“I can’t, Amanda.” Jessica’s legs felt like rubber, and there were flashing lights in front of her eyes. She knew that shock was setting in. They were nearly to the creek, but it was not a straight run. A line of half a dozen men had spotted them as they had come out from behind Jessica’s cabin. Some were on foot, some were on horseback. The opportunity to have four running targets in their sights, four targets that couldn’t shoot back, was too good for the men to pass up. The two women zigzagged back and forth, half bent over, Amanda half dragging her screeching daughters, Jessica hugging the baby to her to shield him from any lucky shot. John Benjamin’s cries were now little more than hoarse, exhausted gasps.
Amanda reached out and took Jessica’s elbow. “Come on,” she urged. “If we can get across . . .” She reached out and took the baby from Jessica. “I’ll help you.”
They had reached that point where the millpond was held back by a small dam and the millrace. A twelve-inch-wide plank crossed over the race. Beyond it the banks of the creek rose sharply for several feet. Jessica saw instantly what Amanda was doing. If they could get across the plank and up the bank, the riders could not follow them. They slowed only enough to cross the board without falling off, Amanda hanging on to the baby and trying to herd her little girls as well. As they made the far bank and started clambering up the slope, Jessica tripped and went down. Without thinking, she threw out her left hand to catch herself. As it struck the ground, she screamed out, writhing in agony.
Amanda leaned over her. “Get up, Jessie!” she shouted. “Get up!”
A bullet slapped into the water just behind them. That galvanized Jessica into action. Sobbing now with the pain and terror, she stumbled to her feet and followed Amanda up the bank of the creek. But the effort was too much for her. She dropped to her knees, panting in huge, desperate gulps of air. “I can’t. Oh, Amanda! Please! I can’t. Save my baby.”
Amanda looked down at her, her face stricken. Her younger daughter was shrieking, pulling at her skirts. “Mama! Mama!”
“
Please!”
Amanda nodded, reached down and touched Jessica’s face briefly, and then turned and ran into the brush, herding her two girls, clutching the baby tightly against her.
Another ball hit just to Jessica’s left, kicking dirt into her face. The target was down and not moving. Driven by that same inner core of strength that had once taken her twenty-five miles across a frozen prairie with Rachel hanging onto her skirts, Jessica moaned and rolled over. Pushing herself up, she clambered up to the top of the small rise, using her knees, one hand, and her left elbow. About ten yards away there was a dead tree that had fallen to the earth many years before. It was nearly two feet high and over thirty long. Scuttling like a crippled crab, she reached it and, with one last cry of pain, heaved herself over and fell to the soft earth behind it.
There was a thud as a ball whipped into the softness of the rotting bark. Then another. But the log was nearly two feet thick and she knew they couldn’t reach her. Half-faint with pain, soaked clear through, muddy, bruised, exhausted, and terrified that her attackers might come after her, Jessica Griffith lay behind her log. Incredibly, some distant part of her mind kept count as the bullets continued smacking into the log over and over. Just before she reached the count of twenty, her eyes slowly rolled up in her head, and, mercifully, she passed out.
* * *
Inside the cabin next to Father McBride’s, Willard Smith bent over a chair, gulping in air hungrily. He looked around. The cabin was empty. He moved to the door to shut it, then froze. From this vantage point he could see the front entry to McBride’s cabin. The door was still open and, to Willard’s horror, McBride was standing in it, leaning heavily against the frame. Somehow he had managed to drag himself out and pull himself up to a standing position.
The three men who had been coming for Willard saw McBride and changed direction. As they drew closer, Willard noticed now that they had blackened their faces and put red cloths on their shirts and hats, so they looked like Indians. But they weren’t Indians. They had white men’s hair and beards and light skin. The one in the lead had something else in his hands besides his rifle. As the man ran, Willard saw in horror that it was a corn cutter, a knife with a wooden handle and a long, curved blade. McBride straightened and stepped out onto his porch. “Mercy!” he cried.
There was a laugh of derision, and Willard saw the corn cutter come up high as the man came at McBride on the dead run. Willard gagged, then slammed the door shut. He jammed his hands over his ears. It was not enough. There was a strangled cry, then a fiendish scream of triumph.
