Jake went out first. I closed the door behind us, not locking it, of course, because our night marshal was kind of my relief surgeon whenever I was on calls. He was a Secesh hospital orderly during the Rebellion. He was better with a saw than with sewing, but he could tie up most wounds well enough to do till I got back. Jake and I set out south up the mountain trail, but pretty soon it hit me he was heading someplace considerable more directly than we usually did. Sure enough, he took off at an angle from the trail after a bit. We struck up into some fairly woolly country. He wasn't following any sign I could see, at least not by moonlight, but he kept going faster until I was plumb out of wind. We were in the hills overlooking Crater Lake when we came to kind of an amphitheater in the rocks, some twenty feet across. He stopped at the edge of it and stood staring in, silent and breathing catchy. Me, I just chased my own breath for a while, then looked too and saw what he was aiming at. Right in the middle, shining pale in the moonshine like nothing else does, was a pile of old, old bones. Jake, I saw, had seen it before. It was scaring him yet. * * * * * Old bones, sir, are still bones. I've seen and set my fill. But after I got a good look at these they scared me too. There were four skeletons altogether, all nicely preserved, and only three of them were men. Indians, I mean. You could tell that from the shreds of buckskin. Two of them still had weapons near their right hands: one a stone knife, the other a lance. And the top of each of the three skulls had been shot clean away. At least, half of the top had, and the same half on all three. Almost the entire os frontale and ossa parietalia on the left side was gone on each one. I hunkered down to see closer, while Jake stood back and shook. 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.