Confederate guerrilla leader John Singleton Mosby continually urged his Rangers to “get the bulge” on their opponents by attacking first, using the element of surprise to swiftly and violently make the most of their small numbers to subdue their opponents. But in September 1864, the Union Scouts took a page from Mosby’s Rangers’ book to serve the Confederates a taste of their own medicine.
Blazer’s men seized the two inebriated fellows, and maybe the applejack, and accused them of belonging to Mosby’s command. The alarmed men denied the charges and promised to aid in the search if they were not harmed. Blazer gave the Southerners a chance to lead them to the Rangers and “mounted slowly and carefully so as to not be led into a snare by the young men.”The bluecoats rode two abreast along a narrow lane bordering the eastern side of the Shenandoah River.
Nelson tried to rally his men and initially drove some of Blazer’s Scouts back. The two sides bunched together: a mass of horses and armed men firing at each other at close range. “I don’t think it is much,” Williamson stoically but breathlessly responded. Bullets whistled near the men’s ears as the two Rangers fled from the Union Scouts. “Hold on to old Bob,” Walston shouted, referring to the Ranger’s venerable mount, which had been in countless skirmishes. Williamson sped off on Old Bob, and as he panned the area, he saw “our men were completely demoralized and fleeing in all directions.
Blazer’s men had overwhelmed a larger force. He recorded, “I came upon Mosby’s guerrillas, 200 strong, and after a sharp fight of thirty minutes, we succeeded in routing him, driving them three miles, over fences and through cornfields. They fought with will, but the seven shooters proved to be too much for them.”