whitish-gray.'
'I see,” said Minor, slightly whitish-gray himself.
'You're welcome.” With his own stomach churning. Gideon stripped off the greasy gloves and stood up. “Now comes your part,” he said.
'My part?” Minor blinked, and his hand went reflexively to the knot of his tie. “I don't take your meaning.'
'The solution in the pot needs to be stirred every thirty minutes for about three hours. Then mix this into it.” He held up a bottle of sodium hydroxide in fifteen percent solution. “Then, if I'm not back yet, put the pot on the burner, heat it to a low simmer, and put in the pelvis. Take it out in a hour—but I'll be back before then.'
'My understanding,” Minor said, not at all pleased, “was that you would be responsible for all the technical details.'
Gideon shrugged. “If you'd rather not do it, you can ask the kid with the beard. I'm sure he'd be delighted.'
'I think I can manage,” Minor said. “I take it this is some sort of caustic solution.'
'Yes, using one's finger to do the stirring is not recommended.'
Minor did not seem to find this amusing. Neither did Gideon. He was anxious to get out of the workroom, into the open air. “In the meantime,” he said, “I thought I'd run over to Amanda Park and see the man who has the bone spear points.'
Minor brightened. “Old Mr. Pringle? That shouldn't take you any three hours. Amanda Park is only a couple of miles away. His house is a bit off the beaten path, but I can give you directions. It'll take you fifteen minutes to get there.'
* * * *
It took him two hours. “Off the beaten path” was an understatement, and Gideon got hopelessly lost on back roads more than once before he stumbled on the place. When he finally pulled up at the side of the road next to the worn, birdhouse-shaped mailbox, he was ready to admit that Julie had a point about his being a city person. He got out of the car and stood looking at the ramshackle old bungalow of dingy white with faded green trim. On a gray day, with no other houses around, and made tiny by the thick forest, it was a forlorn sight. Only after a few seconds did he become aware that a very old man was sitting hunched in a corner of the porch, deep in the gloomy shade of a corroded tin roof.
Sleeping, or perhaps senile, Gideon thought. He walked to the house with a smile but with a distinct sinking of the heart. For an anthropologist he was peculiarly loath—nearly obsessively so—to intrude on others’ privacy.
'Mr. Pringle?” he said quietly when he reached the porch.
The head came up and Gideon saw that the man wore a knit, dark blue watch cap pulled tightly down over a long, lean-fleshed head. He was even older than Gideon had thought, more than ninety, with waxed-paper skin stretched painfully over a large-boned skeletal face, and purplish-brown discolorations on his cheeks. Astigmatic and winking, he looked emptily about, everywhere but at Gideon.
Senile, Gideon thought, his heart sinking further. “Mr. Pringle?” He spoke gently. If the old man were frightened or failed to comprehend, he would go. “My name is Gideon Oliver...'
'Ah, there you are,” said the man in a thin, cheerful voice, fixing a pair of astonishingly lucid blue eyes on him. “The old eyes are getting a bit queer these days. Not what they used to be.'
Gideon saw, as if by the light of those luminous eyes, that he had a tiny white moustache, pencil-thin and meticulously trimmed, midway between his long nose and thin gray lips, with plenty of pale skin showing all around it. Cheered by the sight of that absurdly sprightly ornament on the ancient face, Gideon smiled. “Mr. Minor of the FBI told me about your collection. I wondered if you might show it to me.'
The man's eyes lit up even more. “With the greatest of pleasure,” he said, and began to rise, gripping a cane with one hand and the shaky arm of his folding chair with the other. He was, Gideon realized, a very tall, rawboned man, and he had a lot of difficulty getting out of the chair. Taking his arm to help him to an unsteady balance, Gideon was struck by the freshly laundered smell of his woolen shirt. There was nothing slovenly about him.
The old man laughed. “Got going too fast. Wouldn't have had any trouble if I'd gotten myself organized first.'
The front door opened into the kitchen, and Pringle shuffled slowly onto the ancient linoleum, concentrating heavily on his balance, carefully predetermining each spot on which the thick rubber tip of his cane would come down.
'Forgive the hat,” he said over his shoulder. “Had an operation or two, and the surgeon did a little excavating up there. Are you with the FBI, too, Mr. Oliver?” His large hand groped for support at the old, white-painted chairs, the table, anything within reach.
'No, I'm an anthropologist.'
'Anthropologist? Well, I'm really delighted. May I offer you a cup of tea?'
'No, thank you,” Gideon said, not even wanting to think about watching him try to manipulate kettle and cups at the old-fashioned gas range.
The living room was fusty and stale, with brown, flowered linoleum nearly as worn as that in the kitchen, but the collection was neatly housed in three clean, glass-fronted cases of mahogany. There were bottles and belt buckles and old nails, but there were also a great many Indian artifacts.
Gideon examined the three bone spear points at length. All were cut with the same technique and in the same shape as the two he'd already seen.
'Do you remember when you found these, Mr. Pringle?'
'The one you're holding in 1950. That one, in 1934 or 1935. And this...let's see, it was my first summer here. I was twenty-five, so that would make it 1913,” he said without any apparent pause for calculating.
'And all from around here?'
