Chapter V
The Claws Of The Black Panther
Red Jake and Scotty rode slowly to the left under the brow of the red butte, after Sid and Big John had started up the ravine for their deer. Scotty drew his .405 out of its saddle scabbard and rested it across his pommel as they approached a belt of scrub oak timber.
Red Jake eyed it quizzically. "I ain't aimin', no ways, to be introosive," he drawled, "an' I've kep' my health by remainin' strictly out of other folks' business—but thar's limits!" he grinned. "Which I'm burnin' to find out, is thet thar cannon for shootin' deer or elephants?"
Scotty flushed. "It's all the gun I have," he replied quietly. "She's a bit heavy for deer, perhaps, but she was father's old meat gun out in Montana. He left it to me.... A Hun shell killed him, in the Argonne," added Scotty, his voice dropping over the remembrance.
"Shore, I'm sorry, kid!" came back Jake, extending a lean brown hand, all contrition. "We Arizonans has a pecooliar brand of humor with tenderfeet—but we means well! Put her thar, Pal."
He gripped Scotty's hand warmly, and the beginning of a friendship established itself between them.
"Now you put them spurs to that rampin' steed of yours, kid, an' we'll ride up this gulch. She's acefull on wil' turks, an' ye'll hev a chance to run one up an' do some fancy shootin'."
His own mount began to run as he spoke. Scotty's pony snorted, threw back his head and started into a gallop. The low branches whipped across his face; there was the constant swish and slap of flying leaves, a constant warding off of branch after branch as the horses thundered through the draw. It was grown thick with scrub oaks and scraggly pines and junipers, with here and there a locust-leaved mesquite, its pods strewing the soil. Then ahead came a roar and the flap of big wings as some large bird rose out of the thicket.
"Thar goes one—watch sharp, now!" yelled Jake, hauling up his horse on its haunches. Scotty jerked on his curb and dropped the reins as he raised the .405, peering eagerly under the low trees. Rapid footfalls sounded in the leaves all about them and the Pee! 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. "Thar goes another!—Atter him!—Ride like a buster!" The ponies leaped into gallop as a large bird twisted and dodged through the underbrush, for all the world like a scared hen. They wheeled and spun about, following his erratic dives, now and then catching sight of him.
"Tricky as a Mex. gambler's deck, kid!" gasped Red Jake, picking his horse up like a cat to wheel him halfway around. "Thar he goes! Ride him up!—Hi! Hi! Hi!"
Their combined onset was too much for that particular turk, who took to wing forthwith. Scotty raised his rifle but hesitated. The bird was big as a barrel, but still mighty easy to miss on the wing, with a rifle! Red Jake spurred after him at top speed, whipped out his revolver and fanned shot after shot up into the air at him. At the third report the turkey collapsed and came down into the brush with a sounding thump.
"That's Arizona shootin' for ye, son!" grinned Jake, reining up his pony to punch out empty shells with the rammer of his frontier Colt. "Down in this free an' enlightened commoonity we learns to cut our teeth on a six-gun, son. For A B C's we has the short an' easy road to the right hip; and when we gits so's we kin hit 'em in the air from a gallopin' cayuse we's outer high school," he grinned, stopping to roll a cigarette with thumb and forefinger and lighting it deftly by snapping the match on his finger nail.
They rode over to where the turkey had fallen, and Jake swung him up on the saddle. He would go all of eleven pounds. Except for his red legs and the absence of a broad white band across his tail feathers, there was nothing to distinguish him from the domesticated turkey of the farm. They tied this one and Scotty's together and hung them in a tree, and then rode out up the draw for further adventures. The gully rose and widened out into a swale, filled with thick brown bear grass; beyond it began the sage and greasewood bushes, as moisture became scantier in the soil. To the right reared the immense escarpments of the red buttes; ahead a long, level sky line proclaimed some sort of divide.
"Waal, son, if you're ready to jingle a spur, it's jest likely we may see a couple of prong-horns over that divide. They lays out back here in the desert, for thar's no drivin' 'em away from water. I suppose you'd like to git one, hey?" inquired Jake.
"I'd love to see an antelope, but to shoot one—not on a bet!" returned Scotty, shaking his head stoutly.
A look of pleased surprise crossed Red Jake's face. "Waal now!" he grinned, all interest. "Ef you ain't the first sport that's come down here that wasn't all-fired crazy to snake out one of our antelopes! Th' Major, he don't shoot none, because they'se mighty scarce—but a guest,—of course, he don't say nothin', but —" Jake's pantomime was expressive. "Say, them sports'll put in all their chips the first round to git a prong-horn!"