The slamming door had evidently caught the attention of the other men, for a rifle cracked and a hole suddenly blossomed in the upper panel of the door. Frantic now, Willard turned. His heart leaped. There was a back door! He started across for it, and then stopped in midstep. There had been a sound from the corner. Someone was crying. There was a double bed there. He saw a movement beneath it. In three steps he was to it and knelt down and lifted the valance.
There was a quick intake of breath. A white, very frightened face with large brown eyes was staring out at him. Stunned, Willard looked more closely. There was another face. And another. He dropped down flat on his belly. “It’s all right,” he soothed. He counted quickly. There were six of them. All of them girls. The oldest no more than ten. The youngest, three or four.
Willard didn’t hesitate. Bullets were still hitting the front of the cabin. “Come on!” he said, reaching out for the closest hand. “You can’t stay here.”
As they crawled out, crying and wailing softly, he gave them a stern look. “Everybody take somebody’s hand.” They did so. “Whatever you do, don’t let go.” He forced himself to smile at them. “All right?”
Six heads bobbed simultaneously. “All right. Now, we’re going out the back. When I say run, you run as fast as you have ever run in your life.
And don’t let go!
”
He opened the back door, looked around quickly. There was no more time to make sure they understood. “All right,” he said, tugging on the first girl’s hand. “Run!”
They were out the door and scrambling toward the millpond. Willard headed for the narrow end of the pond, where the plank crossed over the millrace. Across the stream there was a cornfield. There was also a lot of brush and trees. If they could make that, they would have a chance.
If Willard had any hopes that the sight of little girls might deter the men coming after him, those hopes were soon shattered. A shout went up. He felt a whoosh of air go past his cheek. The pond looked like someone was throwing pebbles into it. But Willard didn’t care anymore. Slowing just enough to make sure the girls could negotiate the board without falling off, Willard led his little parade in full flight away from the cabin.
As the last little girl jumped off the board onto solid ground, Willard’s instructions were forgotten. Screaming and crying, the six of them scattered like prairie chickens, disappearing into the high corn or the thick clumps of hazel brush.
Stunned for a moment, not sure if he should go after them, the boy-turned-rescuer didn’t move. Then there was a shout from behind him. Evidently children were not sport enough to draw the men across the creek. They had turned and were running off toward some other target.
For several moments, Willard Smith just stood there, chest heaving, staring at the disappearing forms of his tormentors. Then, looking around, he found a large tree and moved behind it. The undergrowth around it was thick enough to give him good cover but low enough that he could see over it and watch what was happening at the village. He sank down, feeling the rough bark against his back, trying to ignore the fact that his whole body was trembling violently now.
* * *
The pain was everywhere. In his mind. Throbbing at his fingertips. Behind his eyelids. In big fiery waves through the center of his body.
John Griffith was barely conscious of anything but the pain. But then it all came back in a burst of reality almost more intense than the physical pain. The blacksmith shop. The rifle muzzles firing. He realized with a start that, while he could still hear gunfire, it was now outside, distant, not exploding directly over his head.
He opened his eyes and turned his head slightly. The door to the shop stood open, and late afternoon sunlight flooded the room, revealing the horrors that lay around him. Sardius Smith was still lying under the bellows beside his younger brother. The boy saw John looking at him, but he was so terrified that it didn’t seem to register. Alma’s eyes were closed, but then one hand moved, and there was a soft groan.
John tried to raise his head, but the waves of pain washed over him, making him gasp. Turning some more, he could see the legs and feet of Warren Smith near the door. They were perfectly still. John fought back the pain. Clenching his teeth, he rose up on one elbow. He had to help these two boys. The image of his own sons swept before his eyes. Luke and Mark were younger than the Smith boys, but John knew what he would want someone to do for them in similar circumstances. But willpower wasn’t enough. He couldn’t do it. He fell back exhausted.
Then suddenly a shadow crossed the doorway, and there was the sound of men’s voices. A man entered the shop, then another. “Damnation!” a rough voice cried. “We got ’em. Would ya look at this!”
