roying supplies, blowing up ammunition,
disabling cannon, running off mules. They ambushed marching infantry,
flitting away before their victims had recovered from the initial
surprise. Sometimes, fleeing from the scene of one attack, they would
burst through a column on another road, leaving confusion behind to
delay the pursuit.

Finally, the invaders passed on, the camp on the mountain top was
abandoned, the Mosby men went back to their old billets, and the
Forty-Third Battalion could take it easy again. That is to say, they
only made a raid every couple of days and seldom fought a pitched
battle more than once a week.

The summer passed; the Virginia hills turned from green to red and
from red to brown. Mosby was severely wounded in the side and thigh
during a fight at Gooding's Tavern on August 23, when two of his men
were killed, but the raiders brought off eighty-five horses and twelve
prisoners and left six enemy dead behind. The old days of bloodless
sneak raids on isolated picket posts were past, now that they had
enough men for two companies and Mosby rarely took the field with
fewer than a hundred riders behind him.

Back in the saddle again after recovering from his wounds, Mosby
devoted more attention to attacking the Orange and Alexandria and the
Manassas Gap railroads and to harassing attacks for the rest of the
winter.

In January, 1864, Major Cole, of the Union Maryland cavalry, began
going out of his way to collide with the Forty-Third Virginia, the
more so since he had secured the services of a deserter from Mosby, a
man named Binns who had been expelled from the Rangers for some piece
of rascality and was thirsting for revenge. Cole hoped to capitalize
on Binns' defection as Mosby had upon the desertion of Sergeant Ames,
and he made several raids into Mosby's Confederacy, taking a number of
prisoners before the Mosby men learned the facts of the situation and
everybody found a new lodging place.

On the morning of February 20, Mosby was having breakfast at a
farmhouse near Piedmont Depot, on the Manassas Gap Railroad, along
with John Munson and John Edmonds, the 'teen-age terrors, and a
gunsmith named Jake Lavender, who was the battalion ordnance sergeant
and engaged to young Edmonds' sister. Edmonds had with him a couple of
Sharps carbines he had repaired for other members of the battalion and
was carrying to return to the owners. Suddenly John Edmonds' younger
brother, Jimmy, burst into the