At this instant comes an order for the Company to break up into fours and press on through the forest in pursuit.  My four trots off to the road at the right.  A Rebel bugler, who hag been cut off, leaps his horse into the road in front of us.  We all fire at him on the impulse of the moment.  He falls from his horse with a bullet through his back.  Company M, which has remained in column as a reserve, is now thundering up close behind at a gallop.  Its seventy-five powerful horses are spurning the solid earth with steel-clad hoofs.  The man will be ground into a shapeless mass if left where he has fallen.  We spring from our horses and drag him into a fence corner; then remount and join in the pursuit.

This happened on the summit of Chestnut Ridge, fifteen miles from Jonesville.

Late in the afternoon the anxious watchers at Jonesville saw a single fugitive urging his well-nigh spent horse down the slope of the hill toward town.  In an agony of anxiety they hurried forward to meet him and learn his news.

The first messenger who rushed into Job’s presence to announce the beginning of the series of misfortunes which were to afflict the upright man of Uz is a type of all the cowards who, before or since then, have been the first to speed away from the field of battle to spread the news of disaster.  He said: 

     “And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have
     slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped
     alone to tell thee.”

So this fleeing Virginian shouted to his expectant friends: 

“The boys are all cut to pieces; I’m the only one that got away.”

The terrible extent of his words was belied a little later, by the appearance on the distant summit of the hill of a considerable mob of fugitives, flying at the utmost speed of their nearly exhausted horses.  As they came on down the hill as almost equally disorganized crowd of pursuers appeared on the summit, yelling in voices hoarse with continued shouting, and pouring an incessant fire of carbine and revolver bullets upon the hapless men of the Sixty-fourth Virginia.

The two masses of men swept on through the town.  Beyond it, the road branched in several directions, the pursued scattered on each of these, and the worn-out pursuers gave up the chase.

Returning to Jonesville, we took an account of stock, and found that we were “ahead” one hundred and fifteen prisoners, nearly that many horses, and a considerable quantity of small arms.  How many of the enemy had been killed and wounded could not be told, as they were scattered over the whole fifteen miles between where the fight occurred and the pursuit ended.  Our loss was trifling.