Warning was at once sent to every family living down the Fountain and on the Divide, the result being that within a day or two almost every ranch in the county was abandoned. The people for fifteen miles down the valley below Colorado City came to that town. Those living below gathered at the extreme lower edge of the county and there built a place of defense. In Colorado City the work of constructing a fort around an old log hotel was started at once. Green pine logs, ten to fifteen inches in diameter and about fifteen feet long, were cut on the adjacent mountains, brought in, and set in the ground close together, entirely surrounding the building, making a defensive structure about twelve feet high. At intervals through these logs portholes were made for use in repelling an attack. During the next month or two all the women and children of the town as well as those who had congregated there from the country slept at night in this fortification. Throughout this time a picket force of three or four mounted men was maintained night and day on the flat east of the town, and out on the present site of Colorado Springs. There was scarcely a day during this period in which Indians were not seen at various points in the country to the east of Colorado City, and on the borders of the settlements along the Fountain, but as the people everywhere were watchful, the savages had little opportunity of catching any one unawares. About two weeks after the occurrence on Monument Creek, a messenger arrived at Colorado City, sent by Governor Evans to warn the people of an impending attack upon the settlements of the Territory by the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and other hostile Indians. It appears that the Governor had received information from Elbridge Gerry, one of his secret agents, that eight hundred warriors belonging to the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and other hostile Indian tribes, were in camp at the Point of Rocks near the head of Beaver Creek in eastern Colorado, and had planned a simultaneous attack upon the frontier settlements of Colorado extending from a point in the valley of the Platte River one hundred miles below Denver, to the Arkansas River at the mouth of the Fontaine qui Bouille. According to the program agreed upon by the Indians, one hundred warriors were to go to the valley of the Platte, two hundred and fifty to the head of Cherry Creek, and the remainder of the eight hundred to the valley of the Fountain and Arkansas rivers. On reaching the appointed localities, these parties were to be divided into small bands, each one of which was to attack a farmhouse, kill the occupants, loot the property, and run off the stock.