He chose not to mount a full pursuit.

The Texas Historical Commission marker notes that he “realized his tactical disadvantage” — a phrase that likely refers to the danger of pursuing fast-moving, highly mobile people through terrain they knew intimately and he did not.

A pursuit of the fleeing families into the canyons and ravines of the Palo Duro system would have been logistically difficult and tactically dangerous.

He had what he needed.

He had the camp.