“You have to understand,” Lewis stressed, “we were deceived by one we had welcomed into our family of Friends. David Booth had been coming to our Sunday meetings since the beginning of summer. He wanted to know more about our religious beliefs and soon became a member of our society. When we talked about our plans to take our church to some other part of the country, David was the one who urged us to build it in the new lands west of Great Falls and told us that he had seen these unclaimed lands, ripe for farming. He even talked of dreams he had when he was sure that Jesus was telling him to find us and lead us to our new home.”

The rest of the story was not hard to assume. “So this fellow, Booth, acted as your guide and led you to a place where a gang of outlaws were waitin’ for you,” Hawk summed it up. “And that’s when you found out he was one of them.” The outright robbery was easy enough to understand, but the massacre didn’t make sense to Hawk. “Why did they start shootin’? Did some of your party put up a fight?”

“No,” Lewis replied. “Brother Adams was leading the mule with our money, and when he saw what was about to happen, he tried to keep them from stealing the money we had saved up to buy our land and build our church. He turned and tried to escape. That’s when the shooting started. They shot him, then everyone started shooting, especially this one fellow with them. Men, women, the children, even the mules were massacred. We survivors escaped only because our brothers in front of us pushed us back until we fell into the river.” He shook his head slowly as the pain of that memory returned.

“How many were the bandits?” Conner asked.

“I don’t know for certain,” Donald apologized. “Five, I think. Right now, I find it hard to remember for sure.”

Conner looked at Hawk and shook his head. It was a tragic picture of highway robbery gone bad. At worst, the religious group should have lost their money but not their lives. Instead, it turned into a senseless massacre of innocent folks. “I don’t know how much we can do after this amount of time,” Conner said to Lewis. “But if I can rent a horse and wagon, can I ask you and maybe the other four men to take us back up the river to the place where all this occurred?”

“If it will help you to catch those men and maybe recover the church’s money, of course we will,” Donald replied.

The Reverend Henry Bridger, who had been listening to the interrogation, volunteered then. “You can take my wagon and horses, Lieutenant. You don’t have to rent one.”