By this time many of the women and children had again flocked out of the houses.  It was reported that the horsemen 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.