The Indians seemed to have established a camp at some secluded place in the timber of the Divide, from which they went out in small parties in every direction, killing and robbing when opportunity offered. Every day during these two weeks, Indians were seen at various places on the Divide and the eastern part of the county. By this time, however, our people had taken their families out of danger and were so constantly on the alert that the Indians, while having many opportunities for looting and robbing the deserted ranches, had few chances for surprising and killing defenseless people, who were the only ones they cared to attack. Throughout the raid, those who had been able to make any kind of a defense had been let alone. The Indians seemed unwilling to take any chances or to waste their ammunition, unless they were certain of results.
A week or two after the beginning of the Indian troubles, the people of El Paso County took steps to form a military company to be regularly employed against the Indians, its members to serve without pay. It was the intention to keep this company in the field until the Indians were driven out of the region. About the fifteenth of September, eighty mounted and well-armed men, who had enlisted for the purpose, and of whom I was one, met at Husted's saw-mill on the Divide and perfected a military organization by the election of the usual company officers, A. J. Templeton being elected captain. The company took up its line of march through the pinery to Bijou Basin; thence eastward past the place where Simpson's party had been besieged two or three weeks before. After examining with much interest the scene of this fight, we went southeasterly to Big Sandy Creek, thence down the valley of that creek to Lake Station on the Smoky Hill wagon road, about ten miles east of the present town of Limon. On our march we saw no Indians, and, judging from their trails and from other indications, we decided that they were leaving the country. As we marched down the valley of the Big Sandy, in the vicinity of the present towns of Ramah and Calhan, we saw hundreds of dead cattle, most of them cows that had been killed by the Indians only a day or two before. That these cattle had been wantonly killed, was shown by the fact that no part of the animals had been taken for food. In almost every instance they had been shot with arrows, many of which were at the time sticking in the carcasses. Besides the dead cattle, we saw hundreds of live ones scattered all over the hills and down the valley, which had evidently been driven off by the Indians from the ranches in El Paso and the surrounding counties. At a point about ten miles down the valley from the present station of Limon, on the Rock Island Railway, the trail of the Indians left the valley and turned northeastward. At this place we were about seventy-five miles southwest from the Beecher Island battle ground, on the Arickaree fork of the Republican River, where Colonel George A. Forsyth and his fifty followers were at that very time making their heroic defense against an overwhelming number of Indians under the command of the famous chief Roman Nose, although we knew nothing of the affair until some time later. The trail of the Indians led across the country in a direct line toward the battle ground. No doubt they had been summoned by runners to aid their people, and probably this was the reason for their leaving El Paso County.