Further on we found one poor old Missouri home guard who was wounded. He had dragged himself up against a black jack tree and was waiting patiently for some chance of being cared for. We halted and were speaking to him, when one of his neighbors, a Southern sympathizer, came up, recognized him and began to abuse him in a shameful manner. “Oh, you d——d old scoundrel,” he said, “if you had been where you ought to have been, you wouldn’t be in the fix you are in now.” They were both elderly men, and evidently lived only a few miles away, as the Southerner had had time to come from his home to see the result of the battle. I felt tempted to shoot the old coward, and thus put them on an equality, and let them quarrel it out. But as it seemed enough men had been shot for one day, we could only shame him and tell him that if he had had the manliness to take up his gun and fight for what he thought was right, as his neighbor had done, he would not be there to curse and abuse a helpless and wounded man, and that he should not insult him or abuse him any more while we were there. We continued our ride until satisfied for that time, and for all time, so far as I was concerned, with viewing a battlefield just after the battle, unless duty demands it.
Our train came up at night, bringing us, oh, so many letters from our post office at Fort Smith, but the day’s doings, the fatigue, hunger, thirst, heat, and excitement had overcome me so completely that I opened not a letter until the morning. Reckoning up the day’s casualties in Company C, we found four men and fifteen horses had been shot; Leander W. Cole was mortally wounded, and died in Springfield a few days later; J. E. Dillard was shot in the leg and in allusion to his long-leggedness it was said he was shot two and one half feet below the knee and one and one half feet above the ankle; T. Wiley Roberts was slightly wounded in the back of the head, and P. C. Coupland slightly wounded. Some of the horses were killed and others wounded. Roger Q. Mills and Dr. —— Malloy, two citizens of Corsicana, were with us in this battle, having overtaken us on the march, and remained with us until it was over, then returning home. Roger Q. Mills was afterwards colonel of the Tenth Texas Infantry. Dr. Malloy was captain of a company, and fell while gallantly fighting at the head of his company in one of the battles west of the Mississippi River.