Scarcely was this work completed, when a band of five hundred Indians was seen approaching.  As usual, they stopped at a short distance from the fortified camp, and a few of the warriors, laying aside their arms and expressing by words and gestures the utmost friendliness, came forward and were admitted into the camp.  They were followed by others.  Soon there were enough stalwart savages there easily to overpower, in a hand-to-hand fight, the feeble garrison of but six men.  Carson’s suspicions were excited, and watching their movements with an eagle eye, he soon discovered that they all had concealed weapons.

Without the slightest apparent alarm he quietly summoned his men, with their rifles, into one corner of the enclosure.  Then in his usual soft voice he directed each man to take deliberate aim at some one of the prominent chiefs.  He himself presented the muzzle of his rifle within a few yards of the head of the leader of the now astonished and affrighted party.  This was all the work of a moment.  Then calmly he said to the leader, “leave this fort instantly or you are dead men.”  A moment of hesitation on their part, a word of parleying would have been followed by the simultaneous discharge of the rifles, and six of the warriors at least, would have been numbered with the dead.  In a moment the fort was cleared, and the savages did not stop until they had got beyond the reach of rifle bullets.

One of these Indians could speak Spanish.  Thus Kit Carson again found the inestimable advantage of his winter’s studies in the cabin of Kin Cade.  The Indians, five hundred in number, might easily, at the expense of the loss of a few lives, have overpowered the white men, and seized all their animals and their goods.  But Carson well knew their habits, and that they would never hazard a contest where they must with certainty expect a number of their own warriors to be slain.  Friendly relations were opened with the Indians, only two or three being admitted to the fort at a time.  The animals were tethered in the rich herbage within the protection of their rifles and were carefully watched, night and day.

In a few days the men who had left the camp on a trapping expedition, returned.  The whole united company then followed down the south bank of the Colorado, setting their traps every night, until they reached its tide waters.  From that point they struck over east to the river Gila, and trapped up the western banks of that river until they reached the mouth of the San Pedro, a distance of more than two hundred miles.

Their animals now were very heavily laden with furs, and they were in great need of more beasts of burden.  The following is the account which is given of the manner in which they obtained a supply.  It certainly looks very suspicious.  It is not improbable that the Indians, had they any historians, would give a very different version of the story.