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.