Moreover, there was no danger of their hitting upon 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 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 direction. At this moment the Indians were in deliberation. 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 upwards and away from him as medicine to the Great Spirit, before he himself inhaled the fragrant kin-nik-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 equipments. * 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." 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 the trappers killed the preceding night; and underneath them, affixed to the same spear, was the mystic medicine-bag, by which Killbuck knew that the band before him was under the command of the chief of the tribe.