Who's sorry now?

lost.”
    He introduced himself as Dr. Sam Toller and set about getting out his equipment from a bag he’d brought along. He was a long-limbed, sandy-haired man in his late thirties. He had a perpetual smile.
    The hole wasn’t terribly deep and he and the Harbinger boys got flat on their stomachs with tiny trowels and small brushes he’d brought in the bag. ”It’s a good thing this is loose soil. It won’t take long. All I need is the skull and pelvis to determine the age and sex of the victim.”
    Chief Walker was assigned to sit behind them with an assortment of paper bags in a variety of sizes. Robert went inside, fearing what nasty things might be revealed, but Lily stayed back, fascinated once she’d gotten over the shock. It was tedious work as the expert and the Harbingers kept delicately scooping away soil. Lily was assigned to sift the dirt in a set of sieves. First with large holes, then smaller ones, and then very fine ones. She was the first to notice the beads.
    ”Get someone to bring a big pot of warm water, would you, miss?” Dr. Toller said with excitement.
    Dr. Meredith was impatient, but had found a bench not far away to sit and read a textbook he’d had in his automobile.
    Robert was quick to return with a pot. The beads were swished gently and then the water was poured back out through the finest sieve. The beads turned out to be rather pretty balls about the size of a child’s fingernail. They were various shades of brown, green, dark red, orange, and yellow, and had holes through them. ”Whatever they were strung on at one time has been dissolved. They’ve been fired to make them this hard and durable,” Dr. Toller said. ”We’ll keep sieving them.”
    The next discovery was a bit of leather about the size of a postage stamp. Toller said, ”Probably deerskin that’s been heavily oiled or beeswaxed. Otherwise it would have rotted.”
    Are we talking about an Indian?” Chief Walker asked.
    ”Most likely. If it had been a white hunter, there probably wouldn’t be the beads,” Dr. Toller said. ”We’re progressing well. But I imagine everybody’s hungry. At least I am.”
    ”If Mrs. Prinney were here she’d make us lunch,” Lily said.
    ”Let’s just pack up and go to town to Mabel’s,” Chief Walker said.
    Everybody went along, Chief Walker with the pathologist and the anthropologist in his police car. Robert, Lily, and the Harbinger boys in the Duesie. They discussed what had already been found with various levels of interest. Lily and Harry were the most enthusiastic about what they might learn about the skeleton. Jim was a bit bored with the chore of sifting and brushing around dirt when there were other things he and his brother needed to do for other customers.
    Robert didn’t want to see the rest of the bones. ”Bones and bagworms all in one day,” he said with a shudder. ”It’s too much to bear.”
    Lily said, ”You’ve always been afraid of things in nature. Remember the day we first came here and you admitted that you were afraid of trees?”
    ”I never said that,” Robert claimed.
    ”Yes, you did,” Lily said, laughing and gently poking her elbow into his ribs.
    Since Lily was right, he didn’t pursue the conversation.
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    REFRESHED BY A HEARTY LUNCH, the anthropologist, Dr. Toller, was eager to unearth the rest of the skeleton. ”I can see the front and top of the skull now and it’s a young person,” he said, addressing his remarks to Lily because she seemed the most interested. After delivering the pathologist and anthropologist, Chief Walker had left to investigate a house that had been broken into.
    ”How can you tell?” Lily asked Dr. Toller.
    ”By the way the various parts of skull come together. They don’t entirely knit together until a person is close to eighteen or twenty. I’d guess the subject was perhaps early teens. Possibly as young as fifteen or even younger.”
    ”You can’t tell anything else from the skull?”
    ”Yes, the teeth indicate it’s an American Indian.”
    ”They have different teeth?”
    ”Yes, the front ones are ‘shoveled.’ That means that they—” He thought for a moment how to describe it to a stranger. ”The calcium they’re made of goes around the sides and they are a bit concave at the back. Sort of like a little shovel.”
    ”That’s fascinating. I’d have never guessed front teeth weren’t always the same,” Lily responded.
    He nearly preened. It wasn’t often