enough."

"What, that hole?" cried Chris excitedly.

"Yes. Look, the forehead has been crushed in by the blow from a stone
axe, or possibly by a stone hurled from above."

"Perhaps only held in the hand, sir," said Griggs thoughtfully.

"Why, that's a heap of old bones," cried Ned, with a look of horror;
"the dust's full of them."

"Yes," said the doctor, moving the relics carefully with the butt of his
rifle for fragments that were fully defined as to shape to fall together
as mere dust and hide portions below. "There's another skull,"
continued the examiner, "crushed in more than the first. A
finely-preserved specimen, for, in spite of that hole, it shows the
shape of the relic--a low forehead, retreating very rapidly, the brows
very bony and heavy, and the cheek-bones widely prominent."

"That's not the same shaped skull as the first," said Bourne quickly.

"Certainly not," replied the doctor. "I should say it belonged to a
fiercer, more savage race of man, who might have been an ancestor of the
present Indians of the plains."

"Then that was one of the enemy, father," said Chris decidedly, "and he
got it in the attack."

"Possibly," said the doctor, looking strangely at his son. "He seems to
have got _it_, Chris, but that doesn't sound to me a very scientific way
of describing the antique remains."

Chris turned very red, and pressed some of the dust aside with his foot,
laying bare the side of another of the ghastly relics.

"And that's like the first," cried the doctor, bending forward to pick
it up, a skull looking whiter than either of the others. "Certainly
this is of a different race, Bourne, and the owner died in the same way,
the brow crushed.--Look at that."

The rest were already looking, and saw what caused the doctor's abrupt
exclamation, for as he took up the skull the back portion fell away and
the front dropped apart into so much crumbling dust.

"We're looking down at the remains of a desperate fight, sir, I should
say," said Griggs thoughtfully. "It's just as if there had been a stand
made here."

"Come on into the next place," said the doctor eagerly; "but keep close
to the wall, following my steps. Ah! it's impossible to avoid crushing
the remains," he continued, as he sidled along, leaving his footprints
in the soft dust which lay thick.

"I say, Chris, isn't this very horrid?" whispered Ned, as the boys
followed last towards the low doorway opposite to that by which the