The stretch of the San Juan River between Montezuma Creek and Bluff, Utah, reopened Saturday, four days after San Juan County Sheriff Mike Lacy ordered it closed to send in snipers searching for two suspected cop-killers.

Navajo Nation officials were again critical of the search effort thus far.

Navajo Nation Tribal Police Chief Leonard Butler said time and patience is needed to catch the suspects, not a massive manhunt that announces the presence of searchers.

He said he believes authorities have been thwarted because searchers are "telegraphing their presence" to the suspects with the use of aircraft, radios and armies of officers fanning out through canyons.

Butler said that the fugitives have plenty of time to hide in caves, crevices or the dense canyon underbrush before waiting for searchers to move on.

Butler said the tribe is committed to staying with the search until police find Pilon and McVean, even though it has already cost the Navajo Nation more than $300,000.

Residents and local river rafting companies resumed business or pleasure as usual on the river where the banks are partially scorched from an intentional fire police set Thursday in an effort to clear dense tamarisk and Russian olive trees.

Police suspected the two men were using the brush as camouflage and hoped fires would clear a way to search the banks. But the fires failed to flush the fugitives.

After five days of manhunt hype, there was quiet again among law enforcers, who are less than optimistic that the men are still in the area on the Navajo reservation. Lacy turned control of the manhunt over to the FBI Friday, and said he did so because the last sightings of the suspects were on Indian land.

FBI officials said Friday they will cut the manhunt back to an investigation, which will be conducted differently than the search effort by the local jurisdictions. But the FBI wasn’t working on any new leads Saturday.

Last week the manhunt took on a renewed sense of urgency after a young girl identified suspects Jason McVean, 26, of Durango, and Alan "Monte" Pilon, 30, of Dove Creek, as they tried to steal a water truck. Police quickly mobilized in Montezuma Creek and had high hopes of catching the men after finding footprints and hearing voices they believed belonged to the two men.

But even with scores of police back on the prowl and a controlled fire, Lacy and his squad came up empty-handed.

McVean and Pilon are wanted for killing a Cortez police officer and shooting three other sheriff’s deputies, two in Montezuma County and another in Bluff. A third suspect, Robert Mason, 26, of Durango, was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound June 4 near Bluff.