"Just let me see one, wild, that's all," said Scotty, feeling that his stock was rising in the Arizonan's estimation. "None of us may ever look upon another, soon, you know."
They spurred up and rode out into the desert back of the red buttes. It was hot and bare and dotted with sage. It shimmered with heat waves, and glared like iron slag under the pitiless sun. The desert was in a far different mood, now, than when the glories of sunset and dawn made it splendid; it was now a scene of endless desolation, with sunbaked gray mesas standing sentinel across it, stretched to the north.
"Look! Thar they go! See 'em!" cried Jake, pointing suddenly across the distant plains with his finger. Scotty puckered up his eyes and searched the shimmering heat as best he could. Something was moving, far to the north. Like twin gray ghosts were they, bounding with incredible speed and tirelessness. Then one stopped and looked back toward them. A white flash appeared from his rump. Immediately he melted into the same gray invisibility as before.
"That's their signal, that rump flash!" exclaimed Jake. "The ha'rs move, jest like you'd turn plush. They signals a warning, that way, to try out anything so far off they cayn't see it well. If we could make a white flash like that in answer they'd think we was another herd. Look your fill, sonny, this is about as near as we'll git to them."
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."
They rode down the draw, and then along the river bank, crossing to the ranch. Major Hinchman and the Colonel rose to greet them and exclaim delightedly over the turkeys, while a roared order from Hinchman brought the Chinese cook running out into the patio.
"You, Lum Looke!—catch'm turkey, roast topside all over, savvy?" directed the Major, handing the birds to the grinning Celestial.
About an hour later Big John rode into the patio with the buck across his saddle.
"Where's Sid, John—coming along?" inquired Colonel Colvin, surprisedly, as Big John dismounted and pulled at the saddle thongs that held his buck in place.
"Nope!" he grinned. "Sid's gone locoed, Colonel. Got a lonesome fit. Shore, nawthin'd do but he must steal a haunch of my buck an' take a bag of pinole that he's got hitched to his belt, and off he goes for a couple of days, all by his lonesome! He says fer us to pick him up in the Canyon."
Red Jake wagged his head approvingly. "Which the same is the right layout," he put in. "I'm admirin' that kid's sperrit! Ain't nawthin' to hurt him, 'scusin' p'rhaps a cinnamon b'ar that'd run away as quick as he would, in these parts."
"I ain't worryin' none, either, Jake," grinned Big John. "It's been for a long time my the'ry that thet boy's borned to be hung,—an' the good Lord ain't goin' to let nothin' happen to him to cheat the halter, you bet!"
"But how will we find him?" asked the Colonel uneasily. "If it's the Canyon, we've got a mighty lot of room to pick him up in. At Monument Canyon, you say, John? Well, I'm going out to-morrow. I can't feel as easy as you do about him, John. Major Hinchman can't get away for the trip, I'm sorry to say, so it'll be just you and Scotty and myself,—and Sid when we find him. Get together all the horses and dog gear you need, and this afternoon we'll go over the grub."
It was early next morning when their little cavalcade, preceded by the four dogs, trotted out from the hospitable gates of Hinchman's ranch and followed the left bank of the river. Colonel Colvin led the line on his big roan, with the bulging pockets of his cavalry saddle secured by their leather yoke over the cantle hook, and above that hung his bed roll and tarp in a long, low bundle. After him came four pack animals, with the water cans in their panniers, now filled with oats, to be used later on the desert, crossing to Grand Canyon. The grub and duffel bags were piled across the saddle trees under tarps, with the diamond hitch thrown over them. Big John brought up the rear, with Scotty as outrider. The way led up some of the roughest bad lands Scotty had ever seen until it reached the rim of a high plateau to the east. The horses labored and grunted; even the dogs stopped now and then with panting tongues, and once or twice the pack animals tried to roll over in protest. But once on the plateau they found themselves in a typical open stand of western yellow pine, the tall, well-formed trees standing far apart from each other, gigantic and imposing spires of dark green. The floor of the plateau was flat and covered with sparse bayeta grass.
Presently the horses broke into a run of their own accord, even the pack animals bobbing along in an enthusiastic burst of speed. Far under the distant tree trunks Ruler and his three pups galloped tirelessly, noses down, snuffing old scents, heels flying, ears flapping, the pups now and then giving tongue as they struck recent jack rabbit or deer sign.
