“Went off fine, boys! The Black Panther’s not coming any more—that’ll be up to us, right pronto, for if he visits the Navaho sheep corrals a single time again we lose all we have gained. Niltci—I told them I was Niltci, now a Ganhi from the spirit world—Niltci will come back to earth again, soon, in that very cave on White Mesa, and I’ll make a great medicine man out of him without his knowing any too much about it himself! The dye business is already fixed up; Niltci can help me drive that home, too, after I’ve had a talk with him, or the Colonel can make a good missionary out of him, as you say he has a lot of influence over the boy, Sid. The thing for us to do now is to ride for Canyon Cheyo and camp somewhere on the brook to-night, and then run the panther with the dogs early to-morrow morning. I can only hope and pray that he don’t go sheep stealing to-night!”
Around the camp fire that night they went over their plans. Sid and Scotty were to start for Lost Canyon at dawn, while Big John and the Major would ride with the dogs out to the eastern desert and pick up the Black Panther’s trail somewhere back in the timber west of the Navaho settlement. If they treed him, they would shoot and bury him, then and there; if he made for his lair in Lost Canyon it would be up to the boys.
“An’ believe me, I’ll be right behint his tail, Major!” declared Big John. “Them pesky boys is aimin’ to kill me of worry, an’ they’ll git me yet, with their wild an’ woolly doin’s! I’m fixin’ to be right thar when that ole comatabody goes a-sky-hootin’ all over the roof of that pueblo, as he’s bound to do as soon as they begins lettin’ lead inter him.”
It was in the dark before dawn that Sid roused out, to awake Scotty and saddle Pinto. “To-day’s the day, old-timer!” he grinned delightedly, as his knuckles bored into Scotty’s ribs. “Up an’ at ’em, fellah!”
Silently they oiled and cleaned the rifles of desert sand, gulped down some coffee, and saddled their ponies. A rasp of chains where Ruler had arisen from his bed of pinyon straw told that he was awake and eager to be off. Sid went over to him. “Go git ’em, old snoozer!” he whispered affectionately, fondling the big hound’s long silky ears. “We’re sure depending on you!” Then with a pat for Pepper and Bourbon, he walked over to Pinto to grip the bony ridge of his neck, jammed a foot into his stirrup, and was off, with Scotty galloping hard after him.
By sunup they had reached the little dent in the side chasm that marked the great natural wall which blocked Lost Canyon. High above them, hanging down from the ledge at the foot of the cleft, still dangled the lariat. Picketing the ponies, they strapped on their rifles and climbed the fir tree where, arriving near its top branches, Sid took off his rifle and handed it to Scotty.
“I’ll go up first, and then you tie on the rifles and I’ll haul them up the ledge. After that you swarm up, and we’ll make Fat Man’s Misery together.”
Scotty sat in the swaying top of the fir tree, trying to get used to the height as Sid climbed up swiftly above him. To him it seemed a hideous business, even with a rope, and he wondered how Sid had ever had the courage to go up there without it the first time. Scotty’s was the kind of courage that needs lashing from a higher source, from the inner soul that rules over the whole man. He argued that his was the highest kind of courage, the kind that forces the cringing body to go ahead, although it is crying out with fear; but, nevertheless, he wished he had some of Sid’s kind, whatever it was,—that had no fear at all, that regarded this climb with the same matter-of-fact directness that he would have had it been near the ground and the element of danger eliminated.
“Aw,—what’s the use of being afraid!” his mind belabored his craven body as he booted it into action when the time came for him to go up. But he was afraid! Horribly so,—as afraid as the tyro aloft in a man-o’-war’s rigging for the first time, and his climb up the narrow cleft did not improve it either. By the time they had reached the trail up to the pueblo, Scotty was thoroughly exhausted by his wrestles with his courage and far below the key of his usual manliness. A fearsome idea had obsessed him after that climb and he now gave it words as they reached the roof of the cliff dwellings.
“Sid,—suppose this is a real Asiatic black leopard?” he asked. “Did that ever occur to you, as a possible solution of his coloration?”