Chapter 2

Two weeks later, Bonds was back again, bringing more help and equipment. By then, Helen and the people on her crew had managed to clear the first skeleton, half of the second, and had discovered yet a third on the other side of the first. To say the museum director was happy would have been an understatement on a par with saying the Titanic had experienced some difficulty on its maiden voyage.

Helen, Joe, and Jackie were also clearly happy, but someone who knew them better than the director might have noticed something a bit odd in their reactions. They welcomed the newcomers and showed them around, agreeing that it was clearly a death scene, but saying that they hadn't drawn any firm conclusions as to the sequence of events yet.

That was true enough, as far as it went, Helen thought, but…

They relaxed a bit once the director left. Helen needed to talk to the new paleontologists alone, without the director hearing things that might make his funding the venture politically difficult. It was extraordinarily hard to think that way, but with what they were finding, the circumstances were also extraordinary.

"Funny." One of the new guys, Michael Jennings, shook his head slightly. "The way the skeletons sit, I don't think they were fighting at all. Drowned, maybe? Flash flood?"

"Maybe," Jackie said.

"Found any wounds?" another asked. "Broken bones? Evidence of toothmarks? Clearly they didn't get eaten much, or whatever did it would've taken them apart."

"Yeah," said Joe. "There's some marks on the skeletons. Look here, around the pelvis." he pointed with a stick to the first skeleton.

The newcomers gathered around and shone flashlights on the exposed fossil, as the sun was starting to go down and long shadows were gathering in the arroyo. For several minutes there was silence.

"What the hell made that?" Jennings finally asked, frowning at the three neat half-centimeter holes that appeared to punch completely through the pelvic bone.