the first big star was shining before Andy Parker stirred.

His first call was for water. Then he complained of a terrible pain in
his vitals, a pain that stabbed him through from chest to abdomen.
Thereafter he was never coherent again, though for the most part he
babbled like a noisy brook. He spoke of Swen Brodie and old Loony
Honeycutt and Gus Ingle all in one breath, and King knew that Gus Ingle
was sixty years dead; he dwelt hectically on the "luck of the unlucky
Seven." And when, far on in the night, he at length grew silent and King
went to peer into his face by the light of his camp-fire, Andy Parker
was dead.

* * * * *

Mark King made the grave in the dawn. In his roll, the handle slipped
out so that it might lie snug against the steel head, was a short
miner's pick. A little below where Parker lay in his last wide-eyed
vigil under the stars, King found a fairly level space free of rock and
carpeted in young grass. Here with a pine-tree to mark head and foot, he
worked at the shallow grave. He put his own blanket down, laid the quiet
figure gently upon it, bringing the ends over to cover him. He marked
the spot with a pile of rocks; he blazed the two trees. It was all that
he could do; far more than Andy Parker would have done for him or for
any other man.

The sun was rising when, he made his way to the top of the ridge and
came to stand where he had seen Parker and Swen Brodie side by side. He
clambered on until he came to the very crest over which Swen Brodie had
disappeared. Just where had Brodie gone? He wondered. The answer came
before the question could have been put into words. Though it was full