Texas ? Dozens of mothers from a polygamist retreat were bused away from their children Thursday, their legal efforts to stay united rejected as Texas officials sort out their massive custody case.

Two buses took the women from the San Angelo Coliseum, where they had been temporarily housed with their children. Texas officials were preparing to move the last of more than 400 children to group homes, shelters and residences, some hundreds of miles away, over the next few days.

One woman held a handwritten sign out the bus window that read: “SOS. Mothers separated. Help.”

“There are no words to describe how it was,” said Velvet, a mother who was forced to leave her 13-month old. She and other sect women have refused to give their last names, fearing it will affect their custody cases.

“We’ve been staying up nights to watch over the children because we didn’t know what would happen,” she said in a news conference outside the ranch gates Thursday.

In Austin, the state’s 3rd Court of Appeals rejected the mothers’ pleas to immediately stop authorities from busing the children taken from the ranch to foster homes.