_In the Dark of the Aftermath_
He was never able to recall the events of that day, or of the months
following, in anything like their proper sequence. The effort to do so
brought a pain shooting through his head. Up to the moment when the
yellow hair had waved in his face, everything had kept a ghastly
distinctness. He remembered each instant and each emotion. After that
all was dark confusion, with only here and there a detached,
inconsequent memory of appalling vividness.
He could remember that he had buried her on the other side of the hill
where a gnarled cedar grew at the foot of a ledge of sandstone, using a
spade that an Indian had brought him from the deserted camp. By her side
he had found the scattered contents of the little bundle she had
carried,--a small Bible, a locket, a worn gold bracelet, and a picture
of herself as he had known her, a half-faded daguerreotype set in a gilt
oval, in a square rubber case that shut with a snap. The little
limp-backed Bible had lain flung open on the ground in the midst of the
other trinkets. He remembered picking these things up and retying them
in the blue silk handkerchief, and then he had twice driven away an
Indian who, finding no other life, came up to kill the two children
huddled at the foot of the cedar.
He recalled that he had at some time passed the two wagons; one of them
was full of children, some crying, some strangely quiet and observant.
The other contained the wounded men whom Lee and the two drivers had
dispatched where they lay.
He remembered the scene close about him where many of the women and
older children had fallen under knife and tomahawk. At intervals had
come a long-drawn scream, terrifying in its shrillness, from some woman
struggling with Saint or savage.
Later he remembered becoming aware that the bodies were being stripped
and plundered; of seeing Lee holding his big white hat for valuables,
while half a dozen men searched pockets and stripped off clothing. The
picture of the naked bodies of a dozen well-grown children tangled in
one heap stayed with him.
Still later, when the last body had been stripped and the smaller
treasures collected, he had known that these and the stock and wagons
were being divided between the Mormons and the Indians; a conflict with
these allies being barely averted, the Indians accusing the Saints of
withholding more than their share of the plunder.
After the division was made he knew that the Saints had all been called
together to take an oath that the thing should be kept secret. He knew,
too, that he had gone over the spot that night, the moon lighting the
naked forms strewn about. Many of them lay in attitudes strangely
lifelike,--here one resting its head upon its arm, there a white face
falling easily back as if it looked up at the stars. He could not recall
why he had gone back, unless to be sure that he had made the grave under
the cedar secure from the wolves.
Some of the men had camped on the spot. Others had gone to Hamblin's
ranch, near the Meadows, where the children were taken. He had sent the
boy there with them, and he could recall distinctly the struggle he had
with the little fellow; for the boy had wished not to be taken from the
girl, and had fought valiantly with fists and feet and his sharp little
teeth. The little girl with her mother's bundle he had taken to another
ranch farther south in the Pine Mountains. He told the woman the child
was his own, and that she was to be kept until he came again.
Where he slept that night, or whether he slept at all, he never knew.
But he had been back on the ground in the morning with the others who
came to bury the naked bodies. He had seen heaps of them piled in little
depressions and the dirt thrown loosely over them, and he remembered
that the wolves were at them all a day later.
Then Dame and Haight and others of high standing in the Church had come
to look over the spot and there another oath of secrecy was taken. Any
informer was to be "sent over the rim of the basin"--except that one of
their number was to make a full report to the President at Salt Lake
City. Klingensmith was then chosen by vote to take charge of the goods
for the benefit of the Church. Klingensmith, Haight, and Higbee, he
recalled, had later driven two hundred head of the cattle to Salt Lake
City and sold them. Klingensmith, too, had put the clothing taken from
the bodies, blood-stained, shredded by bullets and knives, into the
cellar of the tithing office at Cedar City. Here there had been, a few
weeks later, a public auction of the property taken, the Bishop, who
presided as auctioneer, facetiously styling it "plunder taken at the
siege of Sebastopol." The clothing, however, with the telltale marks
upon it, was reserved from the auction and sold privately from the
tithing office. Many stout wagons and valuable pieces of equipment had
thus been cheaply secured by the Saints round about Cedar City.
He knew that the surviving children, seventeen in number, had been "sold
out" to Saints in and about Cedar City, Harmony, and Painter's Creek,
who would later present bills for their keep.
He knew that Lee, whom the Bishops had promised a crown of glory for his
work that day, had gone to Salt Lake City and made a confidential report
to Brigham; that Brigham had at first professed to regard the occurrence
as unfortunate for the Church, though admitting that no innocent blood
had been shed; that he had sworn Lee never to tell the story again to
any person, instructing him to make a written report of the affair to
himself, as Indian agent, charging the deed to the Indians. He was said
to have added on this point, after a period of reflection, "Only
Indians, John, don't save even the little children." He was reported to
have told Lee further, on the following day, that he had asked God to
take the vision from his sight if the killing had been a righteous
thing, and that God had done so, thus proving the deed in the sight of
heaven to have been a just vengeance upon those who had once made war
upon the Saints in Missouri.
With these and with many another disjointed memory of the day Joel Rae
was cursed; of how Hamblin the following spring had gathered a hundred
and twenty skulls on the ground where the wolves had left them, and
buried them again; of how an officer from Camp Floyd had built a cairn
on the spot and erected a huge cross to the memory of the slain; of how
the thing became so dire in the minds of those who had done it, that
more than one man lost his reason, and two were known to have killed
themselves to be rid of the death-cries of women.
But the clearest of all among the memories of the day itself was the
prayer offered up as they stood amid the heaps of fresh earth, after
they had sworn the oath of secrecy; how God had been thanked for
delivering the enemy into their hands, and how new faith and better
works were promised to Him for this proof of His favour.
The memory of this prayer stayed with him many years: "Bless Brother
Brigham--bless him; may the heavens be opened unto him, and angels visit
and instruct him. Clothe him with power to defend Thy people and to
overthrow all who may rise against us. Bless him in his basket and in
his store; multiply and increase him in wives, children, flocks and
herds, houses and lands. Make him very great to be a lawgiver and God to
Thy people, and to command them in all things whatsoever in the future
as in the past."
Nor did he forget that, soon after he had listened to this prayer, and
the forces had dispersed, he had made two discoveries;--first, that his
hair was whitening; second, that he could not be alone at night and keep
his reason.