Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 10.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[516] such good time in front of me, dashed by this gate, and kept straight on in the direction of New Market, passing by the lane at which they should have turned off in order to get back to our command, and, so so far as I know, I never saw either of them again. I reached the gate at which Tribble must come out into the road, perhaps a minute before he did, and stopped there in order to hold it free for him to get into the road, but before he had reached it, the three Federals who were pursuing, having gotten within fifty yards of me, halted in the road and fired two or three shots at me, which I returned, in order to hold them in check. This I did, until Tribble and his man reached the road and passed through the gate, and our respective parties then numbered three on each side. Two of our enemies had, besides their side arms, carbines, with which they were firing at me, while neither of us had anything but pistols. Tribble at once called my attention to this disadvantage under which we were placed as long as we were in the open road, and suggested that we must get to the woods, where we would be able to bring our enemies within shorter range, and be on an equal footing with them. Accordingly we all three started in a run down the lane, which would take us back to the place where we left the command, and as soon as our horses' heads were turned, our opponents, as we had anticipated, started in pursuit of us, firing an occasional shot at us, which we would return, in order to keep up their interest in the chase.

We had gone this way for perhaps half a mile, running just fast enough to encourage our pursuers to follow us, without trying to run entirely away from them, and had not yet found the trees for which we were looking. As we thus galloped along this lane, I suddenly discovered, as I thought, the very place for our purpose. I saw that we were approaching a small, sluggish stream which crossed our road, that on the side from which we were approaching, the road, which had evidently been used for many years, was cut or worn down quite deep; that the fence on one side of the road did not extend entirely down to this stream, forming the corner of an old field, and leaving an unenclosed space, perhaps thirty or forty feet wide, between the fence and the edge of the creek. I discovered that by turning our horses squarely around this corner into the unenclosed space spoken of, we would be entirely out of sight of our pursuers until they should come within a few paces of us. I therefore turned as abruptly as possible into this open space, and called to Tribble to do the same; but before he understood my purpose his horse had carried him into the little stream above referred to. The man who was with Tribble and me,