The Mormon Prophet Part 22

Some of the men and women lying on the gra.s.s were moaning or screaming with the pain of their injuries. The thought that Halsey might be in like pain made Susannah imperative. "Is he dead?" she asked again in precise repet.i.tion of tone and accent. "Is he dead?"

The Danite lifted his head. "He is quite dead, and I marked the man that did it, and I marked the man that did this too." He touched reverently, not the child, but the wilting asters that were still grasped in the baby hand. "If I'd only had a gun--but"--he ground his teeth again and muttered, "G.o.d helping me, they shall both die."

Susannah understood nothing then but the first part of this speech.

By this time many of the women and children had again flocked out of the houses. It was reported that the hors.e.m.e.n had been a detachment of State militia, that one of them had taken the trouble to explain to a wounded man that they had received orders from Governor Boggs to exterminate the Mormons. Immediately by other frightened tongues it was stated that the armed company were halting round the turn of the road, intending to return and shoot again when the people had come out from shelter. At this the greater number made a stampede for a thicket of poplar and willow saplings that was near the creek. The Danite still held by Susannah's sleeve.

"Where is my husband?" she again asked. She had not moved since he last spoke to her.

Some men were busy laying the dead, of whom there were eighteen, on the floor of a shed which was not far off. Susannah and the Danite moved about together and found Halsey lying still on the green, his limbs decently composed, his eyes for ever shut. The bearers were about to lift him, but the Danite interposed. He had an excited fancy concerning Susannah's dead and what must be done for them. He lifted Halsey easily in both his arms and walked away, Susannah following with the dead child.

Without a word they went till they came to Halsey's camp. Nothing had been touched since Susannah left in the morning. The Danite, remembering the camp as he had seen it a few evenings before, looked about him now curiously, and laid Halsey down on the very spot where he had stood to plead for a divine righteousness.

It was not a time for words. Having deposited his burden, he looked to Susannah, but she had no directions to give. She sat down beside her husband, as though preparing to remain.

"I thought you'd like to lay them both out here, but I guess I ought to get you into the bush, ma'am."

"I will stay here," she said; "you had better go to help some one else."

The cries of the wounded were still heard from the vicinity of the houses. A crowd of the uninjured people were to be seen making their way through the first bushes of the thicket. They seemed to be carrying the wounded thither, for men bearing shutters, and doors upon which the sick were stretched now started in the direction of the bush. There was need for help, as the Danite well saw; then, too, inactivity was torture. He left Susannah and ran back to bear his part in the common task.

When almost every other living soul was lost in the close thicket he came again, approaching the camp with soft footsteps, peering anxiously.

Susannah had laid the child in his father's arms. Their enemies seemed to have taken aim for the heart, for Halsey's wound was also there. She had so laid the child within his arms, heart to heart, that no sign of injury appeared. She sat by them now, sobbing her tearless sobs, stroking gently, sometimes the hair of the child, more often the thick locks of light hair that lay above her husband's brow. She was talking to them between her sobs in rapid phrases exactly as if they were not dead. The young Danite was sure that she had lost her wits; he leant against a tree confounded.

Susannah was saying, "I wanted to keep baby, Angel, I wanted so much to keep him, but I could not have taught him your way; there was no use telling you that before, for you could not understand. When you told me that you would go you did not tell me you meant to take baby. You have the best right to him, dear, he is all yours, but oh! remember--remember that I will be very lonely--very lonely--O Angel." There were a few moments of wordless moans and sobs, but she went on clearly enough, "I want you to know, Angel, that I never was disappointed in you--never disappointed in you, dear; and about my lack of faith--it would have been no use to tell you before, would it?"

She took her hand from Halsey's hair and played a moment with the rings of gold on the baby's head lying on his breast. She laid her hand upon Halsey's hands that she had clasped together above the child. "It is better for you to have baby with you. I could not have taught him your thoughts. It is better, dear, isn't it?"

The earnest inflection of her voice in these interrogations brought so wild a sense of pathos to the Danite's heart that his eyes filled with tears and brimmed over, but Susannah's sobs were like a nervous gasping of which she was scarcely conscious, and no hint of tears.

She lightly touched the baby hand that was lying on its father's shoulder, still grasping the blue blossoms. "See," she sobbed, "he has brought his flowers to you; he always loved you best."

There had been a great silence in the air about them, but now there was again the sound of firing at the distance of about a mile. The Danite's pulses leaped, but he did not, because of that, allow himself to speak or move.

Susannah spoke again, resting her hand on Halsey's brow, "You know, dear, I don't know whether you and baby are anywhere--anywhere"; wildly, as if the appalling loneliness of its meaning had flashed upon her dulled brain, she repeated the word.

The Danite's sympathy rose within him; he staggered forward and bent over her. "Don't, ma'am," he said, "don't go on talking like that. I was with my own mother when she died, when I was a little chap, and I know how it is, and you'd much better try to shed tears, ma'am, indeed you had."

Susannah lifted to him a blank face, disturbed but uncomprehending.

