IN THE OLD WEST 57 



Moreover, there was no danger of their hitting up- 

 on his trail, for he had been careful to pick his steps 

 on the rock-covered ground, so that not a track 

 of his moccasin was visible. Here he lay, still as 

 a carcajou in wait for a deer, only now and then 

 shaking the boughs as his body quivered with a 

 suppressed chuckle, when any movement in the 

 Indian camp caused him to laugh inwardly at his 

 (if they had known it) unwelcome propinquity. 

 He was not a little surprised, however, to discover 

 that the party was much smaller than he had im- 

 agined, counting only forty warriors; and this 

 assured him that the band had divided, one half 

 taking the Yuta trail by the Boiling Spring, the 

 other (the one before him) taking a longer cir- 

 cuit in order to reach the Bayou, and make the 

 attack on the Yutas, in a different direction. 



At this moment the Indians were in delibera- 

 tion. Seated in a large circle round a very small 

 fire,* the smoke from which ascended in a thin 

 straight column, they each in turn puffed a huge 

 cloud of smoke from three or four long cherry- 

 stemmed pipes, which went the round of the 

 party ; each warrior touching the ground with the 

 heel of the pipe-bowl, and turning the stem up- 

 wards and away from him as medicine to the Great 



* There is a great difference between an Indian's fire and 

 a white's. The former places the ends of logs to burn 

 gradually; the latter, the center, besides making such a 

 bonfire that the Indians truly say, " The white makes a 

 fire so hot that he cannot approach to warm himself by it" 



