Free Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies by David Fisher

about a plot to murder two merchants. A man appropriately named Fox had hired on to guide the merchants on a trip to buy goods theywould use for trade. To accomplish that, they were carrying a large sum of money. In fact, Fox intended to kill them on the trail and then leave the bodies in the wilderness. Fox made the mistake of trying to enlist a shady character living in Rayado to help him. This man turned down the offer and, when Fox went back out on the trail, told the story to the local army post commander. When Carson learned of it, he gathered a small posse and raced almost three hundred miles through Indian territory to catch up with the party, arriving just in time to save the two merchants. Although they offered Carson a substantial reward, he refused to accept even one penny and instead took Fox back with him to jail.

Kit Carson fought Indians, then went to Washington to fight for those same peoples, but his actions eventually caused him to be reviled by the tribes of the Southwest.
    As the American frontier moved steadily westward, Indian resistance to the settlers increased. The pioneers lived in fear of sudden and deadly attacks. Few people dared leave a settlement without first making careful preparations. It would be impossible to determine how many encounters Kit Carson had with the tribes, but it is accurate to state that precious few men could match that number. He had come to be known as the greatest Indian fighter in the West. No man was more qualified or better prepared to deal with the tribes, whether the encounter required words spoken over a shared peace pipe or the skilled use of a rifle, knife, or hatchet.But Carson avoided violence when possible. For instance, in the summer of 1851 he went east to St. Louis to visit his daughter and buy provisions for the winter, and on his way back, a few miles after crossing the Arkansas River, he encountered a band of Cheyennes. Carson could not have known these Cheyennes were on the warpath; a chief had been flogged by an American officer and they were out for revenge. Carson knew his party was too small and ill equipped to outrun them; he ordered the wagons to stay close and told his men to have their rifles ready. The Indians’ war party shadowed them for more than twenty miles. When the caravan made camp for the night, Carson invited the advance party to join him for a talk and a smoke.

In 1865, Kit Carson, the nation’s most famous Indian fighter, told a congressional committee, “I came to this country in 1826 and since then have become pretty well acquainted with the Indian tribes, both in peace and at war. I think, as a general thing, the difficulties arise from aggressions on the part of the whites.”
    These young braves did not recognize Carson. Although they would have recognized his name, they would not have known what he looked like. So they certainly did not suspect that this white man spoke their language. As the pipe was passed, the Indians began speaking to each other in the Sioux language, so that if any of the white men escaped this trap, the Sioux would be blamed for the attack. It was not an unusual ruse. But as they continued smoking into the night, they eventually resorted to their own tongue. Finally they revealed their plan: When the pipe was next passed to Carson, he would have to lay down his weapon to take it, and at that moment they would attack and kill him. Then they would kill the other members of the party.
    Carson understood every word, and he waited. When it was his turn, rather than taking the pipe, he grabbed his rifle and stood in the center of the circle, ordering his men to ready their weapons. The Cheyennes were stunned. Speaking to them in their own language, Carson demanded to know why they wanted his scalp. He had never been guilty of a single wrong to the Cheyennes, he said, and in fact their elders would tell them that he was a friend. Finally he ordered them out of his camp, warning that anyone who refused to