The Black Panther of the Navaho

The Black Panther of the Navaho

"The Black Panther of the Navaho" by Warren H. Miller follows Colonel Colvin, a veteran Indian fighter worn down by desk work during the War, and his son Sid, along with Sid's red-haired friend Scotty, whose father was killed in France. To restore the Colonel's health, the party plans a hunting expedition into the Southwest. Three Redbone coonhounds arrive at the Colvin home — Pepper, Bourbon, and Lee — causing domestic uproar before being consigned to the outdoors. Mysterious telegrams and a letter from a frontier veteran named Big John eventually reveal the destination: New Mexico and Arizona, by way of the old Santa Fe trail, to hunt bear, deer, and cougar in the canyon country north of the Grand Canyon. The party travels west by rail through Spanish and Indian country, observing pueblos, Navaho and Zuni traders, and the dramatic desert landscape. They disembark at a remote water-tank station and are met by Big John, a giant Montana cowman scarred by shrapnel, who has arranged horses at Hinchman's Ranch. Two Arizonan cowboys, Red Jake and Mesa Joe, complete the outfit, along with Ruler, a great bony Arkansas hound, the sire of the three pups. After a coyote run across the desert flats and a first night camped on the buttes under the stars, the party reaches Hinchman's, a fortified adobe ranch built against Apache raids. Major Hinchman, a retired Army officer and trusted friend of the Colonel, introduces a complication. A black cougar is killing sheep belonging to an elderly Navaho headman named Neyani. Because the Navaho demigod Dsilyi is said to possess four panthers — including a black one to the east — the Indians believe this animal is a supernatural punishment for some wrongdoing in Neyani's household. No Navaho will shoot or track the creature. Hinchman cannot kill it himself without destroying his influence over the tribe. He asks the Colonel for help, but the situation demands the utmost delicacy. After a turkey and deer hunt near the ranch in which Scotty and Red Jake bring in game, Sid accompanies Big John on a deer stalk into the buttes. Fired by the vast solitudes of the canyon country, Sid feels a deep impulse toward solitude and self-examination, like the Indian youths who went alone into the mountains to seek wisdom. Against Big John's mild protest, Sid rides off alone into Red Valley with a haunch of venison and a bag of parched corn meal, asking to be met at the mouth of Monument Canyon in Canyon Cheyo in two days. He descends into the great canyon, marveling at its scale. Turning up a narrow side canyon at dusk, Sid senses he is being followed. His pony trembles with fear, and Sid glimpses a coal-black head with phosphorescent eyes watching from a ledge above. He fires his carbine, the head vanishes, and in the confusion Pinto breaks his tether and cannot be caught. Sid rigs a clever alarm system connecting the picket line to his bedroll and sleeps beside the fire. The following morning he discovers that his camp occupies a hidden cove whose wall conceals a narrow cleft leading into an unknown box canyon that no white man appears to have explored. He climbs the terrifying ledges to the cleft, squirms through what he calls Fat Man's Misery, and descends into Lost Canyon. There he finds a wild vegetable garden of corn, beans, and squash gone back to nature, a ruined trail, and a small but perfectly preserved cliff-dwelling pueblo of four rooms hidden under a cave overhang. Inside, two mummified figures — an old man and his wife — sit huddled against a pottery oven, the last survivors of their community, who stayed in their home to the end. A magnificent decorated vase stands in the oven, their final work of art. Sid reflects at length on beauty, art, and the meaning of home. Exploring further, Sid finds bones and the strong scent of a predator's lair tucked behind the pueblo ledge, and concludes this is the Black Panther's den. He realizes he has no rifle, only a small revolver, and that the canyon has no exit except the way he entered. Pinto has vanished, presumably having broken free and trotted to the nearest habitation. That night, disturbed by the wind moaning through the empty pueblo and an eerie owl, Sid struggles against superstitious fear before decisively routing what he calls the cave man within himself. He sees the Black Panther himself, enormous and unmistakably black, silhouetted on a pinnacle in moonlight, and drives him off with a pistol shot. The panther departs in spectacular, terror-stricken leaps. The following day Sid, realizing his party may have started early and already be in the canyon searching for him, begins the slow work of burning through a large spruce in hopes of felling it to reach the cougar's exit route on the granite slab above. As hours pass with little progress he practices patience and fortitude. Then, to his overwhelming joy, he hears hounds. Ruler and the pups have picked up the Black Panther's trail and are running him directly toward his lair. Sid holds his fire so as not to turn the cat away, and watches as Big John and Scotty appear on the canyon rim above. The panther darts into his cave. Big John and Scotty fire into it with their rifles, but the cougar retreats into a deep hole and cannot be dislodged. Big John