me the vapors. It was more or less man-shaped. But it wasn't a man, that I know. I don't believe I care to find out what it was. Instead of ribs there was a cylinder of thin bone, and it had only one bone in the lower leg. What there was for a pelvis I've never seen the like, and the skull was straight out of a Dore Bible. There was a hatchet buried in that skull.
The bones of the right arm were good and hefty, and it had two elbows. The left arm was about half the size—not crippled, but smaller scale. Like it was good for delicate work and not much else.
About ten inches from the widespread six fingers of its right hand was what you knew right off was a weapon even if it did look like an umbrella handle.
I was just reaching down to touch it when that fool Jake made his move.
He'd been standing behind me, closer I bet than he'd ever got before, staring down at that fourth skeleton and making odd noises. I tell you, it was something for a medical man to see. Suddenly he grunted like he was going to be sick. He snatched up a femur from one of the Indians and swung it up to smash that fourth skeleton to smithereens.
Well, sir, quicker than the eye could see the umbrella handle smacked itself into the palm of that bony hand, sending fingers flying in six directions. It hung there in the air against what was left, trained dead on Jake's head, and it hummed.
The femur dropped from Jake's right hand like he'd been shot. He hadn't, though, because he was still wearing his skull and by that time running. Soon as he did, the umbrella handle flopped over and just lay there, the hum dying away.
When it stopped the place was pretty quiet, because Jake was off in the rocks and I was going over some things I wanted to say to him immediately I was able to talk again. That fourth skeleton had the fastest draw I'd ever seen.
Jake stuck his head up from behind a boulder. "Doc," he said, "why didn't he shoot?"