Soon after finishing the song a second time, he saw men through the window with painted faces running towards the stairs. He went to secure the door but Hyrum and Richards were already against it. A first shot blasted through the key hole, and a second through the door panel striking Hyrum in the face, and at the same instant a shot through the window hit his back and he exclaimed, "I am a dead man!" Joseph held him in his last few moments of life. Then Joseph advanced to the door with a pistol he secured in secret, however only three of the six loads discharged. Elder Taylore secured a cane and begand parrying the guns as they were being pushed into the room.
Elder Taylor then ran to the window to see if any friends were trying to get at them and was shot in and near the thigh with four balls. He was about to fall out from the window when a bullet struck the watch in his vest pocket and forced him back. One of these shots hit tore the flesh the size of a man's fist away from his hip and splattered the walls with blood. He fell upon the floor, then hearing the mob yell, "He has leaped from the window!" Elder Richards, who escaped unhurt, dragged him to a small room, after a few moments recessitated him back to life, and covered him with an old bed. The mob soon dispersed in confusion after riddling the Prophet's body with holes, and as soon as convenient thereafter Taylor was removed to Nauvoo, where he recovered, but carried one or more bullets to his grave in his left knee forty-three years later. He would testify of this experience for the rest of his life in firm conviction of the sacrifice of his martyred brothren for the sake of the Kingdom.
In 1884 he gave his last public discourse, from then on he lived in exile from marshals arresting all Church authorities under anti-polygamy laws. He lived sometime with the Thomas Rouche family in Kaysville before he passed away. A few friends, two of his wives, his counselors and the Rouche family gathered around him as he slowly sank under the hand of death. He passed away without a struggle, quietly as a child falls asleep. At five minutes to eight o'clock, "the weary wheels of life stood still." Generally, other members of the Quorum act as pallbearers but since all other members were also in hiding this was not the case.
