Taking up an old filthy mattress he threw it over the wounded man saying: "I am sorry I cannot do better for you; but that may hide you, and you may yet live to tell the tale, but I expect they will kill me in a few moments."
The doctor then went out to learn for certain the fate which had befallen the Prophet. While he was gone Elder Taylor suffered the most excruciating pain. Dr. Richards returned in a few minutes, and confirmed his worst fears—the Prophet was dead!
"I felt," says Elder Taylor, "a dull, lonely, sickening sensation at the news."
"When I reflected that our noble chieftain, the Prophet of the living God, had fallen, and that I had seen his brother in the cold embrace of death, it seemed as though there was a void or vacuum in the great field of human existence to me, and a dark, gloomy chasm in the kingdom, and that we were left alone. Oh, how lonely was that feeling! How cold, barren and desolate! In the midst of difficulties he was always the first in motion; in critical positions his counsel was always sought. As our Prophet he approached our God, and obtained for us His will; but now our Prophet, our counselor, our general, our leader was gone, and amid the fiery ordeal that we then had to pass through, we were left alone without his aid, and as our future guide for things spiritual or temporal, and for all things pertaining to this world or the next, he had spoken for the last time on earth!"
SCENE IN CARTHAGE JAIL
"These reflections and a thousand others flashed upon my mind. I thought, Why must the good perish, and the virtuous be destroyed? Why must God's nobility, the salt of the earth, the most exalted of the human family, and the most perfect types of all excellence, fall victims to the cruel, fiendish hate of incarnate devils?"
Ah, why?
Footnotes
[1]. It was understood that these shots wounded several of the mob, and that two of them died from the effects of their wounds. The widow of a Mr. Lawn, captain of one of the companies of McDonough County militia, meeting with Elder Parley P. Pratt in California in 1856, told him that a man by the name of Townsend, living in Iowa, near Fort Madison, was one of the mob who forced the door of Carthage jail on the above occasion. One of the pistol shots fired by Joseph wounded him in the arm near the shoulder, and it continued to rot until taken off, and then it did not heal, but continued to rot, and about nine months after he was wounded he died. About six months after he was shot Mrs. Lawn saw his arm and dressed it. Auto. P. P. Pratt, p. 475-6.