TOM HOWARD'S SQUIRREL BEAD.
On May 28, '64, we were on skirmish line near Dallas, Ga. The remainder of the brigade had left the trenches in our rear to reinforce some other point in the line and the pickets were holding the fort alone. A Federal sharpshooter had secured a concealed position at short range and was picking off the men in a way highly satisfactory to himself, perhaps, but decidedly unpleasant to us. We had been on duty all the night before and worn out from loss of sleep. I sat down with my back to a tree as a protection from careless bullets and fell asleep. Will Daniel, in a similar position and for like reasons, was dozing at the next tree twenty feet away. A courier came down the line and waking me asked for the officer in command. I pointed to Will and as the courier laid his hand on Will's shoulder to wake him, a ball crashed through his knee, causing him to scream with pain. A little while before Louis Picquet had received the wound that cost him his leg, and a little later McCurdy of our company, fell with a ball through his head.
Tom Howard had been watching the progress of events and they seemed to him entirely too one-sided. Gripping his rifle more tightly and with the peculiar flash that came to his eyes when excited, he said, "Boys if I can get a squirrel bead on that fellow I can stop his racket." Slipping from tree to tree until he located the picket by the smoke of his gun, he drew his squirrel bead and fired. This time the yell of pain came from the other side, and Tom, with his eyes dancing and his face all aglow, turned to us and said, "Boys, I got him. I heard him holler." Tom's bead had stopped the racket.