After four days’ scouting the Mexicans returned with the information that they found the Indians had left their camp on the Jemez road after their defeat.  They had struck straight through the hills for the Rio Grande, where they joined the main body, the same which had attacked us the day after our arrival in the valleys, and which had recently made several successful raids on the flocks and herds near Pena Blanca and Galisteo.

It was the guide’s opinion that the party which had besieged me in the cabin had been to the valleys to see what chance there was of running captured stock through there.  Their report must have been favorable, for Cordova said a detachment of forty-seven Navajos was now encamped in Los Vallecitos, apparently intending to pass us the following night with a large number of cattle, horses, mules, and sheep.

I began at once to make preparations to retake the stolen stock and to capture the Navajos.

That the Navajos, if they were watching our movements, might not surmise we knew of their presence near us, I ordered the scouting party and huntsmen not to go out next morning, and all the men to keep within the limits of the parade.

The next evening I marched all the company, except the guard, including the boy corporals, by way of the reserved trail into the valley of St. Anthony, and entered La Puerta from the western end.  This was done for fear some advance-guard of the redmen might witness our movement if we went by the usual way, and because so large a party might leave a trail visible to the keenly observant enemy even by starlight, and there would be moonlight before we could cross the valley.

It was my intention to make an ambush in La Puerta.  In the narrowest part of that canon, where it was barely fifty yards wide, the walls rose perpendicularly on each side.  A hundred yards east and west of this narrowest portion of the pass were good places of concealment.  I placed Sergeant Cunningham and thirteen men at the western end, and took as many and the boys with me to the eastern.

The sergeant was instructed to keep his men perfectly quiet until the head of the herd had passed their place of concealment, and then, under cover of the noise made by the moving animals, to slip down into the canon, and when the rear of the herd came up make a dash across the front of the Indians and begin firing, taking care not to hit us.

For myself, I intended to drop into the pass with my detachment when the Navajo rear had passed, deploy, and bag the whole party and the booty.

It was a long and tiresome wait before the raiders appeared.  The men had been told that they might sleep, and many of them had availed themselves of the permission.

The moon rose soon after ten o’clock, and made our surroundings plainly visible in the rarefied atmosphere peculiar to the arid region of the plains and Rockies.  I sat on a bowlder and watched through the tedious hours until three o’clock, when Corporal Frank approached from the direction of the place where his brother was sleeping.