Killbuck now learned that a scout having brought intelligence that the two band's of Rapa-hos were hastening to form a junction, as soon as they learned that their approach was discovered, the Yutas had successfully prevented it; and attacking one party, had entirely defeated it, killing thirteen of the Rapaho braves. The other party had fled on seeing the issue of the fight, and a few of the Yuta warriors were now pursuing them. To celebrate so signal a victory, great preparations sounded their notes through the village. Paints--vermilion and ochres, red and yellow--were in great request; whilst the scrapings of charred wood, mixed with gunpowder, were used as substitute for black, the medicine color. The lodges of the village, numbering some two hundred or more, were erected in parallel lines, and covered a large space of the level prairie in shape of a parallelogram. In the center, however, the space which half-a-dozen lodges in length would have taken up was left unoccupied, save by one large one, of red-painted buffalo-skins, tattooed with the mystic totems of the medicine peculiar to the nation. In front of this stood the grim scalp-pole, like a decayed tree-trunk, its bloody fruit tossing in the wind; and on another pole, at a few feet distance, was hung the bag with its mysterious contents. Before each lodge a tripod of spears supported the arms and shields of the Yuta chivalry, and on many of them smoke-dried scalps rattled in the wind, former trophies of the dusky knights who were arming themselves within. Heraldic devices were not wanting--not, however, graved upon the shield, but hanging from the spear-head, the actual totem of the warrior it distinguished. The rattlesnake, the otter, the carcajou, the mountain badger, the war-eagle, the konqua-kish, the porcupine, the fox, &c., dangled their well-stuffed skins, displaying the guardian medicine of the warriors they pertained to, and representing the mental and corporeal qualities which were supposed to characterize the braves to whom they belonged. From the center lodge, two or three medicinemen, fantastically attired in the skins of wolves and bears, and bearing long peeled wands of cherry in their hands, occasionally emerged to tend a very small fire which they had kindled in the center of the open space; and when a thin column of smoke arose, one of them planted the scalp-pole obliquely across the fire. Squaws in robes of white dressed buckskin, garnished with beads and porcupines' quills, and their faces painted bright red and black, then appeared. These ranged themselves round the outside of the square, the boys and children of all ages, mounted on barebacked horses, galloping round and round, and screaming with eagerness, excitement, and curiosity.