nt of Sheridan increased in violence. The Confederates
were continually pouring fresh troops upon him, and it became apparent
that even he, with all his courage and quickness of eye at the vital
moment, could not withstand all day long the fierce attacks that were
being made upon him. The Southern fire from cannon and rifles grew more
terrible. Sheridan had three brigades and the commanders of all three of
them were killed. The Confederate attack had been repulsed three times,
but it was coming again, stronger and fiercer than ever.

Dick, aghast, gazed at Colonel Winchester and somehow through the
thunder of the battle he heard the colonel's reply:

"Yes, we'll have to give up this position, but we have saved so much
time that the army itself is saved. Rosecrans is forming a new line
behind us."

Rosecrans, no genius, but a brave and resolute fighter, had indeed
brought up fresh troops and made a new line. Sheridan, having that
greatest of all gifts of the general, the eye to see amid the terrible
tumult of battle the time to do a thing, and the courage to do it then,
sounded the trumpet. Nearly all his wagons had been captured by the
Southern cavalry, and his ammunition was beginning to fail. Around him
lay two thousand of his best men, dead or wounded. Rosecrans and the
fresh troops were appearing just in time.

Yet the retreat of Sheridan was made with the greatest difficulty. A
part of his troops were cut off and captured. Others drove back the
Confederate flankers with a bayonet charge, and then the remnant
retreated, the new lines opening to let them through. Dick, as he passed
through the gap, saw that he was among countrymen. That is, a Kentucky
regiment, fighting for the Union was standing as a shield to let his
comrades and himself through, and the people of the state were related
so closely that in the flare of the battle he saw among these new men at
least a half dozen faces that he knew.

It was this Kentucky regiment, led by its colonel, Shepherd, that
now formed itself in the very apex of the battle. The remains of the
Winchester regiment, forming behind it, saw a terrible sight. Some of
the regiments crushed earlier in the action had entirely disbanded. The
woods and the bushes were filled with fugitives, soldiers seeking the
rear. Vast clouds of smoke drifted everywhere, the air was filled with
the odors of exploded gunpowder, cannon were piled in inextricable heaps
in the road, and horses, killed