The savages, seeing the impossibility of immediately gathering and mounting their horses for flight, cunningly sent a flag of truce to solicit a parley.

According to their custom, this flag consisted of one of their warriors advancing entirely unarmed, half-way to the opposing band.

There he stopped, and folding his arms, waited for some one of the other party similarly weaponless, to come forward to confer with him.
These savage thieves manifested a degree of intelligence in their cunning, which was hardly to have been expected of them.

Through their interpreter they assumed an air of perfect innocence, affecting great surprise that the horses belonged to the trappers, saying that they supposed that they had been robbing their hereditary foes, the Snake Indians.
"Nothing would induce us," said these barbarian diplomatists, "to commit any depredations upon our friends the white men." Such barefaced falsehood did not, for a moment, deceive Kit Carson.

But it was needful for him to move with great caution.