Klingensmith, Haight, and Higbee, he recalled, had later driven two hundred head of the cattle to Salt Lake City and sold them.

Klingensmith, too, had put the clothing taken from the bodies, blood-stained, shredded by bullets and knives, into the cellar of the tithing office at Cedar City.

Here there had been, a few weeks later, a public auction of the property taken, the Bishop, who presided as auctioneer, facetiously styling it "plunder taken at the siege of Sebastopol." The clothing, however, with the telltale marks upon it, was reserved from the auction and sold privately from the tithing office.

Many stout wagons and valuable pieces of equipment had thus been cheaply secured by the Saints round about Cedar City.
He knew that the surviving children, seventeen in number, had been "sold out" to Saints in and about Cedar City, Harmony, and Painter's Creek, who would later present bills for their keep.
He knew that Lee, whom the Bishops had promised a crown of glory for his work that day, had gone to Salt Lake City and made a confidential report to Brigham; that Brigham had at first professed to regard the occurrence as unfortunate for the Church, though admitting that no innocent blood had been shed; that he had sworn Lee never to tell the story again to any person, instructing him to make a written report of the affair to himself, as Indian agent, charging the deed to the Indians.

He was said to have added on this point, after a period of reflection, "Only Indians, John, don't save even the little children." He was reported to have told Lee further, on the following day, that he had asked God to take the vision from his sight if the killing had been a righteous thing, and that God had done so, thus proving the deed in the sight of heaven to have been a just vengeance upon those who had once made war upon the Saints in Missouri.
With these and with many another disjointed memory of the day Joel Rae was cursed; of how Hamblin the following spring had gathered a hundred and twenty skulls on the ground where the wolves had left them, and buried them again; of how an officer from Camp Floyd had built a cairn on the spot and erected a huge cross to the memory of the slain; of how the thing became so dire in the minds of those who had done it, that more than one man lost his reason, and two were known to have killed themselves to be rid of the death-cries of women.
But the clearest of all among the memories of the day itself was the prayer offered up as they stood amid the heaps of fresh earth, after they had sworn the oath of secrecy; how God had been thanked for delivering the enemy into their hands, and how new faith and better works were promised to Him for this proof of His favour.
The memory of this prayer stayed with him many years: "Bless Brother Brigham--bless him; may the heavens be opened unto him, and angels visit and instruct him.