Colonel Speed Fry, commanding the 4th Kentucky Infantry (U.S.), pulled his men back to a split-rail fence on a hill east of the road, where Union soldiers deployed while Confederates regrouped in the ravine after learning that Confederate General Felix K. Zollicoffer was dead. After this quiet interlude came the fiercest fighting of the battle, bloody and hand-to-hand, as Confederates tried desperately to push Union soldiers off the fence and ridge but could not move them. The 15th Mississippi drove Federals back to the main line, then advanced by lying flat and firing, wheeling onto their backs to load, rising, running forward ten steps, and dropping to fire again, until they drove the 10th Indiana from the field. The Confederates then advanced with fixed bayonets on the 2nd Minnesota, which answered with a horrific yell and for the next forty minutes poured volley after volley into them. When the Confederates finally gave way, they were so close to the Federals, with only the fence between them, that some men of the 2nd Minnesota pulled Confederate guns out of their hands.