_The Order from Headquarters_
He left Parowan the next morning to preach at one of the little
settlements to the east. He was gone three days. When he came back they
told him that the train of Missourians had passed through Parowan and on
to the south. He attended a military council held that evening in the
meeting-house. Three days of reflection, while it had not cooled the
anger he felt toward these members of the mob that had so brutally
wronged his people, had slightly cooled his ardour for aggressive
warfare.
It was rather a relief to know that he was not in a position of military
authority; to feel that this matter of cutting off a wagon-train was in
the hands of men who could do no wrong. The men who composed the council
he knew to be under the immediate guidance of the Lord. Their names and
offices made this certain. There was George A. Smith, First Counsellor
to Brigham, representing as such the second person of the Trinity, and
also one of the Twelve Apostles. There was Isaac Haight, President of
the Cedar City Stake of Zion and High Priest of Southern Utah; there
were Colonel Dame, President of the Parowan Stake of Zion, Philip
Klingensmith, Bishop from Cedar City, and John Doyle Lee, Brigham's most
trusted lieutenant in the south, a major of militia, probate judge,
member of the Legislature, President of Civil Affairs at Harmony, and
farmer to the Indians under Brigham.
When a call to arms came as a result of this council, and an official
decree was made known that the obnoxious emigrant train was to be cut
off, he could not but feel that the deed had heavenly sanction. As to
worldly regularity, the proceeding seemed to be equally faultless. The
call was a regular military call by the superior officers to the
subordinate officers and privates of the regiment, commanding them to
muster, armed and equipped as directed by law, and prepared for field
operations. Back of the local militia officers was his Excellency,
Brigham Young, not only the vicar of God on earth but governor of Utah
and commander-in-chief of the militia. It seemed, indeed, a foretaste of
those glorious campaigns long promised them, when they should go through
the land of the Gentiles "like a lion among the flocks of sheep, cutting
down, breaking in pieces, with none to deliver, leaving the land
desolate."
The following Tuesday he continued south to Cedar City, the most
populous of the southern settlements. Here he learned of the campaign's
progress. Brigham's courier had preceded the train on its way south,
bearing written orders to the faithful to hold no dealings with its
people; to sell them neither forage for their stock nor food for
themselves. They had, it was reported, been much distressed as a result
of this order, and their stock was greatly weakened. At Cedar City, it
being feared that they might for want of supplies be forced to halt
permanently so near the settlement that it would be inconvenient to
destroy them, they were permitted to buy fifty bushels of wheat and to
have it and some corn the Indians had sold them ground at the mill of
Major Lee.
As Joel's informant, the fiery Bishop Klingensmith, remarked, this was
not so generous as it seemed, since, while it would serve to decoy them
on their way toward San Bernardino, they would never get out of the
valley with it. The train had started on, but the animals were so weak
that three days had been required to reach Iron Creek, twenty miles
beyond, and two more days to reach Mountain Meadows, fifteen miles
further south.
Here at daybreak the morning before, Klingensmith told him, a band of
Piede Indians, under Lee's direction, had attacked the train, killing
and wounding a number of the men. It had been hoped, explained
Klingensmith, that the train would be destroyed at once by the Indians,
thus avoiding any call upon the militia; but the emigrants had behaved
with such effectiveness that the Indians were unable to complete the
task. They had corralled their wagons, dug a rifle-pit in the center,
and returned the fire, killing one Indian and wounding two of the
chiefs. The siege was being continued.
The misgiving that this tale caused Joel Rae he put down to unmanly
weakness--and to an unfamiliarity with military affairs. A sight of the
order in Brigham's writing for the train's extermination would have set
his mind wholly at rest; but though he had not been granted this, he was
assured that such an order existed, and with this he was obliged to be
content. He knew, indeed, that an order from Brigham, either oral or
written, must have come; otherwise the local authorities would never
have dared to proceed. They were not the men to act without orders in a
matter so grave after the years in which Brigham had preached his right
to dictate, direct, and control the affairs of his people from the
building of the temple "down to the ribbons a woman should wear, or the
setting up of a stocking."
Late on the following day, Wednesday, while they were anxiously waiting
for news, a messenger from Lee came with a call for reinforcements. The
Indians, although there were three hundred of them, had been unable to
prevail over the little entrenched band of Gentiles. Ten minutes after
the messenger's arrival, the militia, which had been waiting under arms,
set out for the scene in wagons. From Cedar City went every able-bodied
man but two.
