A young brave, with his face painted black, mounted on a white horse mysteriously marked with red clay, and naked to the breech clout, holding in his hand a long taper lance, rode into the circle, and paced slowly round it; then, flourishing his spear on high, he darted to the scalp-pole, round which the warriors were now sitting in a semicircle; and in a loud voice, and with furious gesticulations, related his exploits, the drums tapping at the conclusion of each. On his spear hung seven scalps, and holding it vertically above his head, and commencing with the top one, he narrated the feats in which he had raised the trophy hair. When he had run through these, the drums tapped loudly, and several of the old chiefs shook their rattles, in corroboration of the truth of his achievements. The brave, swelling with pride, then pointed to the fresh and bloody scalps hanging on the pole. Two of these had been torn from the heads of Rapahos struck by his own hand, and this feat, _the_ exploit of the day, had entitled him to the honour of counting his coups. Then, sticking his spear into the ground by the side of the pole, he struck his hand twice on his brawny and naked chest, turned short round, and, swift as the antelope, galloped into the plain: as if overcome by the shock his modesty had received in being obliged to recount his own high-sounding deeds. "Wagh!" exclaimed old Killbuck, as he left the circle, and pointed his pipe-stem towards the fast-fading figure of the brave, "that Injun's heart's about as big as ever it will be, I'm thinking." With the Yutes, Killbuck and La Bonté remained during the winter; and when the spring sun had opened the ice-bound creeks, and melted the snow on the mountains; and its genial warmth had expanded the earth and permitted the roots of the grass to "live" once more, and throw out green and tender shoots, the two trappers bade adieu to the hospitable Indians, who were breaking up their village in order to start for the valleys of the Del Norte. As they followed the trail from the bayou, at sundown, just as they were thinking of camping, they observed ahead of them a solitary horseman riding along, followed by three mules. His hunting-frock of fringed buckskin, and rifle resting across the horn of his saddle, at once proclaimed him white; but as he saw the mountaineers winding through the cañon, driving before them half a dozen horses, _he_ judged they might possibly be Indians and enemies, the more so as their dress was not the usual costume of the whites. The trappers, therefore, saw the stranger raise the rifle in the hollow of his arm, and, gathering up his horse, ride steadily to meet them, as soon as he observed they were but two; and two to one in mountain calculation are scarcely considered odds, if red skin to white.