When I stepped into the house Mrs. Davis pointed to the dead bodies and said:  “Captain, if you will avenge their death I will be a friend to you as long as I live.”  I told her that I would do all I could, that I was in a great hurry to get on the trail of the perpetrators, and I would like her to give me all the information she could relative to the matter.

She then led the way into a private room and related the whole circumstance, telling me how the Indians had come there, decoyed her husband and two sons to the barn and there shot them down, then rushed to the house, and before the inmate had time to shut and bar the door, came into the house, caught and tied her to the bed post, and then disgraced her three daughters in her presence.  Then they gathered up all the horses and cattle about the ranch and drove them across the desert.

In the direction she said they had started it was eighty-four miles to water, but I did not believe for a moment that they would attempt to cross the desert in that direction.

After I had gained all the information I could, I said:  “Mrs. Davis, those were not Indians, but Greasers or Mexicans, and I will capture them before twenty-four hours if I live.”

I started one man back to camp to tell Lieut.  Jackson to take the trail direct for Aw-wa-col-i-enthy, which in English means hot water, (Agua Caliente).

Lieut.  Jackson had become over anxious as soon as we left and had started after us with one company of cavalry.  My messenger met him five miles from the Davis ranch, and there he turned in the direction of Agua Caliente.

In starting out from the ranch I took the trail of the stock, and after we had gone quite a distance I called George to my side and told him it was not Indians we were following, but a crowd of cut-throat Greasers, and we didn’t want to have a fight with them until the soldiers arrived if we could help it, but that we would fight them before we would allow them to escape.

I had never told George until now what all they had done, and when I related to him the whole affair he said:  “We will not allow one of them to escape.”  We could see that they were turning in the direction of Agua Caliente and had made this circuit merely to throw any one off that might attempt to follow.

This was what I thought when I dispatched the Lieutenant to come to Hot Springs.

It was twenty-seven miles straight through on the road from the Davis ranch to Agua Caliente, but the way we went that night we supposed it was about forty miles, making sixty miles that we had to ride that night, while the soldiers if they started direct from camp would only have to travel thirty-five miles.

Finally the trail made a direct turn for Agua Caliente and I again “telegraphed” the Lieutenant to hurry up with all possible speed and try to reach the place before daylight, my object being to catch them in camp, as our horses would be too tired to run them down after they were mounted on fresh horses.