Joel Rae was with them, wondering why he went. He wanted not to go. He
preferred that news of the approaching victory should be brought to
him; yet invisible hands had forced him, even while it seemed that
frenzied voices--voices without sound--warned him back.
The ride was long, but not long enough for his mind to clear. It was
still clouded with doubts and questionings and fears when they at last
saw the flaring of many fires with figures loitering or moving busily
about them. As they came nearer, a strange, rhythmic throbbing crept to
his ears; nearer still, he resolved it into the slow, regular beatings
of a flat-toned drum. The measure, deliberate, incessant,
changeless,--the same tones, the same intervals,--worked upon his
strained nerves, at first soothingly and then as a pleasant stimulant.
The wagons now pulled up near the largest camp fire, and the arrivals
were greeted by a dozen or so of the Saints, who, with Major Lee, had
been directing and helping the Indians in their assaults upon the enemy.
Several of these had disguised themselves as Indians for the better
deception of the besieged.
At the right of their camp went the long line of the Indians' fires.
From far down this line came a low ringing chant and the strangely
insistent drum-beats.
"They're mourning old Chief Moqueetus," explained Lee. "He fell asleep
before the fire just about dark, while his corn and potatoes were
cooking, and he had a bad nightmare. The old fellow woke up screaming
that he had his double-hands full of blood, and he grabbed his gun and
was up on top of the hill firing down before he was really awake, I
guess. Anyway, one of the cusses got him--like as not the same one that
did this to-day while I was peeking at them," and he showed them a
bullet-hole in his hat.
At fires near by the Indians were broiling beef cut from animals they
had slaughtered belonging to the wagon-train. Still others were cutting
the hides into strips to be made into lariats. As far down as the line
could be seen, there were dusky figures darting in and out of the
firelight.
A council was at once called of the Presidents, Bishops, Elders, High
Priests, and the officers of the militia who were present. Bishop
Klingensmith bared his massive head in the firelight and opened the
council with prayer, invoking the aid of God to guide them aright. Then
Major Higbee, presiding as chairman, announced the orders under which
they were assembled and under which the train had been attacked.
"It is ordered from headquarters that this party must be used up, except
such as are too young to tell tales. We got to do it. They been acting
terrible mean ever since we wouldn't sell them anything. If we let them
go on now, they been making their brag that they'll raise a force in
California and come back and wipe us out--and Johnston's army already
marching on us from the east. Are we going to submit again to what we
got in Missouri and in Illinois? No! Everybody is agreed about that.
Now the Indians have failed to do it like we thought they would, so we
got to finish it up, that's all."
Joel Rae spoke for the first time.
"You say except such as are too young to tell tales, Brother Higbee;
what does that mean?"
"Why, all but the very smallest children, of course."
"Are there children here?"
Lee answered:
"Oh, a fair sprinkling--about what you'd look for in a train of a
hundred and thirty people. The boys got two of the kids yesterday; the
fools had dressed them up in white dresses and sent them out with a
bucket for water. You can see their bodies lying over there this side of
the spring."
"And there are women?" he asked, feeling a great sickness come upon him.
"Plenty of them," answered Klingensmith, "some mighty fine women, too; I
could see one yesterday, a monstrous fine figure and hair shiny like a
crow's wing, and a little one, powerful pretty, and one kind of between
the two--it's a shame we can't keep some of them, but orders is orders!"
"These women must be killed, too?"
"That's the orders from headquarters, Brother Rae."
"From the military headquarters at Parowan, or from the spiritual
headquarters at Salt Lake?"
"Better not inquire how far back that order started, Brother Rae--not of
me, anyway."
"But women and children--"
"The great Elohim has spoken from the heavens, Brother Rae--that's
enough for me. I can't put my human standards against the revealed will
of God."
"But women and children--" He repeated the words as if he sought to
comprehend them. He seemed like a man with defective sight who has come
suddenly against a wall that he had thought far off. Higbee now
addressed him.
"Brother Rae, in religion you have to eat the bran along with the flour.
Did you suppose we were going to milk the Gentiles and not ever shed any
blood?"
"But innocent blood--"
"There ain't a drop of innocent blood in the whole damned train. And
what are you, to be questioning this way about orders from on high? I've
heard you preach many a time about the sin of such doings as that. You
preach in the pulpit about stubborn clay in the hands of the potter
having to be put through the mill again, and now that you're out here in
the field, seems to me you get limber like a tallowed rag when an order
comes along."
"Defenseless women and little children--" He was still trying to regain
his lost equilibrium. Lee now interposed.
