About the time he pulled trigger, a stray ball from some direction struck him in the side and he fell off dead, and his horse becoming frightened, galloped off, dragging him through the Confederate lines.

His pistol had missed its aim.
I have heard hundreds of old soldiers tell of the amount of greenback money they saw and picked up on the battlefield of Shiloh, but they thought it valueless and did not trouble themselves with bringing it off with them.
One fellow, a courier, who had had his horse killed, got on a mule he had captured, and in the last charge, before the final and fatal halt was made, just charged right ahead by his lone self, and the soldiers said, "Just look at that brave man, charging right in the jaws of death." He began to seesaw the mule and grit his teeth, and finally yelled out, "It arn't me, boys, it's this blarsted old mule.

Whoa! Whoa!" On Monday morning I too captured me a mule.

He was not a fast mule, and I soon found out that he thought he knew as much as I did.

He was wise in his own conceit.