ed: for their smoke was rising in
thick columns, part of it falling again to the earth. Around the fires,
and through the smoke, flitted the forms of the Indians. They appeared
to be cooking and feasting. Some of them staggering over the ground,
kept up an incessant babble--at intervals varying their talk with savage
whoops. Others danced around accompanying their leaps with the
monotonous "hi-hi-hi-ya." All appeared to have partaken freely of the
fire-water of Taos. A few more seriously disposed were grouped around
four or five prostrate forms--evidently the bodies of their slain. The
two we had shot from their horses must have been amongst these: since
they were no longer to be seen where they had fallen. Those around the
bodies stood hand in hand chanting the dismal death-song.

Not far from the fires, a group fixed my attention. It consisted of
three figures--all in attitudes as different as it was possible to place
them in. He who lay along the ground, upon his back, was the young
hunter Wingrove. He still wore his fringed buckskin shirt and leggings;
and by these I recognised him. He was at too great a distance for his
features to be distinguished. He appeared to be bound hand and foot--
with his ankles lashed together, and his wrists tied behind his back.
He was thus lying upon his arms, in an irksome position; but the
attitude showed that he was alive. I knew it already.

Some half-dozen paces from him was a second form, difficult to be
recognised as that of a human being--though it was one. It was the body
of Jephthah Bigelow. Its very oddness of shape enabled me to identify
it--odder from the attitude in which I now beheld it. It was lying flat
along the grass, face downward, the long ape-like legs and arms
stretched out to their full extent--both as to length and width--and
radiating from the thin trunk, like spokes from the nave of a wheel!
Viewing it from my elevated position, this attitude appeared all the
more ludicrous; though it was easy to perceive that it was not
voluntary. The numerous pegs standing up from the sward, and the cords
attached to them, and leading to the arms and limbs, showed that the
_spread-eagle_ position was a constrained one. That it was Sure-shot, I
had no doubt. The spare locks of clay-coloured hair were playing about
in the breeze; and some remnants of bottle-green still clung around his
limbs. But without these, the spider-like frame was too characteristic