34 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



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 carcagien in wait for a deer, only now and then shak- 

 ing 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 imagined, 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 circuit in order to reach the 

 Bayou, and make the attack on the Yutas in a different direc- 

 tion. 



At this moment the Indians were in deliberation. Seated in a 

 large circle round a very small fire,* the smoke from which as- 

 cended 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 upward and 

 away from him as " medicine" to the Great Spirit, before he him- 

 self inhaled the fragrant kinnik-kinnik. The council, however, 

 was not general, for only fifteen of the older warriors took part in 

 it, the others sitting outside and at some little distance from the 

 circle. Behind each were his arms — bow and quiver, and shield 

 hanging from a spear stuck in the ground, and a few guns in 

 ornamented covers of buckskin were added to some of the equip- 

 ments. 



Near the fire, and in the center of the inner circle, a spear was 

 fixed upright in the ground, and on this dangled the four scalps of 



* 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 traly say, " The white makes a fire so hot 

 that he can not approach to warm himself by it." 