“Watch it,” another man growled. “See if there’s any still alive.”
A pair of boots came around the bellows, moving very cautiously.
Lie down! Play dead!
John’s mind screamed at Sardius. But the boy just huddled there, watching the boots come around toward him.
With an oath, the man dropped to one knee. He had a rifle in his hand. Bending lower, his back to John now, he peered beneath the bellows. “Well, I’ll be—”
“What is it?” someone else barked.
“We got a live one.” There was a moment of silence, then a soft exclamation. “Hold it, Glaze! This is just a boy.”
There was a harsh guffaw. “Nits make lice,” the voice growled. “Leave him be and he’ll grow up to be a Mormon.” The rifle muzzle dropped, coming up against the boy’s head.
No! Oh, dear God!
The prayer burst out like a shout in John’s mind. He turned his head against the logs and shut his eyes tightly.
In the confines of the shop, the explosion was like a cannon shot inside a barrel. John heard someone start to curse, his voice heavy with shock. And then suddenly John felt a lance of fire shoot through his side. Someone had nudged him with the toe of a boot. “This one’s alive too,” a voice above him said.
John didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t have to. He felt no fear. Just a deep, instantaneous sorrow that he would not get to hold his children one more time.
There was the scrape of boots on the dirt floor as the man stepped back. Metal clicked on metal as the hammer of the rifle was pulled back. John turned his head toward the wall.
Good-bye, dearest Jessie. I’ll miss you.
Chapter Notes
While the purposes of the novel require that the author place his fictional characters in the midst of the terrible events at Haun’s Mill and provide some detail not given in original accounts, every effort has been made to depict the tragedy as it actually happened. The main events of the massacre come from several eyewitness accounts (see Joseph Young’s account in
HC
3:183–86; see also
HC
3:186–87;
Persecutions
, pp. 234–37;
Restoration
, pp. 399–402).
Later reports of the Missouri militia indicate that there were 240 men in the group that attacked the settlement and that they were led by a man by the name of Nehemiah Comstock. Each man fired an average of seven bullets during the attack. This makes a total of almost seventeen hundred rounds fired against approximately thirty families. Eighteen people, men and boys, were killed, and thirteen other people (including at least one woman) were wounded, some of them critically. Only three of the Missourians were wounded.
The massacre in the blacksmith shop, including the shooting of the wounded and the brutal murder of Sardius Smith, are accurate, as are the mutilation of Father McBride with a corn cutter and the shooting at women and children. The killer of Sardius Smith later boasted about what he had done, showing the totally ruthless nature of some of the mob.
Willard Smith was one of the survivors and one of the heroes of Haun’s Mill, even though he was not yet twelve. He wrote a little-known account of his experience, which gives some details not found in other sources. His hiding in the woodpile, the flight to the cabin of Thomas McBride (who was evidently first shot, then later killed with the corn knife), his getting the old man water from the millpond while under fire, and his daring escape with the six little girls are all based on his journal account (found in
By Their Fruits
, pp. 180–83).
There was an actual woman, named Mary Stedwell, who fled across the creek with Amanda Smith and who was shot in the hand. Amanda Smith later recalled, “One girl was wounded by my side and fell over a log, her clothes hung across the log [and] they Shot at them expecting that they were hitting her, and our people af[ter]wards Cut out of that log twenty bullets.” (In
Redress,
p. 538; see also
HC
3:186;
CHFT,
p. 203.) Rather than trying to introduce a new character so that the story of Mary’s heroic escape could be told, the author has taken the liberty to have Jessica experience events similar to those Mary experienced.
Jacob Haun was wounded but recovered. Some time later, after the Saints reached Nauvoo, the Prophet Joseph said: “At Haun’s Mill the brethren went contrary to my counsel; if they had not, their lives would have been spared” (
HC
5:137).
Chapter 18
A movement outside the window caught Mary Ann’s eye. The glass panes were thick and wavy, and they distorted the image somewhat, but she didn’t need clear vision to recognize the outline and the gait of her husband, or to see that he was coming at a swift trot, something Benjamin Steed didn’t do much anymore.