Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/341

 Picket? s Charge at Gettysburg. 333

of us calling to the skirmishers, "Don't shoot him! don't shoot him !" and, lastly, the impetuous Kemper, as rising in his stir- rups and pointing to the left with his sword, he shouted, "There are the guns, boys, go for them." It was an injudicious order; but they obeyed with a will, and mingled with Garnett's peo- ple pushed rapidly up the heights.

Within a few steps of the stone fence, while in the act of shak- ing hands with General Garnett and congratulating him on be- ing able to be with his men (he had been seriously ill a few days before), I heard some one calling to me, and turning my head, saw that it was Captain Fry. He was mounted, and blood was streaming from his horse's neck. Colonel Terry had sent him to stop the rush to left. The enemy in force (Standard's Vermonters) had penetrated to our rear. He told me that Kemper had been struck down, it was feared mortally. With the help of Colonel Carrington, of the Eighteenth, and Major Bentley, of the Twenty-fourth, I hastily gathered a small band together and faced them to meet the new danger. After that everything was a wild kaleidoscopic whirl. A man near me seemed to be keeping a tally of the dead for my especial benefit. First it was Patton, then Collcote, then Phillips, and I know not how many more. Colonel Williams was knocked out the saddle by a ball in the shoulder near the brick-house, and in falling was killed by his sword. His little bay mare kept on with the men in the charge. I can see her now as she came limping and sadly crippled down the hill. I saw her again at W r illiamsport in care of his faithful man Harry, who asked me what I thought old master would say when she was all belonging to Mars Lewis he had to take home. Seeing the men as they fired, throw down their guns and pick up others from the ground, I followed suit, shooting into a flock of blue coats that were pouring down from the right, I noticed how close their flags were together. Probably they were the same people whom Hood and McLaws had handled so roughly the day before. "Used up," as General Meade said of them. Sud- denly there was a hissing sound, like the hooded cobra's whisper of death, a deafening explosion, a sharp pang of pain some- where, a momentary blank, and when I got on my feet again