Scotty and Colonel Colvin galloped hard after them, heading off the pups from all trails with slashing quirt and bellowed command, for it was essential to get them rabbit and deer proof before going over to the lion country of the Grand Canyon. Mile after mile of this exhilarating open forest riding kept up. Twice during the morning deeper and thicker banks of trees showed up ahead, where small canyons intervened, with dense growths of spruce rising out of them. Or, there would be a hazy void ahead and they would find themselves on the brink of a vast chasm, where some tributary to Red Valley would cut its gigantic ravine through the belted forest of the plateau. Then Big John would lead the train in detours of miles to the eastward around the head of it. This way was much longer and more circuitous than Sid's route down Red Valley, but it served the double purpose of striking Canyon Cheyo far up near its head and reaching at the same time Neyani's hogan, which lay to the eastward of it, for Colonel Colvin had agreed to look up Neyani and see what could be done about the Medicine Panther for Major Hinchman.
It was four in the afternoon when Big John at length turned west and the pack train began to descend the head slope of a ravine which led down in steep declivities into the Canyon Cheyo floor hundreds of feet below.
"We ought to name this ravine 'Yellow Canyon,' all right, sir!" said Scotty to the Colonel as they dismounted and led their horses down the almost perpendicular slopes. "Look at those buttes—all of yellow clay, and worn as smooth as cakes of soap! See how the trees manage to grow, out of every crack and cranny and all their trunks turn up the cliff faces!"
"It'll get down to solid rock soon enough!" replied the Colonel, quietly. "Clay, sandstone, limestone, tertiary, jurassic, triassic—a man can't help but become something of a geologist, in this country!" he laughed. "You can read a big story of the earth in the walls of these canyons. But wait till you see the Grand Canyon, though! There you'll see strata enough to write the whole vast epic of the world's creation! . . . Mark!—Up on the cliffs!"
He pointed upward to where a huge brown bird was just launching into flight from a dead juniper growing down on the face of the yellow cliffs.
"Golden eagle!" cried Scotty. "That's my first! Wonder what in the nation he's doing, in this gameless land!"
"It's not gameless, for him—and, besides, there's young lamb! The Navaho flocks are not far from here. They are within easy flight, for that old marauder!" retorted Colonel Colvin.
They had now reached the dry, rocky bed of the ravine. It sloped downward in a vast series of ledges, as different strata of rock were cut through. By mid-afternoon they were in the main canyon itself, and searching eagerly its sheer walls for ruins, calling and yodeling, hoping to come upon Sid in one of them. Up under the cliffs at the tops of steep slopes were these prehistoric pueblos, some of them to be reached by easy climbing, others perched on steep, smooth walls that could only have been scaled by a system of pole ladders.
"I think we'd better begin shooting signals for Sid, now, boys," remarked the Colonel with a tinge of anxiety in his voice. "I've had my eye open for signs of him for some time, now, but so far we haven't found a trace. Scotty, suppose you try the .405? It's the most powerful rifle we have."
Scotty raised the heavy weapon and fired their old private signal. Bang! Bang! Bang!—Bang! it roared out, and the valley of cliffs reechoed it solemnly down the length of the canyon. They all listened with pent breaths, but no answering shot came.
"Wall, I'll be derned!" ejaculated Big John. "A man'll hear that big rifle five mile, in this yere canyon! An' Sid's .30's got a right smart whip to it, too, fer answerin'. Shore is funny!"
"And it's mighty queer Ruler and the pups haven't picked up any scent of him, too. Who's got something of Sid's on him?" asked the Colonel anxiously.
Something that was Sid's! It was with a sense of foreboding that Scotty searched his pockets, in vain, for some trinket, however slight, of his old chum's, that might serve the hound's nose.
"Shore, fellers, we's way off the trail in this-yere!" spoke up Big John, suddenly. "Ef Sid's come through here, he'd be ridin' the pinto. What we wants is somethin' off thet hoss!—I've got the idee!" he exclaimed, his eyes brightening. "He rode off an' forgot his hobbles,—like a kid will, allers forgettin' somethin'. I've got 'em in the horse gear pack, right now."
He loosened the diamond hitch on one of the pack ponies, while the others were rounding up Ruler and the pups. Presently he yanked a pair of leather hobbles out from under the tarp.
"Here, Ruler,—you ol' pisen critter,—smell 'em!" he commanded, shoving the hobbles into Ruler's eager nose. "They're sure whiffy of hoss-flesh! Go fetch, Ruler! Fetch! Ssssuey, dawg!"
Ruler rose on his hind legs and pawed the air with an understanding bellow. It did not take much further encouragement to get him to circling about, snuffing along the canyon trail with busy nose. The party sat watching him on horseback, half skeptical over the experiment, the Colonel inclined to ride down the Canyon to the west, first, for that was the direction from which Sid would have to come. But Ruler was famed for his sagacity. 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.
