“Turn him loose, Mike, and jump up behind me, it’s our last chance,” I yelled, and at that instant the front line of the enemy burst through the thicket into the open woods within thirty steps of us. Bang! bang! bang! went the carbines. “Halt! halt! surrender! surrender!” they called out. I wheeled, to pick up Mike, if possible, and take my chances running, just in time to see his horse lunge forward and he lying like a sack of meal crosswise in the saddle, with one hand clutching the mane about midway his horse’s neck. My first impression was that he had been shot, and I was relieved to see him wiggle his leg over the blanket strapped behind his saddle, and straighten up. Our horses were going at racing speed and Mike was doing some wonderful riding. He was bouncing about like a ball, neither foot in a stirrup, and he showed no partiality for any particular place to sit. Every time his old horse would make a jump, Mike would come down on him in a different place—behind the cantle, in the saddle, over the pommel on his neck, then back again, up one side and down the other—he literally rode the old bay from his ears to his tail. A fallen tree was in front of us, both horses took the leap at the same time, and Mike disappeared on the far side of his old “brute of a baste”—gone this time, sure, I thought, but the next instant, bare-headed he bounced back on top again. Our pursuers, not liking to follow us too far in the woods, fired a parting volley of lead and curses at us and pulled up. A few hundred yards farther on we run into our scattered squad, that had halted and reformed. An hour later, Weatherly having gotten the company together, we were pegging away at the rear guard of the enemy as they leisurely fell back into Helena, having sent their well-loaded wagons on in front. I stopped a moment to get a drink of water at a farm house the enemy had just left. The old man had a son in our company, and was anxious to hear from him, and learn something of the skirmish. “I tell you they came very near getting Captain Anderson,” he said, after learning that his boy was all right. “How’s that?” I asked, “Captain Anderson wasn’t in the skirmish at all.” “Oh, yes he was,” he replied. “That Yankee captain that just left here told me he rode right up on Anderson. Knew it was him from his riding; never saw such devilish fine riding in all his life; said Anderson just played along in front of him, cutting up all kinds of antics on his horse, and he could have caught him had he not been afraid Anderson was just trying to decoy him into another ambush.” I knew at once that Mike’s remarkable performance had been taken for Anderson’s skill. The story was too good to keep, and no one enjoyed it more than Captain Anderson. When the boys run it on Mike, however, he replied: “It’s all right, me lads, but there’s no danger of any of you blackguards ever being misthaken for your betthers.”