“Bear or cougar, what he wanted was horse flesh!” muttered the boy to himself as he started his fire. “Let’s see; the Navaho hogans are not so far from here, up near the head of the Canyon to the east. That’s about eight miles. Suppose this brute was that freak panther that we heard about at Hinchman’s? Of course, it was dark and I _might_ have been fooled, but he _was_ black, whatever the thing might have been. It couldn’t have been black bear, or I’d have noted his ears. This thing _had_ no ears,--and it looked catty! By George--suppose it _is_ the Black Panther! The black leopards of the East are always larger and heavier than the spotted and clouded kinds, so this fellow must be an old Tom cougar, a lover of horse, deer and sheep. What’s to prevent him coming back and getting Pinto before I can wake up to shoot him?” Sid puzzled a long while over what to do, as he squatted before his fire broiling a slab of venison from the haunch. He munched at it and then washed down a liberal help of pinole with brook water, still undecided. There did not seem to be any solution for this particular difficulty. “Well, there’s one thing about it--Pinto’s as good as a watch dog,” said Sid to himself. “He’ll stay up all night, munching grass, if I know horses,” he laughed, “and he’d sense that cougar around long before I could.... I’ve got it!” he cried, slapping at his knee delightedly. He pulled up the picket pin and drove it in again under the spruces beside the bed of dry needles among some rock hummocks that he had selected for a sleeping place for himself. Then he retied the lariat, so that there was a short length left over, and this he fastened to his bed roll. “There!” he exclaimed. “If Sir Black Panther comes, Pinto’ll plunge and rear and pull out his pin, all in about one jump. Then the lariat will yank the bed out from under me--enough to wake up a dead man--and I ought to be up and shooting mighty sudden!” With that he leaned the rifle handy against a spruce and rolled up in his blankets on the needle bed. The last sound that drifted to his ears was the steady munching of Pinto, as unending as the murmur of the rill in the ravine.