"Yes, Brother Rae, as defenseless as that pretty sister of yours was in
the woods there, that afternoon at Haun's Mill."
The reminder silenced him for the moment. When he could listen again, he
heard them canvassing a plan of attack that should succeed without
endangering any of their own numbers. He walked away from the group to
see if alone, out of the tumult and torrent of lies and half-truths, he
could not fetch some one great unmistakable truth which he felt
instinctively was there.
And then his ears responded again to the slow chant and the constant
measured beat of the flat-toned, vibrant drum. Something in its rhythm
searched and penetrated and swayed and seemed to overwhelm him. It came
as the measured, insistent beat of fate itself, relentless, inexorable;
and all the time it was stirring in him vague, latent instincts of
savagery. He wished it would stop, so that he might reason, yet dreaded
that it might stop at any moment. Fascinated by the weird rhythm and the
hollow beat, he could not summon the will to go beyond its sway.
He walked about the fires or lingered by the groups in consultation
until the first signs of dawn. Then he climbed the low, rocky hill to
the east and peered over the top, the drum-beats still pulsing through
him, still coercing him. As the light grew, he could make out the
details of the scene below. He was looking down into a narrow valley
running north and south, formed by two ranges of rugged, rocky hills
five hundred yards or so apart. To the north this valley widened; to the
south it narrowed until it became a mere gap leading out into the
desert.
Directly below him, half-way between the ranges of hills, was a circle
of covered wagons wheel to wheel. In the center of this a pit had been
dug, and here the besieged were finding such protection as they could
from the rifle-fire that came down from the hills on either side. Even
now he could see Indians lying in watch for any who might attempt to
escape. The camp had been attacked on Monday morning after the wagons
had moved a hundred yards away from the spring. It was now Friday. For
four days, therefore, with only what water they could bring by dashes to
the spring under fire, they had held their own in the pit.
When it grew still lighter he descried, out on his left near the spring,
two spots of white close together, and remembered Lee's tale the night
before of the two little girls sent for water.
At that instant, the chanting and the beat of the drum stopped, and in
the silence a flood of light seemed to shine in upon his mind, showing
him in something of its true aspect the thing they were about to do. Not
clearly did he see it, for he was still torn and dazed--and not in its
real proportions, moreover; for he saw it against the background of his
teaching from the cradle; the murder of their Prophet, the persecution
of the Saints, the outrages put upon his own family, the fate of his
sister, the murder of his father, and the death of his mother; the
coming of an army upon them now to repeat these persecutions; the
reported offenses of this particular lot of Gentiles. And then, too, he
saw it against his own flawless faith in the authority of the
priesthood, his implicit belief that whatsoever they ordered was to be
obeyed as the literal command of God, his unshaken conviction that to
disobey the priesthood was to commit the unforgivable sin of blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost. "If you trifle with the commands of any of the
priesthood," he himself had preached but a few days before, "you are
trifling with Brigham; if you trifle with Brigham, you are trifling with
God; and if you do that, you will trifle yourselves down to hell."
Yet as he looked upon the doomed camp, lying still and quiet in the gray
light,--in spite of breeding, training, habit of thought, and passionate
belief, he felt the horror of it, and a hope came to him out of that
horror. He hurried down the hill and searched among the groups of
Indians until he found Lee.
"Major, isn't there a chance that Brother Brigham didn't order this?"
"Brother Rae, no one has said he did--it wouldn't be just wise."
"But _did_ he--has any one seen the written order or heard who brought
the oral order?"
"Brother Rae, look here, now--you know Brother Brigham. You know his
authority, and you know Dame and Haight. You know they wouldn't either
of them dare do as much as take another wife without asking Brigham
first. Well, then, do you reckon they'd dare order this militia around
in this reckless way to cut off a hundred and thirty people unless they
had mighty good reason to know he wanted it?"
He stood before Lee with bent head; the hope had died. Lee went on:
"And look here, Elder, just as a friendly hint, I wouldn't do any more
of this sentimental talk. Why, in the last six months I've known men to
get blood-atoned for less than you've said."
He saw they were holding another council. Bishop Klingensmith again led
in prayer. He prayed for revelation, for the gifts of the spirit for
each of them, and for every order of the priesthood; that they might
prevail over the army marching against them; that Israel might grow and
multiply and cover the earth with cities and become a people so great
that no man could number them; and that the especial favour of Heaven
might attend them on their righteous smiting of the Gentile host now
delivered over to them by an all-wise Jehovah.
The plan of assault was now again rehearsed, and its details
communicated to their Indian allies. By ten o'clock all was ready.