le
Which proved to be bravado,
About the streams that spout like ale
On the Llano Estacado!

"That's the Staked Plains, you know. Awful hot out there! Pretty
hot here, too. Look at them lovely roasting ears! Can't touch 'em.
Old Jack says so. Pope may live on the country, but we mayn't."
"That mountain is getting pretty big." "Hello! Just a cavalry
scrimmage--Hello! hello! Artillery's more serious!" "Boys, boys!
we've struck Headquarters-in-the-saddle!--What's that awful
noise?--Old Jack's coming--Old Jack's coming to the front!--Mercy!
didn't know even we could cheer like that!--Yaaaih! Yaaaaaaihhh!
Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! Yaaaaaaiiiihhh!"

As the day declined the battle swelled in smoke and thunder. The blue
batteries were well placed, and against them thundered twenty-six grey
rifled guns: two Parrotts of Rockbridge with a gun of Carpenter's
appeared at the top of the hill, tore down the long slope and came into
battery in an open field, skirted by a wood. Behind was the Stonewall
Brigade in column of regiments. The guns were placed _en echelon_, the
horses taken away, the ball opened with canister. Immediately the
Federal guns answered, got the range of the grey, and began to do deadly
mischief. All around young trees were cut off short. The shells came,
thick, black, and screaming. The place proved fatal to officers.
Carpenter was struck in the head by a piece of shell--mortally wounded.
The chief of artillery, Major Snowden Andrews fell, desperately injured,
then Captain Caskie was hurt, then Lieutenant Graham. The gunners worked
like mad. The guns thundered, recoiled, thundered again. The blue shells
arrived in a deadly stream. All was smoke, whistling limbs of trees,
glare and roar. General Winder came up on foot. Standing by a grey
Parrott he tried with his field glass to make out the Federal batteries.
Lowering the glass he shouted some direction to the men about the gun
below him. The noise was hideous, deafening. Seeing that he was not
understood he raised his arm and hollowed his hand above his mouth. A
shell passed beneath his arm, through his side. He fell stiffly back,
mangled and dying.

There was a thick piece of woods, deep and dark, stretching westward.
The left of Jackson's division rested here. Ewell's brigades and
batteries were on the mountain slope; the Light Division, A. P. Hill in
his red battle shirt at its head, not yet up