Col. John M. Harrell, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 10.2, Arkansas
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[141] half a mile down the valley, to a point where it converged into a funnel shape, terminating in a narrow defile. At this point a large body of the enemy were in ambush in front, and upon the flanks where the cavalry could not approach, with their battery also masked in front. [Bledsoe's two guns had gone by, down the road and did not unlimber there; Shoup's were on the backs of horses.] As soon as the party we were pursuing had passed through this defile, they opened upon us a most destructive fire, which, for the moment, caused my men to recoil and give back, in spite of my own efforts and those of other officers to rally them; whereas, if they had, after receiving the enemy's fire, passed on 200 or 300 yards, we could have secured, in a moment more, what we so much coveted—the enemy's artillery. Emboldened by their success in defending the defile and checking our advance, they raised a wild yell and advanced toward us.

The rest of his report is an exercise of the imagination. There was no effort by the Federal forces to pass further down the defile. It is true that, with his howitzers, he shelled from a safe position to which he had retired, some distance back of the place where Jewell fell. Maj. P. H. Wheat and the writer dismounted and removed that fatally-wounded officer from the middle of the road to a fence-corner, where he might not be trodden in a charge of cavalry. The enemy retired voluntarily. No one ever presented for Marmaduke, or at any time had any occasion to bear, as he mendaciously relates, a flag of truce; for not a Confederate had been there touched, except the few who had received saber cuts before the enemy was checked. The sabered men were not ‘seriously’ hurt, as they made a joke of their wounds. One man, whose ear was bleeding from a saber cut, said, ‘The enemy thought me a wild shoat and was trying to mark me.’ A perfect quiet reigned thenceforth in the little, lonely gorge, the enemy sending men wearing badges of the infirmary corps to take away his dead and wounded. A short distance below the scene of this casual fight the Confederates went into camp, and sent scouting parties the next