“Gee, what a trophy!” exclaimed Sid, admiringly. “Cougar or leopard, he’s a scientific curiosity! But we’ve got to bury him, boys. It’s our duty. We couldn’t ship that skin out of Arizona without the warden examining it, and word of it would sure get back to the Indians. We owe it to Major Hinchman, fellows. Look for a kiva in this floor.”
“Dern them Injuns, anyhow!” grunted Big John. “I hate to part with this ole boy, somehow; we shore hev had a fine time with him!”
They scratched around in the dust and after a time unearthed the round stone cover of the kiva, or underground cave, that is built in every pueblo for the mystic rites of the rain priests. Into its dark cavern the body of the Black Panther disappeared, forever, as they replaced the stone and tamped back the earth.
“Shore it’s a derned shame!” snorted Big John. “Good-by, kitty! You were a good kitty, an’ you give us a nice party while you lasted—only you didn’t onderstand that sheep ain’t public property! C’mon, boys, we’ll have a fat job gittin’ Ruler down them ledges! The Major’s thar, waitin’ fer us with the other two dawgs. We shoved fer your canyon as soon as Ruler didn’t give tongue, fer I knew the Black Panther was hyar and there’d be doin’s.”
“Sure was!” grinned Scotty. “But now that he is properly abolished, the Major ought to be able to smooth the Indians down all right. He can keep his word about the Black Panther coming no more, now.”
Sid was the last to leave the little cliff dwelling. It was with a feeling of sadness that he turned away. The place had become tragic, the tomb of a noble beast that had been a notable character, in his way. Like the Indian, Sid inwardly begged his pardon for their having had to kill him. This cliff dwelling would be his fitting monument. He belonged here, in the silence and mystery of an ancient and changeless land. For countless ages the cougar, the bear, the wolf, and the deer had lived with the red men of this country, generation after generation, century after century. They were part of it all, together with the desert sun and the clouds and winds. Life, as it was lived here, had become a settled, stabilized thing long, long ago. The White Man was an intruder; he could take it or leave it as he chose; but he could not alter it, by one jot or tittle.
Sid did not wish to alter it. The desert, the canyon, and all their inhabitants suited him.
“This is my country!—These are my people!” he whispered to himself. “Ethnology for mine! Practical ethnology. I’ll begin with Major Hinchman for a guide. Some day, when all this blows over, I’ll come back up here and get those pottery treasures from the Old People’s pueblo.”
Sid turned for a last look as they reached the point near the cleft from which Big John had fired. Silent, mysterious, inscrutable as eternity, the walls of the cliff dwelling nestled under its great over-arching cave. Old as the centuries, typical of this country and of the spirit that broods over its changeless canyon and desert, it had acquired a new dignity, it locked a new secret in its walls, for it was now the tomb of the Black Panther of the Navaho, and over it hung the sable majesty of Death.
He turned to the cleft, where all was sweating activity.