Fossett formed his men in columns of four and came out of the ravine at a gallop, riding for the horse herd grazing in the distance. AS the Confederates closed, the Indian herders spotted them and stampeded the 7,000 horses toward their camp. The Confederates, spurring hard, yelling, and firing wildly, descended on the herd and turned it just before it crossed the creek. The fifteen herders dove from their horses into the brush to hide, taking a few casualties in the process. I.D. Ferguson later commented wryly on the first part of the action: “I was mad at my bad luck not to get to kill an Indian and thought that they would all be killed and I would not get a shot at them. . . but I soon learned that the boys had not killed all the Indians, that there were plenty left for me to kill, and I had all day in which to do it. . . I had all the killing I could attend to, and I would have been glad to have turned the job over to someone else, but every man had a like business of his own. So I had to try to hold my job down the very best I could.”

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Captain Jack Cureton’s militia company, which was attached to the Regulars, and the four Tonkawas drove the horse herd about 1,000 yards west of the battlefield where they held most of it for the rest of the day. Fortunately as it turned out, Cureton ordered the Tonkawas to cut out 250 head and take them some miles to the north.

Just as the horses were secure, Fossett observed Totton’s militia dismounting to cross Dove Creek on foot, their horses being “too jaded” to stand up to a charge. To cut off the Indians’ retreat when Totton hit them, Fossett dispatched seventy-five Confederates under Lieutenant J.A. Brooks to the hill south of the camp. Here, the soldiers had a perfect view of the attack.

The militia captains waded into he knee-deep creek followed by their men. Not a shot was fired. They scrambled up the bank and entered the thicket along three or four trails. The men on the hill said the silence was unearthly. As the militia filed into the center of the seemingly deserted camp, they could not see the 400 or 500 braves lying in wait for them. Without warning, the brush and high weeds erupted in flames, as the warriors poured shot after shot into them from their new Enfield rifles. The curtain of silence was rent by a crescendo of noise: Wounded and dying men screamed, Indians yelled, dogs barked, and the roar of the Enfields deafened the trapped men in the close-packed clearing. Slow-drifting clouds of acrid, black-powder smoke hung in the damp morning air obscuring the well-hidden warriors even more. The surviving militiamen fled like rabbits back down the narrow trails with 100 of the braves pursuing them. Many in their fear threw down their weapons to lighten their loads. Hand to hand fighting broke out briefly as the stragglers were overtaken, overpowered, and finally butchered. The mass of Totton’s men clawed through the briars along the east side of the creek, stumbling and falling down the bank before rushing wildly through the icy water for the safety of the far side. They did not stop to offer covering fire for their comrades. They did not stop at all, even at the shouts and threats of their surviving officers. In act, they did not stop until their mad scramble had taken them three miles north to Spring Creek. In minutes they had suffered at least eighteen dead–including Captains Gillitine, Barnes, and Culver–and fourteen wounded. Totally demoralized, they could not be forced back on to the field to aid the remaining Confederates for the rest of the day.

Just as the slaughter of the militiamen began, Lieutenant Brooks and his force charged down the steep hill in the Indians’ rear, leaving six men holding the horses. About halfway down the incline, the Regulars met a wall of fire that drove them back. Along with two men wounded, twelve of their mounts were killed on the spot. Brooks could see that the last thing he had to worry about was the Indians escaping. Trying the dodge the Enfield bullets, he shouted for the men who had lost horses to double mount those that were left and rejoin Fossett’s command before they were cut off.

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