“Zey call me, ze man wi’ ze burros,” he said, naïvely.
You see, he had walked in on their level, prodding his patient beasts, covered with the desert dust, a wondrous simplicity on his face. He had touched the Hopi heart. He could have told one things of the Hopi people—but the opening guns of the Great War summoned him away to die at Verdun.
Know ye the trail that the Salt bands go?
Close by the Rock where they carved their names?
Know ye the hills of the Navajo
And the barren sands that the Hopi claims?
Dim in the cañons of the dead,
Where the towns are dust and the last scalp dried,
Their swords are rust, and the desert crow
Scarce can tell where the Spaniard died.