CHAPTER XVII.

_The Meadow Shambles_

They chose William Bateman to go forward with a flag of truce. He was short and plump, with a full, round, ingenuous face. He was chosen, so said Klingensmith, for his plausible ways. He could look right at you when he said anything; and the moment needed a man of this talent. He was to enter the camp and say to the people that the Mormons had come to save them; that on giving up their arms they would be safely conducted to Cedar City, there to await a proper time for continuing their journey.

From the hill to the west of the besieged camp they watched the plausible Bateman with his flag of truce meet one of the emigrants who came out, also with a white flag, and saw them stand talking a little time. Bateman then came back around the end of the hill that separated the two camps. His proposal had been gratefully accepted. The besieged emigrants were in desperate straits; their dead were unburied in the narrow enclosure, and they were suffering greatly for want of water.

Major Higbee, in command of the militia, now directed Lee to enter the camp and see that the plan was carried out. With him went two men with wagons. Lee was to have them load their weapons into one wagon, to separate the adults from the children and wounded, who were to be put into the other, and then march the party out.

As Lee approached the corral its occupants swarmed out to meet him,--gaunt men, unkempt women and children, with the look of hunted animals in their eyes. Some of the men cheered feebly; some were silent and plainly distrustful. But the women laughed and wept for joy as they crowded about their deliverer; and wide-eyed children stared at him in a friendly way, understanding but little of it all except that the newcomer was a desirable person.

It took Lee but a little time to overcome the hesitation of the few suspicious ones. The plan he proposed was too plainly their only way of escape from a terrible death. Their animals had been shot down or run off so that they could neither advance nor retreat. Their ammunition was almost gone, so that they could not give battle. And, lastly, their provisions were low, with no chance to replenish them; for on the south was the most to be dreaded of all American deserts, while on the north they had for some reason unknown to themselves been unable to buy of the abundance through which they pa.s.sed.

Arrangements for the departure were quickly completed under Lee's supervision. In one wagon were piled the guns and pistols of the emigrants, together with half a dozen men who had been wounded in the four days' fighting. In the other wagon a score of the smaller children were placed, some with tear-stained faces, some crying, and some gravely apprehensive. At Lee's command the two wagons moved forward. After these the women followed, marching singly or in pairs; some with little bundles of their most precious belongings; some carrying babes too young to be sent ahead in the wagon. A few had kept even their older children to walk beside them, fearing some evil--they knew not what.

One such, a young woman near the last of the line, was leading by the hand a little girl of three or four, while on her left there marched a st.u.r.dy, pink-faced boy of seven or eight, whose almost white hair and eyebrows gave him a look of fright which his demeanour belied. The woman, looking anxiously back over her shoulder to the line of men, spoke warningly to the boy as the line moved slowly forward.

"Take her other hand, and stay close. I'm afraid something will happen-that man who came is not an honest man. I tried to tell them, but they wouldn't believe me. Keep her hand in yours, and if anything does happen, run right back there and try to find her father. Remember now, just as if she were your own little sister."

The boy answered stoutly, with shrewd glances about for possible danger.

"Of course I'll stay by her. I wouldn't run away. If I'd only had a gun," he continued, in tones of regretful enthusiasm, "I know I could have shot some of those Indians--but these, what do you call them?--Mormons--they'll keep the Indians away now."

"But remember--don't leave my child, for I'm afraid--something warns me."

Farther back the others had now fallen in, so that the whole company was in motion. The two wagons were in the lead; then came the women; and some distance back of these trailed the line of men.

When the latter reached the place where the column of militia stood drawn up in line by the roadside, they swung their hats and cheered their deliverers; again and again the cheers rang in tones that were full of grat.i.tude. As they pa.s.sed on, an armed Mormon stepped to the side of each man and walked with him, thus convincing the last doubter of their sincerity in wishing to guard them from any unexpected attack by the Indians.

In such fashion marched the long, loosely extended line until the rear had gone some two hundred yards away from the circle of wagons. At the head, the two wagons containing the children and wounded had now fallen out of sight over a gentle rise to the north. The women also were well ahead, pa.s.sing at that moment through a lane of low cedars that grew close to the road on either side. The men were now stepping briskly, sure at last of the honesty of their rescuers.

Then, while all promised fair, a call came from the head of the line of men,--a clear, high call of command that rang to the very rear of the column:

_"Israel, do your duty!"_

Before the faces of the marching men had even shown surprise or questioning, each Mormon had turned and shot the man who walked beside him. The same instant brought piercing screams from the column of women ahead; for the signal had been given while they were in the lane of cedars where the Indian allies of the Saints had been ambushed. Shots and screams echoed and reechoed across the narrow valley, and clouds of smoke, pearl gray in the morning sun, floated near the ground.

