Starbuck ran back through the woods. A shell cracked off to his left and a heavy branch splintered and tore down through the surrounding trees. Groups of men were flitting back through the trees, not waiting for orders, but just making off toward safety. They were abandoning bowie knives, blankets, haversacks, almost anything that might delay their flight. Starbuck found a chaotic press of men about the picketed horses and a corporal trying to lead Pocahontas free of the panicked rabble. “That’s mine!” Starbuck shouted, and snatched the reins.

For a second the corporal looked as though he would contest the issue, then he saw Starbuck’s grim face and fled. Captain Hinton ran past, shouting for his horse, followed by Lieutenant Moxey, whose left hand was dripping blood. Starbuck hauled himself onto Pocahontas’s back and turned her toward the clearing where he had last seen Doctor Danson. Another rush of men ran past, shouting unintelligibly. A crackle of rifle fire sounded from the edge of the trees. Starbuck kicked Pocahontas’s flanks. Her ears were pricked back, showing she was nervous. Starbuck ducked under a branch, then almost lost his seat as the mare leaped a fallen trunk. He galloped into the road, planning to turn south toward the casualty station, but suddenly a bullet slashed past his head and he saw a puff of flame-streaked smoke and a blur of blue uniforms in the opposite woods. A man shouted at him to surrender.

Starbuck wrenched the reins, half-falling off the horse. The mare turned, protesting, and Starbuck kicked his heels back. “Come on!” he shouted at her, then cringed as another bullet whipcracked past his head. He still held his heavy pistol and he used its barrel to hit Pocahontas’s flank and suddenly the horse jerked forward, almost throwing Starbuck off, but he somehow held on with his left hand as she bolted back into the woods. Starbuck turned her back toward the hillcrest. There seemed no sense in trying to organize an orderly withdrawal of the wounded; instead he needed to find Bird and tell him that the Legion had been deeply outflanked. “Major Bird!” he shouted. “Major Bird!”