He talked excitedly in hound language as he loped along. "It's all right!—Here's more!—I've got him coming fine!" his reassuring tones seemed to say, as he ate up the narrow horse trail ahead of him. The walls of the canyon seemed to fly by as the ponies strung out in pursuit. There was no time to so much as glance up at ruins, now. They had lost interest in ruins, somehow! Here was Sid's trail, leading out of the canyon; though why or when he had gone they could not conjecture.
Gradually the trail sloped upward, and the surrounding walls became less high and further apart. At the top of the last gulch a vast sterile plain spread before them. Low junipers and mesquite dotted it,—semidesert again! Big John turned in his saddle to shout back at them.
"Watch out for Navaho hogans, fellers!" he yelled. "There's quite a lot of them settled hereabouts."
Scotty looked around from his jouncing pony, but could spy out absolutely nothing. He knew that the hogans, or Navaho houses, appeared from the outside as mere dirt mounds, and were usually built near mesas or rocky ridges where it would take a sharp eye to pick them out. They were never built near water, the Navahos preferring to carry it from some distant source. It was all a part of their stealthy raiding and marauding tendencies; a warlike folk that had invaded the pueblo country several centuries ago,—whose very villages were a sort of ambush for the unwary.
But Ruler still kept on, streaking across the desert in an unhesitating run. His occasional bay showed that the pony's trail was quite recent, enough so that the heat of the desert day had not evaporated all scent from it. Then far to the east showed up a broken ridge of rock with quite a thicket around it, rising like a green hummock out of the ocean of gray sage. In the midst of it Scotty's young eyes made out a tiny patch of color.
"Mark!" he called. "Indians! Navaho!—See it, sir?" he asked, turning to point out the patch to the Colonel. "Looks like a blanket or something, over yonder in that grove of mesquite."
Ruler redoubled his bays, and the gray sand spurted from his heels. He headed straight for the grove. A tiny wisp of smoke rose from one side of it, curling lazily away in the desert breeze. The patch of color had now developed into a square shape, striped and crisscrossed with a pattern of some sort, and under the shade of a mesquite the forked uprights and cross poles of the blanket loom gradually developed and became distinct to the eye.
Then, with the suddenness of realization, they all became aware of the dirt mound of the hogan, looming up before them. A gray blanket hanging in its door had been pushed aside, and a young Indian girl had stepped out with a spindle of wool yarn in one hand and a pottery jar in the other. 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. Ruler turned and circled back inquiringly, for he was well trained to voice, while a pistol shot across the sand halted the pups, and they came around to follow in his lead. Scotty and the Colonel closed up, and the party of whites halted, while Big John dismounted and slipped a leash on Ruler.
The young buck came running out to greet them with a smile of welcome on his bronzed face. "How, white Father Hinch," he called out, evidently taking the Colonel for Hinchman. He slowed up and walked diffidently toward them, his white cotton shirt, open at the neck, decorated with silver jewelry and his blue cloth leggins gaudy with beadwork.
"How, Injun,—where white boy?" demanded Big John, sternly.
The youth looked mystified, and then his mobile face took on a lugubrious expression as he broke out into lamentations in unintelligible Navaho. Then, in broken English, reversing his sentences in direct translation from the Navaho—"Oh, White Father—the Dene much, much trouble have!" he cried, addressing the Colonel. "The Black Panther of Dsilyi, he come! Many sheep, he kill! My father that me have done big wrong, he say." He almost wept, seizing Colonel Colvin's hand and begging him with pleading eyes to dismount and come at once to their hogan.
"This must be that son of old Neyani's that we heard about at Hinchman's, boys," said the Colonel. "We'll have to get this trouble of the black panther off his chest before we can get anything more out of him concerning Sid. Funny he doesn't say anything of his being here, though!"
"There, boy,—me come from Father Hinchman—me make all right!" he soothed, smiling at the young Navaho. "You Neyani's son?"
"Neyani's son I was," said the young Navaho, sadly. "That I did wrong he say, and so Dsilyi his panther send. Now I no more son of his, he say!"
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."
They rode to the hogan, slowly. An old squaw was sitting before the partly finished blanket, pulling alternately at the warp sticks and passing little balls of colored yarn through various sheds of its warp strings. The young girl had seated herself on the sand before the hogan and was dipping wool yarns in her dye bowls of red, black and yellow dyes.