The plan of attack had been well laid for quick success. Most of the men had fallen at the first volley, either killed or wounded. Here and there along the all but prostrate line would be seen a struggling pair, or one of the emigrants running toward cover under a fire that always brought him low before he reached it.

On the women, too, the quick attack had been almost instantly successful. The first great volume of mad shrieks had quickly died low as if the victims were being smothered; and now could be heard only the single scream of some woman caught in flight,--short, despairing screams, and others that seemed to be cut short--strangled at their height.

Joel Rae found himself on the line after the first volley, drawn by some dread power he could not resist. Yet one look had been enough. He shut his eyes to the writhing forms, the jets of flame spitting through the fog of smoke, and turned to flee.

Then in an instant--how it had come about he never knew--he was struggling with a man who shouted his name and cursed him,--a dark man with blood streaming from a wound in his throat. He defended himself easily, feeling his a.s.sailant's strength already waning. Time after time the man called him by name and cursed him, now in low tones, as they swayed. Then the Saint whose allotted victim this man had been, having reloaded his pistol, ran up, held it close to his head, fired, and ran back to the line.

He felt the man's grasp of his shoulders relax, and his body grow suddenly limp, as if boneless. He let it down to the ground, looking at last full upon the face. At first glance it told him nothing. Then a faint sense of its familiarity pushed up through many old memories.

Sometime, somewhere, he had known the face.

The dying man opened his eyes wide, not seeing, but convulsively, and then he felt himself enlightened by something in their dark colour,--something in the line of the brow under the black hair;--a face was brought back to him, the handsome face of the jaunty militia captain at Nauvoo, the man who had helped expel his people, who had patronised them with his airs of protector,--the man who had--

It did not come to him until that instant--this man was Girnway. In the flash of awful comprehension he dropped, a sickened and nerveless heap, beside the dead man, turning his head on the ground, and feeling for any sign of life at his heart.

Forward there, where the yells of the Indians had all but replaced the screams of frantic women--butchered already perhaps, subjected to he knew not what infamy at the hands of savage or Saint--was the yellow-haired, pink-faced girl he had loved and kept so long imaged in his heart; yet she might have escaped, she might still live--she might even not have been in the party.

He sprang up and found himself facing a white-haired boy, who held a little crying girl by a tight grasp of her arm, and who eyed him aggressively.

"What did you hurt Prudence's father for? He was a good man. Did you shoot him?"

He seized the boy roughly by the shoulder.

"Prudence--Prudence--where is she?"

"Here."

He looked down at the little girl, who still cried. Even in that glance he saw her mother's prettiness, her pink and white daintiness, and the yellow shine of her hair.

"Her mother, then,--quick!"

The boy pointed ahead.

"Up there--she told me to take care of Prudence, and when the Indians came out she made me run back here to look for him." He pointed to the still figure on the ground before them. And then, making a brave effort to keep back the tears:

"If I had a gun I'd shoot some Indians;--I'd shoot you, too--you killed him. When I grow up to be a man, I'll have a gun and come here--"

He had the child in his arms, and called to the boy:

"Come, fast now! Go as near as you can to where you left her."

They ran forward through the gray smoke, stepping over and around bodies as they went. When they reached the first of the women he would have stopped to search, but the boy led him on, pointing. And then, half-way up the line, a little to the right of the road, at the edge of the cedars, his eye caught the glimpse of a great ma.s.s of yellow hair on the ground. She seemed to have been only wounded, for, as he looked, she was up on her knees striving to stand.

He ran faster, leaving the boy behind now, but while he was still far off, he saw an Indian, knife in hand, run to her and strike her down.

Then before he had divined the intent, the savage had gathered the long hair into his left hand, made a swift circling of the knife with his right,--and the thing was done before his eyes. He screamed in terror as he ran, and now he was near enough to be heard. The Indian at his cry arose and for one long second shook, almost in his face as he came running up, the long, shining, yellow hair with the gory patch at the end. Before his staring eyes, the hair was twisting, writhing, and undulating,--like a golden flame licking the bronzed arm that held it.

And then, as he reached the spot, the Indian, with a long yell of delight and a final flourish of his trophy, ran off to other prizes.

He stood a moment, breathless and faint, looking with fearful eyes down at the little, limp, still figure at his feet. One slender, bare arm was flung out as if she had grasped at the whole big earth in her last agony.

The spell of fear was broken by the boy, who came trotting up. He had given way to his tears now, and was crying loudly from fright. Joel made him take the little girl and sit under a cedar out of sight of the spot.

CHAPTER XVIII.