After our ten o'clock breakfast we passed on to within one mile of Richmond. We encamped in a very small prairie surrounded by a thicket of hazel brush. When I arrived where the camp had pitched their tents, and viewed our unsafe {102} location, considering the danger of an attack from our enemies, I almost forgot my sickness, went some distance in the brush, bowed down and prayed my Heavenly Father to suffer no evil to come upon us, but keep us safe through the night. I obtained an assurance that we should be safe until morning, notwithstanding about fifty of the Jackson county mob crossed the Lexington Ferry that evening for the purpose of joining the Ray county mob and of making an attack upon us. All was quiet in the camp through the night. While the brethren were making their bed in Captain Brigham Young's tent, one of them discovered a very musical rattlesnake which they were about to kill. Captain Young told them not to hurt him but carry him out of the tent, whereupon Brother Carpenter took him in his hands, carried him beyond all danger, and left him to enjoy his liberty, telling him not to return. [6] [Sidenote: Threats of the Mob.] _Thursday, June 19_.--At daybreak, feeling that we were in a very unsafe situation, I counseled the camp to move forward without delay, and continued a lively march for about nine miles, when we stopped for breakfast. While passing through Richmond, Brother Luke Johnson observed a black woman in a gentleman's garden near the road. She beckoned to him and said, "Come here, Massa." She was evidently much agitated in her feelings. He went up to the fence, and she said to him, "There is a company of men lying in wait here, who are calculating to kill you this morning as you pass through." We halted for breakfast on an eminence near a farm house. The owner furnished us with a large quantity of milk, which gave a great relish to our bacon and corn dodger, which our commissary had procured that morning. When we asked the price of his milk he replied: "He is a mean man that will sell milk; I could have let you have more, if I had known you had been coming." {103} He further said: "You have many enemies about here, and you may meet with some trouble; and it is a damned shame that every man can't come up and enjoy his religion, and everything else without being molested." It was near noon when we finished our breakfast, and we passed on in fine spirits, determined to go through and meet the brethren in Clay county. We traveled but a short distance when one wagon broke down, and the wheels ran off from others; and there seemed to be many things to hinder our progress, although we strove with all diligence to speed our way forward. This night we camped on an elevated piece of land between Little Fishing and Big Fishing rivers, which streams were formed by seven small streams or branches. [7]