# Wife No. 19/Chapter 14
### CHAPTER XIV.
#### BETRAYED AND MURDERED. — TRIAL OF JOHN D. LEE.

* The "White Flag of Peace."
* Friends in the Distance.
* A Cruel Deception.
* Mormon Fiends plan their Destruction.
* John D. Lee's Crocodile Tears.
* "Lay down your Arms, and Depart in Peace."
* A Horrible Suspicion.
* The Massacre.
* The Scene of Blood.
* No Mercy for Women and Children.
* Robbed and Outraged.
* Murdered by Lee's Own Hand.
* The Field of Slaughter.
* Dividing the Property of the Murdered Ones.
* Taken to the Tithing
* House. Haunted by Spectres.
* John D. Lee's Trial.
* Instigated by Brigham.
* No Justice in Utah.
* Lee's Confession made to Shield the False Prophet.
* Eight Mormon and Four Gentile Jurors.
* What was to be Expected.
Murdered by Lee's own Hand.HE morning of the 17th of September dawned. The hearts of all the doomed party were sick with deferred hope. Suddenly a cry of relief broke from the corral. A wagon, filled with white men, bearing a white flag, was seen coming down the Meadows. Succor was at hand. Their terrible tortures were over. Strong men wept like children at the thought that their beloved ones, for whom they had agonized through all those dreary days and nights of siege, were safe at last.
The deliverers were none other than John D. Lee and the officers of the Mormon militia. Immediately upon ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/258 ​from hunger, they marched joyously along, exulting in their regained freedom, when suddenly the troops halted, and the fatal order to fire was given by Lee, and repeated down the line by all the under officers. In an instant it flashed across the helpless victims how cruelly they had been betrayed, and, with shrieks of the wildest agony, they fell bleeding to the earth. Young and old shared the same fate. Gray-haired men and beardless boys were alike cut down. The Indians, who were ambushed near by, joined the Mormons in the work of slaughter, until not one of all the men was left.
And what of the helpless women and children? All the womanhood within revolts at the thought of their horrible Murdering the Women and Children. fate, and my woman's soul cries out in agony at the recital of the sufferings of these helpless ones. Some of them were killed by their husbands, fathers, or brothers, — happy souls, who thus escaped the most cruel torture. Death was nothing, compared to the fiendish brutalities which they suffered before they were allowed to die. Some of the women were too ill to walk. They were taken outside the corral, driven up to the scene of the massacre, stripped of their clothing, shot, and their mutilated bodies thrown down in a pile, with the rest.
Scene after the Massacre. one hundred and twenty-seven bodies in all. These, with the three men who were killed while undertaking to bring assistance, another who was shot outside the corral, but whose body could never be found, and the two children who were murdered at Salt Lake City, made one hundred and thirty-three victims of this fearful and unparalleled assassination.
The spoils were carried to Cedar City, and placed in the tithing-office there, after the Indians had received their share. It is told by a man, who then was a mere boy, that ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/264 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/265 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/266 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/267 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/268 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/269 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/270 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/271 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/272 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/273 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/274 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/275