They overtook the merchants just before they had reached the spot where their lives were to be taken.  Fox was at once arrested.  Messrs. Weatherhead and Brevoort were astounded when informed of the peril from which they had been rescued.  Fox was carried back to Santa Fe and placed in jail.  The merchants were entrusted to the care of fifteen men who could be relied upon.  The rest of the gang were ordered immediately to leave the camp.  Though their guilty designs were unquestioned, they would be difficult of proof.  The grateful merchants offered Kit Carson a large sum of money for his heroic and successful efforts to save their lives.  He replied: 

“It is a sufficient reward for me to have been instrumental in saving the lives of two worthy citizens.  I can not think of receiving one cent of money.”

They all met that night gratefully and joyously, around their camp fires.  With the exception of the guilty wretches who had been plotting murder, all were very happy.  The emotions excited were too deep to allow of jollity.  Indeed Kit Carson was never a jolly man.  He had no taste for revelry.  As in every man of deep reflection and true greatness, the pensive element predominated in his character.

It was a brilliant night, calm, serene and starlight.  As Carson lay awake at midnight, thanking God for what he had been enabled to accomplish, it must have been an hour of sublimity to him, such as is rarely experienced on earth.  While most of the numerous party were sleeping soundly around him, nothing could be heard but the howling of packs of prairie wolves, and the heavy tread of the guards, as they walked their beats.

We can not doubt that Mr. Carson was in heart thoroughly a religious man.  It is the element of religion alone, which, in the midst of such temptations, could form a character of such remarkable purity.  He was too reticent to speak of his own feelings and there were but few, if any, of the thoughtless men around him who could appreciate his Christian emotions.

Messrs. Brevoort and Weatherhead made a graceful acknowledgment of their obligations to Mr. Carson for the invaluable service which he had rendered them.  In the following spring they presented him with a pair of magnificent revolvers.  Upon the silver mountings there was engraved a brief narrative of his heroic achievement.  Mr. Carson on his return to Razado, found pleasant and constant employment in carrying on his farm and providing many hungry mouths with game.  His hospitable home was ever crowded with guests.

Early in the summer he set out with Mr. Maxwell and a large train of wagons, for the States.  Leaving his animals and wagons on the Kansas frontier, he descended the river to St. Louis in a steamboat.  Here he purchased a large stock of goods, and reascending the river, transferred them to his caravan.  He then started with his long train to return to New Mexico.  His route was through the rich pasturage to be found on the way to Bent’s Fort.  Just before reaching the ford of the Arkansas, he fell in with an encampment of Cheyenne warriors.  They were greatly and justly exasperated by an outrage inflicted upon them by a preceding party of United States recruits.  Kit Carson, though unconscious of this, perceived at once that something was wrong.  These Indians had been very friendly.