This inspired Campbell, who now threw off his coat, to shout encouraging orders to his men posted on the side of the mountain opposite to Shelby's force.
When Campbell's Virginians uttered a series of piercing shouts, the British officer, De Peyster, second in command, remarked to his chief: "These things are ominous--these are the damned yelling boys." The battle, which lasted some minutes short of an hour, was waged with terrific ferocity.

The Loyalist militia, whenever possible, fired from the shelter of the rocks; while the Provincial Corps, with fixed bayonets, steadily charged the frontiersmen, who fired at close range and then rapidly withdrew to the very base of the mountain.

After each bayonet charge the Provincials coolly withdrew to the summit, under the accumulating fire of the returning mountaineers, who quickly gathered in their rear.

Owing to their elevated location, the British, although using the rapid-fire breech-loading rifle invented by Ferguson himself, found their vision deflected, and continually fired high, thus suffering from nature's handicap, refraction.

The militia, using sharpened butcher-knives which Ferguson had taught them to utilize as bayonets, charged against the mountaineers; but their fire, in answer to the deadly fusillade of the expert squirrel-shooters, was belated, owing to the fact that they could not fire while the crudely improvised bayonets remained inserted in their pieces.