While the details of the surrender were being arranged, we heard a train coming in from the direction of Decatur. General Forrest hurriedly sent Lyon’s regiment to fall in behind the train on its arrival and block its return. It had brought a regiment of Union soldiers to reinforce the garrison. They jumped from the flat cars and lined up behind a row of cordwood along the railroad. The train hurriedly backed out and made its escape. We were lined up on our horses, and the enemy began a very harassing fire, which had a telling effect on men and horses. Colonel Kelly, our commander, ordered us to dismount and charge the foe from his position behind the cordwood. Meanwhile, General Lyon was advancing upon the enemy’s rear, with his skirmishers well in front. The retreat of the Union column from our attack was so rapid that it ran over Lyon’s skirmish line and captured it. This skirmish line was in command of my boyhood friend, Capt. Henry C. Klyce. Further on in these memoirs I shall refer to him again. We had this new regiment at the mercy of a simultaneous front and rear attack, and its position was hopeless. Captain Klyce, their prisoner, told the commander that we had them surrounded; that we had captured all the troops in the town, and further resistance was useless. Captain Klyce protested against the injustice of thus uselessly subjecting the Confederate prisoners to the fire of their own men; but the Union commander stated that he would not surrender while his men were being fired upon, and that he was unwilling to require one of his men to go forward to announce the desire to surrender. Then Captain Klyce volunteered to go forward and make the announcement in the face of a brisk musketry fire. He carried a white shirt on the point of a bayonet; and, of course, our firing ceased as soon as he was seen, but not until he had faced the gravest danger for the sake of friends and foes. In the midst of the brutalities of war it is such unselfish and heroic acts as this that sublimate the spirit of battle. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XXIII SULPHUR TRESTLE, ALA. The capture of the Union Army at Athens, Ala., was indeed the fulfillment of a great necessity with us. We took over a large supply of provisions and camp equipment, twenty carloads of clothing, a number of horses, several cannon, and about 4,000 small arms, with a quantity of ammunition for same. On the day following the fall of Athens we moved against Sulphur Trestle, in Alabama. At this place the railroad had spanned a small stream with a high, covered bridge, which was of such consequence to the Union Army that a strong fort and garrison were maintained here, guarded with mounted cannon. When General Forrest examined the structure, he was satisfied that we would have to fight for it. The commander promptly refused to comply with our demand for a surrender.