"Saddle's gone, I see," he added, "and bridle and saddle blanket, and hobbles, if he had them round his neck, and every mortal thing. It's a wonder they left the horseshoes. These accursed Navajos haven't any scruple about stripping a dead horse. It's only a dead man that they're so scared about touching."
He went back to the corpse and looked at it a second time. "Gun's gone," he said, "but that's of course. And they didn't need to touch him when he was dead to get it, for, according to the way Mahletonkwa told it, they got his gun from him when he was alive. Pistol's gone, too, I see. Likely they got that off him living, before they shot him with his own gun. They couldn't take the clothes off him till he was dead, and so they preferred to leave them on him. Wish I knew who he was." He cast his eyes around. "Here's where he stood 'em off," he went on, looking at a tiny, stone-built enclosure, barely big enough to hold three people at once, that nestled against one side of the high rock, where it overhung. "That's the place he chose, sure. That's one of those cubby-holes those old cliff-dwellers used to put up under the rocks all about the country; I guess they used them to shelter in when they were out on guard. It wasn't a bad notion of this poor chap to get in there, but those infernal Navajos got away with him all the same—cunning devils that they are! Well, I might as well dig his grave right here."
He passed his horse's lariat round the enormous bole of the great Lone Pine and made him fast. Then choosing a place between the mighty roots, that anchored it like cables to the ground, he set to work with a will, and soon had the narrow last resting-place sunk in the soft black earth. He threw down the spade, and went to lift the light burden of the remains. "Perhaps I'd better look in his pockets first and see if there's anything to identify him by," he said. The weather-worn clothes, threadbare from summer rains and winter snows, lay light over the hollow breast, as he felt in the pocket and drew out a small book. He opened it; it was weather-stained, but not rotten. The moonlight was so bright he could almost have read the writing by it, but he struck a match to make sure. A name was inscribed on the first page. "Holly K. Fearmaker, 1869." There was no address. "Never heard of him before. I wonder where he was from?" He tried the other pockets; there was nothing save some bits of string. "If he owned a purse I reckon some Navajo scoundrel has got it now," said Stephens. "There's nothing, I don't believe, that Mahletonkwa would stick at for cash."
He lifted the remains tenderly, and placed them in the grave, gathering up all that he could find; then he shovelled the rich black mould of the mountain meadow on them, and heaped a little mound, and replaced the grassy sods on top. He leaned on the spade and looked down at his handiwork.
"What was it I seem to remember it saying, in the book that young Englishman had along in the San Juan district last summer, and loaned me to copy a piece out of? There was a verse that I liked, about the body of a man being like a tent. Yes, I've got it now—
"'T is but a tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrásh
Strikes—and prepares it for another guest.'
This grass will send its roots down to where you lie, pard; and it'll grow stronger as your bones grow rotten; and then the blacktail deer and the elk will graze over your head and fatten on the grass; and then, maybe I myself, or maybe some other lone prospector just like you or me, will happen along and shoot the elk or the deer, and the wheel comes full circle. Well, so long, old man, and sleep sound."