Warren H. Miller

“ The great brown hound stood on the opposite rim. Silently he had come out of the forest; silent and perplexed, he sniffed the air, testing its scents. As they watched, his body suddenly stiffened and his tail went straight as a poker. His ears laid back and his teeth bared, and then a volleying bark rang out across the canyon. Ruler pawed the ground in his excitement—then he suddenly ceased and ran along the rim, a houndy growl, whimpering with eagerness, coming from him.
“That settles it!” said Scotty, rising energetically. “He saw the Black Panther, Sid! His eyes are sharper than ours. ”

“ Nothing came down here; nothing could get down here, except an occasional bird and the ubiquitous pack rat, one of which had come snuffing into his lean-to the night before.
Sid was more than weary of the whole thing—but he was learning, from life itself, the meanings of the words patience and fortitude. To take things as they came; never to give up, never to be discouraged; always look for the bright outcome somehow, somewhere—it took a strong soul to do that! His own soul was growing, under the exercise of the Indian’s virtues—courage, honor, fortitude, faith. ”

“ They are not wise who waste them, unheeding. Sid and Scotty sauntered down the ravine and then climbed a tall, round pinnacle of yellow rock, invited by the mists of immense distance that lay beyond it. On its brink they lay down, beside a stunted pinyon that had found a lodgment there. Below and before them stretched the vast gulf of the canyon, clear to its south rim twelve miles away. They had no wish to [173] do anything but lie there and look. There are spectacles of Nature that man never tires of dreaming over, like the ocean and its ever-tumbling surf. This canyon is one of them. ”

“ Sid snubbed the lariat around a stump and let Pinto buck. Gradually the horse grew quiet as Sid talked to him, and he finally was able to come up on the rope and soothe him. The pony shivered with terror, but slowly became more easy, pricking his ears and looking with alarmed eyes down the chasm every time the thought of that creature that had peered out at them recurred to his equine brain. Sid led him over to the grass swale, where he fell to grazing again. ”

“ Sid decided three things for himself during the miles that Pinto laid behind them with that tireless gait of the plains mustang. Happiness, for him, lay close to Nature. She was by far the grandest thing in the world, the one thing of which he never tired and of whose wonders there was no end. Others might prefer the intellectual life of cities, where the body was forever weary, forever crying for good, healthy, sweating exercise, even if the mind was kept occupied. ”

“ Sid turned for a last look as they reached the point near the cleft from which Big John had fired. Silent, mysterious, inscrutable as eternity, the walls of the cliff dwelling nestled under its great over-arching cave. Old as the centuries, typical of this country and of the spirit that broods over its changeless canyon and desert, it had acquired a new dignity, it locked a new secret in its walls, for it was now the tomb of the Black Panther of the Navaho, and over it hung the sable majesty of Death. ”

“ Swiftly the twilight grew, while the pony slowed to a walk, his feet not making a sound in the soft duff. It was growing eerie and mysterious in here, thought Sid, as a slight shiver ran through him, and [66] he now wished he had stayed out in the open valley. But he fought back that wish as cowardly and foolish. Men did not turn back from what they had once set their hand to!
Then a stick cracked, somewhere behind him. Sid reined up and listened. All was still as death; even the birds had gone to roost in the dim twilight of the chasm. ”

“ The old pioneer’s hound—best bear and lion dogs in the world,” explained the Colonel enthusiastically, while Sid winked blissfully over at Scotty.
The very smell of their lithe, active bodies seemed to bring the tang of mighty mountain ranges into the Den again. Watching the dogs, the Colonel’s age fell away from him as a mantle; his eyes sparkled, he moved about the crate, eying the pups like a boy, and then sent Sid into the main house for tools. The log-walled Den, hung with game heads, rifles and saddles, was a replica of the Colonel’s western log cabin of his younger days. ”

“ With that he leaned the rifle handy against a spruce and rolled up in his blankets on the needle bed. The last sound that drifted to his ears was the steady munching of Pinto, as unending as the murmur of the rill in the ravine.
Next morning Sid awoke with a sense of having missed something. Wasn’t there to have been a row with a cougar that was to come and take his horse? But there stood Pinto, grazing peacefully. Birds chirruped in the firs and spruces growing in the chasm; the sunlight streamed down through its silent cathedral walls ”

“ After an hour’s riding White Mesa itself jutted [224] up, in a long escarpment, shimmering with heat, in the immense distances. As they gradually neared it Sid felt that never had he beheld such a place. The odd chalky formation rose in ramparts and pinnacles, like bastions of huge whitened giant’s bones. By moonlight one could well expect to see whole regiments of bleached skeletons of departed Indians skipping across it. But there were living beings there, now!
“What did I tell you?” chortled Big John. “Them little moving dots along the base is Injuns, on their ponies. ”

