THE LAST STAND OF THE BLACK PANTHER
It was dark and the Navaho had all gone when Major Hinchman appeared
again in camp.
“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?”
“Aw!” grinned Sid, “where’d you get that notion, Les? It’s a color
phase of our own ordinary cougar, that’s all.”
“But it’s possible, though,” persisted Scotty. “Seems I remember
reading once about a big circus that got strewn all over seven counties
by a cyclone down here in Arizona. Now, if they had a black leopard in
their menagerie----”
“Even then--y’aren’t scared, are you?” interrupted Sid, scornfully,
turning to gaze at Scotty with wondering eyes--Scotty who had met the
Ring-Necked Grizzly alone up in Montana!
“No, but I’m facing the facts,” retorted Scotty, stoutly. “If he _is_ a
black leopard, then he’ll _stalk us_--that’s the leopard’s game, every
time. He’s not afraid of men.”
“Well, what of it?” exclaimed Sid, intolerantly. “C’mon, we’ll try his
den first.”
Scotty shrugged his shoulders, as Sid led on with his rifle poised for
instant action. In Sid’s present mood there was no use urging ordinary
plain caution. Scotty, however, scanned the cliffs and trees about them
warily. He wanted to make sure that no panther lurked up on some limb,
to spring on them unawares as is the habit of the leopard in the East.
Sid halted at the edge of the inner wall.
“_Woof!_” he called, shying a stone into the dark recesses of the cave.
“Hi!--Come out and let’s look at you!” he taunted.
But there was not a sound or a movement from those impenetrable depths.
“Good business!” ejaculated Sid. “Nobody home. That means he’s out
after his daily sheep, and the dogs’ll get a fresh track.”
Scotty was not so sure. He looked around cautiously, unmindful of Sid’s
amused sniffs. The tall boy led him over to show him the pueblo of the
Old People, but even then, before its mouth Scotty hesitated, with
rifle cocked, before venturing to peer down. He could bear the reproach
in Sid’s eyes unblushingly, for to him Sid seemed casehardened,
foolhardy almost. His own cave man within him was no such subdued
creature as Sid’s, but was alert and tense as a deer, for a subtle
sixth sense persisted in warning him that _something_ lurked around
that pueblo that was a deadly menace. It might be imagination; it might
be a finer instinct for danger; or possibly some indistinguishable
taint in the air that would have been plain as day to the nostrils of
our ancestors.
Disregarding Sid’s taunting protests, Scotty kept his rifle cocked and
his body on hair trigger, ready to turn or spring aside or leap into
instant action at the first hint of warning. Sid turned away from him
in amused disdain and sat down ruggedly on the outer wall, his ear
cocked for the first distant bay of the hounds. It was broad daylight,
now, with the sun perhaps two hours high, and the chase was due to
arrive any minute.
“Gorry! It’s funny we don’t hear them!” exclaimed Sid, impatiently,
after perhaps fifteen minutes of waiting, his eyes scanning the
opposite rim impatiently.
Scotty nerved himself to speak out what was in his mind. It was the
brave thing to do--morally brave--and he did it. “Suppose, Sid, the
Black Panther heard us coming, and just sneaked out of his lair,--and
is prowling about here _now_----”
An impatient shrug of Sid’s shoulders stopped him. “Scotty, you’re
nervous,” he said, solicitously. “Never let yourself get that way, or
you won’t be able to shoot---- By George!--There’s Ruler, now!”
He had interrupted himself to gaze across the canyon. The great
brown hound stood on the opposite rim. Silently he had come out of
the forest; silent and perplexed, he sniffed the air, testing its
scents. As they watched, his body suddenly stiffened and his tail went
straight as a poker. His ears laid back and his teeth bared, and then
a volleying bark rang out across the canyon. Ruler pawed the ground in
his excitement--then he suddenly ceased and ran along the rim, a houndy
growl, whimpering with eagerness, coming from him.
“That settles it!” said Scotty, rising energetically. “He _saw_ the
Black Panther, Sid! His eyes are sharper than ours. That brute’s around
here, somewhere, behind us or above us--did you note where Ruler seemed
to be looking?”
Both boys were now alert and warned. They stepped slowly along the
roof, toward the ladder end of it, rifles poised, eyes scanning every
possible lurking place.
“By--_Gosh!_--There he _is_!” yelled Scotty in a sudden scream of
fright. “Mark!--_Cliff!_”
He had jumped back as Sid looked up, bewildered. Thirty feet over their
heads, on the sheer face of the cliff where grew out the stubby roots
of a spruce from a crack, crouched the great cat. His eyes smoldered
green fire as he peered down at them over the root, and his pink mouth
opened in a hideous, silent snarl. Then his ears flattened back.
