showing through the smoke, and the tremendous battle yell of the South
swelling over everything.

Dick felt a quiver, and then his body stiffened, as if it were about to
receive a physical shock. The whole regiment fired as one man, and a gap
appeared in the charging Southern column. Hertford and his horse charged
upon the hostile cavalry, and all the brigades of Thomas met the Southern
attack with a fire so heavy and deadly that the army of Bragg reeled back.

Then ensued the most tremendous scene through which Dick had yet passed.
The Southern army came again. Bragg, Breckinridge, Buckner, Longstreet,
Hill, Cleburne and the others urged on the attacks. They had been
victors everywhere else and they knew that they must drive back Thomas
or the triumph would not be complete. They struck and spared not, least
of all their own men. They poured them, Kentuckians, Tennesseeans,
Georgians, Mississippians and all the rest upon Thomas without regard to
life.

Kentuckians on the opposing sides met once again face to face. Dick did
not know it then, but a regiment drawn from neighboring counties charged
the Winchesters thrice and left their dead almost at his feet. He had
little time to notice or measure anything amid the awful din and the
continued shock of battle in which thousands of men were falling.

The clouds of smoke enveloped them at times, and at other times floated
away. New clumps of pines, set on fire by the shells, burned brightly
like torches, lighting the way to death. Smoke, thick with the odors of
burned gunpowder clogged eye, nose and throat. Dick and the lads around
him gasped for breath, but they fired so fast into the dense Southern
masses that their rifle barrels grew hot to the touch.