“ Pee! of wild turkey chicks slipping through the underbrush. Their hurtling charge had scared the flock out of their natural silent caution. Suddenly a long bronze bird, running like the wind, his red legs and shining feathers flashing in the sun, darted across an opening. Scotty drew the bead on him, swung well ahead and pressed trigger. The bellow of his heavy weapon split the air under the trees, and out of the smoke they saw the gobbler struggling on the sand, his huge wings fluttering wildly.
“Some shootin’, son!—seventy paces or I’m a hoss thief!” roared Jake. ”

“ But Pinto’s actions told him that that noise was not imagination. His pony’s ears lay flat back and he was shivering all over with fear!
Sid watched, intently, down the chasm. He thought he saw a bush move. A second’s concentration on it told him it had moved, for the tips of its lower branches still vibrated. He reached down and drew his army carbine out of its scabbard. For some minutes Sid watched the bush, his heart beating with excitement. A more experienced man than he would have hummed a shot into it to smoke out whatever might be lurking there. ”

“ The Colonel whistled.
“There’s superstition for you, Scotty! I’ve heard that the Navaho are the most superstitious of all Indian tribes. We’ll have to handle this with the utmost tact, or there’ll likely be a big row over it. This boy is doomed, unless we can manage to interfere somehow, though. I know Indians! Somehow this freak panther must be explained, and so they have to make someone the scapegoat over it! We’ll ride in and see Neyani. Perhaps we can find out something from him about Sid. It looks to me, though, as if Ruler had followed a Navaho pony here, and fooled us.” ”

“ The black square that she opened up immediately gave the hogan shape around it. It was large and conical in shape, and cunningly planted with aloes, yucca and even sage, so that it looked about the same as the desert soil around it.
The girl peered at them, and then ran around to one side, where the smoke came from under the shade of a juniper. A young buck appeared, the red bandanna around his forehead the most conspicuous thing about him at that distance. Big John shouted to the dogs and reined up his pony, for a hound on a hot scent is quite likely to attack any human that gets in his way. ”

“ Both were typical Arizonans, leathery and lean and sunburned, with hard, gray eyes all puckered from the constant desert glare.
“Well, Sid, climb this here twister and we’ll get up the bad lands to the rim,” said Big John, as the ranch teamsters finished piling their duffel into the wagon. “All ready, sir?”—this to the Colonel—“we gotta make Navaho Wells by sundown.”
Sid found that his pony was trained to start as soon as his foot touched the stirrup. His pinto bolted off with him, with the rest of the outfit strung after in hot pursuit. ”

“ The coyote slid to his haunches, snapping savagely at a wound in his side, and then Pepper, Lee and Bourbon fell on him in a riot of howls and barks.
Sid whooped with joy as they rode down. This was fine medicine for those houn’-dawg pups! It was impossible to shoot; the whirling mass of black, tan and gray was too swift and intricate to risk a shot into it. Came a rapid clatter of paws and a great, deep-voiced bray, as Ruler charged down the slope and pitched headlong into the fray. Out of it rose the coyote, borne aloft by the great bony jaws [38] of Ruler about his throat. ”

“ THE DESERT’S FROWN “STOP him!—Nothing stopped him!” smiled the Colonel wanly from his bandages, as he eyed the huge skin of the Yellow Grizzly stretched between four poles and propped up where he could look at it and gloat over it. “Look at that skin—it’s a regular sieve!”
The boys and Big John sat against trees around the small camp fire in front of the Colonel’s stretcher bed tent. It had been a strenuous two days. First there had been, for Sid, those anxious hours of waiting and signaling until at last Big John and Scotty had poked the noses of their ponies over the ridge. ”

“ Big John’s knees were bloody, with the fringes of his home-spuns encircling them like whiskers. Ruler licked steadily at a great red tear on his thigh where the skin hung open like a small hairy tent flap, and shook his ears continually as they dripped blood from long slits in them.
“Father couldn’t make it, boys,” he explained. “It takes a heart like a hunk of sole leather to attempt the canyon. He was wise to stay out. We turned back at the first rim, when you fellows and the dogs went over the second. We’ve got a buck hanging up in camp.” ”

“ It was filled with mossy bowlders, just like those under his camp, and down in between them were cool, clear wells of running water.
Sid drank, and then started up the valley, searching the cliff walls for some of the swallow-nest houses of the cliff dwellers. Then, in a widening of the valley floor, something attracted him. Thick-grown with weeds were clumps of bladed grasses that looked somehow familiar. ”