“Shoot! He’s going to jump!” barked Sid, his rifle springing to
shoulder and crashing out as the bead swung up over a confused mass
of black. Down through the smoke that long, lithe shape plunged like
a plummet, a brawny forepaw stretched out, with the five talons
outspread like steel hooks. Both boys leaped back rapidly across the
roof, for when he landed he would rebound like some deadly infernal
spring-machine at one of them. It was a diabolical black head,--the
nose a snarling mass of wrinkles, the eyes spitting savage ferocity,
that turned on Scotty with the quickness of a lightning flash when
the Black Panther hit the roof. His attack was bewildering, a series
of short springs, each a smash of the muscular forepaw, each a wicked
snarl of formidable fangs and a hoarse, hissing cat-spit that nearly
paralyzed Scotty with fright. The youth jumped back, the cat following,
sparring at him as he pranced on three legs. It was impossible to
get the gun muzzle up, as the sweep of that paw would have knocked it
spinning out of his hands. Yet during the short five seconds of that
rush Scotty was aware of the constant baying of a hound and the shouts
of Sid to jump clear to one side so he could fire. Then a frightful
blow, that ripped his sombrero brim and tore it from his head, sent his
rifle up instinctively to ward off, and the next instant it was struck
from his hands, bellowing like a cannon as the trigger jarred loose.
For an instant the Black Panther recoiled at the noise, and in that
instant Sid’s .30 whipped out its sharp report. High in the air
leaped the great cat. All that had gone before was nothing to the
feats of strength and agility he displayed now. He was hit,--he was
enraged,--he was frantic with fury! In one terrific leap he cleared
half the distance between himself and Sid; in the next he was pawing
and striking around Sid’s gun muzzle, stuck into his face as the boy
retreated, prodding at him and trying to reload. Scotty had picked up
his .405 and was frantically yanking on its lever. Then past him leaped
a brown shape, bellowing attack. Ruler it was--in the nick of time to
save Sid! He had done the incredible thing, the impossible thing, of
climbing along the cougar’s cliff route through the spruces! At the
hound’s raging bark, the Black Panther whirled about from Sid and his
back and tail went up until he seemed ten feet tall. Ruler was a third
his size, but the instinct to hump up at the sight of a dog seems
ineradicable in all the cat tribe.
The next instant he had leaped up on the cliff wall, above its
hollowed-out arch, so as to get a high place from which to spring.
“Shoot, Scotty!--Shoot quick!” yelled Sid, for his own rifle had
jammed, with one cartridge in the chamber and another in the carrier,
in the excitement of trying to reload with the panther pawing at
him. The heavy .405 roared out, filling the whole arch with smoke.
Down through it fell the Black Panther, paralyzed for the moment. He
struck on his back, and the rafters of the ancient cliff-dwelling roof
crackled under him. Toward Sid he floundered, his claws scratching
the ’dobe. Blood spurted in a stream from his side and he was dying,
but there was murder in his eyes, hate, fury, the yearning desire to
kill in the last second of life left to him. Rapidly he crawled toward
Sid, purposeful, determined not to die without his jaws clenched in at
least one adversary. Ruler bit and worried and dragged back on him
from behind, but the Black Panther ignored him completely. He had Sid
cornered, in the angle between the side and end wall of the pueblo, and
he knew it.
Scotty hesitated, with wabbling rifle, for a tense moment. If he fired
he would certainly hit Sid, for the two were in line with him and the
heavy bullet would crash clean through the Black Panther from behind.
If he moved to another position he would be too late.
And, during that instant of hesitation, shot after shot rang out up
in the canyon. Bullets came in a leaden hail--from somewhere--as the
cougar flinched and his head was struck from side to side as if lashed
with an invisible whip. It seemed impossible that a man could shoot
so fast and so true as those bullets came that were crashing into the
Black Panther’s skull. Then Scotty’s .405 went off, close at hand, with
a stunning report, and everything was obliterated in a cloud of smoke.
The cougar shuddered, in a last terrible convulsion which shook the
pueblo walls, and then, with a crack of breaking poles, the roof gave
way beneath him and the Black Panther sank from sight.
A thin haze of smoke drifted out from the spruces on the cliff wall,
between the pueblo and Fat Man’s Misery, as the boys looked around to
see where those finishing shots had come from. Then Big John’s voice
rang out from the green depths.
“Say,--that was the devil’s own climb, boys! I ain’t so leetle but what
I got a number ten foot and a number two haid, an’ that lariat looked
like a pack cord to me! How d’ye git down out’n hyar?--she’s all slide
rock!”
_Whoopee!_--Big John! The boys howled at each other happily at the
sound of his familiar tones. Then Sid shouted him directions, and after
a time he himself appeared over the ladder head on the pueblo wall.
“Wa’n’t invited to the party but I _got_ hyar, allee-samee pronto!”
grinned Big John, as he mounted to the roof. “You boys’ll break this
ole hoss-wrangler’s neck yit! Right sociable time ye was havin’ with
the trick cougar, eh,--Siddy boy!” he chuckled, winking at Scotty. “_I_
seen him, flewin’ round, soon’s I clumb through the cliff, so I wraps
myself around a tree, up thar, an’ draws cyards to set in the game,
too.”
“Came in mighty handy, John--my next would have been a jump over that
wall into kingdom come, if you hadn’t opened up!” laughed Sid, still
fussing with the jammed army cartridge. “Darn a rimless shell, anyhow,
I’ll say!”
Ruler was having a wonderful time, all by himself, worrying at the
carcass below, so they all dropped down to examine the great, glossy
prize.
“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.
“Easy with Ruler, thar, Scotty!” Big John was bellowing from a
precarious footing on the lower ledge. “The Colonel will skin me alive
ef we drap him. We starts across for the Big Crack, to-night, boys. Let
me git that white hoss atween my knees jest onct more--an’ ye don’t git
me up no cliffs ag’in, nohow!”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.