"And near as I can figure, the gun has to be able to tell when that move coming up is going to be dangerous to the man holding it. Stands to reason if it can tell when a brain's signalling a hand, it can tell too if that brain is killing-mad. Some people can do that, and most dogs. "So, if it senses murderous intent and a message to the weapon hand to move, it moves too, and faster. "It homes on this disk like a magnet right into the hand of the gent that owns it, and aims itself plumb at the place the signal is coming from." I tapped the chart. "Right here." I poked the gunk out of a corncob, packed it and lit up before going on. Jake stared at the umbrella handle like a stuffed owl. "Now, that fourth skeleton we saw sure as hell isn't human. He isn't from anywhere on this green earth, or I miss my guess. Might even have something to do with Crater Lake there, years ago. But we aren't likely to find out. "But we do know that he fought three Indians that probably jumped him all at once. And he killed every one of them with this gun before he fell." That brought Jake up short. The Territory is kind of violent generally, and anybody or anything good along that line would be bound to have the sober respect of a ninny like Jake. I dug up an old glove, and used spirit gum to stick in its palm the little disk from the skeleton's hand. I pulled the glove on my right hand, and stood up with my hand about a foot over the umbrella handle. "Okay," I said, "kill me." * * * * * He was so orry-eyed by then he damn near did it just to be obliging. But then the recollection of the night on the mountain, and the three Indians with their heads shot off, sifted through and he shied off. "Hell no," he hollered, "I seen that thing go before! I ain't about to get my head blowed to bits!" And he went on. Well, it took me the best of two hours. I showed him the two studs on the underside that most likely were a safety device. I explained how probably the gun wouldn't go off unless somebody was holding it with a finger between those studs, which was why it didn't shoot when it went into the skeleton's hand that night. I finally got him by telling him if I was right, we'd wire the fourth skeleton together, take it back East and earn a mint of money on the vaudeville stage showing the fastest cadaver in the West. "Mr. Bones: Faster than Billy the Kid and Twice as Dead," I said we'd bill it. Jake, he thought that was a lovely idea, and decided to go along. Fourteen times that eternal jackass raised his right arm at me, while I held my own gloved right hand over the weapon. But he didn't have any real heart for it, and fourteen times the gun just lay there. Then I got a mite impatient, and kicked him in the kneecap. That fifteenth time he was truly trying.