The Black Panther of the Navaho

by Warren H. Miller

Sid got to his feet and passed up the saddle to Big John. Then Scotty took his rifle and, with Sid getting a grip on the stirrup, the ponies started cantering down the side chasm. In a mile more they were out in the main canyon and riding steadily up its huge amphitheater of cliffs.

Sid was dog-tired with the alternate walking and trotting of the horses when, shortly before sunset, the wide plain of the Navaho settlement came to view. Running with a stirrup-hold was far easier than he had anticipated; walking was another story, for a horse’s stride is so long as to take a very rapid pace to keep up with it. As they looked about over the semidesert plain it was hard to realize that there must be at least fifty hogans in plain sight at that very moment. But, so carefully concealed were they that if this party of theirs had been hostile invaders they would be walking right in to a first-class ambush.

But, as they drew near Neyani’s, the entire vicinity seemed dotted with busy Indians, all preparing for the great Fire Dance. From every direction they were dragging in wood, small dead mesquites, greasewood bushes, anything that would burn. A huge pile of it twenty feet high was being assembled near the hogan, with an inclosure of brush formed in a ring about it. Indians passed them, gayly decorated with barbaric jewelry, in white cotton shirts and colored leggings, the older ones wearing broad, striped “chief” blankets. All were noisy, and busy on one errand or another, and behind brushwood screens they could see the young men and warriors of the various clans and secret societies decking themselves in ceremonial costumes.

Then Colonel Colvin came galloping out, his face one huge smile of glad relief and astonishment.

“Sid, my boy!—where have you been? What in the devil has happened to you, son?” he cried, as he reined up his horse to lean over and wring Sid’s hand. “You have come just in the nick of time. It will at least relieve young Niltci of any suspicion of having harmed a white man. But the Fire Dance ceremony must go ahead, I fear. Any news of that infernal panther, John?”

“Yaas; the dawgs run him into a leetle box canyon back thar in Cheyo—an’ you can steal my hoss if thar ain’t Sid, ez ornery and ez nat’ral ez ever! I told ye not to worry, Colonel,” he wagged his head. “Thet rope’s still waitin’ for him! He clumb up thar, an’ then he couldn’t git out again. The varmint’s got a lair in that canyon, too, in a cave behind some of them cliff houses.”

“So you didn’t get him, eh? That’s bad!” said Colonel Colvin, disappointedly. “He’ll come back for some more lamb in a day or so. I’ve sent for Major Hinchman, but he’ll get here too late to do any good, for the Indians are so wrought up that they’re like to throw Niltci into the big fire if anything goes wrong during the ceremonies. He and Neyani are to be leaders in it, so they’ll be right in the limelight.

“I tell you what we’ll do!” exclaimed the Colonel suddenly, as they walked the horses toward the hogan, “we’ll break camp right now, and get everything ready for the ride across the desert to the Grand Canyon. Then if things go wrong at the dance we’ll watch our chance and get Niltci away and take him with us across the desert, until this business blows over. You, Sid and Scotty, keep near him. Watch where they put him if they tie him up; get him free and join us out on the plain, as it will be pitch dark. We’ll start right out and put fifty miles between us and this hogan during the night. I’ll strike for Lee’s Ferry on the Big Colorado.”

Sid and Scotty winked at each other gleefully. A cutting-out party of this nature was right in their line! Big John and the Colonel rode on to their camp, while the boys dismounted at the hogan and went inside. Neither Neyani nor Niltci were anywhere in sight, for they were off in the brush somewhere, dressing for their parts. But a group of old medicine men were making sand paintings on the floor of the hogan, pouring various colored sands deftly through their fingers. The boys looked around curiously, at the huge beams of the hogan slanting up overhead and the square smoke hole over a small fire in the center which gave light for the sand-painting ceremonies. Around the walls ran a log-and-clay shelf which served as both bench and sleeping bunks. Pottery water jars stood in the corners, with granary baskets of corn and pinyon nuts and bowls of corn meal. The young girl knelt beside the fire, making piké bread by pouring a thin batter deftly through a crack in her fingers on a smooth, hot stone. As fast as a layer cooked she rolled it around itself and spread a fresh batch. Paper-thin pancakes of corn meal were they! Her mother crouched in a corner, grinding meal in a stone trough with a long stone pestle.

Then they turned to watch the sand paintings. Brilliantly hued, they told the legends of the Navaho brought down from the Far North—Dsilyi in the house of the Snakes, who taught him the prayer-stick mysteries; Dsilyi in the Rainbow Hogan of the Butterfly Woman, who gave him command of the Rain Lightnings; Dsilyi in the cave of the Sacred Mountain, where the Four Panthers taught him the secrets of the cultivated plants. It all became intelligible to Sid as he studied out the symbolical figures, while one of the medicine men explained him the legends.