throws down knotted lariats and Sid uses them to climb back through the cleft and down the giant fir to freedom. The party reunites and rides to Neyani's hogan, where they learn that Pinto had found his own way there, and that the family crisis has deepened. Neyani's son Niltci has been blamed for the ongoing predations, accused of some hidden crime for which Dsilyi supposedly sends the Black Panther as punishment. The great Fire Dance ceremony is held that night. Niltci performs badly through bad luck — his prayer-stick burns through, his arrow-swallowing trick fails — and when he trips and falls, the tribe seizes him and binds him to a tree, intending to force a confession by making him stare at the sun. Colonel Colvin, unable to stop the ceremony outright without causing an uprising, counsels patience and sends for Hinchman. That night the Colvin party breaks camp and moves out onto the dark desert. Sid, Scotty, and Big John double back to free Niltci. Big John blackens his old Stetson with charcoal, pokes two holes for eyes, and rigs phosphorescent matches inside to imitate glowing cougar eyes. Creeping close in the dark, he gives a cougar scream and thrusts his improvised Black Panther head at the two guards, who flee in blind terror, screaming. The boys cut Niltci's bonds, leaving the thongs in place so the Indians will believe the panther itself carried him off, and the party escapes into the desert. Niltci insists it truly was Dsilyi's panther, and cannot be persuaded otherwise, which, Sid notes, makes the whole affair seem more miraculous and ensures no pursuit. The group rides through the night and across the open desert in a long, hard push to Lee's Ferry on the Colorado, using a carefully managed supply of water for horses and men. Crossing by the cable ferry, they establish camp on the Kaibab Plateau near the north rim of the Grand Canyon, in a forest of tall yellow pines with a spectacular view into the canyon. Major Hinchman's letter, delivered by a Navaho runner, arrives asking urgently for their help: the Black Panther has returned to Neyani's corral, the situation has worsened, and Neyani himself has been spirited away by the tribe. Sid plans to have Big John and Hinchman run the panther with the hounds while he and Scotty climb by lariat into Lost Canyon to ambush it there and dispose of the carcass in the pueblo's underground kiva, eliminating the medicine animal permanently. Before that mission departs, however, a cougar hunt on the canyon slopes — the party's first — ends in success. Scotty and Big John descend into the terrifying depths of the Grand Canyon in a chase that carries them over multiple rims and down sheer cliffs, finally trapping and shooting a large male cougar with Scotty's heavy rifle after a ferocious dog fight in which Ruler is badly torn. Meanwhile, Colonel Colvin and Sid, cut off from the main chase, find enormous grizzly bear tracks — fourteen inches long, suggesting a surviving specimen of the great California yellow grizzly. The Colonel insists this bear is his, since Sid had taken a grizzly in Montana years before. He keeps a lone vigil by a deer carcass used as bait. During the night the grizzly charges him, absorbing multiple rifle shots including a point-blank shot between the eyes and a heart shot without stopping, before striking the Colonel down with a raking blow that tears him from shoulder to knee and smashes his rifle. Niltci, who has followed, drives his knife into the bear's side. The bear delivers a back-hand swipe that shatters Niltci's leg. Both men lie unconscious among the boulders when Sid, riding to investigate, finds them. The great bear is dead. Sid fires the party's signal and nurses both patients while awaiting rescue. With the Colonel and Niltci installed together in camp to tend each other, and Niltci fashioned a pair of crutches, Scotty, Sid, and Big John prepare for the desert crossing back to Canyon Cheyo to deal finally with the Black Panther. The water supply is a serious concern. They fill every bag and canteen at the Colorado ferry, ride hard, and make a dry first camp in a gulch. During the night a sandstorm begins to build, and Big John and Sid get the horses under a sheltering rock wall and rig a tarp over their sleeping gear, carrying Scotty in his bag to safety under the improvised shelter.

By Warren H. Miller · First published 1956 · Genre: Adventure Fiction, Coming-of-Age Fiction, Western Fiction · 12 chapters · 62,782 words

First lines

Colonel Colvin sat in a great roomy armchair in the Colvin Trophy Den, puffing reminiscently at a short black pipe and gazing abstractedly into the flickering flames of glowing logs in the rugged stone fireplace that was the heart of the Den. Sid, his son, and Sid's chum, Scotty, were patching their cruiser moccasins with hand sewing-awls, the former now and then glancing over at his father anxiously.

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Native American · Navajo culture · wildlife · panthers · southwestern United States · adventure · nature · animals · folklore · mystery · predators · indigenous peoples

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The Black Panther of the Navaho is listed on Textopian as a novella by Warren H. Miller, dated 1956 CE.

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