The Lions of the Lord Part 18

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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.saults 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 ma.s.sive head in the firelight and opened the council with prayer, invoking the aid of G.o.d to guide them aright. Then Major Higbee, presiding as chairman, announced the orders under which they were a.s.sembled 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 G.o.d."

"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 d.a.m.ned 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 canva.s.sing 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d; and if you do that, you will trifle yourselves down to h.e.l.l."

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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.sault was now again rehea.r.s.ed, and its details communicated to their Indian allies. By ten o'clock all was ready.