L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

[245] of two to one odds, as long as we had a chance to ride at them. It was only when we got so entangled that we had to fight hand to hand that their numbers told heavily. It was in such a place that I lost sight of Broderick. The troop horse that he was riding was not strong enough to ride through a knot of men, so that he had to fight them. He struck one so heavily that he was stunned by the blow, but his horse was still in the way; swerving to one side, he escaped a blow from another, and, warding off the thrust of a third, managed to take him with his point across the forehead; just as he did so, however, his sabre, getting tangled with the rebel's, was jerked from his hand.

He always carried a pistol in his boot. Pulling that out, he fired into the crowd, and put spurs to his horse. The bullet hit a horse in front of him, which fell. His own charger rose at it, but stumbled, and as it did, Broderick himself fell, from a shot fired within arms' length of him and a sabre stroke upon his side.

I saw all this as a man sees things at such times, and am not positive even that it all occurred as I thought I saw it; for I was in the midst of confusion, and only caught things around by passing glimpses.

You see I was myself having as much as I could do. The crowd with whom Broderick was engaged was a little distance from me; and I had just wheeled to ride up to his help when two fellows put at me. The first one fired at me and missed. Before he could again cock his revolver I succeeded in closing with him. My sabre took him just in the neck, and must have cut the jugular. The blood gushed out in a black looking stream;