Redeye by Clyde Edgerton Page B

apprehension.
    â€œâ€˜Across the meadow come three Mormons on horses, bearing white flags. Your people let them into the corral of wagons. Their spokesman brings wonderful, unbelievable news—the Indians have withdrawn, and there are fifty Mormon men to escort all of you back to Cedar City, thirty-five miles away. Back to safety.
    â€œâ€˜There is one catch, say the Mormons. All weapons and wounded must be put in wagons, which will be followed by the women and children walking, and then some ways back, in a group—the men. These precautions are in case the Indians decide to return. They will see that their enemy has been “captured.” They will be fooled, says the spokesman.
    â€œâ€˜So the march begins. The march of deliverance. There is great sorrow among your people about the ten or so deaths, but there is a great sense of relief, of salvation.
    â€œâ€˜Across the meadow come fifty armed Mormons to escort you back to Cedar City. They walk beside your father and the other men—back behind you. You are walking with your mother, your sister, your brother, and all the other women and children up behind the wagons that hold the wounded and the weapons. The entire group walks about a mile. Suddenly someone shouts,
Halt. Do your duty
. A volley of loud, percussive rifle shots from behindyou. You look back. The Mormons are standing with rifles to their shoulders—some bringing the rifles down—some shooting again, scattered shooting. Your father and all but two of his friends are on the ground, dead or dying. More shots. The two left standing now fall. Scattered shots finish those who aren’t dead. The Mormon men sit down, and from the bushes rush a horde of shouting Indians, streaked in purple war paint, carrying rifles and hatchets. Two of them are running straight at you. Some have stopped and are aiming and shooting into your group of women and children. Blood spatters onto your clothes. Bright red, full of life. Your mother makes no sound. You are knocked down by an elbow and a knee. You cover your head with your arms. The screams—high, fierce pitches. The groans, deep and weak. You listen with closed eyes.
    â€œâ€˜You look around. You do not see your mother. You stand. The clothes your sister was wearing are on a shape, a form on the ground, still and bloody. You start to run back to your father. Maybe he is alive. Your world is vanishing. A Mormon grabs you, holds you, kicking, and takes you to a wagon.
    â€œâ€˜A decision had been made, see, to let you live. You are one of the lucky ones. The Mormons will announce to the world that they saved you and sixteen other small children from the Indians. It is believed that you are too young to remember and tell what happened. But you remember. You remember it all, and one day you will tell. But first, they take you—’”
    One of the Mexicans came to the door and said he needed Mr. Merriwether at the windmill. I was in a sort of trance.
    â€œWalk with me outside,” he said.
    â€œWhat happened to the children?” I said. We was walking out toward the windmill.
    â€œThey were adopted by Mormons. A few years later government officials came for them and returned them to Arkansas. Listen to this: the Mormons billed the U.S. government for their upkeep.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œThat’s right. Then the Civil War came along and all attention was diverted. The one man, Calvin Boyle, was finally set up as scapegoat in 1877 and shot at the site of the massacre—the one I told you about—set on the foot of his coffin and shot so that he fell back in it, the only one ever officially implicated.
    â€œBut in the meantime several of them wrote sworn statements about what happened. Mormons, that is.”
    We got to the windmill and he climbed up and went to work on it. I wondered what I would’ve done if I’d been back there with them Mormons.

    With the influx of entrepreneurs