Darke recoiled, and a furious flash darted from his eyes. Then his left hand went to his hilt; he drew a pistol; and spurring close up to Mohun, placed the weapon on his enemy’s breast, and fired.
The bullet passed through Mohun’s breast, but at the same instant Darke uttered a fierce cry. Mohun had driven his sword’s point through the Federal officer’s throat—the blood spouted around the blade—a moment afterward the two adversaries had clutched, dragged each other from their rearing horses, and were tearing each other with hands and teeth on the ground, wet with their blood.
One of Mohun’s men leaped from horseback and tore them apart.
“A sword! give me a sword,” exclaimed Mohun, hoarsely.
And rising to his feet, he clutched at an imaginary weapon,—his lips foamed with blood,—and reeling, he fell at full length on the body of his adversary, who was bathed in blood, and seemed to be dying.
What is here described, all took place in a few minutes. In that time the enemy’s column had been broken, and hurled back. Suddenly the wild Southern cheer rang above the woods. Stuart and Fitz Lee had united their forces; in one solid column they pressed the flying enemy, banging and thundering on their rear with carbines and cannon.
Kilpatrick was defeated; his column in hopeless rout.
“Stuart boasts of having driven me from Culpeper;” he is reported to have said just before the fight, “and now I am going to drive him.”
But Stuart was not driven. On the contrary, he drove Kilpatrick. Some of the enemy’s column did not stop, it is said, before they reached the banks of the Potomac.
Such was the dramatic termination of the last great cavalry campaign of Stuart.