Arrived, they line up, each man with an arrow on his bow-string which he points successively to the six regions of the world without letting it fly. As they march toward the mesa-“altar” where the leader has seen hikuli as a “deer,” each man shoots two arrows each over five hikuli plants, crossing over their tops that they may be taken “alive.” They make a ceremonial circuit of the mesa, but the “deer” assumes the form of a whirlwind and disappears, leaving two hikuli in his tracks; there they sacrifice votive bowls, arrows, paper flowers, beads, etc., and pray. After this they return to get their five hikuli, and eat and gather others. The whole ceremony is of hunting deer, and after five days they reverse the logs of their fireplace and return home with gourds of holy water, wood for the shaman’s rasp, sotol for the “godseats,” yellow paint material and the hikuli they have gathered. Their tobacco-gourds and faces are painted yellow, the color of the God of Fire. The face-painting represents the faces or masks of the gods, and expresses prayers for rain, luck in deer-hunting and good crops, symbolized as corn field, cloud, ear of corn, “rain-serpent,” squash-vine and -flower designs.[31] Approaching home, they must hunt deer until they have enough for the feast, before being freed from the ritual restrictions of continence, fasting, and non-use of salt, meanwhile being sustained by slices of green hikuli eaten from time to time. The deer meat is cooked and then cut into small cubes which are strung (precisely as peyote is) on cords.[32] The deer-killing is to obtain rain for the next growing season.[33] The hunting period over, men and women bathe for the first time since the beginning of the hikuli-pilgrimage. For the hikuli feast the men deck their hats lavishly with brilliant macao and hawk feathers, and wear supernumerary girdle-pouches; the women wear strings of yellow and red plumes across the back. A temple fire, another at the east of the patio to “guard” the dancers, and a third at the north for visitors from the underworld are built in a special fashion: the shaman carefully brings an eighteen-inch billet of green wood, offers it to five directions and finally to the sixth by placing it on the ground, after which others place sticks pointing east and west on this molitáli or “pillow” of Grandfather Fire.[34]