“Still am!” rumbled Hinchman, emphatically. “I’m old ‘White Father Hinch’ to all the Navaho north of us. They come to me with all their troubles or send in runners about it. One got in last night with a tough one for me to straighten out. It’s a medicine panther, Colvin, that’s been stealing old Neyani’s sheep. The Indians are all plumb scared of him; heap big medicine! They swear he’s black—can you beat that?”
“Black!” echoed Colonel Colvin, incredulously, while the boys listened in with flapping ears. “Freak coloration, eh? The Far East has black leopards, you know, occurring clear down into Sumatra. It’s possible, Hinchy. Where did the cougar get the black on his ugly face? No one knows—nor why there are both black and spotted leopards, either. But I don’t see where you should worry any, Hinchy—just say the word and we’ll go up there and shoot him for you. We’ve got dogs, you know.”
“Precisely just what you can’t do, Colvin!” exclaimed Hinchman, energetically. “It would be the worst kind of a sacrilege in the Navaho’s eyes. You see, Dsilyi, the Navaho demigod, he had four panthers, a white one to the north, a tawny one to the west, a blue one to the south, and a black one to the east. The Indians just know that this is Dsilyi’s black panther—there’s no use arguing with them! 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 death. Right nice mix-up fo’ me to unravel, eh?”
“You’re dead right!” agreed the Colonel emphatically. “Say, the worst uprising the Army ever had to deal with came from just such a freak animal as this. You remember the Arapaho row in ’79, Hinchy?”
“You bet! I sure hope this isn’t goin’ to be anything like that! a white buffalo, wasn’t it? And now, I’ve got a black cougar and a mess of Indian superstitions on my hands!”
CHAPTER III
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; saddles, raitas and ornamental embossed Mexican leather gear—the horse was King here! The place reeked of those old strenuous border days of the Southwest, and the ranch seemed to have imbibed equally of the customs and usages of the early Spanish and Indian possessors of the country. In turn, the boys peeped in the various doorways; the farriery with a smoking forge and laboring bellows; the bunk house with an interminable game of greasy cards going on; the saddlery, where a weazened old sinner of a Sonoran bent over his leather work; and the great kitchen, where dried beef and hams hung from the smoky rafters, and long braids of corn, peppers, desert onions and dried berries festooned the walls. There were bins of pinyon nuts, flour, metate-ground Indian meal, sugar, coffee and red beans—the ranch could stand a year’s siege if you asked Lum Looke, the Chinese cook who presided!
After a time Major Hinchman sought them out at the stables in the patio, where Ruler and his progeny had been made comfortable in an empty stall.
“Say, boys,” he grinned at them with a quizzically apologetic smile, “I’m mighty sorry—but thar ain’t a derned thing to eat in the ranch! Nope, not a doggone thing!” he insisted whimsically. “You’ll have to rustle your own grub. Now, Jake, thar, he was tellin’ me of a couple of deer over the river in those cottonwoods,” he confided, in an elaborate stage whisper. “Suppose you boys get you’ rifles an’ rustle us a little venison? You!—Jake!” he roared, seeing the delighted smiles on Sid’s and Scotty’s faces.
Jake came straddling out of the bunk house, the sunlight sheening on his glossy black fur chaps as he crossed the patio.