to the area along the Pease River, where his scouts reported a fairly large hunting party and camp on the banks. With an oncoming blue norther blotting out sign, Ross moved close to the location of Peta Nocona's Kwahadi on the Mule Creek head bank. Ross sent a detachment of 20 men, of his force of 60, to position themselves behind a chain of sand hills to cut off retreat to the northwest. With the remaining 40 men, Ross led the charge into the Indian camp. The band was taken completely by surprise, and its members were massacred, either shot down where they stood or were killed by the 20 men to the north as they attempted to flee in that direction. The American forces shot the men, women, and children indiscriminately. Sul Ross wrote, quoted in Indian Depredations, by J. W. Wilbarger, that they fired at everyone present. The attack was so sudden that a considerable number were killed before they could prepare for defense. They fled precipitately right into the presence of the sergeant and his men. Here they met with a warm reception, and finding themselves completely encompassed, everyone fled his own way, and was hotly pursued and hard pressed. Two distinct versions of Peta Nocona's death are given. The first is that he died trying to escape with his wife and infant daughter, which is the generally believed account, and the one officially reported by Sul Ross. Seeing that the camp was hopelessly overrun, Chief Peta Nocona and his wife Cynthia Ann fled to the east up a creek bed. Reportedly, mounted behind Peta Nocona was a 15-year-old Mexican girl, while Cynthia Ann carried her two-year-old child, Topasannah. Captain Ross and his lieutenant, Tom Killiheir, pursued the man they believed to be Peta Nocona. Accounts vary as to what happened. Captain Ross, who was acclaimed a hero for the deed, claimed and probably honestly believed that he had caught and killed Peta Nacona, but in the melee, he pursued and shot a former Peta Nocona Mexican slave, whose Comanche name was Nobah, who was trying to save the fleeing Comanche women. Quanah Parker, the chief's oldest son, once reportedly said in Dallas to Sul Ross, "No kill my father; he not there. I want to get it straight here in Texas history. After that, two year, three year maybe, my father sick. I see him die."