"Yes," said Gideon quietly, "astounding, isn’t it? But I really think there isn’t any doubt. There’s no periosteum."

"Doc-" John began exasperatedly.

Gideon smiled. "All right, I’ll speak English." He slid the magnifying glass along the table to John. "The outer layer of bone is the periosteum. It stays on the bone even when it’s been buried for hundreds of years; thousands, for that matter. But when you make a bone implement, and shape and smooth it, you invariably scrape it off. If you look carefully, you’ll see that outer layer all over the vertebra, except for that projection."

John held the glass and bone out in front of him like a farsighted man trying to read a menu. "I don’t-"

"Okay, never mind that," said Gideon. "Look at the bone around the base of the projection. You can see it’s crushed inward, obviously by the force of the arrow entering the-"

"I see!" John cried. "It’s as if…it’s all…"

Julie had risen and looked over his shoulder through the glass. "All mushed in," she said.

"Right," Gideon said. "All mushed in." He took back the bone, grasped the projecting part tightly, and wiggled it.

The point came out at once, noiselessly, without disturbing the crushed rim of bone surrounding it. A faint odor of decay came from the hole in the vertebra. Julie moved back, wrinkling her nose.

"It’s a projectile point, all right," Gideon said.

"It sure is," John said. "Goddamn."

Gideon laid the point on the table. It was a triangular piece of ivory-colored bone a little over an inch long, its base rough and jagged. "It was in there deeper than I thought," he said, "about an inch. It almost went clean through."

He placed the point on a white sheet of paper and traced its outline with a pen. Then with dotted lines he extended the shape. "It’s hard to say, but I’d guess this is what it must have looked like complete." He had drawn a tapering form about three inches long and an inch and a half wide at its base.