It was as if something glided through brushwood.  He forgot to pray, and listened.  Now it sounded again, at a greater distance from him.  Only some animal could have produced the noise; a human being would either have come up to him if a friend, or kept absolutely still if a foe.  He looked and looked, and at last caught a glimpse of the panther’s yellowish fur gliding along the ground.  When a cat glides stealthily she is on the hunt.  His curiosity was fully aroused; he longed to see what the animal was hunting and how he would succeed.  Furthermore the panther is in the eyes of the Pueblo Indian the symbol of the greatest physical power.  A feeling overcame the old man as if this symbol was presenting itself to him at the very time when he needed the greatest moral strength himself; and the animal appeared like a living fetich, a hint from Those Above.  He followed the movements of the puma eagerly.  The tree where the turkeys sat stood near; he had heard their gobblings long ago without paying any attention to them.  But now they explained the movements of the gigantic cat; he was creeping up to the birds.  The puma approached the tree noiselessly; at its foot he laid down his head, and raised his tail, sweeping the ground with nervous force.  Now the beast of prey began to climb the trunk of the pine carefully and noiselessly.  He reached the lower branches and disappeared within their maze.  Then followed his spring; and the turkeys flew away, all but one.  With a tremendous leap the cat broke through the tree-top and down on the ground, with the wriggling bird in his jaws, and trotted off howling.

Topanashka had witnessed the performance with interest and with genuine pleasure.  He admired the strength and the swiftness of the animal hunter.  Unconsciously his thought turned back to the intended prayer, and he earnestly addressed it now to Those Above, that they might give to his heart the strength which the panther had shown in his limbs.  Placing two sticks on the ground before him and a stone over them, he rose to go.  But another sight met his eyes, and he stood still as if rooted to the soil, gazed and gazed.  His eyes opened wide, then his expression became dark and almost fierce.

On the clear space beyond the pines on which the puma had caught his prey, a woman sat near a cedar-bush; and in the shade of the bush a man rested.  The first glance convinced Topanashka that the man wore paint, and carried the accoutrements and weapons of a warrior.  It was not a warrior from the Rito; he was positive it could not be.  Nor was it a Navajo.  He undoubtedly belonged to some foreign tribe of village Indians, in all probability to the Tehuas.  What was he here for?  And what business had the woman in his company?  Indians in war-paint do not associate with women.  Topanashka strained his eyes, and recognized to his astonishment and dismay the woman Shotaye.