Just north of the junction stood Simon Eberly’s redbrick house and a tavern. Also in that area were fields of foot-high corn and plowed land. On the south side were a cooper’s shop, a blacksmith’s shop, and a 400-yard-wide field of waist-high wheat. In the wheat field stood the McCormick family’s barn, 400 yards northwest of the crossroads. Beyond the fields, parallel to the pike, was a belt of woods. Beginning a mile and a third to the west, a plateau stretched west to Salem Church. The Gleim house and a few oak trees lay in a dip about 900 yards away in the same direction, on the north side of the pike.

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Soon after Ewen’s men arrived at the junction, puffs of smoke rose from the barn, and Confederate musket balls whizzed overhead. Return fire struck harmlessly against the barn’s stone walls. Ewen halted his column, but did nothing more. Lieutenant King, cresting a hill, saw some Rebels run from the Gleim barn across the pike diagonally and into the woods south of the pike. Believing they might be trying to turn the Union left flank, King directed the 22d New York’s two leading companies, A and C, into these woods. Seeing this, the Rebels withdrew to the woods around the Gleim house. New Yorkers on patrol captured only a frightened farmer.

The troops of four 22d New York companies were deployed on their stomachs south of the road, concealed by the wheat. Three similarly deployed companies to the north were only partially hidden by the short corn stalks. Finally, Ewen ordered the 37th to move up on the right flank of the 22d, deploy, and attack the McCormick barn.

As the 37th came over a hill, fire from the barn wounded a lieutenant and a drummer boy. The troops fell to the ground for cover and would not follow Ewen’s orders to move forward to a wheat field about 30 yards closer to the barn. The frustrated Ewen then ordered the three companies of the 22d north of the road to drive the 37th forward with fixed bayonets. Before the 22d could digest this strange order, the 37th, of its own accord, rushed forward to a fence and resumed its ineffective fire on the barn.

Confederate artillery began to fire from among Gleim’s oaks. Four rounds whistled over two companies of the 22d, which promptly moved en masse to the south side of the pike. The Rebel artillery shifted its fire to try to follow its runaway targets, but the Yankees had gotten too far away.

At 5:00 p.m. a Lieutenant Perkins arrived with two rifled guns from a unit known as Landis’s Philadelphia Battery. King placed one gun on the pike atop the hill, and the other in a farm field north of the Eberly house. Their first shot hit McCormick’s barn. The doors swung open, and the Southerners fled back to their main position. The Federals seemed to win the ensuing artillery duel, inflicting casualties and forcing the Rebels to limber up their cannon and withdraw.

It was then that Ewen’s men heard artillery fire from the direction of Mechanicsburg, about a mile and a half from their left. Shells seemed to be bursting on Trindle Spring Road to the southeast, not near Sporting Hill. Fearing he was being outflanked, Ewen had the 22d’s flank companies turn and face the line’s left rear.

It turned out that the fire was coming from a gun that had accompanied Lieutenant Herman Schüricht’s Rebel cavalry company to Mechanicsburg. Schüricht had driven out Murray’s Federals and taken position east of town, where the Cumberland Valley Railroad crossed Trindle Spring Road. Schüricht’s horsemen were burning ties to heat and twist rails when the lieutenant detected men in a patch of woods between him and Shiremanstown, to the east. Believing them to be Yankees preparing to attack, he ordered the gunners to fire a few rounds into the woods. No one was hurt, and the “Yankees” proved to be local farmers.

Soon, Schüricht found himself in the same unnerving predicament as Ewen, as shifting winds brought the sound of artillery from the direction of Sporting Hill. Schüricht feared he was about to be cut off from the main Confederate force, so he withdrew his force to Carlisle. Ewen stayed in position almost until dark, then marched back east to Bridgeport.

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