As they approached she looked at them shyly and then picked up a hank of dry wool and caught the end around the staple on her spindle. Rolling it across her thigh, she drew out the lengths of spun yarn, allowing it to coil itself loose around the spindle as each length was twisted to the proper thickness.
"Where Neyani, son?" asked the Colonel after bowing to the squaw and the maiden, who returned his salutations with frightened smiles.
The Navaho youth waved his hand toward a corner of a pole sheep corral which jutted out of the brush back of the hogan. Evidently he was not welcome in his father's presence, for he immediately dropped back and went over to where his silver forge lay smoking under the shade of the thick desert juniper.
The party dismounted and tied their horses, while Big John put leashes on the remaining dogs, for there would surely be half-wild shepherd dogs out in the corral, and they had no wish to open up the proceedings with a dog fight.
The Colonel led the way around the hogan. Their appearance was greeted by a chorus of barks from two shaggy shepherd dogs, half coyote, that guarded Neyani's sheep. The old fellow was kneeling over a struggling animal under the shade of a low bush, putting some sort of healing vegetable compound on deep, bloody gashes in its side.
Seamed and wrinkled with age, with silver locks hanging in thick mats over his ears, Neyani's eyes were, nevertheless, bright with the unconquerable spirit of a wild and free desert people. Just now there was deep trouble in them, and he looked up at Colonel Colvin with something like relief, for he evidently connected his coming in some way with Major Hinchman, the White Father of all the Navahos.
"How, Neyani! What's the trouble, bear?" asked Colonel Colvin, pointing down at the wounded sheep and endeavoring to draw the old fellow out by a leading question.
Neyani shook his head gloomily. "No, cougar. Dsilyi send him. Plenty sheep, he kill."
The whites knew vaguely of Dsilyi. He was the Elder Brother of the Navaho, a heroic demigod who had visited in the abodes of the high gods, and who stood in the same relation to the Navaho as Achilles did to the ancient Greeks.
"Why don't you shoot the varmint, Injun?" broke in Big John. "You won't have no wool for to make blankets of if you don't get rid of that critter."
Neyani shrank back, alarmed at the very idea, and an expression of superstitious fear crossed his face. "Ugh! No,—no! Navaho no kill! Him medicine panther! Him black! Dsilyi send him."
"Well, I want to know!" guffawed Big John, incredulously. Neyani shot him a dark look, and then turned to the Colonel, whose face showed more sympathy for the Indian's beliefs and superstitions.
"Oh, White Father,—black he is! Great, and black as the night! I, Neyani, seen him have! Dsilyi send him!" he insisted, coming back to his original declaration again.
"How do you know that he is Dsilyi's panther, Neyani?" asked the Colonel, sympathetically, suppressing patiently his own ardent wish to inquire about his son.
"Know, then, the legend of the Navaho, my White Father. How that Dsilyi crossed the rainbow arch and so to the Sacred Mountain came. And in the mountain was a cave. In the cave was a fire. The fire without wood burned. Around the fire were four panthers. A white one to the north. A blue one to the south. A yellow one to the west. A black one to the east." Neyani paused to let the significance of this—to him—sink in. "The four panthers asked for tobacco," he went on. "Then Dsilyi of the medicine tobacco took that he had stolen from the Ute. He to the four panthers gave. The four panthers smoked the medicine pipe. Still they lay, dead. Then took Dsilyi the ashes from the pipe, and on the four panthers rubbed. The four panthers came alive again. Then drew the four panthers a sheet of cloud from the four corners of the cave. And on the cloud were painted the ways of the cultivated plants by which the Dene (Navaho) now live. Thus Dsilyi for his Younger Brothers the secrets of the plants learned. And now Dsilyi afflicts the hogan of Neyani with the Black Panther," grunted Neyani, despondently. "From the Valley of the Departed to the west he comes! Great and black as the night he is!" shuddered Neyani. He relapsed into silence and looked to the Colonel for some help in this his trouble.
"But why has Dsilyi sent him, Neyani? Has anyone in your hogan done any wrong?" asked the Colonel, sympathetically.
Neyani's face took on a look of stony immobility.
Whatever his private family griefs were, he chose not to air them before strangers.
"Well, I know why!" suddenly roared Big John. "Injun, you projooces that white boy, mighty sudden pronto!" he shouted, angrily. "Or by jings, you'll find more'n forty black panthers atter ye!— Look yonder, Colonel!"
They all followed his pointing finger, to where the long poles of a horse corral up on the ridge back of the hogan showed. Nickering at them over the gate was Sid's pinto! Ruler was right!