Hank Elmore drove on toward Blossom Range, having added interesting details and additions to the story he meant to tell there, while the sheriff and his posse set off across the hills by the shortest route, the Ute village their objective point.
In spite of the fact that some of them were unmounted they made good progress, not being hampered by the necessity of picking up and following an obscure trail.
The time was past noon when the Ute village was approached. Afar off they had heard Indian howling.
A quarter of a mile from the village, when they were most unsuspecting, they were struck by a blind charge of warriors, of a kind they had never experienced or heard of, and for which they were totally unprepared. Shepard had expected to walk up to the village, summon Iron Bow, demand Benson, then search the tepees, as he had done before.
Instead came this wild charge, the Ute warriors rising out of a nest of rocks and pouring down on the posse without warning. They were led by a small painted and feathered figure and a very giant of a man who seemed more like a wild animal than a man, though he also wore Indian paint and feathers. Iron Bow was there, too, transformed into an Indian maniac.
The screeching braves did not stop even when revolvers were emptied at them. Rushing on the horsemen, they caught them by the legs and pulled them bodily to the ground. They seemed in a fanatical rage. The falling men were shot and hatcheted. Those who at first, in fright, pulled their horses round, got away. The others fell, dead or wounded, or captured. Not even the horses were spared; for when there seemed no white men to kill the Utes began to slay the animals. It was not a rout, it was annihilation.
Matt Shepard had been shot from his horse, a bullet passing through his body; but he still lived when he struck the ground, and did not lose consciousness.
With such horror as he had never felt, he witnessed the terrible massacre of his followers. A groan which the sight drew from him told the warriors that he was not dead. One of the braves, thereupon, jumped at him with a lance, to run him through.
But the small painted chief, whom Shepard had noticed at the beginning of the charge, leaped in, caught the lance, and turned its point aside, so that it drove into the ground; then he shouted angrily to the other Indians, who were crowding round to finish the white prisoner.
When it seemed that the Utes would kill Shepard, the small man, yelling something, pulled a whisky bottle from beneath his blanket and flung it out from him.