The sight was frightfully suggestive: pieces of harness, band boxes, trunks, strips of blood stained clothing, and fragments of the carriage attested the untamable ferocity of the Apaches who had swooped down on the doomed party like a cyclone.
From that point the trail was taken and the infuriated mountaineers urged their steeds to the utmost, knowing the value of every hour and that in the case of a fight with the Indians a surprise is half the battle.
Day after day the pursuit was maintained until nearly two weeks had gone by, before the first glimpse of a warrior was obtained.

The trail was one of the worst imaginable, and, had the pursuers been less skilful, they would have been baffled almost from the first.

At certain points, the Apaches would break up into parties of two or three that would take different routes, reuniting at some place many miles beyond where water was known to be.

This was done repeatedly, with a view of disconcerting any avengers who might take their trail, and it is a tribute to the ability of the mountaineers that the cunning artifice failed, so far as they were concerned, of its purpose.
At last the Apaches were descried in the distance.

Carson was the first to discover them, he being some distance in advance.