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

We had by this time come to the mouth of the lane through which we had passed in getting into this main dirt road, and where we would have to turn off to get back to the road on which we had left the command. About two hundred yards from where we then were, and just opposite the mouth of this lane, stood a comfortable looking farm-house with a good looking horse grazing in the yard. It was then agreed between Tribble and myself, that he should take one of the men whom we had just before met, and get this horse, provided he should find him suitable for our purposes, while I was to take the other man, and go further on down this main road to see if I could not capture, or, as we then expressed it “press” another horse. Accordingly, Tribble started for the horse referred to, and I, with one of the stragglers we had picked up, proceeded down this main road, still going away from New Market, and having passed the lane at which we should have left this road in order to get back to our command.

My man and myself had gone perhaps half a mile when at a sudden turn in the road we were met by three more men from our command going at full speed, and as though the whole Yankee army was at their heels. As they dashed by us they had time only to call out to us, “if you are Morgan's men you had better be getting away from here, as the Yankees are right on us.” I looked in the direction from which these men had come, and saw three Federal cavalrymen coming rapidly down the road in pursuit. I then started after the men who had dashed by me so hurriedly, and who had been promptly joined by the man who had been with me, and ordered them to halt, assuring them that there were but three Yankees in sight, and if they would stop there would then be five of us to fight them. But so badly demoralized were they that the bare suggestion of stopping to make a fight seemed only to accelerate their flight, and with my late companion well up with them, they kept on at the top of their horses' speed. We soon came in sight of the house at which Captain Tribble had stopped, and I commenced calling to him to come and join us. He recognized me at once, but thought the four men flying along in front of me were Yankees, whom I was pursuing, and although about to put a halter on the horse, for which he had gone, and which he had just succeeded in getting hold of, he dropped his game, mounted his own horse, and with the man he had taken along to assist him, started as rapidly as possible for the road-gate. The four demoralized Rebels, who were making