The door was forced open and gun barrels were thrust through. Joseph fired three shots into the hallway from a pistol that had been left with him by Brother Wheelock. Brothers Taylor and Richards with heavy walking canes, tried to beat down the guns. The muskets belched great flashes of fire into the room, and it seemed that in a moment they would all be destroyed. John Taylor sprang to the window but a bullet from the door pierced his thigh and he fell on the sill. He was slipping out headfirst when another bullet from the outside struck his watch and drove his body back into the room. To save himself he began to crawl under the bed, when three other bullets splashed his blood upon the walls. Joseph saw his brother Hyrum dead on the floor and John Taylor apparently dying. Willard Richards was still unharmed, and to save him, the Prophet ran to the window intending to spring out. While he stood for just an instant before making the leap, two bullets struck him from behind and one from the mob below. His dying words were: _"Oh Lord, my God!"_ He smiled and fell to the ground--dead. A hatless Missourian with bare legs and arms, ran to him and set his body in a sitting position against the curb of a well. Colonel Levi Williams ordered four men to shoot. They fired their bullets into the Prophet's body, but he was past the power of men to hurt. The ruffian who had placed the body against the curb, with gleaming knife in his hand rushed to cut off the head and thus gain the reward offered by enemies in Missouri. Suddenly a light from heaven burst upon the scene, the knife fell to the ground, and the Missourian and the four men that had shot Joseph were as if turned to stone. The mob in terror fled on all sides, but Williams called them to take away their four companions. They threw these into the wagon and then set off. Willard Richards had suffered only a slight wound in the ear and after hiding Brother Taylor under an old mattress in another cell, he went out to learn whether the Prophet was really dead or not. Though he thought the mob would kill him, he determined to find out Joseph's fate. He came back and told the awful news to Apostle Taylor, and a dull, lonely, sickening pain, more terrible than the pain from his wounds, came over that faithful man. Doctor Richards prepared the bodies of the Prophet and Patriarch, and early next morning, after providing for Brother Taylor, started for Nauvoo.