A truce for the whole region, which had been signed by Smith and some of his elders on the one side, and by a magistrate, by name Adam Black, for the Gentiles, had been broken by Gentile mobs in several of the counties near Far West.

A number of the saints had been brutally killed, their wives and children driven from their homes at the point of the bayonet.

This renewed outrage roused at last the fires of revenge, long smouldering in the breasts of the refugees from the desolate city of Zion, who had themselves known the bitterness of such unmerited wrong.

These fires fused religious principle and natural wrath together, till a chain was forged which bound many strong men in a secret society, whose members swore to fight, not only in defence, but especially in vengeance.
It was at Haun's Mill that Halsey first heard of this society, and he was deeply concerned.

A young Mormon who had lately come to the place belonged to it, and after one of Halsey's sermons, in which the posts of the Gate of Life were represented as meekness and forgiveness, this young man came to the preacher by night to confess, but also to vindicate his position.
The missionary's little party, with the exception of Elvira, who had accepted hospitality at a neighbouring farm, were camping in a meadow not far from a stream called Shoal Creek, which drove the mill.