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 a