Back on the road, Hawk headed west, continuing on the rough wagon road for a distance he figured to be a reasonable gamble. When he came to a bend in the river that brought it within about a couple dozen yards of the road, he guided Rascal off the road and rode down along the water’s edge. It was a rough trail to ride, especially in some spots where rocks or trees extended out over the water, causing him to have to detour around them. Each time, he would get back to the water’s edge as soon as he could. After an hour or so, he determined that he had been wasting his time and tiring Rascal out needlessly. Ahead of him, the river cut through a high hill, leaving steep bluffs on each side. At the top of the bluff, he could see a large flock of buzzards circling over it. “Hell,” he said to Rascal, “I coulda seen that from the road.” He guided the buckskin up from the water and climbed the hill. When he reached the top of the hill, he suddenly pulled the gelding to a stop. “Another day or two, and I could smell it from the road,” he muttered when he discovered the grisly scene before him. The odor from the putrefying bodies caused him to pull his bandanna up to cover his mouth and nose.

He walked Rascal slowly through a grass-covered hilltop, surrounded by a thick belt of fir trees and strewn with the bodies of the late Quaker mule train. The magnitude of the vicious slaughter was beyond his belief in the depth of evil man was capable of. Adding to the revulsion of the scene was the raucous squawking of the competing vultures as they fought over the rotting feast. Riding close to the edge of the steep bluff, he could see where Donald and the others had been forced over the edge to drop fifty feet or more to the river below. He turned to look back toward the road but could see no sign of it through the thick trees. He continued to slow-walk Rascal around the circle, looking for any sign that might tell him which way the killers left the hilltop. The only obvious path was the one where the mule train had entered the circle. He followed that down the hill to the road, where he prepared to wait for Conner and the wagon to show up. There were tracks that told of the meeting between the killers and the Quaker party where they were stopped on the road, then climbed the hill on the path he had just come down. He could not understand how the patrol sent out from Fort Benton had not found the tracks he was looking at. He could only assume they had not continued their search for very long, perhaps not riding as far down the road to Great Falls as Lieutenant Sessions had said.