“ But, as for men or animals, what are they in Nature’s vast [202] landscapes, where half a mile of verdure is tilted up as a mere wrinkle in one of her mountains! Buckskin was twenty miles long, a straight knife-edge as seen from across the canyon, cloud-covered, dim, and distant, as inaccessible to the traveling world as the North Pole, and it had hundreds of ravines like this.
Sid halted his pony, looking down into the ravine with half a mind to push on further. ”

“ Many a story had drifted back from Arkansas of the incredible feats he had performed,—such as finding lost children in the mountains, and once of having gone back three miles into the forest to retrieve an axe forgotten in the woods.
A bellow from him decided it. Ruler braced back on his haunches, pointed his great black muzzle to the skies, and let out a rolling barking-treed call that was his signal of having found a trail. Then he set off hotfoot to the east, his three pups yipping after him excitedly. The men spurred their ponies to a gallop, for Ruler took a hot pace to keep up with him. ”

“ It was all good; too good to be true; too wild and beautiful and sublime, and filled to the brim with Nature’s plenty for any but very honest men to live there at all, thought Sid. A healthy, natural lassitude had come over the boys. Nature gives these periods, when she is in her mild and genial moods, for times of recuperation to her children. ”

“ Therefore, either old Neyani or his son, Niltci, has been up to some deviltry and the panther is being sent as a punishment. Not a redskin of the lot will shoot him on a bet, nor even dare track him. You don’t know how superstitious they are, Colvin! Sooner than build a fire with a single stick from a hogan in which someone has died, a Navaho would freeze to death. Sooner than touch a hair of Dsilyi’s medicine panther, old Neyani and his whole family would let him take all their sheep and starve to [43] death. ”

“ They all rose and started off through the forest. A short walk through the high pines that covered the plateau brought the blue haze beyond, of the canyon again, and presently they came out on a rock pinnacle that commanded the whole prospect below. A sheer fall about a thousand feet lay below them. Beyond that smoky, purple depths showed beyond over the second rim.
“The place where we came down must lie to the west of here, boys,” declared the Colonel. “Big John and Scotty are somewhere down in this valley—they’ll be all day getting back! We’ll start west for another look-see.” ”

“ The antelope disappeared behind a ledge of rocks, as Scotty sat silently, resting one leg over his pony’s saddle, scanning the torrid, iron-bound scene.
“We’ll git back to the ranch, now, son,” remarked Jake as they rode back to the turkeys. “Hyar’s meat enough, even if Montana John an’ th’ other kid don’t hang up no buck. Put away your hardware. We won’t see nothin’ on the way back.” ”

“ The tall boy led him over to show him the pueblo of the Old People, but even then, before its mouth Scotty hesitated, with rifle cocked, before venturing to peer down. He could bear the reproach in Sid’s eyes unblushingly, for to him Sid seemed casehardened, foolhardy almost. His own cave man within him was no such subdued creature as Sid’s, but was alert and tense as a deer, for a subtle sixth sense persisted in warning him that something lurked around [242] that pueblo that was a deadly menace. It might be imagination; it might be a finer instinct for danger ”

“ The Navahos had [157] departed to their hogans; the desert was as still, under its canopy of stars, as if never the doings of foolish men had disturbed its peace. And, out toward the west moved the Colvin pack train, silent and shrouded in darkness. There was yet an hour before the moon would rise.
About two miles from Neyani’s hogan the horses were reined up and Sid and Scotty dismounted. They were about to vanish into the darkness of the sage, when Big John threw a long leg over the white mustang’s saddle and leaped to the ground. ”

“ Far better to be just reasonably well off, or even poor, than exchange for a heaping measure of dollars everything that gave one joy in living. Life in the open, for him, could be agriculture or mining or ethnology. The human interest of the latter inclined him strongly toward it. It combined idealism with practical, useful work. To make others happy, to help the misunderstood and protect the unjustly treated—that would be a life that could appeal to Sid’s generous, open-handed nature! ”

“ THE VALLEY OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS THE older men went inside to Major Hinchman’s big living room where, over some Mexican stogies, they discussed Neyani and his Black Panther and gossiped over old Army days. Sid and Scotty went out to help Big John with the horses and hounds and then explored the ranch patio. It was all as Spanish as old Mexico. Heavy and age-worn oak furniture—the real Mission—stone metates for grinding corn, great red ollas or porous jars for cooling water by evaporation, striped serapes and Navaho blankets, Apache and Pima baskets ”