had made him edgy. If there wasn't a body there after all this fuss, he was going to look awfully silly. Leland was probably preparing one of his juicier little epigrams right now, just in case it was needed.
'How do they know?” John asked.
'Well, it just looked to me like a classic—'
John tilted his head toward him. “You're the one who found it?'
'Yes, why?'
'No reason,” John said. “Just asking.'
'Look, John,” Gideon said a little tartly. “I didn't go looking for the damn thing. I practically fell into it, over there—'
'While minding your own business...'
'Well...yes, damn it—” He laughed. “Sorry, I guess I'm starting to get nervous. Maybe I was wrong about it.” “We'll find out pretty soon,” John said sagely.
A few minutes later Nellie took a break and walked over to chat. “How are we doing here, John?'
'You're doing great,” John said. “I don't know why you guys want a lecture from me.'
Nellie beamed. “Well, it always has more weight coming from someone outside the fold. Besides, you should have seen us an hour ago.'
'Nellie,” Gideon said, “does it still look to you like there's a body in there?'
'Oh, sure, no doubt about it, none at all.'
Gideon was reassured.
At a little after ten o'clock Julie returned from her ride. “What in the world is this all about?” she asked. She looked wonderful, tousled and healthy, and she smelled of horses.
Briefly, Gideon explained.
'How did anybody even think to look for a burial here?” she wanted to know. “Who found it in the first place?” “Guess,” John said.
Julie laughed. “That's what I thought. Well, I better go get cleaned up.'
But she stayed where she was, engrossed by the scene. “Uh, if they do find a body, it'll just be dry bones, won't it? Not some kind of awful, messy...you know.'
'Let us fervently hope so,” Gideon said sincerely. “It's been there a while, so I think decomposition is long past. If not, you'll smell it before you see it.'
But the only smells were clean ones: pine needles and pine bark, sweet and spicy, and the coarse, dry soil. It hadn't rained for weeks, so with each scoop of the trowel a puff of red-brown dust rose and floated off. Gideon could feel it in his nostrils and at the back of his throat. Above, through the branches, the sky was enormous and beautiful, a clean, washed-out blue, marred only by the occasional silent, bright speck of a jet plane floating by. As predicted, the temperature had risen rapidly, and the humidity with it, but they were still in dappled shade. Even the diggers had hardly worked up a sweat. It was all very pleasant and unhurried, more like an archaeological dig than a forensic exhumation.
And Gideon had stopped worrying about whether they'd find anything. What if they didn't? He'd been wrong before, and he'd be wrong again. So had all of them, and everyone was accustomed to it. That, in fact, was one of the healthiest things about forensic anthropology; its practitioners were willing to be proven wrong. They had to be. It was an applied science, and your hypotheses and guesses were always being put to practical tests. And since nobody could be right all the time, people either learned to live with being wrong or they got out of the field.
Nothing like theoretical anthropology, where scholars could barricade themselves behind unverifiable pet theories for decades, ready to fight off dissenters with an old broom handle if need be. Who, after all, could prove one way or the other whether Neanderthal Man walked fully erect, or if Oreopithecus was a hominid ancestor or just another Miocene ape?
But in forensic work, either a particular bone you examined was female or it wasn't, was Caucasian or it wasn't. And if you said a distinctive conformation of the soil meant that a body was buried under it, either a body would be there or it wouldn't.
It was. At eleven o'clock one of the students, using the trowel in the Hobert-sanctioned manner, horizontally scraping off about a few inches of soil at a time, caught the tip in a bit of tattered gray clothing. The rotted cloth tore, but not before dragging a bit of bone to the surface.
'Ha!” Nellie said, and Gideon was relieved in spite of himself.
Nellie dropped to his knees and leaned over to peer at the fragment through his bifocals, his stiff gray beard fixed on it like a pointer's snout. There was a surge against the tape as anthropologists and student anthropologists jostled forward. Everyone seemed to be in a jolly mood. From the point of view of the attendees this was turning into quite a conference; one that would surely take its place in WAFA legend.
'This must be a new experience for you,” Julie said. “Bones coming up out of the ground, and you can't do anything but watch from behind a barrier, just like the rest of us.'
'It's awful,” Gideon agreed. They were about fifteen feet from the digging. “I can't even make out what the hell it is. A bit of fibula? No, ulna.'
Nellie was sympathetic to his colleagues’ plight. Still on his knees, he straightened up, took the unlit pipe from his mouth, and made a terse announcement. “Proximal left ulna. And...” He leaned down again to blow away some soil. “...medial epicondyle of the humerus. Disarticulated but in anatomical apposition. Quite dessicated. Good condition.” He stretched out his hand without looking up. “Chopsticks.'
Julie turned to Gideon. “What?'
'A left elbow joint, without any soft tissue—'
