It was a Saturday, the thirteenth of June, 1863, and Lieutenant A. Willis Gould stood before Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest in the Masonic Hall in Columbia, Tennessee. Gould was there to protest his transfer. Forrest, for his part, believed the young lieutenant bore responsibility for the loss of two guns at Sand Mountain on the last day of April, and the accusation had festered.

To speak more privately, the two men moved into a vast hallway. Gould was angry, and he was afraid. He worried the transfer would mark him as a coward, a stain no officer could wash away. “No man can accuse me of being a coward and both of us live,” he said.

Four boys sitting on the stone steps outside the building heard the words through the open door, with Forrest’s back to them. Then came the sound of gunfire. Forrest reacted in an instant. His left hand went into his pocket to draw the small pin knife he had been toying with earlier, picking his teeth.

His right hand flew out to ward off what he believed was an attack. He was right. Gould had been fumbling with a pistol in the right pocket of his long linen coat, struggling to free it. As Forrest lunged, opening the knife with his teeth, the pistol, still not completely free, discharged.

The ball struck Forrest just above his left hip. The general grimaced, grabbed Gould’s wrist, and with his right hand forced the lieutenant’s pistol hand upward. In the same instant, he plunged the knife deep into Gould’s right side, between his ribs. The young lieutenant broke free, staggered through the hall, out the door, and burst into the street.

Two civilian surgeons, one of them a relative, took him into a tailor shop to treat him. His wound was severe; an artery had been severed and was spurting blood. Forrest tried to follow. Several officers intercepted him and steered him into a nearby doctor’s office.

Inside, a surgeon examined the wound and pronounced it fatal. Forrest thundered back: “No damn man shall kill me and live. ”

Seething with revenge, he burst from the office. There, tied to a railing, was a horse.

He rummaged through its attached haversack, found a pistol, and armed himself. Then he stalked after his attacker. Forrest’s quartermaster, who had been watching Gould receive treatment, shouted to him: “General, that damn scoundrel is not much hurt. ” The words poured fuel on an already raging fire.

A civilian tried to stop Forrest. “Get out of my way. I am mortally wounded and will kill the man who shot me,” he said. A subordinate handed him another pistol.

Locating the tailor shop, Forrest stormed inside, waving both pistols. The packed room scattered in panic. Gould rolled off the table on which he was being treated and headed for the back alley. As he lunged, Forrest fired.

The shot missed Gould but struck a bystander in the leg. The wounded general turned, went out the front of the shop, and hoped to cut Gould off in the alley. He stalked down the narrow passage and found the lieutenant behind the building, collapsed in the high weeds, glaring up at him. Forrest probed him with his foot and, satisfied that Gould was sufficiently wounded, turned and moved back to the tailor shop.

Later, a more thorough examination of Forrest’s own wound revealed that the round had missed his intestines entirely. It had slipped around his pelvic bone and lodged in the muscle of his hip. Relieved, he told the surgeon who wanted to remove it: “It’s nothing but a damn little pistol ball. Let it alone.

” Then he ordered others to find Gould and tend to him, at Forrest’s own expense. Gould would not be so lucky. The pin knife had penetrated his lung. Pneumonia set in, and twelve days later he was dead.

Forrest, meanwhile, was back in the saddle, the ball still lodged in his hip. No man had killed him, and he had lived.