shoulder to shoulder, then advanced from the four sides of the square, and some, shaking a rattle-drum in time with their steps, commenced a jumping, jerking dance, now lifting one foot from the ground, and now rising with both, accompanying the dance with a chant, which swelled from a low whisper to the utmost extent of their voices—now dying away, and again bursting into vociferous measure. Thus they advanced to the center and retreated to their former positions; when six squaws, with their faces painted a dead black, made their appearance from the crowd, chanting, in soft and sweet measure, a lament for the braves the nation had lost in the late battle: but soon as they drew near the scalp-pole, their melancholy note changed to the music (to them) of gratified revenge. In a succession of jumps, raising the feet alternately but a little distance from the ground, they made their way, through an interval left in the circle of warriors, to the grim pole, and encircling it, danced in perfect silence round it for a few moments. Then they burst forth with an extempore song, laudatory of the achievements of their victorious braves. They addressed the scalps as "sisters" (to be called a squaw is the greatest insult that can be offered to an Indian), and, spitting at them, upbraided them with their rashness in leaving their lodges to seek for Yuta husbands; "that the Yuta warriors and young men despised them, and chastised them for their forwardness and presumption, bringing back their scalps to their own women."
After sufficiently proving that they had anything but lost the use of their tongues, but possessed, on the contrary, as fair a length of that formidable weapon as any of their sex, they withdrew, and left the field in undisputed possession of the men; who, accompanied by tap of drum, and by the noise of many rattles, broke out into a war-song, in which their own valor was by no means hidden in a bushel, or modestly refused the light of day. After this came the more interesting ceremony of a warrior "counting his coups." 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 seated 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 told 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 honor 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, pointing 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 Yutas, Killbuck and La Bonté remained during the winter; and when the spring sun had opened the icebound 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 broke 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 thought of camping, they observed ahead of them a solitary horseman * riding along, followed by three mules. His hunting-frock of fringed buckskin, and the rifle resting across the horn of his saddle, at once proclaimed him white; but as he saw the mountaineers winding through the canon, 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; two to one in mountain calculation being scarcely considered odds, if red skin to white.
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