I pulled up my horse slightly and had half turned my head to look back, when, like a red streak, a trooper dashed by me. There was no mistaking the rider. The reins were flying loose, the old horse’s blood was up, and so was Mike’s. He couldn’t have stopped him if he would and he wouldn’t if he could, for “Charge” to Mike meant “go in” whether there was one man or a thousand at his back. He was unslinging his gun for action as he passed (a double-barrel shotgun loaded with buck and ball, and, by the way, the best weapon cavalry could be armed with in those days for close work). I had only time to notice this before our rear had closed up and the colonel again gave the order to charge. The delay was only the fractional part of a second, but Mike was then flying fifty yards in front of us. I saw two puffs of smoke fly over his shoulder and he disappeared in the cloud. The next instant we were “mixing with ’em.” The action was short, sharp and fierce, the Federals using the sabre, we six-shooters, and was too hot to last long. Their rear gave way, we went through, joined Weatherly, and never gave them time to reform until they were driven inside of their lines. I was hurrying back to the place where I had last seen Mike, when I came up on our surgeon gouging into a poor fellow after a ball and inquired if he had found Mike. “Yes.” “Dead?” “No, but wounded and on ahead in an ambulance.” I didn’t have an opportunity to see him until some time after midnight. I found him stretched out on some straw, with others, in a barn that had been converted into a hospital. His head was swathed in bandages and looked as big as a half bushel. His face was so swollen he could not see, and the poor fellow was delirious. From the surgeon I learned that Mike had marched a couple of prisoners up to him, saying: “Take charge of ’em, Doc,” when he keeled over at his feet with an empty six-shooter in his hand. An examination showed that his head had been terribly beaten; the cuts were to the skull in five different places.