He decided what to do; the thought of action restored him. He ran with all his might back to the houses, and, finding a pick and spade, came again. This time, more confident of himself, he had more control over Susannah.

"We must make the grave right here, ma'am, and do you go and gather some flowers to put on it, for we must just put them two away out of sight before the devils come back. It's what he would want, you know." He pointed to Halsey and repeated the words until she understood.

It even seemed a relief to her then to move about too, and find that there was something she could do, but she did not obey him blindly.

While in a soft place close by he delved with might and main, displacing the earth with incredible speed, Susannah, sobbing all the time, but tearless, went into the waggon and brought out certain things which she chose with care--a locked box, the best garments belonging to herself, her husband, and child, and the baby's toys.

It was no neat gravedigger's work that the Danite accomplished; he had made a deep, large hole, but the cavity sloped at the sides so that they could step in and out. Susannah brought her little store and lined the earth first with the garments.

"You may want some of those things of your own, ma'am," said the Danite.

She paid no heed; when she had made the couch to her mind she signed to him to lay Halsey and the child in it, which he did. She herself stooped in the grave to clasp the dead man's hands more tightly over the little one's form, and her last touch was to stroke Halsey's hair from off the brow. She laid the baby playthings at Halsey's feet; she unlocked the box and took from it all the household treasures that so far she had sought to keep--some silver, a few small ornaments, a few books, and Halsey's Book of Mormon, in which was written their marriage and the baby's birth. She brought a silken shawl, the one bit of finery that remained from her girlish days. She covered her dead with it very carefully, tucking it in as though they slept; then she moved away, wringing her hands and heaving convulsive sighs. The Danite put back the earth.

All the gra.s.s was strewn pretty thickly with poplar leaves, gold, lined with white, and after leaning against a tree some minutes looking away from the grave, Susannah began gathering up these leaves hastily, so that when he levelled the earth she could strew the top, hiding the place from the curious eyes of strangers.

"I guess, ma'am, if there's anything you would like to take with you now, we'd better go into the bush."

"No, there is nothing, but," she cried, "I thank you very much, and if there is anything that would be of use to you--"

When the Danite had first laid Halsey under the tree he had taken a white cloth from the tent and wiped the blood from the coat, that Susannah might not be too much shocked at the sight. He took this cloth now and tore it till the stained fragment alone remained in his hand. He thrust it in his breast.

"This will stand for the blood of them both," he said. "I guess that's all I want." But when he had started towards the thicket he remembered Susannah's needs, and went back for a blanket.

The poplar saplings that bordered the creek were still holding a thin gold canopy overhead, and the dogwood was glinting with scarlet. The other members of the community had gone so far ahead that it was a long time before, making their toilsome way, they came upon their former neighbours.

The fugitives had called a halt where a brook which pa.s.sed through the bush offered some relief to the pain and fever of those who were wounded. One of these, a little girl, had already died by the way, and her frantic mother began to reproach Susannah, wailing that if the child had not been saying her texts to the elder she would not have been a mark for the enemy.

The men were cutting down saplings to make place for a camp. It was their intention to remain, going back under the cover of night to get food and blankets from the houses, if they were not pillaged and burned, going back in any case to bury their dead at the first streak of dawn.

The Danite turned to Susannah. "I guess, ma'am, neither you nor I have got any business to take us back, and there's enough of the brothers here to do the work."

Susannah went on with the young man through hour after hour of the afternoon farther and farther into the unknown fastnesses of the wood.

They left behind them the low thicket of second growth, and penetrated into an uncleared Missouri forest.

CHAPTER XII.

All the powers of the young Danite were strung by excitement into the fiercest vitality, and he thought that physical fatigue was the best medicine for Susannah's mind. Why he had accepted the work of saving her as part of his mission of Mormon defence he did not ask himself. In him, as in many athletes, thought and action seemed one. He acted because he acted; he knew no other reason.

In the middle of the night Susannah woke up. The stars glimmered above the trees; she was lying on a heap of autumn leaves wrapped in the blanket. Sitting up, she remembered slowly the events of the preceding day.

Her movement had caused another movement at some distance. The Danite, sleeping on the alert like soldier or huntsman, was roused by the first sound she made, and when she continued to sit up he came near in the glimmering light. She saw his dark form where he tarried a few paces away.

"You're all safe, ma'am. Can't you go on sleeping?"

A watch of the night often brings to recollection some duty forgotten during the day. "Do you know where Elvira Halsey is?"

"The young lady with the brown eyes that I have sometimes seen you with, ma'am?"

"Yes." Then Susannah added with the weak detail of a wretched mind, "She isn't very young."

"Was she any relation to you, ma'am? Were you very affectionate with her?"

Susannah explained the relations.h.i.+p.

The Danite thought, "If I tell her she's there she'll think it her duty to trapse back all the way to find her; she's that sort." Therefore, judging that a minor grief could not make much difference, he gave it as his opinion that Elvira was dead. At this Susannah shed tears for the first time, which eased his anxiety not a little.