CHAPTER XVI.
FLIGHT OF THE MOB—EXCITEMENT OF THE GOVERNOR—ELDER TAYLOR'S SUFFERING—HYPOCRISY—STILL IN DANGER—THE RETURN TO NAUVOO—GRATITUDE—"WITH THE GREATEST OF PROPHETS HE SUFFERED AND BLED."
Immediately after the terrible tragedy was ended, fear seized upon the perpetrators of it, and they precipitately fled. A number of the inhabitants of Carthage gathered about the jail, and some of these went to the head of the stairs to see the work that had been done.
Elder Taylor was brought out of the cell to the landing at the head of the stairs. Through the open door leading into the room that he and his friends had occupied when the assault was made, he had a full view of Hyrum Smith.
"There he lay as I had left him," he writes. "He had not moved a limb; he lay placid and calm, a monument of greatness even in death: but his noble spirit had left its tenement and had gone to dwell in regions more congenial to its exalted nature. Poor Hyrum! he was a great and good man, and my soul was cemented to his. If ever there was an exemplary, honest and virtuous man, an embodiment of all that is noble in the human form, Hyrum Smith was its representative." Such were his thoughts on the character of his friend, even while suffering excruciating pains from his wounds.
Among those who stood about him on the landing was a doctor, and feeling the ball that had lodged in the palm of Elder Taylor's left hand, he took a pen knife, made an incision and then with a pair of carpenter's compasses pried out the half-ounce ball. The alternate sawing with a dull pen knife and prying with the compasses was simply surgical butchery. The doctor afterwards said that Elder Taylor had nerves "like the devil" to stand that operation.
The crowd now urged him to consent to be removed to Hamilton's hotel, where he could be cared for, to which he replied: "I don't know you. Who am I among? I am surrounded by assassins and murderers; witness your deeds! Don't talk to me of kindness and comfort; look at your murdered victims! Look at me! I want none of your counsel nor comfort. There may be some safety here; I can be assured of none anywhere."
They protested that he was safe with them; it was a shame that he and his friends had been treated in the manner they had; they swore by all the oaths known to the damned that they would stand by him to the death. "In half an hour every one of them had fled from the town," says Elder Taylor.
Meantime a coroner's inquest was being held over the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum. Robert F. Smith, the justice of the peace who had issued the warrant for the arrest of the murdered men on the charge of treason, who without a hearing had illegally committed them to prison and then in a few hours as unlawfully dragged them out to appear before his court, who was captain of the Carthage Greys and who had helped to murder them, was the coroner! During the investigation the name of Francis Higbee was mentioned as being in the vicinity.