The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car, by
W. H. H. Murray

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Title: A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car
1898

Author: W. H. H. Murray

Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23168]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by David Widger

A RIDE WITH A MAD HORSE IN A FREIGHT-CAR

By W. H. H. Murray

Copyright, 1898, by William Henry Harrison Murray

It was at the battle of Malvern Hill--a battle where the carnage
was more frightful, as it seems to me, than in any this side of the
Alleghanies during the whole war--that my story must begin. I was then
serving as Major in the --th Massachusetts Regiment--the old --th, as we
used to call it--and a bloody time the boys had of it too. About 2 p. m.
we had been sent out to skirmish along the edge of the wood in which,
as our generals suspected, the Rebs lay massing for a charge across
the slope, upon the crest of which our army was posted. We had barely
entered the underbrush when we met the heavy formations of Magruder in
the very act of charging. Of course, our thin line of skirmishers was no
impediment to those onrushing masses. They were on us and over us before
we could get out of the way. I do not think that half of those running,
screaming masses of men ever knew that they had passed over the remnants
of as plucky a regiment as ever came out of the old Bay State. But many
of the boys had good reason to remember that afternoon at the base of
Malvern Hill, and I among the number; for when the last line of Rebs
had passed over me, I was left among the bushes with the breath nearly
trampled out of me and an ugly bayonet-gash through my thigh; and mighty
little consolation was it for me at that moment to see the fellow who
ran me through lying stark dead at my side, with a bullet-hole in his
head, his shock of coarse black hair matted with blood, and his stony
eyes looking into mine. Well, I bandaged up my limb the best I might,
and started to crawl away, for our batteries had opened, and the grape
and canister that came hurtling down the slope passed but a few feet