Every man sprang to arms and was at his post.

Kit Carson had anticipated everything and had attended to the most minute details.
With firm self-confident tread the savages came on, a thousand in number, to crush by the weight of their onset, and to trample beneath their feet sixty trappers.

It was an appalling sight even for brave men to look upon.
They were all arrayed in their fantastic war costume, some on horseback splendidly mounted, some on foot, many armed with rifles, and others with bows, arrows, and lances which were very formidable weapons in the hands of such stalwart and sinewy men.
They came in separate bands, of two or three hundred each, and took position about a mile from the fort.

As band after band came up, the prairie and the adjacent hills resounded with their yells of defiance.

In the evening they held their war-dance, which the trappers well understood to be the sure precursor of the battle on the next day.