CHAPTER IV
LOST CANYON
FOR the next few seconds after that rifle shot, Sid was fully occupied. The black head, whatever it was, disappeared in the cloud of smoke from the rifle muzzle, and Sid heard a hoarse, ropy, animal snarl and a scramble in the bushes up on the cliff ledges. But Pinto had reared high in the air at the shot, and, with a whinny of terror and a frantic tug of his head, had broken the picket lariat. He dashed snorting across the ravine. Sid dropped his rifle and fell on the dangling lariat weaving like a snake through the grass. It whipped out from under him as he made a last snatch for it and a half hitch of it caught around his wrist.
Sid was yanked to his feet, hauling against the plunging horse, and was dragged across the chasm. Only its sheer wall stopped Pinto in his mad frenzy of backing. 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. After a time the pony seemed to know that their visitor had gone, for, save for an occasional stoppage to look long and intently, he went on feeding.
But that was no guarantee that the prowler might not come back again, sometime during the night, reasoned Sid.
“Bear or cougar, what he wanted was horse flesh!” muttered the boy to himself as he started his fire. “Let’s see; the Navaho hogans are not so far from here, up near the head of the Canyon to the east. That’s about eight miles. Suppose this brute was that freak panther that we heard about at Hinchman’s? Of course, it was dark and I might have been fooled, but he was black, whatever the thing might have been. It couldn’t have been black bear, or I’d have noted his ears. This thing had no ears,—and it looked catty! By George—suppose it is the Black Panther! The black leopards of the East are always larger and heavier than the spotted and clouded kinds, so this fellow must be an old Tom cougar, a lover of horse, deer and sheep. What’s to prevent him coming back and getting Pinto before I can wake up to shoot him?”
Sid puzzled a long while over what to do, as he squatted before his fire broiling a slab of venison from the haunch. He munched at it and then washed down a liberal help of pinole with brook water, still undecided. There did not seem to be any solution for this particular difficulty.
“Well, there’s one thing about it—Pinto’s as good as a watch dog,” said Sid to himself. “He’ll stay up all night, munching grass, if I know horses,” he laughed, “and he’d sense that cougar around long before I could.... I’ve got it!” he cried, slapping at his knee delightedly.
He pulled up the picket pin and drove it in again under the spruces beside the bed of dry needles among some rock hummocks that he had selected for a sleeping place for himself. Then he retied the lariat, so that there was a short length left over, and this he fastened to his bed roll.
“There!” he exclaimed. “If Sir Black Panther comes, Pinto’ll plunge and rear and pull out his pin, all in about one jump. Then the lariat will yank the bed out from under me—enough to wake up a dead man—and I ought to be up and shooting mighty sudden!” 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; a water ousel was bathing himself in a pool of the brook and thanking God for the gift of another sunny day. All was peace in the glory of the morning. The uncanny visitor had not come, then! Sid lay lazily awake for some time, enjoying it all. The only sounds, save the soft soughing of the wind in the evergreens, were the ceaseless runnel of the brook, the liquid notes of the birds, and the champing of Pinto’s teeth on the grass beside camp, clearly audible in this vast stillness. It recalled Sid’s thoughts to desire for breakfast. He was not quite ready for the frontiersman’s fare of straight venison and pinole! Coffee and bacon with it loomed up in his mind as much more savory and palatable. And that brought him to remembrance of his emergency ration. The boys never went abroad without it. It ought to be in a canvas pouch on the back of his belt, reflected Sid. Reaching around, he was surprised to find it still there, utterly forgotten and no doubt slept upon in the excitement and fatigues of the day before.